The Souls of Drowned People

Author's Note

I started writing The Souls of Drowned People because I was on drugs and in love with an Irish boy.

Now that I have grabbed your attention with that first sentence, I will explain.

I’ll start with the Irish boy. He’s actually half-Irish, and I wasn’t actually fully in love with him— just a stupid little crush, but he had an awesome Irish name and great hair, and that was really enough for me. We met while attending summer programs in the same area. His hair was fabulous, his name was Tadhg, and god knows I can’t resist a guy with good hair and an Irish name. I’d like to tell you we had an adorable summer camp romance, but we didn’t. My roommate and I did sneak out to see him and the other cute boys one night, but that was the extent of it. Tadhg and I talked a grand total of three times. He remembered my name, at least. We kept up an awkward Facebook conversation for a week after both of us returned home, but that was it. It’s not a great story, and I wish it was. He stopped answering my messages, and I’m too awkward to try starting our conversation up again. He lives 800 miles away from me, and though I like to dream, I’ve accepted that nothing will ever happen between us.

I could go on and on about my terrible luck with men, but I’ll get to the point to this story. When I returned home, I was so depressed over this guy that I watched The Secret of Roan Inish about three times that summer. There’s a guy in the film named Tadhg, and I guess I just wanted to be reminded of him. So because of Tadhg and our lack of summer romance, I watched a movie about selkies. And I started thinking about selkies. And I realized that despite all the vampires and werewolves in teen fiction these days, no one was writing about selkies. And so, I decided to write a novel about selkies. I played around with some ideas and scribbled a few lines, but no sparks of inspiration really hit. I put the selkie idea away, and wrote other things, but in the back of my mind, the idea was always there, and I knew it was going to happen whenever it decided to happen.

My inspiration tends to hit at really strange times. Which brings us to the drugs. When the idea for The Souls of Drowned People finally came, I was lying on my couch, totally out of it because I had three wisdom teeth ripped out of my mouth that morning. I don’t know if it was the Valium or the anesthesia in my bloodstream or what, but I couldn’t stop thinking about selkies and the story I needed to write about them. Between throwing up blood and Jello, I managed to write a nine page story about a girl named Moira, a boy named Cillian, and a seal named Ronan.

I fell in love with them. Especially Cillian. I began to realize that nine pages wasn’t good enough for them, and four months and 218 pages later, I had The Souls of Drowned People as it is now. So good can come out of heartbreak and pain pills after all.

As far as the future and The Souls of Drowned People goes . . . what you read was clearly a rough draft, so all the more thanks to you for getting through the errors and confusion. I’m aware that this story needs work, but I feel that it’s worth my time to keep working on it. Rough drafts are messy and ugly and confusing, but I love the general idea of this story, and like I said, selkies need their time in the limelight. I’d absolutely love to have this published someday, but of course, that won’t happen without a lot of work. But because of all you lovely people who've read it, and supported me, I feel that it might be worth my time and worth a shot.

As of right now, I’m taking a little break from The Souls of Drowned People to work on some other things, but it will be back! When I begin rewriting, I probably won’t re-update anything onto Wattpad until it’s completely done and polished, but since I love all your comments and opinions, it will be here again, someday, I promise.

Thank you all again. This story means so much to me, but knowing that people have actually enjoyed it made writing it so much sweeter.

Sláinte!

Elle Svensson