how it begins

by Rain Trueax

If you are wanting to become an author, the first thing you will hear is write to the market. It makes sense. See what is out there and find your own version of it. There is nothing wrong with that for painters or writers. It's not though how I've done it and hence-- here's how it works for me, the process I use, which varies with the book, of course.

Often, I start with location, a situation, and then who might be involved in it. Once in a while, the situation and the who might be reversed. Most of the time though location is the initial inspiration.

When I began Sky Daughter, it had come from several things. It was in the early '90s, Ranch Boss and I were driving through Idaho's mountains. We heard a paramilitary type radio program where the guy feared the UN, the government and a takeover imminent by somebody for some reason. It blew us away as we'd never heard anything like it. 

Afterward, I began to think-- what if it was all you could hear in a small town? This was before the internet but even today-- what if the internet and even satellite TV were suspect? All you could trust was this voice over the radio speaking of a coming revolution, and you needed to be prepared. The outside world was lying to you.

After a time, I thought about how outsiders would see such a situation. It's when I thought about folk singer, Maggie Gard, with a proud Celtic heritage, and what if she came to live in such a place. Suppose recently she'd lost her parents, her music career had become disappointing, and all she could think was to live on her beloved, rugged grandfather's mountain. I saw her living in a small cabin around the road from her grandfather's main home, which he shared with his son, her uncle. There was work there in the service station, the only one in the little town. She needed nature and work to get a grip on what she wanted in her life. The nearby little town seemed bucolic where she even found a friend.

For a hero, whose name is Reuben, how about a big city guy, out there on a fishing vacation. He would have had a Puerto Rican father and Jewish mother-- both successful professionals. He had no clue about wilderness, but he's had a high octane, journalism career with a need for some healing of his own. He's cynical about life in general-- facts are what he believes in.

The story opens when those two opposites meet at the service station with Reuben claiming he needs to steal the gasoline because he has escaped kidnappers, who he can't identify. What's Maggie to do? Shoot him seemed reasonable. Unreasonable is to listen to the little voice in her head when she tracks him down and takes him to her cabin to heal.

Well, the story had all it needed for a romance and conflict, but there was more to resolve

for me as the writer. What was speaking to Maggie on the mountain? One voice seemed benevolent, sweet, encouraging. There was, however, a second voice-- predatory feeling, malevolent. The first voice could be her grandmother, who she discovers was a witch. The second voice though-- what was that?

Resolving that question was where my real dilemma began as I continued to write. Often continuing to write the setting, the events, the characters is the best way to find answers to what a writer might be unsure of in the beginning. 

Is that bestial voice, the frightening energy, from a real being or is it a product of a woman's imagination, a creative woman, who has experienced too many tragedies?  I got to a point in the story where I had to know.

To make my decision, I bought some books (internet not a reality at all back then) and researched what people claimed they had experienced in terms of monsters. Let me tell you, there are some scary stories out there. People would sometimes come across an area where something otherworldly dwelt and, for reasons beyond knowing, end up having it attack and even follow them to their homes. When I had finished reading that book, true stories or not, I destroyed it.

In the supernatural sense, I then believed what was possible, but did I want to introduce a monster into my story? My characters had plenty of conflicts with the militia types. I didn't need it; but that mountain, which had always seemed so benevolent to Maggie appeared to have another side-- or did it? Did something exist there that had been drawn forth by a human seeking power? More to the point for me-- would writing about a monster draw it to me? I seriously considered that. 

Not wanting to ruin the book for someone who has yet to read it, i am not going further here, but the clue is that it is the first of what would eventually be seven books delving into alternate realities. This book is the first with a common theme that land has power and  humans often bring evil beings into reality by their seeking to use that negative potential and not for noble reasons. Something that they believe they are controlling, but it ends up dominating and even destroying them.

Sky Daughter is first in a series called Mystic Shadows for how some things are beyond explaining and do appear to be in the shadows. I consider these books to be more metaphysical than paranormal as they use things I have read or heard about the supernatural side of our universe. 

From that book on, I have felt no fear at writing about these possible otherworldly beings. I say possible because I don't know. Does Big Foot exist? How about the Loch Ness monster? Are there aliens who kidnap people? What explains human disappearances in our national parks where no body is left to figure out what happened? 

Last week, I redid all the book trailers for the Mystic Shadows romances as in mid-September I am going to bring out the seventh. The redo was required because I had changed covers, titles, other elements that had no longer worked for how I saw the books. 

Available at Amazon for eBook or paperback: https://www.amazon.com/Sky-Daughter-Rain-Trueax-ebook/dp/B0083YU2FI

If you have never watched a book trailer, here's the one I created for a romance where embedded into that story is an exploration of what reality might actually be and how might we deal with the unknown.