On Travel and Writing

“Travel opens your mind as few other things do. It is its own form of hypnotism, and I am forever under its spell.” With these words, young adult writer Libba Bray so clearly expresses how we feel about traveling the world—and how it influences our writing. When Nina and I sat down to write Star Bringer, we knew we weren’t writing a book that could be described by any of the places we’ve traveled in our lives—even though, together, we’ve traveled quite extensively. But in so many ways, when one is a writer, it’s not just the destination that matters. It’s also the journey that takes you there.

Star Bringer is a sci fi romance that takes place in a galaxy far removed from the Milky Way where we reside. But for us, where the story takes place is just one piece of the puzzle. Other pieces that are equally important—and maybe even more important—is what happens in that place and who it happens to. I’ve stood at the bottom of the Great Pyramids at Giza and marveled at the way they loom over Cairo, Egypt, roamed the streets of Madrid awestruck by its marvels of art and architecture, and walked, mesmerized, along the black sand beaches of Hawaii as volcanoes erupted nearby. And while each of those places holds a special place in my heart, what I remember most from each of them isn’t just the landscape—it’s the people I met along the way and the stories they have to share.

Amir, the Egyptian man I met at the bottom of Khufu (the largest of the pyramids at Giza), who taught me where to stand to take a picture with the pyramid in my hand. He had a smile like an angel, but a sadness in his long lashed eyes that belied his grin and his friendly patter. Patricia, my Spanish publicist with the most beautiful curly hair I’ve ever seen. She has a serious face and serious eyes, but when she laughs the sound of bells fills up the entire room. And Joe, the guy I talked to for hours in Hawaii, who has spent his entire adult life traveling from place to place, waiting tables, so he can afford to live there for a while and bicycle from end to end of whatever country he happens to be in. His blue eyes lit up when he talked of all the places he’d been and all the places he still had to visit and his stories have stayed with me through the years—even as I’ve visited some of the very places he told me about that long ago day on Kauai. 

For Nina and me, that’s what travel is about—and, for that matter, what writing is about. It’s about taking in the sights, yes, but then taking them in again from other people’s perspectives. It’s about stepping outside of ourselves and our worlds for a little while and into the worlds these people inhabit. That’s where the fun of traveling comes in and that’s also where the fun of writing comes in. For a while, when we write, we get to step outside of ourselves and write the stories of our characters. But to do that well, to step into the shoes—and the world—of these characters, these people, means opening our minds and hearts to new ideas and viewpoints in the same way that traveling the world does. And because we’ve traveled, because I’ve eaten dinner made by a Bedouin man under the stars in the middle of the Sahara desert and Nina has sat cross-legged on the dusty ground of a Zambian village, sharing a meal with the villagers, as the hot African sun goes down over Lake Kariba, it makes it that much easier to write unique, amazing characters in unique, exciting situations.

In Star Bringer, Nina and I tell the story from four very distinct points of view—Kali, heir to the throne of the Seven Planets, Ian, a mercenary/criminal on the run from pretty much everyone, Rain, a high priestess who has been cloistered her entire life, and Beckett, a rebel who has been captured and tortured before escaping in an explosion that destroys the space station where she is being held. These four people—along with three other characters—end up hurtling through space on a ship with a mind of its own and what feels like the entire galaxy trying to kill them. While our travels have never taken Nina or I on a spaceship in a far off galaxy, they have taken us into the lives and hearts of so many other people. They’ve taught us to open our minds and hearts and made us better people and, subsequently, better writers. 

Lillian Smith, a writer and social reformer, writes, “No journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within.” Nina and I have traversed vast distances in our lives, and it is those distances that have given us the gift of being able to learn, and hopefully understand, people and places beyond our own. Without it, without Amir and Patricia and Joe and a myriad of others, would the stories we tell be as powerful? Would our characters be as real? Somehow, we don’t think so. 

—

Tracy Wolff is a #1 New York Times, #1 International, and USA Today bestselling author as well as a lover of vampires, dragons, and all things that go bump in the night. She collects books, English degrees and lipsticks and has been known to forget where—and sometimes who—she is when immersed in a great novel.  A one-time English professor, she now devotes all her time to writing dark, action packed, romantic stories with tortured heroes and kick-butt heroines. She has written all of her seventy-plus novels from her home in Austin, Texas, which she shares with her partner, her sons and their three dogs.  Visit her online at www.tracywolffauthor.com

Nina Croft grew up in the north of England. After training as an accountant, she spent four years working as a volunteer in Zambia, which left her with a love of the sun and a dislike of nine-to-five work. She’s since then spent a number of years mixing travel (whenever possible) with work (whenever necessary), and has settled down to a life of writing and picking almonds on a remote farm in the mountains of southern Spain. Nina writes all types of romance, often mixed with elements of the paranormal and science fiction.

Visit her online at
www.ninacroft.com

STAR BRINGER

Firefly meets The Breakfast Club in this snarky, new adult romance.

The sun is dying…and it’s happening way too damn fast.

With the clock ticking, the Nine Planets’ only hope of survival rests on a fancy space station and the alien artifact it’s carrying. Which is why it really sucks when some jackass doesn’t want the universe saved and blows that station up―while you’re still on it.

So if your only choices are flaming death or stealing a flying hunk of space junk―you pick that busted-ass spaceship. Even if it leaves seven strangers with deadly secrets trapped together: a princess, a prisoner, a con artist, a warrior, a priestess, a mercenary, and an asshole in charge of us all.

Now every faction in the galaxy is hunting this ship―from the Sisterhood to the Corporation, and the rebellion’s joining in on the fun, too. We just need to stop drinking, fighting, and screwing long enough to evade them all and save the freaking universe…somehow.

Because apparently the only thing standing between a dying sun and ultimate salvation is seven unlikely misfits…ahem, heroes.

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing