Where Ideas Come From - Alex in Wanderland

I’m actually not certain where the germ of this novel originated. “Alex in Wanderland” is a departure from the high fantasy tales I’d been writing of knights and ladies and mad magicians. I get bored and often want to try something different. I took a modern day feuding married couple and dropped them in the middle of an alternate universe Dark Age or heroic ancient Greek type of society. He was Alexander, she was Alexis, hence the title.

This was one of those tales where I had the opening scene of a story, and very little idea where it was going from there. She was working, he was an unemployed writer, and no, this isn’t auto-biographical.

I threw in a quest motif, and had the couple travel with a collection of characters on a religious journey that could result in their death if it was a success, or a failure. Then I dropped all sorts of problems in their path.

Because they were a modern couple I had fun having them try to figure out where they were and making comments along the way. Their best early guess was they were dreaming.

This was one novel where I had two of my publisher’s editors requesting plot changes. The first editor didn’t appreciate my original ending; the replacement editor hated one of my main characters. So, if chaos was my object, I guess I succeeded.

Not sure if this one will ever become anything more than a fun stand-alone tale. There is always room for more nail-biting nonsense.

Next time I divert from novels to talk a bit about something completely different, my fantasy detective series of novellas.