Who just goes out and writes a book? Where did this come from?
It’s a common question, and the one most often asked of me when I tell people “what I’ve been up to lately.” I can tell that they don’t really believe me when I tell them the crazy story –you know, the one where …
It was dark – middle-of-the-night-without-a-night-light-dark – and I woke to the sound of a voice. It wasn’t a scary voice, and I knew it wasn’t a physical voice, but it was clearly a voice nevertheless. I thought, that’s weird, it’s like someone wanted me to hear something. It was urgent, and it seemed so real.
As I drifted back to sleep, I tried to re-play it in my mind. The individual words were crystal clear, but they certainly didn’t make any sense. I had no context for them, I didn’t know what the story was around them. I remember smiling to myself and thinking, wow, that must have been one crazy dream. And, I wondered if I fell back to sleep, would the dream continue? Because now, of course, I was curious.
An hour or so later, I woke again. Yup. Same voice, same sentence. Except this time, I saw the setting where the person was. No kidding, it’s like I was there. I could see the setting sun in front of me, I could feel the warm, dry breeze from the opened window in the car, and I knew that the words I heard were just a small fraction of something much larger. They were like the first notes of a familiar song – you recognize the tune and you don’t even need to hear the whole song because your mind fills in the rest. You’ve added your own context.
The opening scene in the novel Find Your Way Home is my recollection of the voice, the setting and the emotion of that middle-of-the-night revelation. While writing this novel, the voices of the characters were so real for me, that sometimes I had slow down and work hard to put the vivid mind pictures into words so I could be sure other readers could come alongside me in the story. And, there were moments, whole scenes, that felt like I wasn’t even writing them. Yes, it’s true. There are scenes that, even after the light of day editing process, have held true to their original written form.
That’s where I feel the true message of the novel resides. That’s why this story came to me in the middle of the night. It’s for someone – not sure who they are or where they live – but I know it’s for that person. I wrote it, now I just hope they find it and read it.
Living today the best way I know how, j. Marie
Now available e-book on Amazon! And free for Kindle Unlimited members.
To find the novel, follow this link:
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Also available in paperback soon!
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... because there's always one more story to tell... 