“Old Souls” Inspiration

Practicing our walk down the aisle . . .

For the most part, I was raised by my dad. He was (and still is) one of those rare men who could do it all. He worked a great job, fed us, tidied the house, and even took us to church . . . a LOT. While our family was far from perfect, I will never forget the feeling of laying my head on his chest and listening to the deep rumbling of his voice as he read to me almost every single night. It’s probably why I love reading so much to this day, and why that spark–that love of reading–was able to evolve into my new found love of writing.

That said, my writer’s fire didn’t really ignite until shortly after the arrival of my first little hellion. Four days before his due date, my doctor decided to induce labor. After a month of weekly ultrasounds to measure his slowing growth rate and the waning supply of amniotic fluid in my womb, she concluded my little guy would be better off out than in.

His delivery was scary.

The nurses fitted my stomach with monitors which recorded his little heart for signs of trouble. Because of the limited supply of amniotic fluid, my contractions contracted him, and his little heart wavered back and forth between beating in a tangent to hardly beating at all.

After hours of labor I was rushed to an operating room. My husband was given a gown and mask, most likely to protect me the horrified look on his face. Despite all our worries, the myriad of doctors and nurses surrounding me managed to save my baby and delivered him into the world, face up, with the help of a vacuum. They discovered his umbilical cord had been wrapped around his neck. Every one of my contractions had not only compressed his fragile six pound body, but also cut off his oxygen supply.

My little guy was a fighter

I’ll never forget the intelligence behind my little hellion’s expression when the nurses laid him on my chest. He was born with a head of white-blonde hair, grey eyes, and a layer of soft wrinkled skin just waiting to be inflated with a perfect layer of baby fat. He stared into my eyes not only as if he as if he knew me, but as if he knew everything.

Other people noticed his keen awareness, too. When we brought him home from the hospital, the comments were all the same. “He is such an old soul.”

And one day, a story began to whisper in my ear. Because, what do we really know about souls and where our consciousness comes from? What if he really was an “old soul,” on one of his many passes through life? Could he have had other mothers? A past love? Would they meet again in this life? And, what if there were people looking for him? People who needed him? People who lost him when he died a thousand years before, and who never gave up hope they’d run into him again?

Gradually, Jaxon grew into the boy he is today–a happy little string bean who loves riding his bike, bugging his brothers, and *gasp* talking to girls on the phone. But the story he planted in my mind has taken on a life of his own.

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Lucien Navarro spent years trying to ignore the dreams and delusions that led to the death of his only childhood friend. But, when a woman claiming to know him from a life ten-thousand years before asks him to return to their great family, he abandons his medication to discover the truth.

His soul is immortal.

Once the leader of three hundred beings who incarnate over and over throughout the ages, Lucien must unite his kind again to rise up against the cult set on their destruction, take a stand in a war which has raged behind the veil of human awareness for millennia, and fight for a love that transcends the boundaries of time.

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This story is why I am attempting to teach myself to write. It’s why I wake up early and go to bed late. It’s why I contribute my every spare moment to my writer’s group, building my author’s platform, and opening myself up to criticism. This story fuels my fire. I read because my dad raised me to read. I write because my son gave me a story.