Personal Experiences in my Writing

(Originally published May 9, 2007).

This week, I completed my first interview questionnaire. One of the questions asked was: How much of your personality and life experiences are in your writing? After due consideration, I answered as follows:

Since I was born in Scotland and lived there until the age of seven, my first hero had to be Scottish — think hunky Scottish archaeologist with abundant charm and a wry sense of humor.

In addition, my heroine’s enjoyment of good food, particularly chocolate, is akin to mine. Also her quirky sense of humor. More to the point, my heroine and I share some real-life traumas. For example, our mothers were both substance abusers. Like me, my heroine figured she should be able to save the parent she both loved and hated, if only she could find the correct words to make her see the error of her ways. Of course, both my heroine and I were equally wrong in that type of co-dependent thinking. Writing the scene where my heroine finally ‘gets it’ that she is not responsible for saving her mother, leaving her free to pursue her dreams, was cathartic for me.

Most significant of all, THE JAGUAR LEGACY gives voice to my strong conviction that I have experienced many past lives and will continue to reincarnate until I master the lessons I am here to learn. I am coming to believe that the description of my heroine’s past life as an Olmec High Priestess who had harmed many people during that lifetime was one of my previous incarnations, although written with a little poetic license. In case anyone is wondering, the use of flashbacks (triggered by the energy of the archaeological dig) to depict my heroine’s past lifetime is a merely literary device and not intended to represent my experience of past life regression.