If I was a setting, what would I look like? with Terry Persun

ACP - The setting in a book is sometimes just as important of a character as the characters themselves. If I were a setting, what would I look like?


The Magic Garden
by Terry Persun

Leave it to Karla to come up with some of the most interesting questions. So, I sit and ponder the question from my small office separated from my house by a dozen or so steps. It looks onto a courtyard. The sun this morning shines through a smattering of disinterested clouds, across the water, the town, and onto the posts of the porch. The cat is perched in its cat bed, eyes closed, soaking up the morning warmth.

I close my eyes as well. I often do that while writing, which is like meditation to me, it’s like prayer. It’s the greatest connection to the universe that I have during the day, and I love the feeling like I love nature. I am myself in this state…and no one can touch me.

I think of this as a magic garden: anything can grow here, anything can appear, animals speak, trees and flowers move, everything is fluid, everything possible. When I am a setting, I am that magic garden. Inside me, you might find your own animal totem, you might shape shift like those in my novel “Doublesight”, or you might invent something inside a small laboratory like in “Revision 7: DNA”.

The truth is, I don’t make this stuff up. It appears to me like magic. All I do is open up to it, allow it to come through. I am often more amazed than anyone when a novel pushes through my psyche and onto the page. At that moment I have become the fertile garden it needs. The weather is perfect for the moment, whether raining, like in a recent novel I wrote, or barren and desert-like, similar to a sci-fi novel that’s going through production at the publisher’s.

If I think of myself as a setting, I think of that fluidness of growth, the fragrance of honeysuckle or lilac, the taste of rain on my tongue or metal from a gun barrel, the feel of a lover or a punch to the jaw. Could I go on? Of course, and each image, sound, smell that comes to me also comes with a character, an idea for a book. When I am at my most open, anything can come through the garden of me—and often does.

Look, the sky is gathering its cloak around the moon. A murder of crows leave the comfort of branches and travel across the light from the last glimmers of day, behind them the flat and scruffy terrain of a swamp. Something resides in that swamp, something beautiful and horrible, I’m going in after it.

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Terry Persun writes in many genres, including historical fiction, mainstream, literary, and science fiction/fantasy. His novel, “Cathedral of Dreams” is a ForeWord magazine Book of the Year finalist in the science fiction category. His novel “Sweet Song” just won a Silver IPPY Award, too. His latest sci-fi thriller is, “Revision 7: DNA”, and his first fantasy novel just came out. “Doublesight” can be found online. Terry’s website is: www.TerryPersun.com or you can find him on Amazon.  

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