Why I Revisited The Daisy Chain
by Erica, Co-Founder of Death Do We Party Press
I didn’t want to do it. It was like my husband just asked me to move back in with an ex.
That was my gut punch when Dustin brought up the idea of revisiting The Daisy Chain and releasing a revised and expanded edition. I didn’t just hesitate. I recoiled.
Because the truth is: writing The Daisy Chain was one of the greatest joys of my life. Editing it, sending it out into the world? Brutal. The kind of creative process that carves you open and leaves you there like roadkill. The book had moderate success, and I received kind words from readers and publishers—but it’s a soul-baring process to let something that big fly into the world and wait for people to affirm or ignore you.
I started writing The Daisy Chain in the early 2000s, longhand, in spiral-bound notebooks during stolen moments. Lunch breaks and late nights from my cozy writing corner in my car, complete with loads and loads of coffee and cigarettes.
I remember the night that first sentence reverberated in my head and it wouldn’t stop until I wrote it down. I filled notebook after notebook with dialogue and a plot that just flew out onto the paper.
I fell in love with Dannah Marshall in a way I’ve only experienced with my family, with a weird blind reverence for who she is and an unmistakable obligation to do right by her. It’s a very strange feeling. I’ve been a writer my whole life. I was supposed to be a photographer (my UT loans will confirm), but the pen has always been mightier for me. Writing pulls me in—part counselor, part overbearing consigliere—always without my consent.
The stories arrive like gifts blown in by the wind. They’re not mine so much as they’re on loan from the universe. I’ve missed so many opportunities—lost them to brain clutter, distraction, and sleep deprivation—but The Daisy Chain was one I managed to catch.
Of course, once the writing high was over, there was editing. If writing is seduction, editing is the fight afterward. Dirty, hard, unglamorous. But I learned to love the clash—cutting, molding, sharpening. Exhausting and exhilarating, invisible work but without it anyone’s writing is crap.
Next came the query process. Both interesting and soul-sucking. You make connections and learn about the industry from inside the abyss. I received enough rejections to know Westerns weren’t cool. Unless your name was McMurtry or L’Amour, publishers didn’t want to hear it. Cormac McCarthy hadn’t yet become everyone’s favorite dark cowboy-poet and Yellowstone was just a national park.
Eventually, in 2011, I self-published it. It sold thousands of copies and I felt like I could finally let Dannah lead her own destiny. I did what I was called to do and I released her into the world.
Cut to spring 2025. Dustin was trapped in hotel rooms on weekends working on his MBA out of town and after a few failed attempts to watch his top 100 movies list or play video games alone in the dark he decided to work on an old manuscript—West of Nowhere—and said, “Hey, could you edit this for me?”
Dirty. Trick.
At the time, I was up to my eyeballs in life. Three kids (two, four, and six), each one a sparkler with legs. I was deep in the weeds of building a wellness startup I’d been dreaming about for years with a bestie. I was freelancing as a copywriter for several major fashion brands. My days were full. My nights were fuller. But Dustin knows me.
Through his manuscript, nostalgia crept back in. He didn’t push The Daisy Chain right away. He let me remember what it felt like to live inside a world built by words. Then—once I was knee-deep in it, he pounced.
I wanted to throw a shoe at him.
“Remember those sequel ideas we talked about ten years ago? Don’t you want to dive back into Medea?”
Where the hell are my shoes?
But something had shifted. Because by then, I was seeing The Daisy Chain again with new eyes that were a little older, a little wiser, and a little less convinced that my writing flatline was not a permanent label.
So I listened to it—Gwyneth Paltrow, in a sultry, AI-perfected voice, read it to me. And after all these years while I folded laundry and fished under beds for Legos, I listened again for the millionth time. I finished and felt something completely unexpected: pride.
Okay, swan dive here I come. I was revising before I knew it. It felt good—not easy, but good. Revisiting Dannah honestly felt like coming home. Maybe a part of me that I’ve had to bury with kids in the stage of life I’m at. I could feel atrophied parts of my brain quivering.
But I let the townspeople of Medea County breathe again. I allowed for deeper complexity, for new scenes that only revealed themselves after years of living. I didn’t just revise it—I expanded the story. And that’s the thing about creative work. Sometimes it looks like a dead end, when really it’s just a long detour.
And Dustin’s sequel ideas? Turns out, they were good. Really good. So The Daisy Chain became The Cole Edwards Saga. Not an endpoint, but a beginning.
My hall-pass Longhorn, Matthew McConaughey, once wrote:
“We all have scars. We’ll get more. So rather than struggle against time and waste it, let’s dance with it. Just keep livin’, man.”
I’ve got scars from this book. They’ve made me better. Because sometimes the stories we think we’re finished with aren’t done with us. Sometimes what looks like failure is just a chapter break. And sometimes, all it takes is a devious co-creator, an old manuscript, and the right kind of trick to bring you back home.
Yours,
Erica
Co-Founder, Death Do We Party Press
P.S. If you’ve ever shelved a dream, you’re not alone. But maybe, just maybe—it’s time to take another look.
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