Dreams at Midnight

"Midnight Dreams" is my first fantasy to get published, and not just a fantasy, but a fantasy romance. At the time that I wrote it, I had been thinking, wouldn't it be nice if someone were in love with me and I didn't know it? It was just a thought, but then I thought, suppose this someone was a powerful being? But what kind? I thought of all the things that I liked, and chose rain. I love it like nobody's business, so I turned him into a storm, and he controls the monsoon season.

And then I thought, the woman whom he loves needs to be somebody deserving, somebody who needs to get away, somebody who will benefit most from it. Abusive men are such jerks, so I made the main character an abused wife. When I was in high school, my friend took me out to eat. We were in earshot of the bar, and I could hear a man bragging how he had made his wife cry, and that that was how he had left her when he came to the bar. His loser friends laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world. It had bothered me ever since. I based Eliza's husband after him. His ending was a hate kill.

While I wrote, I could see a really awful ending in which Eliza succumbs and goes back to the house of horrors. I've seen too many endings like that. My inmost soul shrieked, "NEVER!" Failure is made too much a reality, and people forget that hope and strength are a reality, too. I wasn't about to write a "going nowhere" story. Eliza had to become who she was meant to be.