Let me take you back a few years. Maybe ten. Okay, how about fifteen? Yep, I’ve been working on The Foll Stones for fifteen years. Back then, I was into making jewelry. I created an anklet for myself with green glass beads. One bead was in the shape of a leaf. My imagination took over at that point.
What if the leaf stone had some sort of magical power? What if it’s magic became so powerful it burned my skin? Where would the magic come from? What if Christian Bale showed up and whisked me away to a different universe?
Ahem. That is where it began. I also have clear memories of hashing out the main storyline with my husband in our local coffee shop. I scratched it out on a piece of paper that I still have. I also have a bunch of scraps with notes and ideas I would right down during the day as they occurred to me.
We were in our early twenties with no kids. We had oodles of time. I started writing the story out by hand. I have those old drafts too. I generally don’t throw away old writing. You never know when you might need it!
Flash forward a few years. The Foll Stones had been stuck in a drawer as we raised our daughter, and then son. With two kids, there was little time for writing. Then I began to need an outlet. I was a stay-at-home mom and I needed something that was just for me. A pursuit that was completely unrelated to my kids. Cue NaNoWriMo.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It happens every November, and it’s a kind of challenge. Can you push yourself to write that novel you’ve had in your head? One of my favorite books (The Night Circus) was written during NaNoWriMo. So, feeling inspired, I hauled out The Foll Stones and made a push to complete it.
I stayed up late every night that month after the kids had gone to sleep, trying to write a thousand words. I finished the draft, and that lit the writing fire within me once more. A short while after that, a local coffee shop opened just down the road. My husband encouraged me to make that my writing space. Every Thursday I would go and write for hours. The alone time was amazing.
I actually started and finished several other works before coming back to The Foll Stones, but it’s always been my favorite. Maybe because it was the first story I ever completed that had a true beginning, middle, and end. It’s been a long and winding road to publication for Brian and Cleona, but I think you’ll love them as much as I do.
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Brigid Huey 