Contemporary Fantasy authors–How do you decide what parts of humanity to explore and create around? How do you look at what others around you take for granted and say, “That’s interesting. What if…”
What is your inspiration?
For my first two Legacy novels, for me it was wanting to build a contemporary world that bleeds in and out of dreams. Which lead to studying dream theory and the para-science behind how they interact, react, and drive our waking lives. Which lead to the realization that dreaming is a life-long process. Which lead to the idea that as children, we saw and believed in and understood our dreams far better than we do now.
Which lead to my second book, Secret Legacy, being about not just the current psychic war being waged with dreams, but painting a tapestry of the protagonist’s dream symbols and memories since she was a child. And showing them driving what’s happening with her now, and with other characters who are sharing her dreams. Showing her childhood reality and psychic abilities foreshadowing what was to come, and her difficulty with facing what’s shaped her–even though she’s living the psychic reality in the here and now.
And THAT’s when the fantasy elements in my writing really began to take off. A good three-fourths of Secret Legacy plays out in dream sequences that span the time warp of how before/now/the future can all become the same things, if you see the thread that ties each experience to the other and understand what your mind is trying to tell you through your dreams…
Very cool stuff, especially since it’s lead me to study theories about psychic children in even more depth. THAT, as it turned out, was the key to the contemporary world I’d been writing about all along.
Believe it or not, the theories of psychic children blend well into the idea that we’re born with certain traits (nature) and develop others because of our environment and upbringing (nurture). (more…)
