Lucy Smoke’s Letter to Librarians

In HALLOWED BONES, Lucy Smoke writes a scorching hot mashup of The Covenant and Wednesday, with dark academia vibes, forbidden love, gothic suspense, and morally grey characters. In her letter to librarians, she shares the story of her misspelled tattoo, and talks about how her time working as a librarian’s assistant shaped her and her future as a writer. 

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Dear Librarian,

So, I have this tattoo—I know, odd way to start this letter, but hear me out. It’s one of my most embarrassing stories to tell and I think you’ll get a good chuckle out of it. It’s a quote that reads, “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” 

Sounds poetic, right? It definitely did to an 18-year-old girl who had these grand dreams of being the modern-day Shakespeare. The self-indulgent nature of the quote aside, here’s the real kicker:

It’s misspelled. 

I’m an author—one with both a Bachelors and a Masters degree in Literature and Professional Writing. And I have a misspelled tattoo. If that’s not irony, I don’t know what is. 

What’s even funnier is that I spelled it correctly when handing it over to the tattoo artist, and I had someone with me to double check it (since it’s somewhere I can’t see myself). So, how did it happen? 

Accident, maybe? Bad tattoo artist with a poor sense of humor? My own idiocy? All of the above?

Who can say, but you know what that experience did? It taught me that it doesn’t matter how well you plan, life has a way of turning everything upside down. 

I’m one of the thousands of young readers that have stepped through a library’s doors. And when I was 21, I became more than a reader, I became a Librarian’s assistant struggling to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. 

Eventually, I was accepted into a grad program and had to leave the library behind. But during my time there, something in me changed and it was because of that place and the people there that I found my purpose. I wrote one of my first books while working at that library. It wasn’t very good and to be honest, I wouldn’t let anyone read it now, but it did lead to my next book and the next and the next until finally… 

This one: HALLOWED BONES. 

HALLOWED BONES is a dark gothic modern reimagining of the Salem Witch Trials. But it’s also a love letter to being different. It was written for my past self, but also for people who felt the same as me—for the readers who grew up dreaming of stories and of being different in the best way. 

The characters are flawed, wounded, and sometimes outright frustrating. The story is a complex tapestry woven with pieces of real history as well as mystery and themes of identity, love, and loss. 

Despite that, HALLOWED BONES is a celebration too. It honors the journey we all go through to finding and forgiving ourselves. For growing up. For making mistakes—like getting a crappy tattoo. 

But without you—without librarians—this book wouldn’t exist. So, thank you, and I hope you go on this next adventure with me.

XOXO,
Lucy
Author of HALLOWED BONES