This
is the Night... Origins
(aka
‘What was I thinking?’)
"The Lord God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable to him.'" - Genesis 2:18, NIV
I am a serious glutton for punishment to be seriously writing this page… the story of how the saga of Clay and Kate came about. Because the story behind the story is oftentimes far more personal than I’d like to admit. If you want the short version, I’ll give it to you in two words: Blame God. If you find the short version somewhat lacking in detail, read on.
The truth is that I never planned this at all, at least not the way it turned out. As I saw it, my life had just turned to dust before my eyes, and I truly believed some downright nasty things about myself. When I first came to the Clay fan fic, I came as a reader not a writer. I was hoping to find a lot of things that explored the development of his person and his career. With Clay being so outspoken about his wholesome values, I presumed that most of them would be honorable, respectful, and some even faith-filled. I wanted to read some light, wholesome, even inspirational ‘fluff’ that would soothe my wounded spirit and give me escape from the disaster that was my life. I wanted to find something that would keep my hope alive, even if that hope now had someone else’s name on it. Most of you who have read enough fan fic, especially Clay fan fic, know that very little of it fit the bill I have just described.
I found little to nothing like what I was seeking in the way of fan fic. To say that I was shocked and appalled at some of the ways they portrayed him was an understatement. Many authors placed Clay in situations he would stay away from entirely and had him doing things he would avoid as if he was allergic to them. Many invented events and facts about him that there was no way of knowing whether they were truth or not. And as I’ve already stated, most weren’t very flattering or very nice. Most days I would just say, “This isn’t what he’s really like,” and back out of the thread. Note I said, “MOST DAYS”.
All of you have had mothers, sisters, or other women in your life who have at one time or another had “enough”. A woman who has had “enough” tends to blow her top and go on the warpath. A woman on the warpath would take on the most fearsome opponents and win, the most daunting projects and succeed. This woman is certainly no exception.
One day I read another Clay fan fic that turned sour… only this time I didn’t just back out quietly. This time I went stinkin’ ballistic, ranting about how such garbage did not honor Clay and did not honor God. If these people had been writing purely fictional characters that way, I probably could have let it go. But no, this was a real flesh-and-blood man they were slandering with their prose, the most amazing and honorable man I had ever known… this was serious. Then I uttered the famous last words that everyone’s heard at least once in their life, or even uttered themselves: “I can do better than this.” (Or was it the similarly-related "If you want something done right, you do it yourself"?) They’re called famous last words for a reason… they mean that you’re about to get yourself in over your head.
I determined then and there that there WAS going to be fan fic on the boards that honored and respected Clay and our God if I had to write it myself. Granted, with the cockamamie ideas I had crashing around in my head I figured I’d have a limited readership… but it was going to be out there, by gosh by golly, for anyone who wanted to find it. I figured I’d write a few short stories of mixed type and style and subject that all took Clay’s faith and values seriously, and didn’t make up stuff we couldn’t fill in the blanks for, and then I’d call it good and move on to the next thing whatever it was.
Yeah, right. I told you that I never planned this… but Someone else did. As soon as I decided that Clay’s faith and values were going to play a major role in my writing, my so-called ‘little project’ was commandeered by that same Someone who very quietly became one of its major characters and fonts of inspiration. It happened so quietly that it took me until partway through the third of four fairly lengthy works to figure that out. (Duh.) Fortunately it took me far less time to figure out by Whom. Like I said before, blame God. Anyway, let me get back to the proper sequence of events.
Pretty much every Clay fan fic I had stumbled across were romance stories, of how he met some gal and they fell in love and he won her over, yadda yadda. Ho hum. I decided very quickly that was NOT the story I wanted to see. “How they met” stories are a dime a dozen… I wanted to see “How they grow together”, and make their meeting mere history. I wanted to see THEM have the kind of relationship I had always dreamed of and now believed I had lost all chances of having. I wanted to see an honorable godly relationship as it could be and was meant to be.
Then it came time to develop the heroine… and I had the PERFECT idea. Or so I thought at the time, before I realized what I was getting into.
Like I’ve already stated, I was fresh from my own life blowing up in my face. My self esteem was almost zero. Almost – there’s this one little corner of my brain that refuses to give up hope no matter how much I try to talk (also read: slap) some sense into it. It was this little corner of my brain who annoyed the bejeebers out of me every time Clay would say something more about the kind of lady he was looking for. Nearly every time Clay described another trait to his ‘dream lady’, it would interject its over-optimistic two bits’ worth about how that seemed to fit what I was like. And it wouldn’t pipe down no matter how many times I told it to shut up.
The perfect idea that sprang from this was that if that rebellious corner of my brain thought that all those traits Clay mentioned described me, fine… I would make the heroine very much like me. Only I made some improvements so that she would be more like the kind of lady Clay wants and deserves, and not a loser like I was. She would be me, but yet not me, to poke fun at the totally ludicrous idea that Clay would ever find someone like me interesting. Come on, a little nobody like me from the sticks who had blown up her own life? It is almost a guarantee that Clay both wants and deserves better than that. I found the mere idea laughable, and decided that I would be the one laughing by having fun treating it with complete seriousness. So it was set… once I had created the character, I was good to go.
I was quite surprised to get very positive feedback on one of the boards I was posting it on, the board called “That’s the Clay”… and they wanted more. More? Suddenly I had to invent a full storyline and plot to go with what had already been developed in the first post. I was a relatively inexperienced writer who abruptly found herself in a very fast-paced serial, and I was posting things nearly as soon as I could come up with them. And like a dunderhead, I had based the female lead on myself, so I had to keep her true to how I had already written her… which means she got a lot more of my experiences, my character traits, my loved ones in one form or another, than I ever planned on putting into fiction, as I couldn’t exactly go back and totally start from scratch after that first post. (And by swiping stuff from real life, I saved a lot of time I didn’t have to concentrate on giving the storyline and character development the justice it needed.) Fortunately I got somewhat smart by the second one and modified her family & friends considerably more from the original models, so my loved ones have been afforded a bit more privacy. And I’m getting sidetracked again.
I kid you not when I say that one thing led to another… and another, and another. The doggone thing snowballed, and I was just along for the ride. One short story turned into over 500 pages of Word document, single-spaced. A short hour’s work ballooned into fifteen months. The number of my readers went from the couple I anticipated to staggering numbers that left me shaking my head at times. And the sections of prose I figured would get all but ignored were eliciting compliments and messages from readers, including how the adventures of Clay and Kate changed them and their lives. People still remember me and my work even two and three years after I finished the last one, much to my surprise. For the record, the author was not entirely unaffected either. Through a resulting series of events too incredible to explain, your dear author found astounding healing and personal growth of her own. My own life has been forever changed as well.
Early at the beginning, I admitted that this whole thing wasn’t exactly what I had planned on. Very few people plan to create a work of this magnitude with the power to impact lives of countless people. Also early in this entry, I presented the short version of the story as ‘blame God’. Although I presented it in a very flippant manner, I am absolutely serious as to the charge. I would be totally remiss if I did not give credit to God for all of it… for introducing me to Clay, for priming me with suitable background circumstances that would give me that passion to address a need as I found it, for giving me the drive to see it through, for giving the inspiration that some days really did seem to come from nowhere, and for giving me the gifts to give His pet project justice, including various readers who were able to give me insight into situations and circumstances I would otherwise not have had knowledge. I didn’t write this series, God did… I was just His scribe.
The Series (in chronological order):
Never Lonely Again – in the works
Every Kiss is a Kiss You Can Never Get Back - Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7
I've Been Waiting Forever For This - Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10
I Would Go With You to the Ends of the Earth - Day 0 | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5
| Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10
Bonus Pages:
Since mission work is such a big part of my heroine Kate's life, I am also going to put up a link to the web site for my Haiti 2001 Mission Trip.