The truth behind Trust pt 1

Blame Scott Free for this one (and those to follow, this is going to take a few posts).

When did Trust go from being Delyn's story to Vayen's story? Well, that's kind of in the last third of the evolution process.

Yes, Trust evolved. Every other novel I've written comes out of an idea and flows onto the page--through various degrees of agonizing birth, but never the same way (thankfully) that Trust did.

It's a story that's grown with me, through the teen years, dating, marriage, divorce, dating, marriage, and two children. It's always been with me, and it wasn't until I forced myself to put it down and write other things that I was finally able to detach myself from the immense world of characters who were as real to me as anyone else I talked to on a regular basis and finally write the story it was meant to be. I could finally see it for a novel and not a hobby that I slunk off to when I wanted to be alone.

It grew up. I was ready to cut the apron strings and kick it out of the house.

Might as well bare it all, while I'm at it, I suppose.

The story that began around 1983 as "The adventures of Dan & Dana", was about two kids who crashed their space ship after things went wrong at the children's rocket festival. They end up on another planet ruled by the evil Prince Barstone. It was, well, awkward. Really, really awkward. The most memorable lines were:

"Remember that Dana?"

"Yeah, I remember, I remember all those days in the cramped ship, and the frightened faces as we left the atmosphere, and I remember when we lost contacct on the cb, and I remember when we ran out of fuel and crashed here just last night!"

There are so many things wrong there that I'm just shaking my head and hanging my head in shame. CB's in space? Really? Oh my. The part that makes this the most memorable is that I had spelled remember wrong. Yes, every time in that long repeating sentence.

Once on the planet, they meet up with two boys named Matt and Jason. Together, they proceed to defeat the prince and his nefarious plans and escape the planet to go on a new adventure. At this point, the story consisted of 6 legal sheets of yellow paper with handwriting much neater than what mine is now. The pages were tucked away until a few years later when current events brought them to mind again.

In 1986 the Challenger space shuttle exploded. This was a traumatic event for most kids in school as we were all avidly watching the launch during class. Oh hey, I had a story somewhere about kids in space and a space ship festival! Now, in high school, Dana became Alexandria (cue Ms. Wildstar). Mostly because I'd found a new favorite name.

I figured if I was going to dive into this writer thing, I'd better have the right tools. So I saved up my money and bought a typewriter (and a lot of white out). It was really noisy and my parents banished me to the farthest room in the basement with it.

By the time I was in tenth grade, I had a hundred fifty page story and made my creative writing teacher read it. I'm pretty sure she skimmed it or she clawed her eyes out and then got replacements over the weekend.

It was full of teen angst, giggling girls oogling the mysterious cute and troubled new boy on the bus, and no way, they got stuck in space after their space shuttle replica misfired during the shuttle tribute! Guess what? They end up on a planet (cue the Barthromians) and have an adventure. I know, you didn't see that coming.

After some encouraging and not so encouraging comments from my creative writing teacher, I tucked the story away and got involved in real life teen angst, along with plunking away on my typewriter with a couple sequels in which Matt and Jason also got to hook up with space chicks (cue Delilah).

Over the next few years I went on a sci-fi reading binge and grew up a little.

To be continued...