Meredith Mansfield, Author

Every writer I know has this problem. It’s always when you’re elbow deep in another story that the shiny new one comes along to taunt you.

I have to hold this one back until I’ve finished not only BEYOND THE PROPHECY, but also the fourth (and last) book in the DUAL MAGICS series. That’s at least a year!

So, maybe writing a little bit about it now will help with that. Fingers crossed, because, of course, it could just as easily make it worse.

DREAMER’S ROSE is not precisely a new idea. I’ve actually written an earlier (and very bad) version of it. Then I let it sit and re-imagined it. I played around with it a little, but it was tricky because the story involves three main characters and two of them aren’t even born when the story starts. I wasn’t sure exactly how I was going to handle that.

Then the inspiration came to me a couple of weeks ago. All I really had to do was free the story from the box I’d been trying to shove it into. Now I can see how it needs to go. It’s most likely a trilogy. Possibly with each book focusing on one of the three characters. And no matter how badly my fingers itch, I can’t start writing it yet.

Can’t. Mustn’t. Must finish DUAL MAGICS first. (Keep repeating that.)

This is a glimpse into part of the world of DREAMER’S ROSE–a temperate rainforest.

The first part of the story is the legend of Hercules turned on its ear. (The real version, not what Disney did to it.)

In the Greek myths, Hercules led a cursed life, because Hera (who was not his mother) had it in for him. He failed at absolutely everything in his life, except killing monsters and completing other impossible, but mostly useless, tasks. Really, how helpful was it to retrieve the three-headed dog, Cerberus, who guarded the underworld, just to prove he could, and then take him right back again? (By the way, in the original Greek version, Hades helped Herc by giving his permission for that.)

Then he became a god and there were actually altars for his worship. I’ve always kind of wondered what you would pray to Hercules for. I mean, if you had a hydra in your backyard, I get it. But certainly not for any kind of domestic happiness. (Hera drove Hercules mad so that he murdered his own wife and children.)

How did his very unsuccessful life prepare him to be a god?

And that’s where DREAMER’S ROSE starts. Will start. In about a year. Keep repeating that.