Throughout the year, we will be spotlighting nominated and winning authors through interviews and guest blog posts. These are interviews and posts that are original and created specifically for this challenge!
Today's guest post is from Christy Award winning author Marlo Schalesky, whose book Beyond the Night won the 2009 Christy Award for Contemporary Romance.
What do you do when characters just won’t leave you alone? They haunt your dreams, whisper to you in the car on the way to the grocery store, dance through your thoughts when you’re supposed to be doing your job.
What do you do? You write their story. For me, that story was Beyond the Night.
It started with a dream. Not one of those “I have a dream” kind of dreams, but a real, honest-to-goodness, it’s-3am-and-I-had-pepperoni-pizza-last-night kind of dreams. I dreamt Paul and Maddie’s love story. And when I woke up, I couldn’t get the two of them out of my head, or out of my heart. I thought about them in the shower, on the way to seminary classes, in the check-out line at Costco. Everywhere! For weeks, I found myself replaying tidbits of their interactions in my mind, enjoying their humor, laughing to myself at their antics.
But there wasn’t enough for a story. Not a real story that I could write as a book. And then, I realized Maddie was going blind.
“Oh,” said I, “That’s very interesting. But it’s still not enough. Not quite. Not yet.”
Two more days went by, and Paul and Maddie’s story kept teasing my mind. And I knew there had to be more. More than what I’d seen, more that they still had to tell me.
And then I saw it – the big ending twist. The incredible truth that I had no idea about before. It took my breath away. So, after I finished picking my jaw up off the floor, I sat down and started working on the proposal for Beyond the Night – a new type of story. A moving love story. A shocking twist.
As I fleshed out the plot, I realized that this is exactly the type of book I’d like to keep writing – something with the poignancy of a Nicolas Sparks love story matched with the knock-your-socks-off twist of a M. Night Shymalan movie (without the horror!). That kind of story excited me, spiritually, emotionally, mentally. And I figured that there had to be more people like me out there – people who want to be both moved emotionally and surprised and delighted intellectually. People who want to be changed, challenged, and caught with wonder by a story. People who just want something more in their stories, because the typical tale is just not quite enough.
So, that’s what Beyond the Night is. It’s following a dream. It’s letting the characters whisper truths in the dark. It’s coming face to face with unexpected, wondrous light. For me, it was one breath-taking ride. I hope it’ll be that for readers too!
Marlo Schalesky is the author of several books, including Beyond the Night and Empty Womb, Aching Heart. A graduate of Stanford University, Marlo also has a masters of theology with an emphasis in biblical studies from Fuller Theological Seminary. Married over twenty years, she lives with her husband, Bryan, and their five children in California.
