Until five years ago, I never thought I would find the time to write a novel until after I retired from my “responsible career.”  My whole life I’d had two dreams, become a defense attorney and an author.  Like most aspiring authors, I started writing short stories and poetry in early middle school and then throughout my life I’ve started and restarted novels which never made it past a few pages.  Life seemed to always get in the way of my second dream.  I focused on my double majors in college.  Then, there was law school, law review, and the bar exam.  Of course, then I threw myself into my legal career and being a public defender doesn’t leave me with a lot of free time.  And then the darkness came. 

I still don’t know how I became one of the thousands of women trapped in an emotionally abusive relationship and marriage. Yet, almost twelve years into my first marriage, I was drowning.  I hid everything from my closest friends and family.  In many ways, I hid it from myself.  Without anyone who knew what I was going through, I felt utterly alone.  

Then, something strange happened.  I had a dream.  A dream so vivid and intriguing that I awoke the next day and frantically wrote as much as I could remember.  It sounds crazy.  I know.  No matter how tired I was at the end of my work day, I wrote till I fell asleep at my computer.  Every evening. Every weekend.  For a year, I wrote.   It was a compulsion, the characters and scenes demanded to be given life.  

And just as sudden as I started the novel.  It was finished. Eighty-Thousand plus words. Twenty-five chapters. What now? I asked myself.  

I’d done it.  I’d set free the characters of my subconscious in creating my own world of science fiction and fantasy.  What was next?  I  didn’t have a clue how to try and get my novel published.  But, I knew one thing.  It was time to free myself.  And I did. 

For the next three years, I left my novel untouched.  I’d crafted it in the darkest part of my life and it was a painful reminder of the years I allowed to erode my core. 

Then, one day I thought,  I am proud of what I’ve accomplished. I worked too hard to leave the novel sitting on the proverbial electronic bookshelf.  The past was a shackle of my own creation.  

In May of last year, I broke the chain, I clicked on the icon, and feverishly started editing the book and preparing it to be sent to a publisher.  

I know it’ll be a long journey to publishing my novel.  This is the beginning.  Still, out of the darkness of my life, I crafted something beautiful and unique. Someday, I will share it with the world.