Gaia Wild begins …
There’s going to be a book.
For a long time, it’s just an idea, a collection of thoughts loosely tied by hopes and wishes and maybe even some words. Then you take a step, write something down, pull an idea out of the ether that makes that loosely tied collection make sense, and suddenly you know there will be a book.
After writing Flight or Fight — actually while writing Flight or Fight — I decided that if the writing process was always going to be that much of a struggle, I was going to have to find a new career. There was only one way to find out if it was always going to be that hard, however, and that was to try again. So I wrote Crow Medicine. And although I didn’t know much more the second time around than I did the first time, I did know I could finish a book. And that one small knowing was enough to make everything easier.
Oh, yeah, this is when I get on a big roll and then can’t get out of bed the next day. Oh, yeah, this is when I have so many ideas shunting around in my brain that I can’t get them down fast enough and feel like I’m going to explode. Oh, yeah, this is when I have to stop writing and stare out the window and wait for the characters to tell me what happens next.
There was a small but comforting sense of familiarity to the process of writing Crow Medicine that of course I didn’t have with Flight or Fight; F/F was not just the first book in the series, it was my first book ever. That familiarity, and the degree to which it made the whole process just a little easier, was enough to convince me that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t have to reconsider shoe sales as my true career path.
And now there will be a third. (Of course, my publisher expects there will be at least six, but to that I say, Easy, Pumpkin! One at a time!) The idea for Gaia Wild had its genesis in 2003, when I first came up with the concept for Jane Ray’s Wildlife Rescue Series. That was the year that Tina, an elephant who had spent most of her life in a small enclosure at the Greater Vancouver Zoo (formerly the Vancouver Game Farm, was finally freed and transported to the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee — otherwise known as Heaven for elephants. I followed her story avidly; you see, I’d known her since I was five years old, and she was just a baby, bought by the zoo to give rides around a dirt ring to little kids like me. I was horrified to realize that in the 30+ intervening years, I had lived and learned and loved, and Tina had remained captive in that small, barren enclosure. The story of her release and rescue –spearheaded by the Vancouver Humane Society and Zoocheck Canada, and made possible by the Elephant Sanctuary — was the highlight of my year.
I wasn’t the only one who followed the story, or who kept following Tina by “elecam” after she made herself at home in Tennessee. It turned out thousands of Vancouverites and other Canadians had loved her as I had, and were thrilled to see her free. Or at least, as free as she could ever be after a lifetime in captivity.
As I constructed plot outlines for the first three books in my series, the third took shape around the story of Tina. And although I’ve set the first two books in a wildlife rescue hospital that would never admit an elephant as a patient, I think I’ve found a way to keep Jane, keep the Urban Wildlife Rescue Center, keep Cedar’s Ridge … and still have my elephant.
I promise I’ll share the synopsis here - or at least, a version of it (minus the ending!) - just as soon as my publisher has seen it. I owe him that, at least. So check back in a week or so.
This will be my first time writing a book and keeping a blog at the same time. I figure it will either be therapeutic to be able to talk about the process in the blog, or else a big distraction from actually getting the book finished. Time will tell ….
And though it seems an awfully long way off, it’s still worth saying — now that I know there will really be a book — Gaia Wild will be available in fall 2008!
:D