I am happy to welcome JC Andrijeski to Book’d Out today. Rook :Allies’ War, Book One is the first book in a series, of which two more installations have been published, Shield: Allie’s War, Book Two and more recently, Sword: Allie’s War, Book Three. JC Andrijeski recently moved to India to research and write the fourth book in the series titled Shadow: Allies’ War, Book Four. Today she shares her fascinating journey of writing Rook: Allie’s War and the subsequent titles and is offering reader’s the opportunity to win one of 5 electronic editions of her novel.
Rook: Allie’s War: Book One
Twenty-eight-year-old San Francisco native, Allie Taylor, knew she had issues…but she at least thought she was human.
In her version of modern day Earth, a second race of human-like beings called seers were discovered in Asia in the early 1900s. Since then, they have fought in two world wars and live alongside humans as second-class citizens. So when Allie meets her first, real, flesh-and-blood seer, she’s not exactly thrilled when he tells her that she’s a seer like him. Worse, all the other seers believe she’s going to end the world…and no matter what she does, everything that happens after that only seems to prove him right.
“The Book Wrote Me...”
In thinking about what I wanted to say in this guest blog, it occurred to me I’ve never really written about the whole journey involved in completing my first novel. Partly because it’s embarrassing to me in some respects, in that it was such a long process.
Since then, I read somewhere that it takes an average of ten years’ apprenticeship for most novelists. The other milestone I’ve heard from pro writers is the “1 million words.”
For some reason, the journey for me involved writing most of those one million words on the same set of characters, who simply wouldn’t leave me alone until I did it right.
I wrote different books, mind you. That’s the funny part. I wrote six full-length novels only to be unsatisfied with each of them for one reason or another. The first few were straight science fiction. The second few were more of a portal fantasy. The last book, the one that finally felt “right,” is set entirely on Earth, as an alternate history.
Boring, right?
I mean, I’ve never been one of those writers that assumed my process was interesting to anyone but me. The reason I felt compelled to write about this was more how much writing this book changed me.
In every case listed above, the main characters of my books had psychic abilities.
After the first few versions of the book, I realized I kept getting stuck on certain concepts in terms of building the world. I mentioned this to another writer friend, and she suggested, quite sensibly, that I do some research.
I stared at her blankly.
“Research on a made-up phenomenon?” I said.
She gave me an equally puzzled look. “Don’t you live in San Francisco? Do you have any idea how many books, classes and seminars there are on psychic abilities in that city alone? Much less the number of spiritual traditions that claim to have adepts who’ve developed this ability?”
I just looked at her, still blank.
“No,” I said finally.
But I had to admit she had a point. I’d always shied away from the New Age thing, though. I may have lived in San Francisco, but I grew up in the South Bay, where my parents were Catholic and most of my friends relatively agnostic. I’d gone to graduate school in New York City and my friends there were staunchly grounded in the material world, a world they felt invested in improving, as did I.
But then, I’d always liked the idea of a more “method” style of writing.
I had a research background, was a history buff already, and I’d even taken up martial arts classes to understand one of my characters. Instead of a few weeks of learning the basics, like I’d planned, I went on to become a ring fighter in Choy Li Fut, a style of Kung Fu.
So I really tried to approach my friend’s suggestion in the same light.
I started to research psychic phenomenon.
I admit, most of what I read initially struck me as pure bunk.
Yet I continued researching, and eventually began chasing more reasonable-sounding tangents. Somewhere in all of this reading and scoffing and reading and finding interesting bits and pieces, my studies intersected with meditation and other contemplative arts.
I’d had friends try to get me into meditation for years, but I’d always resisted. For one thing, it had always been couched either in New Age-y language which turned me off, or else was a thinly-disguised admonition that I “chill out,” and “not think so much.” I’ve always despised unsolicited advice, so I usually make a point of ignoring it.
I pretty much did the same with that.
But the more hardcore meditation practitioners fascinated me. I mean the people who spent years in ice caves, staring at a wall. I found much I read of the philosophy and experiences of consciousness fascinating as well, so much so that for the first time in my life, I genuinely wanted to try it for myself.
So I looked up one of the least airy-fairy-seeming meditation schools that wasn’t affiliated with a particular religion, and as luck would have it, found a teacher in Oakland, California. I studied with him for a few months, then ended up moving to the main school in Sydney, Australia for a year. There, I did a number of stints of solo meditation and a lot of group intensives. I had some pretty far-out experiences I won’t go into here, but that really changed me, more than I would have thought I could be changed, frankly.
I ended up being involved with that school, to lesser and greater degrees, for about six years.
At a certain point, it made sense to move on. The school grew and changed, and so did I.
Throughout that period, I didn’t write a word, not of my own stuff anyway. When I came out on the other side, I found my entire approach to the book I’d wanted to write had changed, however. I started from scratch yet again and finally wrote the book that felt like the “right” one. How did I know it was right?
Because I immediately wrote the sequel, only a few months later.
It still astonishes me, what a strange learning it’s been. When people ask me how long it took me to write the Allie’s War books, I always feel like Orlando when I say, “Well, the first one took awhile.” The second book, however, took a lot less time. The third, even less than that. The fourth took about the same as the third.
So something in me crossed over in that journey to finally finish that first book.
Since then, I’ve had a pro writer tell me that some ideas come along before the writer is ready to write them. She said they’ll sometimes pick them up and put them down for years before they hit that right combination of timing, skill and life experience to finally finish the darned things. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) for me, the very first novel I tried to write as an adult ended up being one of those books. But a half-dozen books and a few million words later, those characters finally seem to be okay with moving on.
Now I live in India, and I find I’m still exploring the worlds opened up for me in the course of “researching” these books. I’m also thinking of starting up martial arts classes again.
Maybe in this case, the book really wrote me.
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About the Author
JC Andrijeski has published novels, short stories, essays and articles. Her short fiction has appeared in horror and monk punk anthologies and a children’s story of hers was published in an illustrated collection called Ogner Stump’s 1,000 Sorrows. She has also published a graphic novel set in the world created in her Bridge series, and penned the occasional screenplay. Her nonfiction articles have covered subjects from graffiti art, meditation, psychology, journalism and history. She currently lives, writes and does research in McLeod Ganj, India.
Website I Blog I Facebook I Twitter I Goodreads
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Available to Purchase
@ Createspace {print}
@ Amazon {print}
@ Amazon {electronic}
@ Smashwords {electronic}
@ Barnes & Noble {electronic}
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Rook: Allie’s War, Book One
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Entries close September 9th 2011
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