How I Wrote my Debut Novel

Hi everyone!

Welcome to my journey to writing my debut novel, Winter’s Captive, The Georgia Series, Book 1. First, I must thank Taylor for inviting me to write this piece.

I would love to share my writing journey with all of you.

Writing has always been a part of my life, but not in a professional capacity. This is something that has come late in my life.

Writing a novel was a dream of mine for my whole adult life, only life got in the way. My life’s journey went down a lot paths, but writing was not one of them. In truth, I was standing in front of myself, which could be applied to more than just my writing life.

A number of years ago, I had a serious knee injury that left me waiting three months for surgery, unable to get about comfortably, followed by three months of rehabilitation. While waiting for my surgery date to arrive, I decided the time had arrived to start writing that novel to keep from being bored to tears.

Thus began my writing journey. The next decision and a most important one, was what to write about?

They say to write about what you know. I had spent nine years in an abusive first marriage before I finally took my four-year-old son and walked out.

I decided to write a fiction story about a woman who finds out she’s pregnant only after her cheating husband leaves her for his pregnant mistress. I applied the lessons I learned from my personal experiences about becoming empowered, along with my Cinderella expectations in relationships.

The book took me two years to complete.

First, I decided my story needed suspense. I didn’t want it to be just another relationship book. I chose a remote geographical location in British Columbia, a province I call home, and had my main character kidnapped in the Yukon and escape from her abductors in this remote area of BC called ‘the last frontier’.

I did a lot of research into that area about winter and survival. Being First Nations land, I also researched the Tahltan Nation and wove their culture and beliefs into the story.

The Internet is a wonderful tool for a writer and I utilized this wonderful source of information not only for story research, but to learn about formatting a novel, character development, dialogue, plot development, and so much more.

Imagine yourself in a harsh, snowy winter. Imagine yourself lost and alone in a remote undeveloped area. Imagine yourself with no running water, chopping through ice to get drinking and cooking water.

Imagine using an outhouse at minus forty temperatures. Now, imagine yourself pregnant, aware that you must give birth with no doctor, no mid-wife, no nurse, no one for support. Then, there’s the wild life. Could you survive?

Add a Tahltan native spirit and this is the plight of Georgia Charles, my protagonist. Hers is a story of a journey to empowerment and spirituality. She is a heroine.

When writing Winter’s Captive, I always thought of it as a one-up book. It became a healing for me during the course of its development. A strange thing happened as I got three quarters of the way through the story; it took on a life of its own.

It wasn’t about me anymore, it was Georgia’s story and her plight has continued in Chasing Georgia, Book 2 of the Georgia Series, which will be released in April, 2015. I am currently writing A Missing Thread, Book 3 of the Georgia Series.

I hope this post will prove helpful to all you writers out there, if only to prove that I’m an example of what you can accomplish when you put your mind and effort to it. I think the most important thing in writing is to be committed to your project, which for me means doing something every day towards my current goal.

I don’t always have the muse to write and when this happens, I do research, work on a marketing plan, or update my social media (writing a blog, or posting on my Facebook Author Page, Twitter, etc.).

This usually stirs up my creative juices again. I’ve been working on the ABC’s of novel writing on my blog site.

My next posting will be for the letter ‘D’ (Dialogue). If you’d like to follow my blog site, here’s the link:

http://losingcinderella.blogspot.ca/.

You can also subscribe by email on the site.

My books were picked up by indie publisher, Fountain Blue Publishing of Los Angeles and are available on Amazon.com and other online retailers.

Taylor, thank you for inviting me to participate on your site and thank you for providing a site where writers can learn and readers can connect.

To all the writers, keep on keeping on writing.