Anna DeStefano's Blog

I shut down the electronics in my home last Thursday, while trying to finish some online tasks before travelling. I was laughing about it to a friend, when her blank stare registered. Hadn’t she heard about me? The jokes that over time stop seeming like jokes? Oh dear. Electronics don’t get along with me when I’m stressed, I explained. I can’t help it. I has something to do with kinetic energy or something, and … My friend, also a writer, blinked slowly. Then smiled. Cool! she said, then pumped me for more information about the strangeness that is me and how I’m thinking of spinning it into storytelling.

I’ve been fascinated by the kinetic energy around me (the energy of movement),long before I knew what it was or that it seemed to seethe in and out of my life in somewhat predictable patterns. The kinetic energy of an object, I explained, is the energy the object produces while its in motion.

But what happens if the energy rush comes before the movement? What happens if things around you start going haywire, but nothing’s really moving? Until you walk by it, or turn on the computer, or try to connect to the high speed Internet the way I was when I WAS TRYING TO GET OUT THE DOOR LAST THURSDAY!!!

Eh-hem.

What if a person’s mere presence or emotional state or reaction to their circumstances could cause energy to move in the space around them?

I’ve wondered about that most of my adult life. When I’m in a hurry. When I’m stressed (particularly when I’m on a tight book deadline), things seem to jump off of counters when I pass through a room.Electronics stop running around me with comical frequency. Like all my watch batteries–dead within a week of me replacing them. One time, they all went dead in the same week. I’ve shut down the kiosks at the airport, trying to check in when I was running late for a flight. I regularly kill the registers at drive-through windows. The self-checkout lines at the discount stores. My husband has no problem, unless I’m with him. When they stop working, I jokingly say I’ll just step over here. No joke–as soon as I do, the thing starts processing again. I was checking my three cats out of the vet the other day, and both the front desk computers unhooked from their network and they couldn’t get them working again until I left. My babies were unhappy and I was worried about getting them home. I didn’t mean any harm, really…

And I know that sounds unhinged. I’m used to feeling that way about it myself, but the craziness keeps happening, at at some point you have to stop ignoring it.

So, if the phenominon I’m describing were real instead of a figment of my vivid imagination, what might be happening? Some would say it might be a mild form of psychokinesis–focusing kenetic energy to move or control objects. I get it, with me it’s more a matter of being nuts when I’m distracted in a dozen different ways. But in a book. In a story, wouldn’t that be a cool principle to work with? So many people have, but how could I do it differently…

Which is exactly what I’m doing with my Legacy series, particularly the three new books I’m writing a proposal for, that spins the Watchers’ continuing battle with secret government researchers beyond Sarah and Maddie Temple’s stories. The Brotherhood is protecting a new Legacy whose gifts could be manipulated into global psychic weapons, and the world at the same time. And why you’ll see Psychic Realm posts weekly going forward.

I’m fascinated by the parapsychological research out there, how I see pieces of my own zany experiences in the theories, and how I can paint exciting characters and stories based on what some believe is happening around us every day, if we’d just open our eyes to the truth waiting for us in our minds’ shadows.

What if the mind really can work like a walking force field or a remote control, and some are born with an energy force that ebbs and flows in unpredictable cycles, unless that person leans to control/channel the kinetic energy they create.

I won’t bore you with more details until next Tuesday, but feel free to chime in on the comments and make me feel better with your own strange stories.  Until then, to all my friends who’ve  been on the receiving end of my little misadventures with electronics, let me formally say, no matter how nuts it makes me sound, “I can’t help it. It’s kinetic…”

Tags: Anna DeStefano, contemporary fantasy, fantasy author, kenetic energy, Legacy Series, parapsychology, psychic

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 25th, 2011 at 11:50 am and is filed under What About Everything Else?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.