Really Enjoying the Ability to 'talk about' where my writing is going... where it came from.

The Janus Paradox only 8 chapters and some polishing away from completion…!  :)

Beginnings:

   - For those who've only heard vague references to this project that gradually took over my life 2 - 1/2 years ago, here's the 'Cliff Notes' version:

   The sum of it is that when I started this project back in May of 2009, it was merely an exercise – or perhaps, 'exorcise’ – in order to get the image from a recurring dream out of my head by writing it all down.  My hope was that in writing about it, I’d finally stop experiencing the dream.  There really was no other goal initially, as I wrote off and on for a number of months about the various images I saw in the dream.   At some point I became less troubled and more intrigued by those images and I started exploring where I could take them in terms of my writing it down as a coherent story.  I even began looking at the possibility of marketing what I’d written as a short story.

   However, as I continued to work on it, the physical act of writing the story seemed to be weaving itself into every routine of my daily life.  I’d wake up and immediately go to my computer to write. I’d be in my car and wonder where the story should go next.  I’d be standing in the grocery line and be mentally working through dialogue.  It became clear to me there was much more to both the story and my need to write it out than I had first realized.  At times I was spending 14-hours a day – and right through the nights – creating, weaving and reweaving the two simultaneous and interdependent storylines that were the backbone of the entire concept.  Starting with that image from the dream as the kernel of the story, it eventually became clear that what I was writing was much more than just a short story; it was the beginning of a full-fledged epic and easily the progenitor of an entire book series.

   The working title for the series is Twinned Souls, with the first book in the series called, The Janus Paradox.

   The story is a “paranormal time-travel adventure" It's about two souls who are reconnecting again and again through time and space, over the course of their twenty millennia on earth and how their modern day personas learn to reconnect and interact with those lives, past and future. 

   The Twinned Souls stories follow two modern day characters, Glen and Alyse, after they discover they have the ability to "bridge" a telepathic connection and share consciousness with both their past and future lives.  In the first book, "The Janus Paradox",  (A reference to the Roman god of bridges and portals - always depicted with two faces - one looking into the future, the other into the past) Glen and Alyse are first made aware of their special talent after their soul-bond is broken and a divergent eddy in their personal timeline is created by scientists from a Bio-Medical Research Corporation (MURC) attempting to coerce them into using their unique talents to benefit MURC’s ominous PROPHET* program.  In the process of trying to protect both the past and the future from MURC’s exploitation, Glen and Alyse encounter one challenging situation after another in a minefield of divergent timelines and dubious allies, which it becomes apparent is the natural and direct result of delving into the intricacies of temporal mechanics.  In the process they face the challenge of interacting with the many lifetimes and various relationships their souls have experienced throughout history.

*PROPHET = Profit Recovery OPportunities from Historic Events in Time

   The overall story reflects a concept that I've long believed in, as I feel many of us have experienced it in our own lives and on multiple levels.  That concept is called, "Recognition": The sense of recognizing and bonding with certain people in one’s life on an often subtle, but soul-deep level – as friends, as confidants or lovers, even as rivals.  I think we all know people whom we’ve met and taken an instant liking – or disliking – to for no apparent reason.  Yet the bond of friendship or enmity is so strong in those instances, it is nearly impossible to step away from to any degree in order to understand it under the cold light of mere logic.

   Many different cultures have stories about people who overcome profound obstacles on their way to ultimately recognizing they share a mutual kinship with one another that is so strong it defies rational explanation.  From the ancient Sumerian tale of Gilgamesh, Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbe or Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, their names and circumstances may change in the retelling, yet all over the world and throughout history we have found their stories to be irresistible.  In the books of the Twinned Souls their names are Glen and Alyse...

The so-called, 'elevator line' for Twinned Souls, Book One: The Janus Paradox:

            A time-rift in the 21st century must be restored from nearly a thousand years in the past

- by two people who no longer know each other… 

  One of my next entries will focus on what I have left to finish.  As the story is currently formatted, I have 8 chapters left to write from the detailed outlines and snippets of dialogue I have already in place, along with a few chapters to clean-up and finalize - that's out of a total of 39. (woohoo!) 

   In another entry I think I'd like to verbally diagram the process I devised in visualizing the story-arc and the 'back-and-forth' of the characters between to main timelines. 

Thanks for visiting!  Please feel free to share comments or ask questions.