Friday Special with Barb Han and GONE
I’m thrilled to have my critique partner and friend, Barb Han, here today. We’re celebrating the release of her wonderful second book, GONE. Let’s find out where the idea for this book came from.
First of all, thank you for having me on your blog today, Jerrie!
[image error]
GONE came to me five years ago in the kind of nightmare that jars you from a deep sleep. It’s the middle of night, pitch black, and you wake up gasping only to realize you’re shaking and crying. I pushed up on my elbows and scanned the room—dresser, nightstand, bed—taking inventory to reassure myself I lived in this reality and not the other one…the one I’d just forced myself out of. I was Elizabeth. My son was missing. I was scared and alone. In a mental institution. No one believed me. I had to save him. The dream was so intense, so real, I was literally soaked with sweat.
I shot out of bed, and checked both of my sleeping children. So innocent. So sweet. So vulnerable. More tears came, and I said a prayer nothing bad would ever happen to them.
I washed off, climbed under the covers, and eventually calmed myself enough to close my eyes. For the rest of the night, I feared sleep. My husband was out of town (I never sleep well if he’s not here) so it was easy to stay awake.
I dragged myself out of bed the next morning and checked on the kids again. It was summer, so I let them sleep. I can’t remember how long I stood there watching them, grateful. Elizabeth’s story haunted me. I wanted it out of my head. I thought if I wrote it down, purged, it would leave me alone. I didn’t want to write a story about a woman who woke in a mental institution fearing for her son’s life. I had a little girl around her son’s age. I couldn’t go there. Not even in fiction. I scribbled everything I could remember on a tablet, recalling events with frighteningly vivid detail, and then stuffed it in a drawer. I tried to forget. Elizabeth waited. And not patiently.
The details pushed through my thoughts and I tried to force them out. Three years passed. I wrote other books. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get her story out of my head. I decided the best way to be rid of it was to write it. Over the next summer, ten weeks, I wrote four hundred pages. I didn’t need the tablet to remember. Every scene came back to me exactly as it had played out in the dream. I waited another two years to open the file again to edit. The hard part came. I revised, sent for critique, and revised again. Then repeated I don’t know how many times. The final result is my debut novel, GONE, which releases today.
My only hope is that I did justice to Elizabeth’s story. She’s been waiting a long time to be heard.
Here’s the blurb:
A woman wakes from a nightmare so visceral her entire body is shaking. She can think of only one thing—save her son! But the men in scrubs who rush in and jab her in the ass with a needle don’t share her sense of urgency.
What’s more, she wakes days later to learn there’s no boy and she’s in a mental institution. Her nightmare was so real—her arms still freshly imprinted with memories of holding her son—she’s confused. And her instincts tell her to trust no one.
Gone is her child. Gone are her memories. Everything is…GONE.
Here’s the excerpt:
If memories were liquids, then Elizabeth Walker’s would be blood. Not warm, life-giving, tissue-bathing blood, but cold, coagulated, dried up, and stepped-over-on-the-sidewalk blood.
Memories weren’t liquids.
They were more like fireflies blinking in the dark, daring to be caught, disappearing a moment before they could be reached. And the only liquid left in Elizabeth’s body was a few unshed tears. They hardly ever fell now. Even they seemed to be drying up on her.
Nightmare or not, she would claw her way through any level of consciousness to save the boy. The last ounce of breath she drew from her lungs burst out as a scream, leaving her choking and gasping for air.
The sense of urgency to save him, to do something, burned frustrated holes through the bottoms of her feet—feet that did not touch pavement no matter how fast she moved.
She had to do something. But what?
She calculated the likelihood of reaching him and came up short. He was far. No way could she reach him in time. Yet waiting, doing nothing, wasn’t an option either. Protective instinct propelled her legs forward, and damn the odds.
“Somebody. Help.” She pushed herself from the dream.
She dug her fingers into her mattress, discharging a crush of bleach into her hyperventilated nostrils. A drowning sensation filled her lungs. She clenched her chest muscles. She gasped, struggling for oxygen.
A door slamming against a wall made her sit bolt upright. Two bulky men in blue scrubs burst into the room.
[image error]Barb lives in North Texas with her husband, has three beautiful children, a spunky Golden Retriever/Standard Poodle mix, and too many books to count.
When she’s not writing, researching, or otherwise getting lost in a story, she volunteers at her children’s school, is in the kitchen ‘creating’ dinner, or can be found on or around a basketball court.
Writing contemporary romance and romantic suspense has been a dream come true for Barb—something she’s wanted to do for as long as she can remember. She left her corporate job, at her husband’s urging, and has been happily playing with her imaginary friends ever since.
In her down time, she plays video games and loves reading with her children. She also enjoys traveling with her family. Many of the places she visits end up in her books.
Barb is a graduate of The University of North Texas, and holds a bachelor degree in journalism.
Where to find Barb on the Web
Website, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest.
Her newsletter has prizes and cool things just for subscribers.
