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Digging into Of Sand and Bone

January 21, 2023 | By Women Writers Women Books | Reply More

Digging into Of Sand and Bone

By Georgia Day

About 10 years ago, for a brief period, I was having frequent nightmares. I’m not sure what brought it on. Stress is the most likely culprit, but I won’t ever know for sure. For a little while, though, it was common for me to wake up afraid. Every shadow in the dark room hid something sinister. I would have to force myself to turn on the light. If I sat in the dark, I’d never get back to sleep.

I don’t remember any of the nightmares except one. In it, I was watching a line of men in black robes walking in the desert under a clear blue sky. The sand was a bright yellow, like a child’s drawing. I only saw the men from behind, never their faces. I remember being afraid because the sky was so clear and blue, but it was hiding something. The men threw handfuls of powder into the air that cracked in the sky. After what felt like a long time, a thing I couldn’t see hurtled to the earth. The men attacked it with knives and machetes. I woke up afraid but obsessed. The nightmare didn’t leave me. I puzzled over it for days, picking at it, trying to hold that fear in my head. Strangely, this is where Of Sand and Bone started.

It’s hard to talk about the writing process without sounding pretentious. Writers spend a lot of time in their own heads, so maybe that’s inevitable. I think I have always wanted to be a writer. When I was a kid, I wrote stories and shared them with my parents and friends. When I got older, I had a folder of short stories and character sketches that I never shared with anyone. In college, I wrote a children’s book that I sent around to agents and then put away when there weren’t any takers. After my nightmare, I started writing again.

I began thinking about an endless desert and a harsh existence. People grew out of this idea. First was Connor, the stone-faced desert wanderer. She was the physical embodiment of the brutal desert environment and the ultimate survivor. Rue came second, but only just. Once Connor had formed in my head, Rue appeared next to her, existing as her natural complement. Rue is also the voice of the suffering in the desert. They both have endured so much, and will endure more together throughout the story, but only Rue can show it openly. From there, everything else started to come together.

I folded in the myths these women would have heard as small children and the stories they would have been familiar with. The cycle of real life informing stories and stories inspiring real life continues as the reader watches Connor and Rue pass into legend themselves.

I attempted to throw the reader into an unkind world. When I thought of the desert, I thought of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. The final section is called “What the Thunder Said” and describes, among other things, the obsessive thirst of an unnamed number of people in the desert, the hallucinations, and the despair of being far from help. I tried to keep that feeling with me as I wrote.

Stars, particularly constellations, are a theme of the book. As a child, I was familiar with the stories of the stars, but as an adult a passage in Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King stayed with me: “We do not see the stars as they are, so why do we love them? They are not small gold objects, but endless fire.” Perception, or rather the human tendency to fill in the blanks with our own inadequate imaginings, is important in Of Sand and Bone.

I got bad advice along the way. Add more characters. Add a love scene. I discarded the first piece of advice on the grounds that it would take Of Sand and Bone to Tolkien levels of people to keep track of, and I simply do not have that kind of energy. This second piece of advice threw me. It provoked an immediate eyeroll—a love scene between who exactly? The two protagonists are an adult woman and a 12-year-old girl. Even if the love scene were between the adult woman and another character she met over the course of the story, it would be completely out of character. I figured this person had an entirely different story in his head than the one I was writing.

Eventually, the book just needed an ending. Because I was struggling, I took a road trip to the coast and sequestered myself in inexpensive lodgings. An ice storm was scheduled to hit north of the coast and miss me completely. I assumed that the seclusion would help me focus. Most places were shut for the season. I imagined taking cold walks on the beach in between writing sessions. Unfortunately, the storm settled further south, and I wound up trapped with dwindling supplies and no electricity, waiting for the roads and bridges to thaw. There was nothing to do except finish the book. While it worked, and finally ended a decade-long journey, I can’t say I recommend this method.

Why it took me 10 years to write is another story for another time.

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About the Author

Georgia Day holds a B.A. in Literary Studies from the University of Texas at Dallas and has dreamed of being a writer her entire life.

She is an avid reader, movie buff, and travel enthusiast. Of Sand and Bone is her first novel.

She lives in the United States.

Follow her on Twitter @GeorgiaDayBooks

Find out more about her on her website https://www.georgiadaywrites.com/

OF SAND AND BONE

A hunting party attacked. A lone survivor rescued. Turning her back on the traditions of her family and community, Rueda Cole forges a new path with the desert wanderer who saved her life. The way is fraught with danger, but the unexplainable drives them onward, even to the ends of the earth. Together, they will journey into the unknown. Together, they will bring the world into a new era. Together, they will become the stuff of legends.