Question – How does a screaming woman at an airport tie in with my visit to the Science Museum that inspired the story HAMARTIA?

While in a meeting, I wrote the vivid airport scene that constantly ran in my head simply to make it stop. Period. I didn’t know what I would do with it if anything, but I freed it from my mind so I could get back to living my life. But then it happened again. Another scene manifested in my head. This time, the event that played on repeat was a funeral on a sunny day and two sisters quietly sitting back to back. The sunshine was so rich and lifelike I could feel it on my own face as I envisioned the moment. So, again, I wrote it down.

Weeks passed by and I kept asking myself questions. Who died? Why did they die? And what did any of this have to do with an airport? But mostly I kept asking, “Raquel, why the hell did you write any of that down? What are you gonna do, write a book or something?” And then I’d respond to myself in a Mr. T accent, “I pity the fool! Of course not, fool!” But how else was I going to beat those questions from my brain? They seemed insistent on telling a story.

For weeks these characters would accompany me through rush hour traffic jams as I commuted to and from work. I needed to know more about them and their world. You know that feeling when you realize you’re dreaming and you can make the characters do what you want because it’s your dream and you’re the director? “CUT! CUT! Let’s do that scene again, people! Take two…” That’s what happened. Like a lucid dream, I kept changing the scenarios around about who was dead and why until I found one I liked and then I played it out.

I imagined the screaming airport woman was returning from a search around the world for an organ donor on the black market. But wait, why would she do that? Maybe the organ was for her child but she didn’t make it back in time and that’s who the funeral was for. What if this mystery woman killed someone to obtain the organ and that’s why no one greeted her at the airport? What would it be like to make a bad choice for a good reason and then fail?

I thought to myself, “that would make a pretty cool story”. But I couldn’t come up with a disease. Or rather, I got lazy and didn’t feel like researching one. So I made one up: Metagenesis. When you’ve been reincarnated too many times, your soul vacates your body and then you die, never to be reincarnated again. And so the following conversation took place in my car between me and the voice in my head:

Me: What’s the cure for Metagenesis?

Voice in my head: Find a soul donor on the black market like you would a kidney donor for someone with kidney disease.

Me: How?

Voice in my head: Travel to a past life and clone a soul.

Me: Any soul?

Voice in my head: No. A matching soul, Raquel, you idiot!

Me: How do you determine a good match?

This brings us back to the Science Museum and the exhibit on fears and phobias with Liam making fun of my dumb fears. What if reincarnation was a fact? What if you could profile your past life like one would map out a family tree? Instead of tracing ancestors, you would trace past lives using your fears and phobias to locate who you may have been, and research how you lived and how you died. Wouldn’t it be cool to learn about your past life? Or better yet, travel back to visit it or relive it?

That’s the long answer of how my crazy thought process led me to write a book about a world where the human race in being plagued by Metagenesis. I thought to myself, “I would love to read a book about that. Maybe I should just write it”.

The short answer would look like this… I wrote a book I wanted to read based on a lucid daydream. My laziness led me to reminisce about a fun chit chat with my son at the museum. That conversation sparked the world which my characters live in and the impossible situation they must find their way out of. Being lazy helps my imagination run wild with lucid daydreams. Lucid & Lazy are my writing friends.