Eureka!

I had a very interesting and pleasant e-mail exchange with an agent who requested my MS yesterday.

"I'm not really a big faerie fan so it will be an uphill battle for me," they said...but still they requested it.

Naturally, I'm pleased at the request though not particularly hopeful regarding the outcome, but the funny thing is - I'm not a "faerie fan" either!

It was a long road to get to the point where I was okay with writing about the Faerie world, but once I allowed the idea to germinate it became like Jack's beanstalk and soared up into the heavens of my imagination. I battled giants (writer's block) and monsters (plot holes) until I finally found my goose with the golden egg (7 drafts later).

You see they always tell you "write what you know" - the most helpful and vague advice anyone has ever given to a writer.

I knew witches and wizards (thanks to Anne Rice, and J.K. Rowling), I knew vampires, mummies, werewolves (thanks again to Anne Rice...and...Ms. Meyer). See, I grew up loving stories about magic, more specifically I loved the magical characters in those stories. Not gonna lie, when I was seven I had my grandfather make me a Jafar-like staff because I thought his powers were "so cool". When Aladdin the Animated Series came out I would sneak into the kitchen and wear only one dish-glove so I could pretend to be Mozenrath with his magical gauntlet. I rode our household broomsticks like Sarah, Mary, and Winnifred Sanderson from Hocus Pocus. I never wanted to be Aladdin, or the hero who saved the day against all odds; I wanted Aladdin to ask Genie for magic powers so he could defeat Jafar...*sigh*...it simply wasn't to be - and that is when I started making up my own stories.

I have started a multitude of stories over the years. I would always stop around chapter six or seven - something always just didn't jive. The characters were good, the plot was engaging (or so I thought) but I would just get *for lack of a better word* Tired.

In the late summer of 2011 I was working on a project that provided me with much of the foundation to build what I've currently completed - but it had nothing to do with Faeries.

My...parter/boyfriend/hubby/significant other/etc for future reference we'll call him "L" ...anyway his friends invited us out for drinks one evening on this lovely summer night at our favorite hole-in-the-wall tavern.
Cory and Allison are a lovely couple, and absolutley perfect for one another. However, at the time I really didn't know either of them particularly well - only that I enjoyed their company.
Allison and I got to chatting about our mutual love for The Little Mermaid when someone, somewhere, for some reason said the words: "Golden Snitch"....

Allison and I exploded with Harry Potter nerdgasms.

As I sipped my beverage I was pondering the solution to a problem with the project I was working on at the time while Allison bravely and unabashedly admitted that she was most likely a Hufflepuff (the poor girl).
Then she said something that completely changed my (writing) life:

"Dude when I was a kid, I was like, 'Where the heck is my letter to Hogwarts?'"

Instantly I scrapped the project I was working on. For you see, with each and every project I had planned that was the one element missing.

I had created breathing characters, intricate worlds, and adventurous, fantastic plotlines...but I had yet to create or find a unique world that I wanted to be a part of.

Three months later around 3am November 13, 2011 I did. But to my surprise - and dismay - the Faerie world was the one that I had found. However, the more I began to explore it I found something rich, whimiscal, and dark - something so very inherently Me - that I could never turn back. The Faerie world - My Faerie world - is one that I so long to be a part of, and it is that passion and that longing for it that carries me through every revision, every chapter, and every sentence. As I write I still discover things that I never knew (most of which won't find its way into the series - alas).

But that's my gauge, that was my True Beginning; no matter the characters, setting, or plot it ended up being my need to belong to the world that I created to write a good story. That's what gives me my fire as an author.

What about you? What was your 'Eureka' moment? What gives you your creative fire?

Until we meet again...