Of Muses and Dreams (How I got the idea for my new novel)

One of the questions I get asked most is where the ideas come from. Usually, an idea starts as a spark.  A simple "what if," that grows as it knocks around the noggin.  If the spark isn't that interesting, I'll eventually forget about it and move on.  It's the ideas that percolate and persist that end up on the page.

For the most part anyway.

The Bridge Between Stars was a little different. It began as a dream I had back in the summer of 2009.  The dream was vivid and felt real, and it stayed with me upon waking, and I wrote it all down. I wrote about images I'd seen, the sounds I heard.  The docks.  The lapping water.  The reflection of the night sky.  the burning cities.  The invaders.  Something about the dream was important to me, but I couldn't place it. 

Half a dozen years passed until I was ready to flesh out the story.  I had attempted to write it several times before, but each time I felt that I wasn't ready.  Until now.

There is still something very personal about this story.  Something very important, and I think the timing for this story in our world is just about perfect.

Below, I've pasted the exact words I wrote upon waking from the dream, nearly a decade ago  (typos and all).  The idea for The Bridge Between Stars came from this:

From A dream I had 7/21/09

the days before the endd--live beneath in the tunnels--RED graffiti everywhere

warriors coming, Aztec?--feathers, clubs, swords--BRUTAL illusions?

(desolation))

Warriors are supernatural--no one believes in God, or anything

 the warriors slaughter their victims--no survivors.

Family (group of people) w/ small children--twins??

Maybe MOm comes in from another City, saying that the warriors are

coming--then she is killed.  (Warrior is blury?? in the shadows--it is the spirit of a warrior sent to finish off the

victim--can only finish what the physical warrior started) 

RED HUES

leave.  north

hear drums all around, FIRE.  cities burning. skylines with smoke and red glows.  sun doesn't rise. ash like snow.

north

Family flees --YELLOW hues, even in MOON LIGHT, like

mars, otherworldly--warriors hunt them.

They follow the paths, climbing high into the yellow, shale mountains.

Higher and higher, to the top of the mountains--climb through a crust of snow)

train going north

--BLUE HUES--beautiful blue--serene

docks from the banks of the lake/ocean.  maze of docks.

water is calm.

I can see stars in the water.

Ocean, lakes, at the top (Wierd, like death valley)--surrounded by

mountains and glaciers, and ice.  ALWAYS NIGHT, DARK BLUE HUES.

White caps on the water, waves--docks running everywhere--like a maze

of docks.  rickety, some painted, some not--some only big enough for a

few people. The run on the docks.  The warriors hunt.

North.

The finished product is more polished than these notes (as we would hope), but the themes remain in this dark apocalyptic thriller.

So, where do you get your ideas?

***

Pre-order The Bridge Between Stars for the Kindle!

Chaos reigns. Fear and terror run rampant. War is inevitable.

An ancient tribe of primitive people rises to save the world from its own destruction.

At least, that’s what we think…

The Bridge Between Stars is a nightmare come to life. A haunting tale of a family’s will to survive at all costs, even when hope is lost, and a love that spans galaxies.

One Whale of a Book

As one of my New Years resolutions, I'm finally getting around to reading Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville, and it's about time.  I've attempted the long slog on several occasions in the past, but never made it past the sermon that takes place in the  Nantucket chapel (like 30 pages in-I know, it's sad), but I've always been fascinated with the whaling industry.  Like Ishmael, I'm to the sea and the adventure that awaits thereon: 

“Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure..... Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle , and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself?” 

This time around, I think I'm going to make it through, and I recommend that you read this book. Once you get through the chapters that expound upon the anatomy of the whale, or the listing of seemingly every literary reference to whales, it is quite the rollicking adventure.  And it is surprisingly funny.

For example, during the “first lowering” (when the sailors lower the smaller whale boats from the larger ship—the Pequod—to chase and harpoon the whales), Ishmael’s whale boat gets lost in a storm and separated from the others.  The small boat is tossed around violently (described as if an earthquake) but the boat and its passengers survive.  They sit in the flooded boat until dawn, unable to find any other whale boat or the larger ship in the thick fog.  Suddenly, they hear the creaking of the Pequod and see it barreling toward them from the mist.  The sailors bail into the ocean and the Pequod crashes into and destroys the small whale boat.

When Ishmael is finally pulled aboard the larger ship, he begins questioning his friend and the ship’s officers—and you can just imagine how frantic and upset Ishmael must be:

"Queequeg," said I, when they had dragged me, the last man, to the deck, and I was still shaking myself in my jacket to fling off the water; "Queequeg, my fine friend, does this sort of thing often happen?" Without much emotion, though soaked through just like me, he gave me to understand that such things did often happen.

 "Mr. Stubb," said I, turning to that worthy, who, buttoned up in his oil-jacket, was now calmly smoking his pipe in the rain; "Mr. Stubb, I think I have heard you say that of all whalemen you ever met, our chief mate, Mr. Starbuck, is by far the most careful and prudent. I suppose then, that going plump on a flying whale with your sail set in a foggy squall is the height of a whaleman's discretion?"

 "Certain. I've lowered for whales from a leaking ship in a gale off Cape Horn." 

 "Mr. Flask," said I, turning to little King-Post, who was standing close by; "you are experienced in these things, and I am not. Will you tell me whether it is an unalterable law in this fishery, Mr. Flask, for an oarsman to break his own back pulling himself back-foremost into death's jaws?" 

 "Can't you twist that smaller?" said Flask. "Yes, that's the law. I should like to see a boat's crew backing water up to a whale face foremost. Ha, ha! the whale would give them squint for squint, mind that!" 

 Here then, from three impartial witnesses, I had a deliberate statement of the entire case. Considering, therefore, that squalls and capsizings in the water and consequent bivouacks on the deep, were matters of common occurrence in this kind of life; considering that at the superlatively critical instant of going on to the whale I must resign my life into the hands of him who steered the boat- oftentimes a fellow who at that very moment is in his impetuousness upon the point of scuttling the craft with his own frantic stampings; considering that the particular disaster to our own particular boat was chiefly to be imputed to Starbuck's driving on to his whale almost in the teeth of a squall, and considering that Starbuck, notwithstanding, was famous for his great heedfulness in the fishery; considering that I belonged to this uncommonly prudent Starbuck's boat; and finally considering in what a devil's chase I was implicated, touching the White Whale: taking all things together, I say, I thought I might as well go below and make a rough draft of my will."

It was a laugh-out-loud moment for me, and the story is rife with similar humor.  So far, the deeper I get into the story, the more I understand what made this book an American classic.  Aside from the melodrama, it captures the unknown vastness of the sea, the brutality and violence of the whaling industry, and the horrors that lurk not only beneath the surface of the ocean, but within the human psyche.

So tell me, have you read Moby-Dick?  What did you think?