Ireland
Von Mueller
I love words. The way they weave themselves together to form stories, how they have the power to transport you anywhere and everywhere. Entire world’s at my fingertips.
I spent my youngest years in a small Canadian farm town, running through hay fields and exploring the woods behind our house. At seven, I wrote my first book, a wandering story about a silver horse and a cat titled “The Longest Adventure.” My teacher, Mrs. Ferguson, lovingly bound it between wallpaper-wrapped cardboard and presented it to me as my first published book.
The author’s bio says I “enjoy dancing and writing stories.” It also says, “When I grow up, I hope to become a dancer.” But I never wanted to be a dancer; I was just too scared to admit the truth…the only thing I have ever wanted is to write.
At eleven, I attempted to write my first “novel” about the shenanigans of two girls who meet on summer vacation and discover they look like twins. I made it to chapter nineteen before it lost its way. As, I suppose, did I.
Clumsy and uncoordinated, I stopped dancing. My parents divorced. We moved to Mexico, where I traded hay fields and forests for deserts and beaches. I was enrolled in distance learning. Everything changed, but I never stopped writing. That is until a grade eleven teacher told me, “Everyone wants to be a writer, but very few succeed, and those who do don’t make a living at it.” I put down my pen.
In 2016, while thru-hiking the 3,000-kilometer Te Araroa trail across New Zealand, I was struck, like lightning, with the idea for Clementine Lemons. It started with the name Clementine Lemons—an ordinary girl with a magic box. Over the weeks, the ideas kept coming. I’d love to say I made them up, but the ideas came fully formed…out of the Aether, maybe, and straight into my brain. Not coherent. Not in a linear form. Bits and pieces of a long and convoluted timeline swimming around in my head.
I’d love to say I got right to work. But the story felt too big and impossible for someone as normal and unextraordinary as me. After all, everyone wants to be a writer, but very few succeed. Clementine and Andro’s story spent longer than I care to admit on sticky notes and scraps of paper as I tried to make sense of it, to convince myself I could.
The problem with a story like Clementine is that it never leaves. It festers below the surface, slowly eating at you. I saw Clementine sitting at the bus stop. I wandered past a house in Victoria, knowing that was where she lived. On vacation, I saw Clementine adventuring through the canyons of Utah because that’s what Acirrassi looked like, where she went to find the Water Stone. Over the years, I collected her story in images, brochures, and jotted notes. And then, one day, when I realized I would drive myself insane if I didn’t write her story, I opened a Word doc and began to type.
Maybe Clementine and Andro are bigger than me, but I will not stop until their story is written.
I live in the Okanagan Valley with my husband, Carl, and my rescue kitty Rigby. When I’m not at my desk, mentally wandering through the worlds of Clementine and Andro, I’m at college, where I’m pursuing a degree in Environmental Science.