A Goodreads user asked Richard Bach:

Hi Richard, I've been a big fan of your books. I have read Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions a number of times and they are some of my favourite books. My question is: What events in your life inspired you to write Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions?

Richard Bach Thank you! My latest answer is that there's a current within us, where events of our mortal and spiritual lives mix right on the edge of consciousness, and from time to time the current makes a splash into our everyday life. I was fascinated by the sea, when I was a kid. One night, year later, walking alone, I heard a voice: "Jonathan Livingston Seagull."

I still have no idea why I heard those words. But soon as I got home, a wall disappeared and I saw a wide-screen movie of first scenes of the story. I wrote as fast as I could, till it faded and the wall came back. I loved the little seagull, but couldn't finish the story.

Eight years later, I woke from a dream...the ending of the story! Immediately scrambled to the typewriter and wrote that down, found the handwritten opening in my Manuscripts Unwritten folder. The two fit perfectly.

How did it happen? Why did the manuscript get 18 rejections before one editor loved it? A long story, that current within us. If we write, I guess, the splashes become manuscripts that we care for.

_Illusions_ was a another splash, a lovely story, I thought, come from flying summer rides in my old biplane from midwest fields. Those little adventures, mixed with a person I've always wanted to meet, my Messiah who quit his job, suddenly came alive.

The splash and love of my characters paints all the books I've written, seagulls and ferrets, pilots and Messiahs. They make sense only for a few readers, the family for whom I've written and for whom I still write, even now.

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