Through Indigo's Eyes, our YA novel, will be released by Hay House Visions in July 2012. We are extremely excited for this novel to hit the shelves because it has been a true labor of love. Working together on such a project empowered us to embrace a We and not Me mentality. With two strong women, this is not always an easy feat. But we came together and worked side by side to create a novel we hope millions will love. Many people have asked us how we worked together to write this book. Here are our stories.
Tara: I will never forget the day that Lorna and I were sitting in a coffee shop chatting about what it was like for me to see, hear and know things that most people aren't aware of. Until I was seven years old, I thought everyone saw and heard the things that I did. I told her story after story about my visions and how they often came true, and she was so fascinated and kept asking questions. I was happy to share with Lorna because she is a very dear friend and I felt safe with her. Then Lorna said, "I would love to write your memoir one day!" I laughed and replied, "How about a fiction?" Of course, to me, that statement came from somewhere else, from my divine team. The night before, I'd had a vision about the book and I had been shown the cover. My divine team was telling me that this was something I had to do and they had presented me with an amazing fiction writer.
That was the beginning of my adventure with Lorna and the YA novel Through Indigo's Eyes. I have always been such a huge fiction fan, because it was an escape, especially when I felt so different and "out of place" in this world. I do believe that Through Indigo's Eyes is a book that can be a safe place for other Indigo children. Yes, there is a part of me that feels vulnerable exposing my past and Lorna's questions obviously stirred up past emotions but if I can help one person understand their own intuition and if that person is able to live life with more ease and happiness, then we've got a bestseller.
Lorna: Through Indigo's Eyes was a different write for me but I drew from my experience a fiction and non-fiction writer to create the book. My first step was to interview Tara and talk to her about her childhood, her live as a teenage intuitive, and how her friends and family handled her situation. This information about Tara created Indigo Russell. All back stories in the novel are based on Tara's real life and I wanted specific stories and details. Believe me this was not done in one session. I talked to her a gazillion times and, in my trusty writer's notebook, wrote down story after story. Then I asked Tara for photos of when she little, and I wanted all ages. I needed the photos to see who she was as a little girl, a pre-teen, and most importantly a teenager. Since I know Tara quite well now, I was also able to draw on her mannerisms and personality traits and, with the photos beside me, I could see those traits in a much younger person. That is the non-fiction component of the story. The fictional story, which includes all plot lines and secondary characters, just came to me as I wrote. I started with a small seed, which in this case was the fictional vision Indie sees in the first chapter. Magically, (okay, Tara would say I was being guided by my divine team), all the real stories Tara had fed me became fuel for the fictional plot. I had many Aha moments where I would think, "OMG, I can use that story here!"