Journey of a Dream

Many things start out as dreams. Some grow into fruitation, while other’s fizzle away never to see the light of day.

For years we’ve swapped books, recommended authors to each other, and passed the paperbacks back and forth. After dreaming and talking about writing for years, one day we decided, "we can do that". It seemed so simple to just join forces, since we loved the same books, and pretty much thought in similar paths each adding a unique twist of their own.

The first step was deciding which direction we wanted to embark on. We loved the idea of a 'special' object to center the story around. We tossed ideas back and forth, emailing probably 100 or more emails a day, before finally deciding on a genre. The next step was character development. We needed awesome, fearless, and strong yet relatable characters to support our story. Taking the plunge we found our main character, Kate. 

As our other characters developed, the plot took form, and vice versa. Pretty soon our story was taking life, begging for us to write it. We knew we wanted Kate to work in the arts somehow, as we both originally met in an art history class. We felt that this added a little bit of 'us' to the package. Kate ended up being a Native American artifacts specialist, working in an auction house in San Francisco. She told us her story, and as we researched artifacts, the plot continued to evolve. Kate met her male counterpart, the rugged and sexy Professor Trevor Hart, on an archeological dig site. A trust builds quickly between the two when they realize how much they have in common and the passions that they share. Of course there’re a few other characters in the mix, the abrasive trail guide, Chevy and his brother Max, among others that we’ll talk more about later.

Inspiration for the story came in the form of Native American legends, the History Channel, music, and our eccentric imaginations filled in the gaps to take it a step further into the paranormal.

As our story evolved, we couldn’t believe how everything was fitting together. We’d think of a plot line, and always find research to support what we thought we dreamed up in our imaginations. It began to get really freaky how many times we would think we were creating something new, and we’d end up finding a myth or fact sheet with almost a word for word validation of our thoughts. It was almost like we were meant to write this story. 

About midpoint through draft one we decided to take a research road trip from the California Bay Area to the site where part of our story takes place in Arizona. We knew we had to visit the reservation we were writing about.

We shared many ‘Sedona moments’, as some Sedonian’s called them, while on our trip. Sedona moments are coincidences that bring people, or events, together as if by magic or energy. Sedona is a very powerful place that thrives of the energy of the land. These moments only solidified our story and encouraged us to fall deeper into Kate's world. With a company called, Sedona Private Guides, we learned about the Vortex energy in Sedona, which was a truly remarkable experience. We walked in Kate and Chevy’s shoes on the trails of the Kachina Wilderness, stalked the campus at NAU casing the Archeology Lab for one particular scene of ours, saw where our characters lived, and visited the incredible Hopi Reservation.

Common and reoccurring themes in our story are energy, dreams, spirits, and balance or equilibrium.  Many kinds of energy affect the nature of our world. Energy from people’s thoughts, emotions, intentions, dreams, down to the energy around us that connects people to the earth. Both good and bad energy, ying and yang, are required to create a happy balance, an equilibrium that holds all life forces in perfect harmony. Many of these themes are prevalent in the Hopi culture, and while we have done our best to stay true to what we have learned of the Hopi, there is always a little creative license as we translated these ideas to support our ‘fictional’ story.

Join us as we create Gift of Blood, our first paranormal romance novel. This is our dream, welcome to our journey.