What is the Inspiration?

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.