Somewhere in all the flotsam and jetsam and the meanderings of a writer’s mind, there lives the spark that launches the ponderings into a fully fledged plot, something that pulls it all together and suggests that this could be the makings of something – for me it’s the dilemma in the climax.

It’s emotional. The moment goes something like this: “What if these characters have gone all through the story – survived all the challenges, fought against the odds and come out of it, scuffed and burned and scarred and wiser – and what if now, after they have come so far and gained so much, they’re here in this place where there is no exit. What if here they face their biggest challenge, but this time there is no way out. This time they know they are going to die.”

Yep – that’s what triggered the Khekarian Series – that’s where I’m aiming for in book four, the climax I had planned before the series was born and before the first story expanded into first three, then four books. The series goes beyond that point (you bet), but initially this is where I was aiming.

From that scene alone, characters formed. From that scene came the camaraderie and deep emotion as a small group of people realize the hopelessness of their situation. They know that if they are brought from this place alive it will be to face a prolonged and torturous end, so death is their best bet. Emotional? Yes. Not in the weeping surrendering sense, but in the determined trying to find a way out sense. (How would you feel?)

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