Transcendence (11 page)

Age:
16

Apparent Age:
14

Skin Tone:
Pale with a few
freckles.

Physical activities:
Tennis, but she's
not very good.

A: English
(8:30-9:25)

Class shared with: None of the main
characters

B: Spanish (9:30-10:25)

Class shared with: Chelsea

C: European History
(10:30-11:25)

Class shared with: None of the main
characters

D: Physics
(11:30-12:25)

Class shared with: Jeremy

LUNCH (12:30-1:15)

E: Drawing
(1:20-2:15)

Class shared with: Lizzie

F: Calculus
(2:20-3:15)

Class shared with: Jeremy, Drew

Before Lizzie, Drew, and Chelsea went back
in time to change the past, here is what happened to their past
selves:

Lizzie:
She was reincarnated because
she died too early in the past, and never had time to be with her
soul mate, Drew.

Drew:
He made a massive mistake in his
past life that led to Lizzie getting into the carriage with James,
which caused her death. He never forgave himself, and could never
be with his soul mate because she was dead. He married Catherine,
and was miserable and depressed for the rest of his life. The two
of them never had children because he wanted nothing to do with
her.

Chelsea:
Her past self, Catherine,
ended up lonely and depressed when Drew married her after Lizzie
died. Drew never loved her, and she was never able to find her soul
mate because she was married to him and miserable. Since Drew gave
her no attention, she had many affairs, which destroyed her
reputation.

Jeremy:
His past self, James, blamed
himself for Lizzie’s death since he was driving the carriage. He
never forgave himself. He became an alcoholic, obese, and wasted
away his fortune to gambling. His destructive ways never allowed
him to be with his soul mate, Kate.

Keelie:
Keelie’s soul mate is Jeremy,
although they are not meant to be together until the end of
college, once he has time to mature and become a better person. Her
past self, Kate, never ended up with her soul mate James because of
his self-destructive behavior.

See how their stories connect in the past
and the present? Luckily, once Lizzie, Drew, and Chelsea succeeded
in their mission of changing the past, those destinies never
occurred.

The “Love Story” music video premiered in the
fall of 2008. The first time I watched it, I was entranced. Taylor
sees a guy while walking through campus, and the moment their eyes
connect, the scene flashes to the two of them dancing at a
beautiful ball dressed in clothes that appear to be from around the
year 1815. It’s magical to watch, and the video is so amazing that
it gave me chills. I watched it over and over again, and a story
started to piece together in my mind. A story about a girl
reincarnated from Regency Era, England, who doesn’t realize it
until her soul mate transfers into her school and triggers her
memories to gradually return to her.

In that semester at school, I was taking a
class called Intro to Creative Writing. One of our first big
assignments in class was to write anything we wanted and bring it
in to share with everyone. Since the characters and scenes that
came to me while watching “Love Story” refused to leave my mind, I
decided that for the project, I would write the first chapter of
what I then called “The Story Inspired by ‘Love Story.’”

After completing the chapter, I stared at it
for about an hour, worrying about what my classmates would think
after reading it. I assumed everyone else would write about
“normal” topics—not reincarnation and seeing your soulmate from the
past for the first time! What if they thought what I wrote was
weird? I nearly erased it in favor of turning something else in,
but then I remembered something Taylor had said:

"If you’re lucky enough to be different from
everyone else, don't change."

I listened to her advice. Yes, what I wrote
was going to be way different from what everyone else in class
wrote, but I was okay with that. And after I read the chapter aloud
to the class, I was amazed to find out that everyone in my class,
including my teacher, loved it. Actually, they more than loved
it—they wanted to read more!

But I had never written a novel before, and
the idea of making the plunge and going for it intimidated me. What
if I failed and couldn’t finish it? That worried me, but again, I
remembered something Taylor had said:

"To me, fearless isn't not having fears;
it's not that you're not afraid of anything. I think that being
fearless is having a lot of fears, but you jump anyway."

So I jumped.

And now, three years after I saw the “Love
Story” music video for the first time, my debut novel
Remembrance
is finally available for everyone to read. I’m
so happy to be able to share it with you. I can only hope that if
you choose to read it, you end up enjoying it as much as I loved
writing it!

Thank you for taking the time to read my
story about how “Love Story” and Taylor Swift helped me get to
where I am today!

To write the Transcend Time Saga, I had to
create my own version of reincarnation. The first thing I did was
research reincarnation on the Internet. Even though I don’t
personally believe in reincarnation, I had fun learning about it.
There are tons of websites on the topic—from ancient Buddhist
beliefs to people who claim there are scientific ways to prove
reincarnation. It was interesting doing the research, but I came
across a problem: Nothing was fitting into the story I had started
to create about Lizzie and Drew.

Then I realized something:
Remembrance
was going to be a work of FICTION, so I was free to create my own
version of reincarnation!

The main thing I knew about Lizzie’s story
was that she had a dramatic early death in her first life that made
it so she couldn’t be with her soul mate, Drew. She and the people
close to her who were negatively impacted by her death had been
reincarnated to set things right. I decided to create my own
version of reincarnation that revolved around that idea.

I created a Word document with bullet points
describing the important aspects of reincarnation in the Transcend
Time Saga. This document is called “Reincarnation Rules,” and this
is the first time I am sharing it with readers.

Here are some of the basic Reincarnation
Rules in the Transcend Time Saga:

1) The only reason a person will be
reincarnated is if they have to change something dramatic that left
them unfulfilled in their past life. They continue being
reincarnated until they do this.

2) Most people are not reincarnated. Once
they live one life, they go to Nirvana. Most people living on Earth
are “New Souls.”

3) Major events in present day lives parallel
past lives, so people will be thrown into situations with other
reincarnated souls from their past.

4) Their physical features are similar to
those they had in their past lives, although not so similar that
they look the exact same.

5) A big part of initially remembering a past
life is a recognition of the soul of a person they had a positive
deep connection to, usually a soul mate. (In Lizzie’s case, this
person was Drew.) If you were friends with someone in a past life
(like Lizzie/Chelsea and Elizabeth/Catherine), you will feel very
close to that person, but they will not trigger memories of the
past to return.

6) Objects from the past will also serve as
triggers. (Lizzie loved
Pride and Prejudice
in her past
life, so reading the book for her English class triggered her
memories. Drew built the music box for Lizzie in his past life, so
seeing the music box again triggered his memories.) However, people
usually believe their memories to be figments of their imaginations
until they meet the person who is their “big trigger.”

7) A soul can only reincarnate into the same
species it started in. (You cannot be a human in one life and a dog
in the next.)

8) People remember images and scenes—they
very rarely remember full conversations. They can, however,
remember their feelings from those conversations.

9) People don't reincarnate immediately. They
reincarnate during a good time for them to complete whatever it is
they need to do to sort out the issues they had in their past life.
Plus, if a spirit went through something traumatic in their life
(usually resulting in death), they need time to recover.

10) Reincarnees have Memory Guides that help
them remember their past life so they can make changes in their
current life. These Memory Guides have been reincarnated, and
successfully fixed what they needed to. They go through training,
and then come into the Reincarnee’s life when they are ready to
remember their past life.

After I had those basic ideas, Lizzie and
Drew’s story pieced together as I wrote. I outlined the book before
writing the draft, but it was still fun to see their story
unfold.

I always knew the final book in the Transcend
Time Saga would involve the main characters time traveling back to
Regency Era, England, and I couldn’t wait to write about their
adventures in the past.

Of course, this involved creating my own
version of time travel. I read and watch a lot of time travel
stories, so I know that characters can usually travel through time
by use of a machine, an object, a hole in the space/time continuum,
a genetic superpower, etc. There are so many possible methods for
characters to travel back in time! However, the Transcend Time Saga
is a modern fairy tale, so I knew the best form of time travel for
the story would be magic.

Time travel in the world of the Transcend
Time Saga is not easy. Three main conditions must be met for people
to travel back in time:

1) All of the individuals must have been
reincarnated

When a person travels back in time in the
Transcend Time Saga, their physical body does not make the journey.
Instead, their soul leaves their body and enters the body of their
past self. Naturally, a person must have a past self for this
journey to be possible. If you’re traveling in a group, everyone in
the group must travel back to the same time period, therefore their
past selves need to have all been alive in the time they are
traveling to.

2) One of the time travelers in the group
must have magic in their blood

Magic sparks the connection from the present
to the past, so one of the people making the journey must have
magical abilities. They can either be a natural witch, meaning they
are born with magic, or borrow magical abilities from a natural
witch, which involves drinking a drop of the witch’s blood. This is
a gift rarely given, because each drop of blood gifted from a witch
decreases the witch’s power by a small percentage. Also, borrowed
magic will only stay in the human’s bloodstream for one month.

3) One of the time travelers must be in
possession of an object owned by his or her past self

The more important this object was to the
time traveler’s past self, the stronger the connection will be to
the past. The best kind of object for time travel is a piece of
jewelry worn by the time traveler’s past self. The constant contact
with the past self combined with metal being a strong conductive
element makes jewelry extremely powerful as a connection to the
past.

Read
Timeless
to find out how Lizzie,
Drew, and Chelsea meet these three conditions to travel back in
time to Regency Era, England!

http://abackwardsstory.blogspot.com

Bonnie: I love the covers for the Transcend
Time Saga. They're what made me first sit up and take notice of
this title. Since you designed the covers yourself, did you always
know what you wanted to do? Did you go through multiple designs
before deciding on your final covers?

Michelle: Thank you! The big thing I knew
when I started looking through images on stock photography websites
was that I wanted Lizzie’s face to be on the cover. I spent hours
searching through images on iStockPhoto of “girls with curly blonde
hair.” I discovered a model who was PERFECT for Lizzie, but none of
her photos jumped out at me as “the one.” Then I went to
Dreamstine, saw “Girl in a Mask,” and knew I’d found my cover.

Bonnie: What are the easiest and hardest
things about designing your own covers?