Annie Jackson
Annie Jackson writes clean YA fantasy fairy tale retellings. Her Princess Kingdoms series includes Tattered Heart, a Sleeping Beauty retelling, and Enchanted Storms, a Beauty and the Beast retelling set three centuries earlier in the same kingdom.
Annie Jackson has always loved stories–from books to tv and movies. She grew up rereading C.S. Lewis, Robin McKinley and Madeleine L’Engle in a small mountain town with limited library options, which likely explains a lot. She wasn’t only collecting favorite scenes; she was collecting proof that stories mattered, that honor wasn’t outdated, and that bravery had texture. Long before she wrote fairy tale retellings, she was being formed by them.
Before writing fiction, she spent years in television production which gave her a working vocabulary for emotional pacing, story mechanics, and ensemble dynamics. It also taught her that craft is not an enemy of creativity, but what lets creativity survive contact with reality.
She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and developed the Agile First Draft method for writing novels in focused iterative passes. On Substack she writes Writing Alchemy, story analysis through a Christian lens in the tradition of C.S. Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle and J.R.R. Tolkien and Ink & Loose Leaves, which chronicles her drafting process in practice.
She taught herself to build websites out of sheer restlessness, then built iOS productivity apps as work moved from the browser to a phone. As technology continues to evolve so do our tools and Northlight Letters is where she shares tools and tips for authors navigating AI for the business side of writing, never for generating prose. Annie doesn’t just wish for tools, she makes them.
Her readers are advanced teens and women who love YA-style narratives that feel like light in the dark. She writes fairy tales because she still believes in a world of gallant heroes, where princesses are not frivolous and honor is not for the faint of heart.
6 random facts
- I love writing stories and writing about ideas and reading fun books. And, no, that doesn’t count as three things.
- I nearly failed an assignment during my MFA which led to the development of an Agile First Draft.
- I completely overuse smiley emojis. And I don’t apologize for it (often).
- I love chocolate, in all forms, but not cheap chocolate. If you’re going cheat, make it worth it.
- I adore the smell of coffee but only drink it with a lot of coconut milk creamer and only once a month or so.
- I’m kind of devastated that they’re breeding the scent out of roses because there is nothing that smells so beautiful and full of life as fresh roses.
Newsletters
Reader Newsletter
Exclusive first look and need to know updates on Annie’s latest writing adventures.
Ink & Loose Leaves
Behind the scenes of drafting a novel with the Agile First Draft method
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