The Spark in the Dark
It's been almost two months since I released Hearts of Prey. By now there's a decent group of people who have read it. If you haven't you can find it here:
It will look like this:
There's been enough feedback so far to recognize the most frequent compliment I've gotten: "It was an easy read." That is a relief. While I do envy those writers who can elegantly pack each sentence with layers of meaning, I definitely don't want my first self published novel to be a difficult read. And at the end of the day, not even I have very much say in the style and tone of what I write. It just comes as it does. If that is in a manner that other people can appreciate, than I am lucky.
So in the spirit of sharing, I thought I'd share the answer to a question someone asked me at the book signing I did in Brainerd last weekend. The question was where did I get the idea for the book. My knee jerk reaction was of course, That's too personal! Quick, make something up! And so I did. I rambled on lamely about how I just started writing and one thing lead to another and Hearts of Prey was born. I was surprised she was still listening at the end of my flavorless explanation, but she was. And then she bought a copy despite the risk of it's contents being as dull as the explanation I just gave her. I signed it like this:
Then, about five minutes later, I realized that she's about to read my book, the creation of which was a far more personal experience than sharing where the idea for it came from. I suddenly felt insincere. So in atonement, and also as an exercise in not holding everything quite so tightly, I thought I should give an honest answer to her question, which is simply, a dream. And this is what the dream looked like:
I was having dinner in a restaurant. I didn't know it yet, but in the dream I was the prototype for Shaka. In the book she is far more bad ass than me, a quiet vegetarian who doesn't smoke pot or morph into a wild animal, but she didn't quite exist yet. At that time it was just me, sitting at a dinner table with a handsome Native American man who had shaggy black hair and big, outdated glasses. Across from him sat a good looking white man with brown hair and blue eyes. Of course these two men were Winston and Adrian. I didn't know exactly what we were talking about, but I knew that the then unnamed Winston and I shared a secret, and he was relaying some kind of warning to me. The then unnamed Adrian did not share in our secret, but he was my companion. Then, Adrian's prototype and I snuck outside and away from the restaurant. Whatever Winston had told me meant that I had to run, and being a good companion, Adrian's prototype ran with me. We disappeared into the woods. And I woke up.
It was one of those dreams that make you want to immediately go back to sleep and reenter it. After all, it was unlikely that my day would involve a dangerous adventure in which I was accompanied by two attractive men, but I didn't get the dream back. That was all I got. So I did the next best thing and I started writing about it. In the dream no one shape shifted, there was no laboratory or the threat of betrayal, no friend with powers of her own, and no sage grandfather. All of that came later. So in that aspect, the dream was only a snap shot into the world. The rest of it was the choice to create it, to see it through, to publish it, and now, to discuss it.
Inspiration is a mysterious thing. It can come from anywhere, but it's also just the spark, it's not the work you do to build the fire. And that work is what set Hearts of Prey apart from my large collection of stories that never made it past the second chapter. Now I'm moving forward, but mind you, I'm on a learning curve.
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