Fun Facts About the Elysian Chronicles

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Fun Facts about
A Prophecy Forgotten

These are some interesting facts about the writing of A Prophecy Forgotten:

Plot:

Originally, I came up with the idea for the story by asking myself, "What if a woman was walking by a river and saw a little boy drowning?" And what if she rescued the boy, but injured herself and got amnesia in the process? And then, what if the boy thought she was his guardian angel turned human? I thought that would be a fun twist until I asked myself the next question: "What if she really was his guardian angel." Bingo! Anyway, I knew I needed to develop the guardian angel culture and back story in order to write the story, and once I did, I discovered that I liked the back story better than the original story. Gabriella and Tommy became a sub-plot within the first week or two of writing.
Marcus never existed in the first draft. Can you believe it???? Where would the story be without Marcus? (Where would Out of the Shadows be without Marcus.) Neither did Josephi. I realized that I needed to develop a "team culture" amongst Davian's unit, meaning I needed more than Eric and Snead, so I came up with Marcus and Josephi during the second draft. You can see how much rewriting I had to do.
Ianoda and Octirius used to be the same character.
I experimented with pitting Jim, the ex-Navy SEAL, and Gabriella against each other by making him suspect she was a terrorist. It was quite a fun fight, but it wasn't working. I was forcing the characters to do something they wouldn't do, so I axed it.
Eric was originally Snead's character: a young lieutenant whom Davian had taken under his wing (metaphorically speaking). When I added Marcus and Josephi, I promoted Eric to captain and made him Davian's best friend.
I had no idea that the Nectar Reservoir incident would become so important. It just seemed like something Gabriella would do that would make Zephor angry. Sometimes my characters speak and I just listen to them, and Zephor just blurted out this thing about the Nectar Reservoir. I think its because I really "feel" my characters. I can't explain it. Somehow, I knew something happened in Gabriella's past, but I didn't know why it was important. Stephen King says that writing a story is like unearthing a fossil. The story is already there, it just needs to be discovered. After writing this novel, I heartily agree with him.
Along those lines, I did not know that Cassadern was a seer until Davian mentioned it. Then I had to figure out what a seer was.
Theo & Tyce were not created until the Third draft. I basically took a bunch of characters at the end and combined them into Theo and Tyce. I call them T&T for short when I write freehand or make corrections.

Names:

Cherubians were always cherubians. I took the word "cherub" and added some letters. Creative, huh?
Mornachts were not always mornachts. I took the German word for night, nacht, a tried to do something with it. They were originally nachtai (plural). Then I decided to make them nachtmors (using the Spanish "mor" for dark as in "moreno"). Finally, it became mornachts, which was great until my husband said, "Mynocts? Ugh!" quoting Princess Leia in Empire Strikes Back. I decided to keep the name anyway. They are mornacts, and I can't change that.
It wasn't until August of 2006 that I used the word "scabs" to refer to mornachts. Until then, it was "stinkers," but that was kind of childish.
Gabriella was always Gabriella. I just took the name, "Gabriel" and feminized it. Duh!
Marcus's name came from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I must have watched the movie right before I created his character.
Salla's name did not come from the Indiana Jones movies.
Azernoth, Zephor, and Cassadern just popped in my head. I love it when that happens, but it doesn't happen often.
I originally called Davian "Agent Smith." Yes, I think it came from The Matrix. I knew it was temporary. His name actually came from one of the contracts at the company I worked for at the time.
Theo & Tyce came from two boys at Naples Christian Academy. I was a substitute teacher there for a while, and I fell in love with the class that graduated (as 8th graders) in 2006. They were so excited that I was writing a novel that they wanted me to use their names. Theo was a boy in the class. Another boy, whose last name was Hood (can't remember the first) wanted me to use his nickname, Tyce. Viola!
Elysia was originally called Assengard. I took it from Norwegian mythology. (The Norwegian gods lived in the city Asgard.) Unfortunately, Tolkein took a lot of his ideas from Norwegian mythology, too. Once Peter Jackson made the Lord of the Rings into a movie, Assengard had to go because Isengard was just too common, and I didn't want people to think I had stolen from Tolkein. I turned Assengard into Cherubia, which is really cheesy, and I knew it at the time. I did word charts, tried anagrams, anything to come up with a name for Davian's homeland, but nothing clicked. Then my husband said, "What about the Elysian Fields?" Now don't think he was being all intellectual. Yes, the Elysian Fields are where all the Greek and Roman Heroes go when they die in their mythology, but that's not what my husband was referring to. The New York Knickerbockers, the athletic club that created the game of baseball (Doubleday had nothing to do with it.), played their first baseball games on the Elysian Fields across the Hudson River in New Jersey. Bingo! My own personal heaven--the creation of baseball--and a mythological reference that made sense.
Jaliel was probably my hardest character to name. He went by Mi1 for a while. (My system of naming characters when I don't know their names. I give them the first two letters of something they remind me of and a number. That way, I can use the Find/Replace function in word once I figure out their names.) In this case, Mi1 stood for Mithrandir, (i.e. Gandalf), who reminded me a bit of I wanted for Jaliel. Then it changed to Melchedai, which wasn't working--especially since it reminded me of Mordechai from Esther. I actually took the J and the iel from the name of a star in some fantasy story I read and created my own word. (If you're wondering why I'm spending so much time on Jaliel when Davian only mentions him once or twice, you'll just have to read my second book, Out of the Shadows.
Ianoda was also a difficult name. This one took forever. I don't even remember the initials I used for him. There is a secret to this name, however. See if you can figure it out.
Picante was always Picante. I don't know why.
I insist that Maurice just popped in my head, but Greg still thinks I subconsciously took it from Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Every time I read Greg part of the story with Maurice in it, he'll adopt his best Gaston voice and say, "Crazy old Maurice."
A Prophecy Forgotten was not always A Prophecy Forgotten. It started out as Title, as do most of my works. I have stuff saved under "Angel" and "Davian." Then it became The Cherubian for a while, but I felt like that title was only touching part of the story. You don't know how many lists I've made trying to brainstorm for a title. I tried The Guardian, but then The Guardian TV series came out. Guarding Tommy also sounded cheesy. I tried The Third Battle for the City of Ezzer for a while, and I actually send it off to a few contests with that title. (Seriously, how many of you would have bought a book called The Third Battle for the City of Ezzer?) I ended up sitting down and focusing on the core of the manuscript. What was it about? That's when I realized that all the trouble came about because the cherubians had forgotten about some of the prophecies, especially one predicting a great tragedy. Bingo! I decided to call it The Forgotten Prophecy. Several of my old manuscripts have that as a title. Then I decided that I wanted something that sounded more "mysterious" so I called it A Prophecy Forgotten.

Miscellaneous:

I had absolutely no target audience in mind when I wrote A Prophecy Forgotten. I didn't know authors were supposed to know those things. I also had not read much fantasy, so I had not studied my competition. I basically did everything wrong. I learned almost everything about writing a novel on the fly.
I had no idea that I had created something special until my mom, who doesn't like fiction, wanted to read the first chapter of my first draft. She couldn't put it down and read it all the way through.
I also didn't know that I had something until a boy named Jim Quattrocchi read the story and liked it so much that he refused to stop reading it--even in class. His teacher finally gave up and let him read it and do a book report on it. Right after that another boy, Theo Shelton who is now a teen, read it, and his mother told me that he wouldn't go to bed until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning because he couldn't stop reading it. And yes, Theo is Theo. I consider these two boys my first fans.

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