In 2003, when I was 26 years old, I was sick, diagnosed with two chronic autoimmune illnesses and was not sure if I was going to be able to go back to work. I was not sure of a lot of things. These illnesses took one of the things I was most proud of – my intellect! I considered myself relatively smart, but my ability to think, my short term memory was impacted. I was in such a mental fog that I could not do simple math. Well, that was a bummer!
In the mist of all of this, I had a dream…literally! It was such a cool and impactful dream that I wrote it down. I told my husband about it, as well as my mother. But besides sharing this dream, I was not really sure what else to do with it. My focus was to get me back!
For many weeks, as I worked on getting healthier, I played this dream over and over in my mind. It grew! And the more excited I got about the possibilities of where this dream could go, the more I dreamt. I had fantastic dreams about family secrets, amazing creatures, new worlds, friendships with bizarre animals, a blue bottle shaped like a star, and powerful magic!
I began collecting these dreams, realizing that not only I could connect most of them, but that they began to create a fascinating and wonderful tale. And so, a story was born. I knew it was about a girl uncovering secrets and experiencing wonderful adventures where she had to find herself and make important choices.
I wrote the outline of 6 books and about 3 maybe, 4 chapters of the first book. At that time I was living in the northern mid-west of the United States, and I had realized that the cold weather impacted my health for the worse. As much as I did not like moving away from my family, my husband and I decided to move south. And the book was on pause!
My main priority was to get healthy, so I worked hard on recuperating. But I never forgot the book, and in my mind the story continued to grow and evolve.