The Story Behind the Story

Once upon a time, I lost my mind. I stopped trusting the fact that the ground was solid. My fear of not being here, now, on this planet, consumed me. There’s so much we don’t know within the confines of what we do know about anything and everything that my mind went on a mini-vacation trying to grapple with it all.

My kid went off to preschool for 3 days a week, giving me about a collective 6 hours a week to myself. This was partially the reason for me losing my mind — I hadn’t had any time to myself in years. Of those delicious 6 hours, some were spent working, and some were spent at Barnes and Noble with my ancient computer plugged into the wall as I typed.

I hadn’t creatively written in eons. I still wrote in my journal on occasion, but most of my efforts and energies went to my blogs and website. And that was choppy.

This story contrived at Barnes and Noble wrote itself. Violet got bored, and apparently so did I. I used tales from my own life to fill in some of the scenes. Violet’s emotions are not unlike a lot of what I’ve felt over the years. She’s bored, she’s trapped, and then all of a sudden her life takes off and she’s hanging on by a pinky.

I can definitely relate.

By the time my kid finished preschool, I had not only written an entire book, but an entire series! The more I wrote, the more complicated the story became. The histories, the plot lines — there’s still so much *I* don’t know about these characters. I know how the series ends, and I know which relationships are the most important, but there are a lot of gaps to fill in.

This is exciting! I have a feeling Violet and I will continue to be in the dark about some things, and that’s okay. Life moves along every day without us knowing everything, right?

After the kid entered public school, I was trying to find a way back to Violet. I couldn’t find the time between school events and work. Then, Covid happened, and the axis of the planet shifted and I found myself homeschooling my kid for 2.5 years!

I’m currently at the 2 year mark of the aforementioned homeschooling. You would think being at home, life would have offered more time to write. This has not been the case — my life has become about lesson plans, field trips, and all sorts of grammar rules that I had forgotten about.

One of my good friends from a previous life passed this fall, and once again I was faced with the short duration of life and whether or not we have any importance here. I have no idea how long I will live. I know that my life will invariably have some sort of impact on a select few. I also know my words will remain much longer than I will.

To that essence, I must keep writing. I may not write well, I may not have time-standing-still characters, characters who people love hundreds of years after I write about them, but I must write. I must write for me. I must write to know that I will exist after I die.

If anyone cares to read my words while I’m alive, all the better. Knowing that my words might even be read after I’m dead, well, that helps my ego in the now. Maybe one day I will pen the next Great American Novel, but I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be in the fantasy genre with my main squeeze Violet from When Violet Got Bored. That’s okay by me.

She will still exist in the ether, and therefore I will, too.

Violet’s tale consists of fantasy in the real world. Some of it inexplicable, and some of it is currently supported by science. Maybe in the future some of the fantasy will also be considered real — who knows. I do know, though, that pseudoscience can eventually become science science.

The following scene, however, did not happen to me, and is rooted in no reality that I know about:

Meatball #1 put up an arm as thick as a tree trunk to block me from moving, and it distracted me enough to control the push. The ring on Nathan’s finger and the ring around my neck started to connect, a thin line of light reaching from my neck to his finger. It didn’t seem that Grayson even noticed it in the chaos.

I’ve never seen magical light energy leaking from one ring to connect to another ring, have you?

At any rate, after my friend’s passing I have taken a look at Violet’s story again, and realized that the first book was actually finished. I moved the ending, and found myself with over 200 pages of a first book that needed intense editing.

After ordering a proof a short while ago, I began to edit the story in great detail. I needed to be able to see the words on paper to edit, rather than to continue playing with the book on the screen. Editing is HARD. I will never be satisfied. I will never find all of the grammatical errors, story errors, misspellings. It’s impossible.

It gives me UNDUE respect for all of the editors out there.

Self-publishing is a blessing, because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to publish my book. But having a publisher and editor must be a wonderful thing!

The Light Thrower series was incredibly therapeutic for me during the year that I broke. I hope that I will find the rest of the details hidden on shelves in my mind, or from new experiences of my life yet to unfold. I hope that if you choose to follow Violet on her journey at all, you enjoy her company as much as I have.