The Echo of Inspirations Past: Part 1

When I was younger, ten years old to be exact, my cousin and I created a game that we would play for several years to come, adding characters and continuing story lines. We one day decided to play school. We chose our names, and of course their boyfriends’ names, the mean girls’ names, and names of classmates and teachers. This “school” became a game called “Mary and Matheka,” a series about a boarding school in which the twin girls and their classmates had adventures. Mary and Matheka came to the school in the 10th grade, interestingly, the same grade that the protagonists of the future book I would publish.

Fish Out of Water is also about two sisters coming into a boarding school at the 10th grade, and the school is also a school with many characters. I wonder; this previous boarding school world might have helped out the next one more that I know.

Greater still, in any case, was the help of playing make-believe itself. With the Mary and Matheka series having been the last one that I worked on (four books and two unfinished ones recounting the happenings), and several years passing without having anything to write, I was eager to start writing something new when Rachel suggested we write a book. The previous and long-left-behind years of playing make-believe planted a joy of creating stories in me that shall not leave.