Current WIP: The Waking
The Waking was never supposed to be a serious story. It started as a fun mental exercise when my husband and I were on our five-year anniversary trip in Nevada. I wanted to get into the psyche of a male protagonist. So I wrote brief paragraphs with multiple choice options and emailed them to him, with an agreement in place that if he didn’t like any of the options he could make up his own. The result was quite effective—His choices often surprised me, guiding the plot and character arc in directions I would never have explored. I thoroughly enjoyed our little game.
When we returned home from our trip, we had plotted about 3/4 of a complete story. By that time I was invested in it, and my husband was dying to know how it would end. I took the email thread and copy-pasted it into a document, did a bit of tidying up, and then sprinted to an ending. The final result was a story that fascinated me. I felt as though I’d dipped a toe into this world, I’d overheard a distant conversation between two interesting characters, and I’d heard an echo of this story’s theme. I had to bring it to life!
January 2019, the first draft of The Waking (version two), was complete. It didn’t surprise me that the plot had morphed into something like, but not at all the same, as the original. The kingdom of Celandra was born, possessing a rich history of conflict between the classic three fantasy races: humans, elves and dwarves. The twist, my original transfusion into this well-developed genre, is a new race of creatures called Osakk. They are an ancient people, hunter-gatherers inspired by my own cultural heritage as a Native American. The Osakk are everything the elves and humans are not—huge, powerful warriors who love conquest as a wolf loves the hunt.
Except the Osakk protagonist, that is. Goel was separated from his own kind and grew up among humans. When he returns ‘home’ he doesn’t fit in. He fell in love with the land instead of combat. And then he falls in love with a human. So… there’s that.
I had so much fun with this story. It has themes of friendship, found family, racial reconciliation, the essence of power, and dealing with trauma. I hope my characters will make readers fall in love. They’re the types of fictional people I enjoy getting to know the most—conflicted, raw, full of potential for both good and evil. And while I’ve got a lot of revisions ahead of me to make The Waking really shine, I’m eager to share it with the world soon.
September will be our ninth wedding anniversary. How long is a book’s gestational period again?
