Writers are often asked, “Where do you get your ideas?” Usually, the answer is a mix of “I had a weird dream” or “I stared at a wall until my forehead hurt” or “I honestly have no clue.” But every once in a while, a story comes from somewhere completely unexpected. The Atlantis Twins is one of those stories. And the truth is, it never should have been about mermaids at all.
The Original Concept: A Thriller About Bros on a Boat
Picture this. A group of twenty-somethings on a ship in the middle of the ocean. Tensions running high. Secrets lurking beneath the surface. Maybe a mystery, maybe some danger, definitely some questionable life choices. It was supposed to be a thriller. Dark, suspenseful, maybe a little bit murder mystery adjacent. Think less “magical underwater kingdoms” and more “things go horribly wrong at sea.”
I had it all mapped out. The beats, the tension, the red herrings. It was going to be gritty and atmospheric. The kind of book where you’re not sure who to trust and everyone has something to hide. I was excited about it. I mean, what’s not to love about a confined setting with high stakes and a ticking clock?
But here’s the thing about stories. Sometimes they have other plans.
A Fateful Workshop
I was attending a creative writing workshop at the Brooklyn Public Library. If you’ve never been to one of these workshops, they’re usually a mix of prompts, free writing exercises, and sharing your work with other writers. The kind of environment where you’re encouraged to let go of perfectionism and just write. To see what comes out when you stop overthinking every word.
The facilitator gave us a prompt. I don’t even remember what it was anymore. Something open ended, something designed to get us out of our heads and onto the page. So I started writing. And then something weird happened.
A voice showed up that I wasn’t expecting.
She was sassy. She was bold. She had opinions about everything and zero patience for nonsense. She wasn’t one of the twenty-something dudes I’d been plotting about. She wasn’t part of the thriller at all. But suddenly, there she was on the page, talking back to me, refusing to shut up.
Her name was Alysa. And she had a twin sister. A mermaid fantasy began to take shape…
When Characters Hijack Your Story
I’ve had characters surprise me before. That’s part of the joy of writing, discovering who these people are as you go. But this was different. This wasn’t a character revealing an unexpected quirk or backstory. This was a full on mutiny.
Alysa wasn’t interested in being part of my carefully plotted thriller. She had her own story to tell, and it had nothing to do with bros on boats. Well, actually, it still involved a boat. And the ocean. But suddenly, there were mermaids involved. And ancient curses. And a missing twin sister who was supposedly dead but maybe, just maybe, was still alive somewhere beneath the waves.
I tried to resist at first. I had a plan, after all. A perfectly good plan for a perfectly good thriller. But the more I wrote in that workshop, the more Alysa’s voice took over. She was funny and fierce and vulnerable in ways that completely surprised me. And her relationship with her lost sister, the way she refused to believe Alyx was really gone, that felt real in a way my original concept never quite had.
By the end of that workshop session, I knew. The thriller was dead. Long live the mermaids.
Meeting Alyx and Alysa
Once I stopped fighting it and let the story go where it wanted to go, everything clicked into place. Alysa became the protagonist, a seventeen year old girl living in Hawaii with no memory of the boating accident that nearly killed her. Her twin sister Alyx vanished that day, and everyone told Alysa to accept that she was gone. But Alysa couldn’t. Wouldn’t. She could feel in her bones that her sister was still out there.
And then there was Alyx herself. The sister who did remember. The one who’d been transformed, cursed, pulled into a world Alysa didn’t even know existed. Their connection, that twin bond that refused to break even when an ocean separated them, became the emotional core of the entire series.
What started as a random free writing exercise in a Brooklyn library became three books in my mermaid fantasy series. The Atlantis Twins, The Atlantis Song, and The Atlantis Queens. A whole trilogy about these sisters, their heritage, and the ancient enemy that had been hunting their family for generations.
The Power of Free Writing
Looking back, I’m so grateful I didn’t cling too tightly to my original idea. If I’d been rigid about sticking to the thriller concept, I never would have discovered Alysa and Alyx. I never would have built the world of Atlantis, the Ocean Alliance, or Alabaster Island. I never would have written about mermaid genetics or ancestral curses or what it means to fight for someone everyone else has given up on.
That Brooklyn Public Library workshop taught me something invaluable. Sometimes the best ideas come when you’re not trying to force anything. When you show up, put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), and let whatever wants to emerge just happen. Even if it derails your entire plan. Especially if it derails your entire plan.
Free writing exercises can feel silly when you’re in the middle of them. You’re sitting there scribbling whatever comes to mind, half convinced it’s all nonsense. But that’s exactly the point. When you turn off the internal editor, when you stop worrying about whether something fits your outline or makes logical sense, that’s when the real magic shows up.
From One Voice to an Entire World
What’s wild is how much of the final book came from that single free writing session. Not the plot details, obviously. Those got developed and refined over months of writing and revising. But the voice, the tone, the emotional truth at the center of the story, all of that was there from the beginning.
Alysa’s sass never changed. Her determination to find her sister, even when everyone told her it was hopeless, that stayed too. The way she approached the world with equal parts humor and heartbreak, that was in the very first pages I wrote in that workshop.
And once I had Alysa’s voice, everything else followed. The setting in Hawaii made sense for her. The mystery surrounding the Ocean Alliance fit her need for answers. The revelation about her mermaid heritage and her family’s dark history gave her a journey worth following.
The thriller I’d originally planned would have been fine. Maybe even good. But it wouldn’t have been this. It wouldn’t have been a story about sisterhood and identity and the lengths we’ll go to for the people we love. It wouldn’t have been a story that surprised me at every turn, that made me laugh and break my own heart as I wrote it..
What The Atlantis Twins Became
The final version of The Atlantis Twins kept some elements from that original thriller concept. There’s still a ship. There’s still danger and mystery and people who aren’t what they seem. The Ocean Alliance, that mysterious group Alysa gets involved with, they’re absolutely harboring dark secrets. Nate, the handsome surfer who seems too good to be true, well, he definitely is.
But wrapped around that thriller skeleton is something richer and stranger. A mermaid fantasy about two sisters separated by trauma and transformation. A mythology that draws on Atlantis legends but twists them into something new. A coming of age tale where the protagonist has to accept not just who she is, but what she is, even when that truth is devastating.
Alysa’s journey to Alabaster Island, the place where her mother was born and where ancient secrets wait, became the emotional and physical center of the book. Her relationship with Nate got complicated in ways I never planned. And the twist at the end, the reveal that changes everything you thought you knew about Alysa and her family, that came from letting the characters and the world breathe, from not forcing them into the box I’d originally built.
Reviewers said things like “Not many books surprise me like this one did” and “There were more than a few times that I gasped out loud.” That’s exactly what I wanted. I wanted readers to feel the same shock and discovery I felt when Alysa first showed up and took over the story.
The Final Word
The Atlantis Twins wasn’t the book I planned to write. It was better.
It taught me that sometimes the best creative decisions are the ones that feel like losses of control. That surrendering your agenda can lead to something truer and stranger than you imagined. That free writing isn’t just a warm up exercise, it’s a way to access the parts of your brain that know things you don’t consciously know yet.
If you’re a writer sitting on a story that refuses to cooperate, that keeps pulling in directions you didn’t plan, maybe that’s not a bug. Maybe that’s a feature. Maybe your story knows better than you do what it needs to be.
And if you’re a reader who picked up The Atlantis Twins expecting one thing and got mermaids, ancient curses, and sisters who refuse to let death separate them, well, you can thank that random Wednesday night workshop at the Brooklyn Public Library. You can thank the voice that showed up uninvited and changed everything.
You can thank Alysa and Alyx for being exactly who they needed to be, even when that meant hijacking my entire book.
Best creative accident I ever made.
Have you ever had a character or story take over your plans? Or as a reader, have you been surprised by a book that turned out to be something completely different than expected? Let me know in the comments! I’d love to hear about your own creative mutinies.
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