It has been a minute (or fifteen years) since my friend Kathy Jeffords and I have created something together. As we reconnected a bit more earlier this year, it became evident that there was a synchronicity happening around where we were in our lives and the goals that we had going forward. We had both individually written books and we had the drive and desire to write many more.
As I mentioned in my “The Wendy’s Experiment” post, Kathy and I have been friends since junior high. We both have always been super crafty and creative. However, we also both love writing stories above all other creative ventures.
When we first began chatting again, we thought we might just support each other with editing and occasionally have craft days to fuel our maker-spirits, but then it began shifting into something more.
We still have our individual stories to write and tell, but we realized that there was also a great deal of fun to be had goofing around with each other and combining forces on social media and letting the world know how fun our stories are. It’s a big world. Sharing the load is incredibly helpful. And, when you get to do that with a good friend, it is even more magical.
Thus begins a new era of our writing careers. We are older. We both have a heck of a lot of experience and, dare I say, wisdom underneath us.
While some things are in the works and some are coming soon, our first combo project ended up being a collection of short stories. These stories were already written, but when we read over them, they paired so nicely, we put six of them together (three each) as our first giveaway offer.
My friend Kathy and I have known each other since junior high. At one time we waged a cartoon war that involved adventures of our awkward superhero alter egos. I was dubbed Super Frizz because my grandmother had attempted to perm my hair in the seventh grade and severely damaged it. It took years to grow out.
Circa 2009-2010, Kathy and I had a series of meetings at our local Wendy’s to catch up and discuss creative adventures. Just thinking about it makes me want a bacon and cheese baked potato – my go-to at Wendy’s at the time. We called the meetings “The Wendy’s Experiment” and dreamed up lots of possibilities.
(Kathy, if you’re reading this, please correct me if I’m wrong about anything – this seems like a whole life ago to me).
The Birth of Hope & Josie Go to the Prom
I have had several friends over the years that I tried to create with, but it is no simple thing for more than one person to have the time or energy or resources to bring ideas into form.
However, on this particular occasion, all the things aligned to create something really fun.
Hope & Josie Go to the Prom was written in a back and forth manner between Kathy and me as the characters Hope and Josie. We treated the creation almost as if we were uncovering the story ourselves as we wrote our notes to each other and the exchanges grew in complexity and silliness.
At the time we wrote it (again, 2009-10), we felt like we made use of the communication options that teens had available. While most of those don’t really translate to what a 2025 teen would use, the story still holds up. It is super zany and wild, and if you read it with the knowledge of when it was written, it hits some nostalgia buttons.
Then and Now
I decided to bring it back into the world earlier this year. When we first published it on Lulu.com in 2010, we had it printed as a spiralized book because we thought that would be a cute feature. It actually made the printing cost a little ridiculous. Later, we didn’t publish it as an ebook because we didn’t want to lose the handwritten fonts that we felt made the book seem like you were truly reading someone’s notes.
I finally decided to tackle that issue. I knew I could publish Hope & Josie as an illustrated ebook, but I needed to do it in a way that people wouldn’t have to enlarge each page to read it (because that would be super annoying).
I tested several different sizes and I think I found a sweet spot where the reader has a decent amount of text per page without having to zoom in.
Is There a Sequel?
When we first created Hope & Josie Go to the Prom, Kathy and I thought we would be making a series of books with these two characters. That hasn’t quite panned out over the last fifteen years.
I’m pretty excited about that and a bit nervous. I imagine this feeling is similar to seeing your child up on stage, about to perform their part in the school play and, while you’ve done what you can to prepare them, you don’t know 100% how it is going to go. I’m proud of the book regardless of how well it does. But, of course, I want it to do well and for folks to enjoy it!
So… Where Did the Idea Come From?
I wanted to use today’s post to reveal the origin of Goddess Game. For most of my stories, the origins are memorable and I could tell you exactly when I had the idea and what it was spawned from. This one was not so easy for me to pin down.
I have a folder for Goddess Gamewhere I have consolidated various beginnings and writing explorations about the story. I went into that folder, trying to jog my memory. I was surprised to see that I had a NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) file from 2012 where I had started to write this story. It was quite different at that time. Bethany was called Denise. She was a data analyst, and, while there was a similar grocery store scene at the beginning, she and the love interest ended up working together at the same company.
I also found a NaNoWriMo file where I made another attempt to write it in 2017. In both these years, I did not get very far with it. The idea endured, though, and when I was looking at my half-finished writing projects and making a plan to complete them, this one stood out as a fun story to put higher up on the “to do” list.
Tracing the Creative Thread
Because I had the NaNoWriMo file from 2012, I decided to go back to my 2012 morning pages and see if I could zero in on where this idea originated. I didn’t really find the exact answer there (and ended up in a rabbit hole of old writings!), but it did stir up some memories about it.
Around 2011 or 2012, I had been attempting to co-write a book with a friend of mine. One of the ideas that I offered up was a character that realized she could write her own life. I know, I know – that’s not a particularly novel idea. At the time, I thought it was. However, we didn’t end up writing a book together, and this “character writing her own life” idea started to grow into a story in my psyche.
I started to imagine an arrogant goddess, thinking she could be born into human form and easily see through the distractions of life and master it. She imagines that she would craft and experience a perfect love story. Except, she falls victim to the same pitfalls we all do and ends up living a mundane life.
Later, that concept became a bit more nuanced. The idea of the arrogant goddess faded away and it became a story of Bethany. She has a supernatural gift that she has used to stay safe, not realizing that safety has kept her from all the joy she dreamed of experiencing in life.
What Goddess Game Is Really About
The underlining message is that we are all creators of our own life. We just have to be willing to do the (sometimes uncomfortable) work that activates our inner power.
Writing Bethany’s story certainly caused me to look at areas in my life that I am holding myself back. These days I am clearer about my goals and what I need to do to reach them and even move beyond them into bigger goals. As Brian Johnson points out in his book Arete, we can nudge ourselves infinitely forward by asking and acting on two questions:
What do I want?
Now what do I need to do?
I want to write more books and reach more people to read and enjoy them!
I’ve had a deep fascination with the supernatural and paranormal since childhood. A good ghost story? Always my jam. And over the years, I’ve had a few strange experiences of my own.
One of those real-life encounters inspired my short story Darker than the Night—first published in the July 2007 issue of The School Magazine. It was the opening story for that edition, and the cover art was even inspired by it.
But the story itself? That was sparked one night by a trip to a haunted church.
How It Started
I was in in college. Two friends (a guy we’ll call J and a girl we’ll call V) invited me to go to the beach to visit a “haunted” church. Too much time has passed for me to accurately recall the story about the church. I seem to remember that someone had burned the church down twice and possibly that one or more persons had died in the fire – I can’t be sure about those details, though. What I can be sure of is what happened when we went there.
To get to the church, we drove down a long road that didn’t have much else on it. This gave me a sense of being out in the middle of nowhere when we pulled alongside the road and parked. The church had a fence around it and we had to walk around to a place where the chain links had been pulled away from the posts and we could crawl through.
I was apprehensive about the whole thing. I never liked doing things that could get me in trouble and trespassing on the church property made me very uncomfortable. I went along, though. I also knew that I wanted to have unusual experiences and I figured it would make a cool story.
The bell tower of the church was still standing, but without a bell. The openings on the bell tower were large and you could see the moonlight through it easily. Several walls were also intact. We walked around the remains of the church. V kept saying that she felt hands touching her. Not being able to verify this in any way, I was a bit skeptical.
As we walked about and talked, we came across what I can best describe as a shadow-wall. I’m not sure how to describe this adequately except that one of the broken pieces of wall extended out into a 3-dimensional wall-shaped shadow. It was as if the wall had a shadow extension. I walked around it, looking at it and the surroundings from different angles to determine what could be causing it. J put his hand in it. I felt that was not a good idea.
The Descent
About that time, V said that she could see some dark shape circling the bell tower. We hung around for a bit longer, talking about the shadow wall and what had happened at the church and why it might be haunted. Somewhat suddenly, V said that we needed to go.
The three of us hurried across the property and squeezed our way out through the fence. When we got to the car, V told us that the thing that was circling the tower was starting to crawl down. The thought of that freaked me out a bit. I was in the back seat of the car as we drove away and I remember looking back at the tower as we left.
The openings in the tower were impossibly dark based on the size of the openings and the moonlight that should have been shining through.
The experience left quite an impression. And if you’ve read the story, you know how this inspired it.
Want to Read the Story?
You can grab Darker than the Night as a free download when you join my newsletter. It’s a creepy little short for fans of weird fiction, ghost stories, and real-life chills.
It’s not always easy to see the opportunity or good in each situation. I have been practicing the art of seeing everything that happens as something intended to help me. Even if it doesn’t appear to be the best thing ever, there is likely something for me to learn.
This little toon I drew several years ago is a fun reminder. If I remember correctly, I was drawing the baby with the mouth wide open and I got curious about what all you could identify in a mouth that wide. I did some quick research and this is the result.
For your amusement…
(and I feel the need to say that no babies cried this hard or were in this much distress in the making of this drawing). 🙂
