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Although A Dream Across Time is fiction, St. Lucia is a real place with a wonderful story of its own. We are also psychotherapists with an intimate knowledge of psychological processes and motivations. The columns in this section provide insight into the settings, culture and characters in our works. We want to share this material and our perceptions with other authors but believe that many of our readers will find these columns of interest as well.
We had been putting up new columns monthly but had to take a break. The time was spent getting all our rights back so we could set up our own publishing company. It is working much better for us to have everything under our control. We apologize for the interruption. Our publish date for the second edition of A Dream Across Time is January 2006. The second book in the saga will follow in June 2006. You can find the prologue and first chapter of A Circle of Dreams at the end of the second edition of A Dream Across Time. Once we have things under control for the January pub date you can expect new columns to come out on a regular basis.
If you would like to see what we have been up to and to see some of what we are dealing with as we move to self publish, go to our blog at http://letmedigress.blogspot.com. We want it to be interactive so join in. The columns from this section will also appear in the blog.
At the end of the latest column, you'll find clicks for past columns.
Column 12
Family Life is a Saga
We are now close to the publish date of the second edition of A Dream Across Time. The launch of our publishing venture is largely complete and now I plan to return to writing the columns I promised.
The more we are writing, the more I am thinking about what we write and why. Are these merely stories and pastimes for our amusement? Is the reader to take something away other than a few pleasant hours spent on an interesting story? And, is the writer to take something away other than the satisfaction of a completed project?
My wife and I wonder how we got here? We built a home in the Caribbean and it took over our lives. The home quickly expanded from a starter cottage to a villa. Its care and feeding spawned a business selling short term villa rentals. The experiences in the islands gave birth to the formation of stories about people who might just as well be real.
And then we started writing as a joint project we would enjoy. Our lives got crowded pretty fast. Characters walked in the door. Even a whole book walked in the door. I came home one day from running errands and laid out the story for the second book which had just materialized. It’s called A Circle of Dreams.
Where was this coming from so late in our lives?
We puzzled over it. We thought about the very beginning of our relationship. Glorious and extremely difficult times. Our marriages were deteriorating. No, they were failing. We had found each other as our lives were sinking. In such desperate moments you fly away together.
Most of our friends in that time could be best described as hippies. Others were in the forefront of the reform movement of the time. Mala started making jewelry and we spent more time with craftspeople. An intensely interesting and creative period.
Then another part of reality visited itself on us. We remarried and had four children to tend. They were going through divorces also and had to reconstruct their lives. There was now no time for self indulgence. Much of who we were got put away in the interest of family. When you have children, your primary job is raising children.
Decades passed and one day we went to a place far far away in the Caribbean. We stepped out of our culture and a whole new cultural landscape stretched out before us. Many of the constraints we had felt for so long were shed. It was time for our fundamental natures to be reasserted. Looking back it was clear that we were living our own saga and our venture into the Caribbean was the latest part of our saga.
Don’t we all have our own sagas? We simply can’t see our life as a saga because we are within it. We move through the stages of our lives. Such things as falling in love, having a career and seeing your children arrive are parts of the saga. As we go through our childhood we go through all the stages of personality development only to find that our development continues in our adult lives. Getting "there" isn’t half the fun. It is the whole of life. We know where the end leaves us and that is not what we are seeking. It is the living of life. We just need to step back once in awhile and view our own saga.
We were criticized for writing a romance about a woman who was married and had a marriage in trouble. Did we perhaps recapitulate part of our own trip? Of course we did. And we are writing about life. Finding your mate and living happily ever after is lovely but it is not the end. The saga continues.
Our heroine, Jamie, comes out in triumph having been tested. She is stronger and has her beloved partner. As writers we have chosen not to move on to another similar story but to continue her story. The story of her family. The story of this family reflects the story of all of us. And, as you will see, we are bringing in a paranormal element to enrich the stories. In that fashion we can highlight the richest, mythological elements of human existence. Through mythology we can convey the reality of existence in a way that goes beyond the so-called facts.
When it is all said and done, fiction writing is a way to affirm the experience of our individual sagas. We see in the story of others our own triumphs or perhaps the healing of our own failings. But, above all, we experience our humanity.
In the next columns I’m going to begin to lay the groundwork for the second book in the saga, A Circle of Dreams, by talking about the philosophical and conceptual underpinnings of the book as well as the characters.
Past Columns
Column 1 - St. Lucia
Column 2 - Jamie Elliott
Column 3 - Andre Demontagne
Column 4 - Paul and Danielle
Column 5 - Marcus Deroche
Column 6 - Bertille Deroche
Column 7 - What It's Like Living in the Tropics, Part 1
Column 8 - What It's Like Living in the Tropics, Part 2
Column 9 - Taylor, Clarisse and Barbara
Column 10 - How Does Our Writing Partnership Work?
Column 11 - Goal, Motivation, Conflict and Creativity
Column 12 - Family Life is a Saga
Column 13 - Toward A Circle of Dreams; I don't believe in ghosts.
Column 14 - A Book Walked in the Door
Column 15 - Every Woman Knows This Story
Column 16 - The Bridge
Column 17 - Why the Mystical Element in A Dream Across Time?
Column 18 - Gaia and myth in the Demontagne Saga
Column 19 - Carl Jung, Mythology and the Demontagne Saga
Column 20 - Carl Jung's Concepts in the Demontagne Saga
Column 21 - Martinique
Column 22 – Janine-Yvette Demontange (Yvie)
Column 23 – Anne-Clarisse Demontagne (Lissa)
Column 24 - Philippe Diamant Demontagne (Philippe)
Copyright© 1987-2006 Annie Rogers LLC dba Bivens and Jensen Publishing. All rights reserved |
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