by
jason Tesar
By the Author
I began writing The Awakened in the winter of 1998. The company I worked for at the time
closed down every year between Christmas and New Year’s and I suddenly found myself
without responsibility for a period of time. For years I’d been toying with a storyline in my mind
—inventing characters and visualizing scenes—but had yet to venture beyond the confines of my
imagination. As my body moved through the motions of a physically laborious job, my mind
wandered, unengaged and unchallenged by my work. The characters became real to me as I
spent countless hours experiencing their lives, living their passions and struggles. In the back of
mind, I always thought that someday I’d write it all down.
And then someday happened. As the snow fell outside, I sat in front of a computer with a
cup of steaming coffee and began typing the first scene that I had already witnessed a thousand
times in my head. Every last movement and word of the characters, every detail of their
environment I could see as if they were right in front of me. But I struggled, coming quickly to
the realization that writing is much more difficult than imagining. There is no explanation in
imagining. The scenes just play out and make sense because you are both the author and
audience. But writing is altogether different. Writing means commitment. Writing means
exposing yourself through words that someone else may read. And for an introvert like me, that
was a scary concept. Still, I pushed through and after several days I had a very short stack of
papers to show for my effort. It was more than I had ever written for a school assignment and it
gave me a measure of satisfaction at getting something out of my head and down onto paper.
New Year’s Day came and went and the pace of life sped up once more. Until one night,
maybe a year and a half later, my wife asked, “What ever happened with that story you started
writing?” We began talking and our conversation didn’t stop for several hours. I told her about
my characters, where they had come from and what they were going to face. I explained the
geography of the Empire, the main plot and subplots. I even told her about the prequel to my
story and that one day I wanted to write that as well. When I finished, she was almost
speechless. I say almost because she did say something very important, something that changed
the trajectory of my thoughts and actions.
“You have to write your story—like right now! You can’t just keep it in your head! When
you’re eighty years old and sitting in a rocking chair on our front porch, do you want to be the
person who always thought about writing a book? Or do you want to be the person who did it?”
Hearing those words and seeing her excitement was like pouring gasoline on a fire. That
was it. I was going to do it; I was going to write my story. From that night on, I committed to
myself that I would write at least one night a week. Though a seemingly insignificant amount of
effort, it was a major turning point for me. Writing was slow-going at first, but over time I saw
improvement. I was gradually becoming able to express my thoughts without struggle. I no
longer spent hours agonizing over a few sentences, but could write a couple pages in an evening.
This continued for years until, by an interesting coincidence, I finished my story roughly a
week before my first child was born. As the sleepless nights began, I put my writing on the shelf
and didn’t return to it until a year later. That’s when I realized that my story was far from
complete. Though I had a few hundred pages, I realized it needed some resolution, and the
characters and scenes I’d planned as sequels would need to be pulled in to accomplish it. This
was daunting at first, as I realized that I wouldn’t be satisfied until I got the whole storyline
down on paper. But as I started on part two, I quickly settled back into the routine of writing and
found myself looking forward to it. It was like reading a good book, only much better because it
was the book that I’d wanted to read but couldn’t find at any bookstore. All week I would plan
out the scenes and work through the dialogue in my head, so that when I sat down to write I was
able to write five pages on a good night.
Two years and a few hundred pages later, I reached a stopping point once again as my
second child was being born. And like before, I took a break for about a year. But when the
time came for me to start on part three, my passion and commitment were already growing at an
exponential rate. Now I reserved two nights a week for writing. And when that wasn’t enough, I
started getting up early on weekends to squeeze in a few hours before anyone in my house was
awake. It didn’t take long before this behavior began to spill over into the weekdays also, as I
looked for every available moment to continue my story. It was addicting. To make up
something out of thin air and then watch it come to life. I finished writing part three of The
Awakened in the fall of 2007. What had previously taken me years to complete with the first two
parts, I accomplished in six short months. It was a major accomplishment for me and I found I
could breathe a little easier having released the story and characters from the prison of my
imagination.
But even as I took pleasure in the realization that I’d just accomplished what might
otherwise have been a life-long unrealized dream, my imagination refused to be satisfied.
Already I was thinking of a prequel. Like a monster that grows when you feed it, this was not
just a book I’d written, but the start of an epic saga requiring several series of books to fully
bring it to life.
So that is how The Awakened came to be. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed
writing it. And if you find that the story finishes sooner than you want it to, don’t worry, there’s
more to come—much more!
—Jason Tesar
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