I get asked a lot about how I come up with ideas and/or material to write about, how I got started, etc. My answer has been for a long time now….I believe it’s my soul. My purpose. Here’s the story….

It was a dark and gloomy night….kidding! Five years ago I was on a last ditch effort trip to Florida for vacation to “save my marriage”. While there the song Sober came on the radio by Tool, and for some reason that sparked off this movie strip in my head. It was quite literally exactly that. I could see various scenes, smell things, and even feel what I was seeing. It was THAT strong and so much so that my now ex-husband (well I guess you see that shit didn’t end well lol) had to pull over to a Publix and buy me a legal pad of paper and a bunch of pens. I spent the majority of all down time on the trip writing out this story. Initially, it was supposed to be a short story, but that turned into three separate books called Dunalia. It was a fantasy genre book, or so when I look back on I believe it to be at the time. Frankly, it bombed. I had no clue how to write a novel, let alone three separate ones. I also made the mistake of writing from a third party perspective and I absolutely suck at that. I shelved those books. So the entire writing process, even though I sucked super bad at it initially, started with music and a painful time. It was healing for me even then.

My first real relationship after my marriage also ended fairly bad. That’s an understatement. It broke me. I was devastated and lost. At one point my parents were concerned that I may not come out of the depression I was consumed in and considered locking me up if I did not “get my shit straight”. To effectively shut them up I went out with friends, Beth and Laura, to a local bar and had a panic attack one beer in. I did not suffer from any of these issues until that breakup. I’m not kidding I think I had PTSD following that piece of work for a long time. Anywho, when I got home that night, after the girls had to drag me out of there like an asshole, I had this overwhelming urge again to write and as clear as day my heart told me “write what you know”. At the time I was highly invested in paranormal things so I started writing about a character, Jenna Frey, who dreamt about a dead body, and then found it. I wrote in the perspective of my life, my point-of-view, and used characters already in my life. I wrote, wrote and wrote some more. I did it all by hand. The process of doing that removed me from the world where I was in such unbearable pain and took me somewhere else of my design. I didn’t put down the pen for a few days and I still give credit where credit is due; writing helped me come out of that. It helped me heal. Writing helped me find myself. Writing helped me find my voice and my strength. It took me 2 years to finish that book, but I did. It was hands down the first time I finished a project of that magnitude. It meant something.

I knew that I wanted it published and in the middle of shopping that first book around I had a dream on 2/23/13. I became lucid in my dream and it went like this:

There was a man standing in front of me, garbed out in a robe, who looked exactly like a guy named Rob that I dated for a little while. I knew in the dream that he only looked like Rob because it would offer me comfort to see him that way. He said, “what do you write about?”, and I answered “I write scifi books”. He smiled, nodded his head at me, and said, “okay, love” and I was instantly thrown into the end of the world via alien attack. I was running with my children trying desperately to take shelter inside of the house. I woke up out of a dead sleep from that at 4 a.m. I was crying and couldn’t breathe. I was scared to death and couldn’t quite get myself to wake completely up. I had to run around the house to check for my boys and make sure they were okay and then, like the good friend I am, I texted Beth and Laura a long ass text about my dream at 4:30 a.m. This really happened. I remember it completely. They still don’t let me live it down. I never wrote a lick of scifi anything before that dream, but it was so strong and impacted me so much that I couldn’t work until I wrote it out. At first it was going to be a journal entry only, but then as I wrote more and more it became the first chapter. That dream changed everything because that dream and what I wrote from it became the first book and the second book is the first book I initially wanted published with some tweaks to make it all fit. I flip flopped them into what is called Memoirs of a Dreamer, a series. Book 1 was released this past July and the next one is about finished in terms of edits and will come out next month. Book 3 in the series has been started. I have written multiple short stories since then, as well.

Along the way I realized the books that I’m writing for Memoirs of a Dreamer (the human, Jenna; the alien, Lasayala; the light warrior, Lasayla) are a trinity. Jenna is what we think we are here in this reality. Lasayla, the alien version, is who we wish we could be. Lasayla, the light warrior from the Spirit Realm, is who we all truly are. Once that clicked for me I no longer doubted how this series would pan out and I’ve been writing it ever since. Oddly enough, I now feel like I’m being pushed to start working heavily on the Karen Phasser Diaries, which is a side project I did as a short story that when published everyone loved and wanted more, so now that is being fleshed out too. My soul pushes me to write. It seems to know what it is that I need to do and gets me there. Every single time I thought that I hit a wall there was a calm that would wash over me knowing that the answers would come and they always did. I’ve never been left high and dry when it has come to writing. I never have to worry that I will get stuck and have to scrap another project if I don’t want to. I think that is how you know that you are in your purpose. It just happens. It brings you joy. The ideas keep coming. It’s easy and fluid. Will everyone like what I write? No. Is it going to win major writing awards and I will live next to Oprah? Prolly not. I'm okay with it.

Writing was initially given to me by Source as a healing tool. It is what I believe to be true about me through and through, the same as the sky is blue. Five and a half years later I’m published. I was a wreck of a person who couldn’t get out of her own way, had a failed marriage and bombed her first attempt at writing a novel. Not only am I now published, but I have multiple projects in the works and my life has changed completely. I’m not who I was before. That person is gone, but I remember her fondly.

So when people ask me where I get my ideas from I tell them my soul, the part of me that is directly connected to Source; what some call God. Some understand that and some don’t. And that’s okay. BUT! That’s the answer and this story is how it happened.