Beginnings

Sometimes it is nice to sit back and reminisce. To think about how things came into being. From time to time, I will be doing just that, focussing on specific parts of my books, but also considering how the stories themselves were born.

The original plan with "Your faith will be rewarded", in keeping with most things in life, was not how it ended up.

It started life as a single set of diary entries, telling the story of George. It was a particular set of events that I wanted to portray, trying in the most to imagine how I would react to some of the events myself - all of the ups, downs and in-inbetweens!

As part of telling this story, Emma had been introduced. To George though she was (and would remain for the whole book) a complete mystery. This became very clear after the first read through. I decided to add depth to their relationship, but even when the first draft was complete, this was still not working. Sure, the reader can fill in the gaps as they see fit, but there was little there to sensibly do so.

The original working title was "It's complicated" and it was certainly getting so! I decided to overhaul things, and began starting to tell the story, effectively the same one, from that different side. It took a good eight or nine months to complete this. But once it was, it allowed me to complete the gaps, but still leave George completely in the dark!

The final title came from the lyrics of a Bruce Springsteen song The land of hope and dreams. It has a double edge to it. The title of the song suggests that’s ultimately where the characters may be heading. As for the book title - well, that suggests the same, and also takes a cue from the cover. The barbed wire fence is that which should not be crossed. Yet, there is colour on the other side of it. To cross relies on a faith. Not in the religious sense as such, but more in terms of each character’s innermost feelings (again something which can be fed to the reader but not each other).
And perhaps a message to the reader as well....

Whilst the epilogue of the story does tell the reader the ending, there are few clues as to how the characters actually get there. I wanted to do this so that I could possibly explore other time periods in future.

I intend to start again approximately five years on from “Your faith...”

“Your faith..” is available on Amazon, both for purchase and through the Lending Library / Kindle Unlimited, as are my other efforts.