This week I decided to share a little bit about my writing process for Dragon Disciples: Resurrection. I’m often asked what the inspiration for my books is, and most of the time it is hard to pin down. But with Dragon Disciples: Resurrection there was a distinct point when I felt the inspiration hit. In this and part two I will discuss that inspiration and how it went from inspiration to a written story.

So what was my inspiration? One Sunday morning I was sitting at mass listening to the Gospel proclaimed by our priest. This particular Gospel story: Jesus feeding the 5000 with bread and fish supplied by a boy in the crowd. My wheels started turning. What if that boy was a Samaritan? Now I have a character and the beginnings of a conflict for him.

With that information I now take a deep dive into my process. I’m not a plotter. I let the characters dictate the story for me. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have some work to do, in the form of research. With this book there were a lot of little and big details needed to set the scene, to give the characters life, to provide the ambiance necessary to flesh out the story. My process: do enough research to get the story rolling, continue through writing the first draft and then a few jewels for the final draft to make the story shine.

What kind of things do I research? I tend to start big. In the case of Resurrection two details were important to nail down; A timeline of Jesus’s ministry and the relationship between Jews and Samaritans. I had to ensure that the story timeline lined up with Jesus’s ministry. In spite of the fact this is fantasy I still wanted to keep things as close to real as possible. To accomplish that I started big and worked to the small. City layouts in first century Israel, what buildings looked like, how they were constructed. And while I am still on the big stuff what were the relationships with and between the groups of people that have a part in the story.

This sets up the framework or the skeleton of the story. In Part 2 I will dive deeper into fleshing out the skeleton by adding muscles and skin.