What was the inspiration behind Ages from Eternity?
How did the novel come to be?
First things first, let it be known that I think in pictures.
When I was a kid I thought it was weird, well I still do, but now I know people
that think the same way. That being said,
all of my story ideas start with some kind of flash. It's either an image or a
short movie style clip that will play in my brain. If I find it interesting,
attach to the characters, intrigued by something or if I am just plain bored,
I'll follow it. These flashes may come while listening to song, driving,
sitting in class or in a meeting or while I am asleep. I have always been a
very vivid dreamer. Most of my dreams consist of me being a different person
and caught in a moment or situation. I will jump from first person to third person
as the dream continues, seeing all sides to the moment. It can be as simple as a few word conversation
or it can be an entire nights worth of material. It is always people I don't
know, stories I have not heard and characters I have never met. They pop up and
some just never seem to leave.
Ever since I was a child this is how I daydreamed. I would
think of these random people and just let situations play out. It would be like
I was on the stage and I was playing every character and sometimes I would
physically talk out the dialogue, act out parts and just have a good time with
it. I've had insomnia the majority of my life so most of these acting out
moments occurred while laying in bed and trying to fall asleep. I will whisper
dialogues out loud and close my eyes and just disappear into the imaginary world.
As I got older the stories, for the most part, changed. I
still have some characters floating around in my mind that I've known since I
was eight years old. They've grown up with me. Then I have new characters, new
stories that seem to just pop up out of nowhere. Ages was like that. Around
2006, I had a dream. It was simple, just a first person, intimate conversation.
But there was so much emotion and depth to that fragment of a moment that when
I woke up their story consumed me for the better part of a month. I would just
let it play through like a movie clip in my head when I was driving to school
or sitting in class or laying in bed trying to fall sleep. I would throw out questions
and throw in ideas and see where the story led me. The more I played it out,
the bigger and bigger the story became.
Another thing about me, I never talked much about my stories.
I didn't see it as writing because I never put anything on paper. For my own
reasons, dumb as some of them were, I decided to keep this little nugget of oddity
to myself. I also never thought I would be a writer. It was an artistic dream
that people seem to talk about but never chase or embrace or support. So for
whatever reason, be it insecurities or fear or whatever I just decided that was
a road I was never going to go down. I would keep my stories to myself and not
face the difficulty, hardship, the what I saw as torment of putting my thoughts
out paper.
I can go into this more later, but it ties in to why I shied
away from writing. Since I had a head injury in high school I've had a lot of
issues with some form of dyslexia. I can get my words on paper but it will be
riddled with errors no matter how hard I try or how vigilant I am, there's
always things that I don't see. Which is fine. You know it's something that a
lot of people deal with and struggle with, I was just at a point in my life that I hadn't
fully realize what was happening. All I really understood was that I was a
great student and now suddenly I'm having so many issues with writing and
mistakes and like most of my professors I chalked it up to laziness or not
paying attention. It wasn't until I got older that I realized what was actually
going on.
That being said, I made my decision, for better or for worse,
to be a closet story maker.
Back to Ages. That little interaction I dreamed of in 2006 rested
on my back burner. It was common for me to rotate stories depending on what was
going on in my life. I found it was a good way to work things out and to think
about how other people experience things. Plus it was an escape. As I grew old
I began to slowly let other people in on my creative secret. My husband,
college roommate and a friend or two. I even put some things on paper. But in
all fairness, I chicken out. I did get some writing on paper but it was I was
holding back. Honestly, I wrote stories that I didn't care about and characters
that I don't even care to explore. But it was good practice. I embraced the
fear of conquering the blank page.
Later on, in 2012, a new friend and I were walking and she
began talking about a story she had in her head. I listened and was almost
jealous at the way she talked about her own creative world. I decided in that
moment to be real, fully truthful if the conversation turned to me. Though,
part of me hoped it won't. Stupid insecurities. Of course, the conversation
turned. While many of my stories filed through
my mind, Ages was the one that surfaced.
During that walk we talked and I fumbled through explaining
my world, my Realm. I fumbled through some of the characters and fought the
internal desire to say what I thought she wanted to hear and actually stick to
the truth of my creation. The more I divulged, the more the story seem to take
a life of its own.
February 2012, my
friend looked me in the eye and told me
that if I did not write that story on paper that she would tie me up and
tickled me with feathers until I cried. Then she proceeded to threatened me,
claiming she would follow me and bug me every second of every day until I got
that story in a form where she could hold it and read it. She was persistent
that it needed to be shared that it needed to be given a life outside of my
head.
I could've done a lot of things after that walk but I decided
to give it a shot. Starting that summer I had a lot of health factors pop up.
The next few years would consist of numerous surgeries and a lot of downtime. I
couldn't work. I volunteered but that basically took a week of lying in bed to
give one evening. So I made a choice and I got that story down on paper in a
way that my friend could hold and she now reads it to her daughter.
That one scene in that dream that sparked the entire story
was supposed to make it into book one, Ages from Eternity, but as I flushed out
the story and allowed the characters to run around and cause mischief, the more
it grew. So now, that one moment that started everything is actually in book 2.
After the release of the second book later this year, I will be glad to talk
about exactly which moment it was but until then, no spoilers. All I can say is
it's between Calla and Bennett.
