Okay, I know what you're thinking. Purple hair, giant crystal necklace, nose ring, this woman is one of those new age spiritual people, all love and light and shit. Well, yes, sir or madam or both or neither, yes, I am. Here's the thing: if that isn't your cup of tea, cool, have a nice day. But if you're still reading this, that means you're curious about it or have already had your own awakening. So, stay with me as I'm guessing you're supposed to be here.
This blog will not be about my awakening, but I will mention it as it was the catalyst to begin my journey to becoming a self-published, aka indie, author. So, I'll start at the beginning. This realization hit me just the other day, and I'd like to share it.
Lots of people would cite their love of books for the reason they became a writer. Not me. I hated reading growing up. We had cable tv back before reality shows took off, so there were a lot of great television shows for me to consume. I grew up in the era of Friends, Seinfeld, Night Court, and even such esteemed Nickelodeon classics as Hey Dude, and Salute Your Shorts, just to name a few. My point is, I was exposed to a wide variety of entertainment and struggled to allow the magic of storytelling in books to unfold because television was so much faster!
When I was a kid, I'd find myself obsessed with one thing or another—as most kids do—but the common theme, the one thing that I seemed to obsess over more than anything else, was love. Falling in love, specifically. Just like every other 90s girl, I owned multiple issues of Tiger Beat and Teen Beat, as I had my celebrity crushes: Keanu Reeves, Brad Pitt, Jason Priestley, Jonathan Brandis (RIP) et cetera. But instead of reading, I was making up stories in my head—fan fiction as it were—to escape my reality.
It must have given me serious dopamine hits because I was pretty prolific. Also, get your mind out of the gutter! It was mostly these Hollywood hotties rescuing me from situations. Mostly PG-PG13 due to explicit language. I could sit here and psychoanalyze myself all night, but I'll spare you. If you're still hanging in here at this point, bless you for your patience!
These stories in my mind were the genesis of me becoming an author of fantasy romance and science fantasy romance novels. I started my first romance novel, again we're talking PG-13 tops, when I was ten years old. I'm not going to get into specifics to spare you and myself the embarrassment, but I will say this: it had drama, humor, suspense, action and made me have all the feels for the love story I was writing. These elements are all found in abundance in my first two novels.
I never finished that story, but it did get quite long. Forty-some-odd pages if my memory serves me, but I followed it up with an even better idea. Still, I will spare you and myself the embarrassment of going into detail about it, but that story led me to another, and then another, until the age of twelve. I had a concept, and I started writing. In fact, I couldn't stop.
My entire summer of 1995 I spent writing this novel called Windham Peak. Every night after supper, I would hunker down in the study in front of our HP or Dell, I can't remember what we had at that point, pull up WordPerfect 5.0, throw Garbage's self-titled album on my portable CD player, and off I'd write until midnight or later. I literally only had like five or six CDs at that point, so my options were limited, but damn, that was a great album!
I wrote most of it then, but didn't finish it until the following year, right before I graduated from 8th grade. MTV held a contest that summer to help publish an indie author. You best believe I submitted my horrible, horrible novel. Did I ever hear from them? Nope. Did they send back my manuscript to me? Hell no! It was my first bit of rejection and I was not prepared for it. I thought my book was the bee's knees, man. At fourteen-years-old, my ego was about as fragile as a dandelion seed floof. I wouldn't write anything creative for at least fifteen years after that.
That's not to say I didn't have ideas for stories. I did. My gods, I did. But I wouldn't allow myself the space, time, and energy I needed to write. Not after that hit. Pretty sad, I know. It was especially sad because I had this idea only a few years after the MTV debacle. It hit me when I was watching one of my favorite movies of all time: The Dark Crystal. I loved Jen and Kira's love story since I first saw that movie as a five-year-old girl. If you have not seen that Jim Henson/Frank Oz classic, watch it. It's a beautiful story.
The character of Kira is the last female of her kind, and the females have wings. I don't know why, but this resonated with me so hard that it stuck with me for 36 years and counting. And I don't have to know why. It just does. I envisioned this beautiful, strong, sarcastic woman alone in the world, isolated from humanity because of her extra appendages. A set of physical wings given to her by her cross genetics. Of what, I wasn't entirely certain, but she was a Hybrid, and thus the story had a name. She would wield Japanese sai as her weapon of choice, and she would save a man from execution simply because she was there and could.
The origin of her extra appendages began with a world war and a massive government experiment to create super soldiers. All of which were wiped out except for her. At least that's what she was told by the man who spirited her away. Her uncle, Colin.
Aside from Colin, and how Rowen and Gabriel first meet, the beginning of the story is almost the same. Oh, and Rowen was not Rowen. She had many names over the course of me trying to write her story. The first one was Lex, which then turned into Sasha, both nicknames of Aleksandra. She would have been Russian in this version of the story, but I never wrote it. A few years later, Linkin Park came out with their album Hybrid Theory. And what was on the cover? A hybrid soldier with wings, carrying a flag.
Needless to say, I was floored that I came up with the concept of their cover art two years before they even released that album. 1998 was the year Linkin Park formed with Chester Benningon, and at the time, they called themselves Hybrid Theory. So, I'm not taking credit or anything, but it's a pretty good example of Jung's collective unconscious connecting human beings to one another across time. It's because we are connected. I still feel connected to Chester, as I'm sure millions of people do. He came here to help us follow our dreams. He did and look at where his perseverence got him. He was in one of the biggest, most successful bands of all time that changed music for the better, and continues to influence other musicians. He was a phenomenon, and I miss him. RIP Chester.
What an incredible way for the universe to confirm I was on the right track. Being a nineteen-year-old atheist, though, I shrugged it off as a crazy coincidence. A few years later, I was attending a Creative Writing class, and as part of the course, I had to either write short stories, or a novel. I saw this as the perfect opportunity to bring Hybrid to life. And so I wrote several chapters for this class, swapping with my classmates over the 12 week college course. And each time, I always had incredible feedback on the character of Sasha and my writing, but I had issues with info dumping. The criticisms were a little easier to take as an adult, but I still couldn't do it. Rowen's story wasn't ready.
Years later, I had an idea for her story, which prompted me to expand on the chapters I had written before, but I was so frustrated by not knowing which way I wanted the story to go, that I gave up. Again. While I got frustrated and angsty with myself for not writing this book, it wasn't time to. Not yet.
Flash forward to 2021. I got the bug to write. And not only that, but Rowen's story came to me in my spiritual awakening. I had forgotten who I was shortly after her character came to me when I was 16 years old. It took 23 years of lessons to be ready for it. The essence of her character came to be with such confidence, the name of Sasha didn't fit her anymore. Before I came up with the character, I fell in love with the name Rowan. I told myself I would name my son that if I ever had a son. Well, I gave birth to two daughters, so the name was up for grabs. It fit her so well, except I softened it a little with the alternate spelling of Rowen.
This is how Rowen's character came to be, how Hybrid came into being. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. Part 2 coming soon!