SOURCES OF INSPIRATION FOR BOOK 2

“Nature is the art of God.”

Dante Alighieri

One of the benefits of becoming a writer is to get answers to questions I used to wonder about – like where do authors get ideas for their stories. I’ve discovered that finding inspiration for my stories is one of the funnest parts of writing because inspiration comes from everywhere.

This subject came to mind as I was thinking about this post. My original idea was to talk about the history of cenotes I included in books 1 and 2. I was going to write about the importance of cenotes to the Mayans in the Yucatan (none of which I saw) and about some cenotes I visited in the Dominican Republic. But I decided it would be too dry. So, I got to thinking about what was most interesting about the cenotes. And that’s when I realized that no one thing made them good fits for my books. Instead, there was a multitude of reasons. Below is a smattering of them:

- The addition of cenotes to my first two books all started with the mystery of why the Mayan civilization collapsed so suddenly. In book 1, The Palantir, I had Constance discussing some of the theories with Alex. The most prevalent theory is drought (see Collapse by Jared Diamond ). And that’s where cenotes come in, as the Yucatan Peninsula is a karst landscape (porous). Despite all the rain, there’s not a lot of surface water (lakes), as it filters down into underground rivers and cenotes. Besides cenotes being one of the Mayans’ principal water sources, they were also sometimes used as sacrificial places. The history and anthropology aspects were just too interesting not to include in my books.

- Another source of inspiration is my book trips. From the first drafts of book 2, The Pair Dadeni, I always had my protagonist, Alex Scire, finding a treasure because come on, it’s the Caribbean where much of the Golden Age of Piracy took place. Originally, though, I had the treasure hidden in Tortuga – until my trip to Haiti, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic. When my travel guide daughter and I were in Santo Domingo, we took a side trip to Three Eyes National Park (Los Tres Ojos) because I wanted to see what a cenote looked like. It was such a cool place that I immediately knew I had to hide the treasure in a cenote. But the question was where. I learned that not only does the Dominican Republic have the Three Eyes Park, but they also have a much more impressive Los Haitises National Park. So, I switched the treasure location.

- And then there is the link to one of my all-time favorite books. The Count of Monte Cristo’s treasure is hidden in a sea cave. I love the book so much that I had to have at least a couple of references to it in my books. So, besides the treasure being hidden in a sea cave, one of my characters was inspired by the book. However, you’ll have a tough time figuring out which character because I didn’t use the fictional character’s name. Instead, I used the historical person’s name. Yes, The Count of Monte Cristo was inspired by real-life events. I will give you one hint, though, the character has not appeared in the series yet.

The picture below shows me standing next to one of the lakes in Three Eyes National Park. Just off to the left of the picture is the stone wall and hole near the ceiling that inspired the scene in chapter 22 of The Pair Dadeni, where Alex, Jane, and Diana are climbing a wall in a sea cave to get to the treasure.

Me inside the Three Eyes National Park in the Dominican Republic.