If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. ~Toni Morrison
Additionally, if you dream of people you would like to get to know better, then by george, get yourself to a typewriter and get to know them. ~Kathy Lane
Like many people, I dream frequently. Also like many people, I don't always remember the dreams. But there are some mornings that I wake up, the details so vivid, it's almost as if I had returned from a trip. On these trips I meet people, sometimes friends, sometimes family, but many times people I've never met until I dream them; people that I actually miss when I wake up in the morning.
No, I'm not crazy. At least no more so than any other writer with characters running amok in her head clamoring for the story of their life to be let out onto paper. I've leaked these stories in bits and pieces over the years, never really pausing long enough in this busy process called living to let one of them out entirely...until now.
Ceralyn, Navarre, and Tristan, the three main characters of my fantasy series, The Measure of a Queen, visited me one night several years ago after an evening of reading a compilation of fantasy short stories. Their visit resulted in eight pages of hand-written...sentences. (Note please, that I do not call it anything remotely resembling a story.)
In January, 2006, my niece started 'poking' me to attend the Florida Christian Writer's Conference with her. The FCWC is held in Bradenton, Florida, only an hour away from my home, so I finally gave in. Of course, I then needed something to take to the conference, so I went in search of some piece of formerly-written fiction.
Ceralyn, Navarre, and Tristan clamored the loudest, (three voices are, after all, louder than one or two), so I pulled out those eight pages of descriptive sentences. After spending two months working those sentences into a readable story I received a surprisingly good critique at the conference. In fact, the author who critiqued the story let me know in no uncertain terms that I had to finish what I started. Fourteen months later, those eight pages have grown to more than 120,000 words, with four more books of words waiting to be written. Talk about a story!
Click on The Stories and visit The Measure of a Queen to read excerpts from book one, Fire and Ice, and book two, The Winglyth King.
3/6/07
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