One step closer

Today, I am one step closer to seeing four years of writing, rewriting, editing, more rewriting, and more editing become my very first novel. It is currently under review, and barring any problems it should be available by October 26th. So, while I am waiting and hoping for no errors, I thought I would introduce this little novel I called Circles.

I had read Dante Alighieri's Inferno first in high school (of my own free will...didn't know what I was thinking) then again after college (for no reason except I could). I needed a little (a lot)help with interpretation, leaning on Wikipedia and other random sites to help me understand where Dante was coming from and why he put the people he did in the different circles of Hell.

It was then I thought about what a modern-day Inferno would look like. I had read an adaptation of the work once after high school (it could have been by Larry Niven, but I'm not sure), and I think that made my fascination with Dante even stronger.

It wasn't until well after college and I had started a family, that I began to think of writing my own version of Dante's Hell. In 2009, I was introduced to my very first NanoWriMo. For 30 days, all I had to do was write until I reached 50,000 words. So I chose to write about what I thought the nine circles looked like. It was fun, although I only made it to 38,000 words, and I could see the beginning of an interesting story, but I didn't do much more with it. Until 2010.

A video game put out by Electronic Arts spurred me into action. The video game was Dante's Inferno. I was enthralled by the graphics (and boy was it graphic), but I was also upset that someone had the initiative to reinvent this epic poem and I had not. So in June of 2010, I got to work. I located my Nano doc and set to making it into the story I still had stuck in my head.

Two years later, here I am, waiting for my hard work and long hours at the computer to come full circle, pun intended I guess, and see my homage to Dante come alive in the pages of Circles. As a writer, the story is never complete, sometimes never good enough, but I hope that the story I watched in my mind for years is as much of an enjoyment for you as it was for me.

This novel was meant to be a story about how choices can reach out and touch others, then in turn come back to touch you. It's about not giving up on the people you care about. It's about overcoming obstacles and not letting a burden weigh you down. It's about a lot of things. But above all, this is a story meant to entertain readers and introduce them to a most imaginatively hellish place ever envisioned.

Thank you, Dante, for the nightmares.