The Temple Of Indra - Writing My First Novel

‘The Temple of Indra Jewels’ is a story that has been floating about in my head for five years. It is a working title as I haven’t quite found the real title yet. I wrote the first draft of the story when I was pregnant with my son in 2006. The 3D Animation Company that I had worked for had been bought out and so I was left with a lot of time on my hands aside from taking a night course on Canadian history at the University of Toronto. This allowed me to basically write the bones of the novel.

Then in 2008 I made it more complex as I found the time after planning a wedding, buying a new home and caring for an infant. The adventures of the last four years of my life definitely played into my characters and plot. I took the break up and the painful emotions from my past engagement and translated it into the unhealthy relationships between my main character and her relationship in the beginning of the story. I played with the story line to incorporate the new and exciting feelings, traits and moments from the love affair with my husband and translated it into the heat between the main character and her stable relationship which develops later on in the book.

Things were going great, I had a great momentum and I was determined to finish the novel, edit and get it published. Then life once again factored in by making me busy with my latest career path in Digital Media not to mention a toddler and a husband. So, for the last two years I have picked up my novel when possible between squeezing in work-outs and friends but I have never managed to get the necessary prep work done that needs to happen in order to send my work to the Publisher.

So rather than present to publishers, I thought it would be better put the story online as a series. That way I can publish the story as I edit it. Obviously this presents many challenges, but I get around most of them by being ahead of what is published, but that is a topic for another post. The online version went through a few variations until I decided and settled on using a blog to publish it. I also want to earn money from my work so I plan to learn how to earn from the blog as well but this will be a topic for later posts. I don’t how I’m going to do it but I always do everything that I set my mind to so I know it will happen.

So all in all, my time traveling Sophia and the cursed jewels will soon have a home online, will be read by people and will hopefully earn me a little bit of money, but best of all, it will finally be read by all the people that I have mentioned it to over the years. All the people that have asked to read it. Sooner or later, and this is going to be the most exciting factor of doing this on a blog, people will comment on chapters, criticize the story and, I hope, this will become a conversation between writer and reader.

I can’t think of anything more exciting for a writer then to be able to discuss the story with the reader as it is being written. And vice versa as a reader; I can’t tell you how many novels I have loved over the years and wished that I could pick the writers brain.