I love to dream. I love exploring my self-conscious and gaining insight into the mysteries I wasn't even aware were pulling on my conscious. Dreams are my mind's way of processing the world around me and even when they don't make sense, I embrace them...
My dreams can be the beginning of a story I had no idea needed writing or could be just the thing I needed to get that scene just right. They spark that part of me that believes magic is real, aliens exist, and an open mind is the only way in which to live.
Sometimes my only faith can be found in God and in dreams...
Take for instance Saturday (January 27, 2018, can you believe we are in 2018?) I was in bed completely exhausted. I'd been cooking for the week ahead, researching for my latest project, and writing all day... Not usually the combination for dream territory, but I gave in and shut down everything, and gave into the feeling. I fell alseep thinking about "Jenna".
She was the wallflower used to living her life in the shadows. She was used to life passing her by. Used to not trying, because it was easier than failing.
She was the child of two people who never would have had her if they had not taken the risk to be together. Her parents had been Adventurers and she was caution incarnate. She was ready for more. Ready to jump off the cliff and find out whether she could fly. She was a story ready to be written and I wanted to be the person to write her.
I wanted to be the person who got to know her and to be there when she found her purpose in the world. In my dreams, she's an outline. The promise of a story sure to get my synapsis firing,
It was the same when I wrote Dessani Queen, Wintr's Homecoming, Witch's Reflection, or She Gets What She Wants. I just knew she was something worth exploring.
Dreams, stories, and books can be heartbreaking. They can be unfulfilled wishes. They can be the future yet to come. But boy-oh-boy can they be fun to read.
"Jenna" is and was a story I knew I would create. She is the kinder Jinx. The more timid Makayla. At the beginning of her growing awareness feminity and her own strength as a woman, she is learning just how exciting life could be when making the "right" choice wasn't always the way to get to her objective. She was a heroine and I couldn't wait to see how her story shaped out.
How crazy is it, that I can dream something and feel so certain that it was meant to be shared? That by placing pen to paper I am sharing a part of myself to the outside world. Quite literally, because if you have read about my writing style before you knew I write on pen and paper as well as typing. I like the tactile sensation of working through writer's block by putting orders down with ink and seeing how I still feel about that scene when I am actually typing up.
As a child, writing was my release. It was how I dealt with my feeling and how I organized my thoughts. Now it is as paramount as breathing. It is how I create content girls and women like me wished they had when it seemed like the world was crashing in and they wanted to read about someone who knew about their experiences... Who shared features with them and knew that coconut oil was life. I write and for the most part, it is for me. It feeds that creative part of me, but it is also for my sisters, friends, aunts, and for the women who read the books traditionally offered by mainstream media and feel unfulfilled because they aren't pale skinned. They aren't natural blondes with beautiful blue eyes.
Their hair is kinky. Their eyes are, for the most part, varying shades of brown. Their universe doesn't necessarily start or end with the ghetto and gansta life. They want to believe in the supernatural for a few hours during the day and to read about a heroine that looks like them finding love with a hero. They want that ever elusive happily ever after.
You know the one... With the guy on horseback, preferably with no shirt, a pearly white smile, and bulging arm muscles.
I want the people who read my books to dream. About their wishes. About their future... I want them to read those books and know their futures are unbelievably bright. Happily ever after isn't just for our paler friends. It is for us. Our Princes aren't just disowned royals without a dime to their name and aspirations of being a musician.
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