I’ve been reading my own books over the last week – it’s interesting to see how I wrote before I got hooked into my Radwinter series, and to think where I found inspiration for the characters. My stories start with imagined people, I’ve realised rather than starting with a story-line for which I have to cast the characters. Many of my stories lurked for years before they were properly written and published, first as e-readers on Amazon KDP, and then made available as paperbacks, also on Amazon.
The first was Farholm, set on my imaginary island off an imaginary coast and the imaginary town of Strand. Here’s how it starts:
She was beneath water looking up and there was someone between her and the sun, holding her down, holding her down. She snapped open her eyes and gripped her wooden crutches, gulping the salty air. It was bad enough having nightmares at night – now she was having them during the day – and they weren’t even her nightmares. How could you dream someone else’s dream? The ferry to Farholm Island was bucking and weaving against the current and Deke felt her gorge rise. If this bloody boat hits one more bloody wave then I am going to throw up… It hit a wave. She held on….
Deke is going to Farholm Island to find the truth about a person she’d loved. It’s not an unusual premise, but I hope that the plot develops in a different way from what the reader might expect. I set up a situation in the first couple of chapters which may lead the reader to think this is going to be a romance – no it is definitely not! Romance is the last thing which Deke wants, and nor does it happen. She meets Michael, who has also come to Farholm on his own mission and it’s not a spoiler to say that within a couple of chapters, an eighteen year-old girl goes missing on the island, which is of great significance to Deke and to Michael.
Re-reading it now, I see there are stylistic things I would change, I would be tighter with some of the descriptions, cut out some repetitive language – but that’s me, the hyper-critical author of the story! I hadn’t looked at it for a couple of years, and I did find myself quite gripped by it, even though I know the plot and the ending, and as it’s my first book, I confess, I am quite pleased with it!
If you would like to find out the mystery Deke is trying to unravel, whose dreams she is trying to unravel, and why she dreams of being deliberately drowned, then here’s a link to it, available as a paperback and an e-reader:
Lois Elsden 