Today, David Fitz-Gerald is going to share with me the process he went through to write Waking Up Lost.
Brainstorming Waking Up Lost
The idea for Waking Up Lost came from a brainstorming process. It’s kind of like planting a row of seeds in the garden. They don’t all germinate. Some get pulled out to leave room for the ones that have a better chance of surviving. As they grow, a lot of weeds have to be pulled.
I don’t recall the premise for Waking Up Lost coming in a single, cataclysmic inspirational moment, but rather as a wondrous evolution. I made a list of supernatural, paranormal, and otherworldly premises, then after eliminating other possibilities, selected this one. I thought it would be fun for readers to imagine what they would do if they found themselves transported to some perilous place.
I like to write fiction that is grounded in history and soars with the spirits. I use that phrase like a mission statement. My Adirondack Spirit Series is an epic, multi-generational family saga. Each book stands alone. What they have in common are ancestry, the Adirondack Mountains of New York State, surviving in nature, and supernatural tendencies that just seem to run in the family. The common ancestry includes the Native American people that inhabited New York state before colonization.
When I finished writing She Sees Ghosts, I thought about what should follow that book, featuring an empathic medium named, Mehitable, set in 1799-1816. As that book ended, the recently widowed mother of a toddler was expecting a second child. What supernatural tendencies should her children possess? That’s where my brainstorming list came in.
Waking Up Lost is the story of a young man raised by a single mother in a newly formed woodland town in 1833. One morning, he wakes up miles from home at an isolated lake where his mother once met his father. A few nights later, he is transported in his sleep to the bedroom of the meanest man in town’s daughter. Another night, Noah awakens in a storm on the peak of a mountain. Just when Noah thinks that he has found a solution to his problem, he awakens on a depraved scow, and its captain forces him to lead mules along the banks of the Erie Canal. Will he find a way to break free from captivity and escape the horrible plans the captain has for him at the end of their journey?
Caught in a Trance, set in 1849, is the story of Noah’s brother, Moses. He has the ability to blast through the air, from one location to another, and yet nobody notices when he does so, even when it happens right before their eyes. Moses also discovers that he can hypnotize people. What happens when Moses becomes addicted to hypnosis and mesmerizes himself? I hope to publish this story in the summer of 2022.
Some ideas are so good, it is hard not to return to them. It is tempting to imagine more adventures for Noah. Maybe I should make a list of different places I’d like to jettison him off to and see if he can make his way home, yet again.
Or maybe I’ll go in a completely different direction. I wonder whether I’ll pull anything else from that list of ideas.
I’d like to think I could just work on one thing at a time, but these little book babies all seem to have their own needs. One needs to be planned, another needs to be written, a third requires editing, this one is setting off to find its way in the world, and the ones that came before still require attention now and then. But I think my favorite part is planning and plotting new stories to develop.
So, I’ll keep brainstorming and see what else I can come up with. Thank you for your interest in Waking Up Lost!
Thank you so much for sharing and good luck with all your writing plans.
Here’s the blurb:
Traveling without warning. Nights lost to supernatural journeys. Is one young man fated to wander far from safety?
New York State, 1833. Noah Munch longs to fit in. Living with a mother who communes with ghosts and a brother with a knack for heroics, the seventeen-year-old wishes he were fearless enough to discover an extraordinary purpose of his own. But when he mysteriously awakens in the bedroom of the two beautiful daughters of the meanest man in town, he realizes his odd sleepwalking ability could potentially be deadly.
Convinced that leaving civilization is the only way to keep himself and others safe, Noah pursues his dream of becoming a mountain man and slips away into the primeval woods. But after a strong summer storm devastates his camp, the troubled lad finds his mystical wanderings have only just begun.
Can Noah find his place before he’s destroyed by a ruthless world?
Waking Up Lost is the immersive fourth book in the Adirondack Spirit Series of historical fiction. If you like coming-of-age adventures, magical realism, and stories of life on the American frontier, then you’ll love David Fitz-Gerald’s compelling chronicle.
Buy Waking Up Lost to map out destiny today!
Trigger Warnings:
Rape, torture, cruelty to animals, sex, violence.
Buy Links:
Available on #KindleUnlimited.
Amazon UK: Amazon US: Amazon CA: Amazon AU:
Meet the author
David Fitz-Gerald writes fiction that is grounded in history and soars with the spirits. Dave enjoys getting lost in the settings he imagines and spending time with the characters he creates. Writing historical fiction is like making paintings of the past. He loves to weave fact and fiction together, stirring in action, adventure, romance, and a heavy dose of the supernatural with the hope of transporting the reader to another time and place. He is an Adirondack 46-er, which means he has hiked all of the highest peaks in New York State, so it should not be surprising when Dave attempts to glorify hikers as swashbuckling superheroes in his writing.
Connect with David
Website: also https://www.itsoag.com/
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MJ Porter 