Four trains, heavy luggage, craggy mountains, village of 3,000 people, an astronomical research station, and American-style ranches. But no buses…and no English.

Welcome to my inspiration destination in The Middle of Nowhere, Japan.

Inspiration Is More Than Ideas in Your Head

Many writers are asked where they get their ideas from. I have a few sources:

• where I live
• emotions tied to personal events (but not the events themselves)
• places I visit
• activities I participate in
• shows I watch

memories—no matter how fuzzy—from childhood that I want to revisit

My inspiration comes from anywhere in my world. The more I experience, the more inspired I become.

Travelling to Japan was part research for a character—you may have met Mayumi Enomoto in Teas of Joy—but it also included an inspirational pilgrimage.

Rabbit Holes: Time Wasters? Or Sources of Inspiration?

I like to know the ending. What happened to everyone from my grade school class? To celebrities I used to idolize, but who seem to have fallen off the face of the earth? To authors I stopped reading many moons ago?

And to childhood shows?

Such was the rabbit hole I tumbled down about two years ago. I’d discovered in 2023 that an anime show I’d watched as a kid, Grendizer, was getting a reboot.

In the age of reboots, this can cause eyes to roll, but the original was nearing 50 years of age. The trailerexcited me about rediscovering this relic from the early 80s (originally broadcast in the mid-70s in Japan).

My rabbit hole opened. I located the original episodes, the 25 English-dubbed episodes, and the full series dubbed in French, and a “movie” in German. I even found an academic book on the subject in French.

When the original Japanese episodes arrived (with English subtitles), I watched all 74 over a long weekend. For the next year, I rewatched them all, one at a time, during my lunch break.

And the more I watched, the more I discovered. For a show I’d originally viewed through the eyes of a six- or seven-year-old, it tackled some difficult subjects: PTSD, found family, child soldiers, radiation, war, and many others.

Yes, it had many hokey moments, forced plot tactics, and two “transformation scenes” that could be extended or cut as needed to ensure the show reached its required length for television broadcast.

Once plans for Japan had solidified, I included the suspected location of this series in my itinerary. There is simply something magical about touching—whether through sight, sound, smell, taste, or feel—creations that have affected my life.

The Village in The Middle of Nowhere: Minamimaki

I’d learned in my research that Grendizer may have taken place in a village called Minamimaki, an area renowned for astronomy. Several locations had clear connections to the series: Makiba Park, Jersey cow ranches, the Nobeyama Radio Observatory, and the Yatsugatake Mountains (specifically mentioned in the second episode) were all within a few kilometres of each other.

My train trip took me 1,500 m above sea level. Minamimaki is part of an agricultural area comprising valleys tucked in among mountains. You don’t have to travel here on an anime pilgrimage to marvel at what nature can create.

As my two-car train pulled up to the Nobeyama train station, the signs of The Middle of Nowhere, Japan, surrounded me: an unmanned train station, very few houses, no taxis, and one convenience store at the train station that didn’t even offer sushi. (A rarity in Japan.)

Minamimaki covers 133 km² and has a population density of about 22 people per km². For contrast, Tokyo has 14 million people living in about 2,194 km², giving a population density of about 6,381 people per km².

I definitely found myself in The Middle of Nowhere, Japan.

Landscape and Story

The best settings in a novel are a character unto themselves: they have personality and affect how the human (and sometimes animal) characters behave and what choices they make.

Standing where Grendizer likely took place made that even clearer to me.

I’ll use the protagonist, Duke Fleed (sometimes romanized as Freed), to illustrate what I mean. He has two identities:

• Duke Fleed is the prince of Planet Fleed and pilot of Grendizer.
• Daisuke Umon is a farmhand trying to live a peaceful life, free of violence and destruction.

However, the settings for both identities often act as a backdrop for each respective part.

• As Duke, he fights in his mecha, Grendizer, often in harsh environments: underwater, in the mountains, in the Arctic. Viewers rarely see Grendizer in a peaceful setting except occasionally at the end of an episode, with the red setting sun in the background.
• As Daisuke, he cares for the farm animals and often plays his guitar alone or with friends, but often in a natural setting.
• Daisuke usually becomes Duke in the Space Science Laboratory, either by jumping off a nearby cliff or by racing down a chute and jumping into Grendizer’s cockpit. The lab is where he can be whoever is needed.

As a viewer, I can enjoy the stories that unfold in each episode. As a traveller, I could touch where these stories could have happened.

Landscape in My Current Work-in-Progress

I initially travelled to Minamimaki to experience the possible source of inspiration or location (or both) of Grendizer. But I came away with much, much more.

When I write, I struggle with setting the most. I set my novels where I live to make creating settings easier. Creating new worlds, whether planets or villages, requires not only an extraordinary imagination, but also a memory of similar talents so you can track where everything takes place.

My current romance novel will challenge my struggle, though. It’s an opposites-attract story whose idea began with opposing personalities: a tall, shy man in his 50s, and an outgoing woman who’s over a foot shorter, also in her 50s. They live next to each other in an apartment building.

That led to the inevitable question: If their apartments are identical in layout, how has each character decorated theirs to showcase their individuality?

The answer had to expand beyond “he’s tidy; she’s messy,” and their living situation. It needed to fuse settings that others experience daily with the character’s point of view, something I’ve rarely done.

From Pilgrimage to Page

In my romance novels, at least one scene usually takes place along the Iron Horse Trail. However, all characters view it in the same light: as a romantic location to steal a kiss, hold hands for the first time, and share similar romantic moments. If you visit the actual location, you’ll understand why.

This time, the trail carries different meanings for the romantic leads. For one, it’s a place to demonstrate care for the environment. For the other, it is a place reminiscent of fear experienced long ago.

Same trail.

As I continue to write, I’ll discover more ways to incorporate the real-life environment of my novels so that, with each subsequent story, readers hopefully close the book at the end having experienced the same location in a different way.

Spending those few days in Minamimaki, a potential source of inspiration for Grendizer, inspired me to explore where I live and challenge myself by incorporating more of the scenery into my characters' lives.

I can’t wait to share the final story with you!

I started questioning the existence of God when I was a teen. Growing up in Catholic and Anglican schools showed me what believing in God might look like. But over time, I read books on other possibilities. Other religions, philosophy, and general spirituality showed me that believing in God—if one believed in such a being—had difference faces. With my first young adult series, Between Worlds, I wanted to offer young readers a chance to explore their spirituality in the privacy of a young adult series of books.

What Does Spiritual Journey Mean to the Reader?

You may associate “spiritual” with a belief in one or (many) more higher powers, whether a god, many gods, or many spirits.

The generally accepted opposite of “spiritual” is often “empirical,” i.e., a belief in science, which does not support a belief in an unproven higher power.

As a teen, I was torn between both: raised Catholic, but attending school in Ontario, I thought both sides conflicted with one another.

I’ve since learned that spirituality can mean many things and need not exclude science.

What Spiritual Means to Me

Spirituality is an abstract concept: We can neither hold it nor see it, hear it nor taste it nor smell it.

Yet it still exists. How? Why?

Humans cannot live alone, despite what many may wish to believe. Someone makes our clothes. In most cases, someone grows our food. How clean our air is depends on how clean our neighbours—whether directly beside us or on the other side of a border—keep their air.

The noise or silence we experience is connected to others, too.

How do we honour these connections? How do we feel about them? How do we become a part of them?

There’s no one answer to these questions. That’s why I created a series with two teenaged girls whose spiritual lives differ vastly from one another.

Elisabeth’s Spiritual Journey

In Between Worlds, Elisabeth’s journey is perhaps the more expected one. She navigates her beliefs and relationships, seeking to understand where Jesus is present in her life. Whom should she turn to for guidance? Jesus, God, her parents, the minister, or her own heart?

Elisabeth cannot fathom a world without a god, even as she tries to reconcile how a loving god could allow what eventually became known as World War I to happen.

For Elisabeth, following her Lutheran faith means both following the rules and participating in the community:

·      Church called everyone together once a week.

·      Social traditions formed out of aspects of religious life.

·      Life’s greatest moments, from birth to death, were celebrated together.

Believing in God meant both following a moral compass to get into heaven and learning how to co-exist with one another. Many of us today may not agree with some of the rules that were imposed on Elisabeth’s’ community for this coexistence to happen, but it happened nonetheless.

Juliana’s Spiritual Journey

If spirituality is about connecting with others while developing a deeper relationship with yourself, then dance is that spiritual journey for Juliana. Indeed, the first novel ends with her dancing as she gathers courage to tackle this latest chapter in her life.

Many adults today will shy away from dancing: “Oh, no, thank you. I’m going to sit down. I can’t dance.”

However, dance is community. What’s a wedding without dancing? Teenaged life without the high school dance? Rock concerts without dancers onstage? Some forms of theatre without dance?

Dance, for Juliana, takes that to a different level. As a teenager in love with dance—especially the percussion form that is tap dance—she finds connection with those around her. The transition to a new dance studio presents many problems for Juliana, including not understanding the social rules of this new group.

Juliana doesn’t pray in the religious sense of the word. Instead, she tries to deepen her relationship with herself and find answers to her problems through dance.

Spirituality Your Own Way

Most youth will embark on some kind of spiritual journey. It may only begin in their pre-teen years and take decades to conclude. Or perhaps they learn in those younger years that what they have always believed is what provides them the strength to continue in this world.

Spirituality carries a diverse range of meanings, and I wanted to write a series for pre-teens and teens that could help them work through that journey in the privacy of a book. For more information about Between Worlds, visit here.

I have some amazing news! My new YA series, Be Right Back, has received funding from the Ontario Arts Council (OAC). The series explores disability in ever-changing family dynamics.

Continuing to build family-friendly stories that celebrate diversity and look at tough questions, Be Right Backstars teenager Austin Tschirhart, whom many of my readers may have already met in Love on Belmont(Books #1 and #2) and Between Worlds (Book #9).

My Current Writing Style

Unique to this new series is the writing style. I usually write in what’s called the third person past, limited point of view. Much of what you read is likely written in this way. Here are some brief samples:

“You know what?” Aunt Anne said. “Why don’t they go to Mr. Casimiro’s for dessert?”

Mom’s eyes popped out of her head. “Oh, that sounds like a fabulous idea! I haven’t been in years!”

Juliana stared at both of them, but now even Sophie smiled. “But can we go by ourselves? Juliana’s fourteen.”

Taking advantage of Juliana’s age to get rid of the parents. Juliana liked how Sophie thought. ~Between Worlds 1: The Move

In this style, the scene is only told in the past, from the point of view of one character, but by referring to the character in the third person, i.e., they, he, or she. In addition, the reader only experiences what that character experiences.

A New Writing Style

Be Right Back will be a new journey for me, because I’ll be writing in the first person present. (“First person” automatically includes limited point of view.)

Reading a novel in this style will bring the reader right into Austin’s mind, where not only his thoughts and feelings but also his seizures, happen. Because of the nature of Austiin’s seizures, he’s not always aware of them. Indeed, his journey in the first novel is learning they exist at all.

Disability and Teen Fiction

When I was young, I read a lot of Jean Little’s books. Although I didn’t consider myself “handicapped” (the term we used at the time), I loved reading her stories about kids with disabilities. She had written in her memoir that she wanted to give the disabled children she was teaching the stories they were craving: stories about children disabled as they were, but who weren’t cured as part of the happy ending.

They wanted reality.

Much of my previous books so far—especially Between Worlds—have dealt with mental disability. Although Sophie, a supporting character in Between Worlds, has Stargardt disease, a rare eye condition, the better part of each novel focuses on the emotional trauma each of us carries inside.

Be Right Back includes not only that part of life, but also neurological disability.

How Much Is Personal?

This series is personal to me, but most of it is not from my personal life.

Although Austin’s absence seizures resemble to mine, his life story differs from mine in many respects:

• He discovered his seizures as a teen. / I discovered mine when I was 11.
• Austin can dive into the internet to research his diagnosis if he wants to. / There was no internet when I received my diagnosis.
• Austin’s seizures last up to 10 seconds. / Mine are under 4.5 seconds.
• Austin stares. / My eyelids flutter. (The technical term is eyelid myoclonia.)
• Ballet = life for Austin. / Ballet = a must-do art form for my dance competition career.

In addition to all of that, Austin’s regrets will differ from mine at that age.

If you’d like to stay up to date on the development of this series, send me your email address, and I’ll add you to the list. I email about once every two months, so your inbox will not explode.

I look forward to sharing Austin’s journey with you.