Guest post from the future: Jim Wolfe on finding inspiration for 'The Making of Heroes'

Hello, beautiful literate people. You give us hope for the future.

Speaking of which, today's guest post came to us through a wormhole in the space time continuum (or something like that).

Historical novelist Jim Wolfe hails from the distant future, and we'll let him tell you in his own words about the inspiration behind his book The Making of Heroes.

For a long time I’d been wanting to write about Abigail Eastwind. But where do you start, with such a well known figure? Already there are novels, biographies and more than one H-Box production.

So for many years I wrote, as it were, around her, chronicling the V-Cities in all their magnificent glory. But always somewhere, to the back of my mind, figures, characters, backstories, incidents and plots were forming and - gradually - becoming more and more insistent on being recognised and recorded.

One day, I skimmered to the massive ruins of V-CityB. As usual, a guide was conducting a tour, conjuring images of the past with a wave of its hand. Sometimes it would morph - as VFs are wont to do - into the characters it was speaking about. The small group - there were maybe six of us - trailed along the curving passageways while around us the events of over 500 years ago were brought into shimmering, 3D life.

I knew most of it of course, having already written extensively about this period. So I wandered off.

After a few turns and random changes of direction I found myself alone. The air was slightly stale, but not unpleasant.

And as I walked I could hear the quiet, distant echo of my footsteps. I could easily have been the only person to go this way for centuries.

I fell into a reverie. And from the entangling mists of thought, pulled remorselessly into a fictional reality, a powerful figure emerged.

Spiker Gomez, padding along at that steady trot that eats up the miles. Going home with snared rabbits. And above, far beyond the sky, the planets indifferently clicking into place.

I had the start of my story. And the other figures, some - like Spiker - fictional, others - like both Allegra and Abigail - historical fact, began to assemble and take shape, waiting to come on stage and make themselves known.

Heroes, villains and ordinary people all caught up in the great flux of a tumultuous time.

I had my book. I had three. An epic.

Of course they found me: a guide fizzed into being and announced the last Skimmer of the day was about to depart. Back in mundane reality, I returned to my Dome and began to write.

Hungry for more? Take a trip to the future and read The Making of Heroes.

Just remember, there's no time like the present to crack open a great book.

Happy reading,
Erin & Anna