Trilogy: The Return to R.J.

After putting aside nearly 900 pages of tales about the oddball characters of Heaven's Wait, I sat down with my 33-page preface about R.J. and wondered how in the world I was ever going to turn his story into an entire book. Eventually I became very excited about delving deeper into R.J.'s initial experiences in HW and discovering what he would learn along the way.  Interesting that the story lines always seemed to write themselves, once I got going!

In the original preface, R.J.'s Story took place about 30 years ago; not many specifics about Heaven's Wait's residents were divulged. The remainder of the manuscript, however, which was now tucked away, was alive with present-day residents. So, my first task was to take the current characters back 30 years, when R.J. first arrived in Heaven's Wait. The present-day seniors needed to go back to being middle-aged, and the middle-aged folks needed to go back to being youngsters. Then new characters representing the older generation of thirty years ago had to be created to make R.J.'s story work.

I found it fairly easy to expand R.J.'s Story, once the new character base was established. I learned a lot about the new land and its inhabitants right along with R.J. As I envisioned the characters moving about in their environment, pictures of their original dwellings simply appeared in my head. And what a fascinating job it was to create the characters' history! I had the freedom to make it whatever I wanted it to be. I even got to make up their native language and dialects. While one clan's word for "I" was "Yi", another clan's word was "Ya", and still another's was "Yu". And, though the new details required more documentation so I could keep track of it all, I found myself loving the process.

I ran into difficulties, however, when I was faced with the complexities that accompanied writing about a world that existed between Earth and Heaven. My original intention in writing the tales was simply to share some of the things I've learned in life in a fun way. After all, this world I had created ended up in this location of Heaven's Wait purely on a whim.

Meanwhile, I did my best to stay away from any religious undertones that could easily have overtaken this project, since heaven and what happens after death are integral parts of the story. I tried to establish non-restrictive rules that would invite everyone into my fantasy world, regardless of their beliefs. Time would tell if I had accomplished that goal.

After 4 months of work, I was finally able to turn my 33-page preface into a 270-page story of its own. I was truly pleased with the overall storyline, and ready to send it back to story consultant Brad Schreiber for a second review.

 Learn more about Brad Schreiber at: http://www.bradschreiber.com/ and http://www.redroom.com/author/brad-schreiber