Meredith Mansfield, Author

What is now BECOME: TO RIDE THE STORM started life very differently.

Several years ago . . . . Let’s see, a little digging shows that I started the first version of the story in 2008. Ten years ago. It was, if I remember correctly, the third novel I wrote. It was very different than it is now.

That first version was titled Dreamer’s Rose–and Rose was the main character. The same Rose (well, mostly the same) who makes her first appearance in the final book of the Become series. That novel was finished, revised/rewritten a couple of times–and tabled. It just didn’t work–or not in a way that I wanted it to.

It took me awhile to figure out that Rose just wasn’t the most interesting character–Gaian was. (Though his name was different in that first version.) And more time to fully develop Gaian’s character and background–which also changed beyond all recognition from that first version. In fact, about the only things that haven’t changed are the map,

and Gaian’s parentage and . . . more or less what happens in the end–rather less than more in some ways.

I wasn’t idle during that time, of course. But this story never really went away. It was always somewhere on a back burner waiting to be ready. I always did picture Gaian as Hercules-like in some ways, but it was when I realized that there were parts of Hercules’s story that could really be built into this one, in an upside down kind of way, that it really started coming together.

I love this story the way it’s turning out now.