How'd You Get the Idea In the First Place?

As it happens, I can tell you!

This whole story came to me in a flash one spring morning in 2007 as I was walking along the Stowe, Vermont Recreation Path.  (That's a picture of the Rec Path in spring right there, look down. Inspirational, no?).

I was listening to Adele’s first album on my iPod, and I got thinking about how important it was for gifted people to arrive at the right place and time if their gifts are to be realized.  

I've always been a reader, of course, and my major in college was English literature.  So when this thought flitted across my mind, I immediately thought of Thomas Gray’s famous poem, ‘Elegy Writtenin a Country Churchyard,’ which includes this notion as one of its major themes.  That is, what might have been if people weren't constrained by the circumstances of their birth?

So, I thought, what if the Universe had a way of, very occasionally, correcting these mistakes?  Of shifting people born in the wrong time and place to the place where they and their talents can flourish?  How might that be done?  How might a good story about this be told  about this.   

The book unfolded itself right there. 

Well, sort of unfolded itself.  I then had to spend the next five years working it all out.

I’ve always been an anglophile (since way before Downton Abbey), a fan of antiques, vintage bikes, typewriters etc.  I was immediately captivated by the idea of writing a coming-of-age story that would allow me to explore this topic along with all my other favorite things and places.  

It was a great journey and I am thrilled to have made it.  I am hoping at least a few other people will like reading it as much as I liked writing it.  If you like it let me (and the rest of the world) know- Amazon allows you to write reviews you know!  If not, you can keep that to yourself.  (Kidding!  [sort of]).