Storyline, Theme & Focus of the Twinned Souls Series...

 - Just a few things to foster further conversation and discussion...

            Here are my thoughts about the overall theme or storyline of my book, The Janus Paradox, and the Twinned Souls book series from which it is born:

            The overarching storyline of the Twinned Souls series relates to a bond of love surviving over the course of many millennia, as souls reconnect with each other, time and again, across physical, cultural and emotional distances.  Of greatest importance, I believe, is the idea that the bond is vastly interconnected – and there are far more than two souls involved.

            The stories connected to the Twinned Souls series will always be about exploring the ability of the human soul to recognize and reconnect with others whom we've bonded with in one way or another through time – past, present or future.  (Even while I have a great deal of fun playing with people's concepts of what is the past, present and/or future  :)

            The secondary or underlying theme is the idea that discovering such a bond of love is a great gift – but learning how to express it to each other, is almost  always complicated.  Such a bond is rarely anything but a complex interweaving of physical and/or intellectual attraction, combined with the ability to relate and communicate with each other. In addition to sheer proximity, finding that bond sometimes, but not always, depends on a commonality of intelligence, culture, , personal experiences and philosophy, etc.   Even cultural taboos will play a significant part.  To some degree I dismiss the attraction of straightforward sex, which I frankly consider instinctual, and as most of us know, is not always linked to romantic love, let alone a loving friendship. 

            Something I genuinely look forward to in writing more books based in the Twinned Souls story-universe is the idea that with each bridging adventure, Glen and Alyse are going to have to overcome major challenges in how they relate to one another – especially when they discover that in their other lifetimes they have not always been romantically connected.   

            In the next book (Timebound), one of the incarnations that’s explored is one where their souls are brother and sister.  It’s also in that book where more is learned about Glen and Alyse’s birth-souls – when they first emerged as human beings on earth – seventeen thousand years ago.  The nature of their emergence as sentient beings is at the heart of the fierce bond they share.  In that incarnation their biological relationship is best described as half-brothers however, it’s far more complex than that – as they are each born to different women, fathered by the same man – however the women are twin-sisters and as one dies giving birth, her death-experience is shared with her twin and together they unwittingly impart that experience with their sons just as they are being born.  

             Glen and Alyse will experience being in other sibling relationships, as well as parent and child.  I think what might prove to be the most frustrating of all for them, there will be instances where they were “Just friends”…

          I’ve already been asked an interesting question by one of my pre-readers:

            "..Will they ever be together with one as a lover of the Úlfgeirr spirit (like the path Ælfwyn almost chooses with Úlfgeirr in Janus Paradox) where [the Glen soul] must be the third?  You are going to have fun with your readers, non?..." 

 

           Answer:  Oh yes indeed… I plan to have a great deal of fun with both my characters and my readers!

Thank you all for your interest and encouragement on behalf of  Twinned Souls - Book One: The Janus Paradox

Cym