Before I get started,
I just want to thank Kayla for letting me write a guest post on her blog! *Big
Wave*
Writing about a world where out-of-control telepathy existed
sounded so cool; but writing from the point of view of an out-of-control
telepath named Kai didn’t.
I had no idea how to get inside her mind and not get lost there. So
I stayed on the periphery telling everything from the perspective of my other
protagonist, her husband, Oliver.
It was easier to learn about her powers from him. To understand her
through his eyes.
So I let Oliver be the point-of-view character for most of The Six Train to Wisconsin. As her
abilities came under control, I reached a point where the story required her to
be the narrator. Only then did I plunge into Kai’s point of view. And it was
thrilling. Her powers affected her perception and her thought patterns. Her
abilities intertwined with her so deeply and enriched her character so much.
I fell deeply in love with her character and realized I was doing
a huge disservice to Kai. By refusing to go into her point of view in the
beginning, my readers missed out on a key element of who she was. Or at least
who she could be in her worst moments. The telling moments.
After I finished my third round of revisions, I knew Kai so well,
I felt nearly certain I was up to the task of capturing her at her worst and
still telling the story. I struggled with how much of her powers would eclipse
a scene and how to not have the powers front and center all the time.
This wasn’t simply a story about telepathy. This was a story about
a woman whose out-of-control ability threatened her life and a husband whose
secret threatened their future. So I had to pick and chose the moments where her
ability took center stage and the moments that it had to be a background player
to the emotions or the plot.
There were times I had to go back and add more details about her
abilities and other places I had to scale back. Sometimes I got so into how the
powers worked I’d lose myself in them. It’s a dangerous path for a writer. Just
because you’re enamored with the mechanisms of your world building doesn’t mean
anyone else is.
One of the hardest things was figuring out ways to limit her
abilities. I played with the idea of shield. The telepathy could reside in the
background when she formed a psychic shield. Others could block her out with
their shields. I didn’t want her powers to remove the opportunity for confusion
and misunderstandings. In fact, I wanted them to exacerbate them.
In the end, the character that was the hardest to write became my
favorite one. She challenged me and made me a better a writer. And I am so
grateful that I stepped outside my comfort zone and into hers.
Author Bio:
Kourtney
Heintz writes emotionally evocative speculative fiction that captures the
deepest truths of being human. For her characters, love is a journey never a
destination.
She
resides in Connecticut with her warrior lapdog, Emerson, her supportive parents
and three quirky golden retrievers. Years of working on Wall Street provided
the perfect backdrop for her imagination to run amuck at night, imagining a
world where out-of-control telepathy and buried secrets collide.
Her
debut speculative fiction novel, The Six
Train to Wisconsin, was a 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award
Semifinalist.
The Six Train to Wisconsin Back
Cover:
Sometimes saving the person you
love can cost you everything.
There is
one person that ties Oliver Richter to this world: his wife Kai. For Kai,
Oliver is the keeper of her secrets.
When her
telepathy spirals out of control and inundates her mind with the thoughts and
emotions of everyone within a half-mile radius, the life they built together in
Manhattan is threatened.
To save her,
Oliver brings her to the hometown he abandoned—Butternut, Wisconsin—where the
secrets of his past remain buried. But the past has a way of refusing to stay
dead. Can Kai save Oliver before his secrets claim their future?
An
emotionally powerful debut, The Six Train
to Wisconsin pushes the bounds of love as it explores devotion, forgiveness
and acceptance.
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