Early one morning, I jogged through soft, deep snow along a rural path near my home. Bright sunshine glistened off of snow crystals, and icicles dangling from pine trees dripped beads of moisture.
Several years ago, as a refugee from winter living on a steamy Indonesian island, the story of Girl Submerged flowed through me for the first time. As I penned the final paragraph of Girl Submerged, Book 1, I knew the novel was complete and was moved by the main character, Sirena’s, sense of awe about her evolution. (Even after all the revisions that followed, that paragraph changed very little.) But as soon as Book 1 ended, the story continued. I kept writing. That is when I realized I didn’t have a novel but a series of novels.
I completed the initial draft of Book Two from my balcony in Bali overlooking the rice fields. I wondered what it was like for Sirena and Ricardo to fall in love in paradise, far from the pressures of daily life, and then return to jobs, bill paying, laundry, and family dynamics. Does the mundanity of chores and responsibilities put out the flame? From the sweaty tropics, I imagined my characters in a bitter cold East Coast winter and dreamed up a mighty blizzard, a whiteout. Having grown up in Colorado and lived for a time in Boston and New York, I had firsthand experience of snowstorms, but it had been many years since I shivered and sloshed my way through one. I relied on memory, imagination, and Pinterest.
The subtitles of each book came later in the process. Book One is Surging Tides. Book Two, Melting Snow. Book Three will be Singing Leaves. Each one carries layers of significance for me. What I never expected was to be completing and publishing Book Two from my home in Boulder, Colorado. While writing the initial drafts, I imagined many things but never that I would move back to where I was born and raised. I passionately love Bali and wasn’t sure I would return to living in the United States, much less Colorado. I had left Denver to go to college and all these years only returned to visit family, not to set down roots.
Snow can melt in the sunlight even when the air temperature is still brisk. It transforms into a wetter slush and falls from trees and rooftops in a whoosh. Sometimes the moisture holds and dangles until it cannot hang any longer, one droplet or a stream of them dashing downward. Please read Book 2 to find how this relates to the story!
I imagine Sirena and Ricardo in discussion, sitting on a bench like this in a New York City neighborhood park, surrounded by snow.