Why I Wrote MIA’S JOURNEY

Why I Wrote MIA’S JOURNEY

My latest novel, MIA’S JOURNEY, is about an astronaut who, just before her first space launch, is hit by a car and can’t go to space, ever. She refuses to believe what her boss and her doctors tell her, so she embarks on a mission to find a way to space, even if it isn’t with NASA. She finds herself in a questionable space simulation, sitting in a dome on top of a mountain in the Rockies with a group of people who won’t be allowed out for two weeks, no matter what happens. The situation is rife for danger and will test Mia to the core. At one point she has to decide which is more important: her dream or her life. 

I write novels about women who will do whatever it takes to reach their dreams. Brave women. Determined women. And in my previous three books, they’ve achieved their goals. In this one, I wanted to explore how it would look if a brave, determined woman just wasn’t able to reach her goal, no matter how hard she tried, and how she would deal with that huge disappointment. I love Mia’s character: she’s brash, determined, and supremely confident—until none of those work for her. She’s still got a brain injury and a weak leg. 

Authors explore ideas in their books and often work out issues from their own lives. In this case, I was looking at what happened to me many years ago and how I dealt with it. I wasn’t an astronaut. Hardly. But I was a college professor who had trained for years to teach social workers at the college and graduate level. And then I had a series of falls: I fell off my bike, I fell on the ice and hit my head, and the last, worst fall was when I was playing racquetball. I was running backward when I caught my foot and fell backwards into the concrete wall. My head smashed like a melon. The sound and pain were so bad that I was sure I was dying. 

But I didn’t die. I spent months in bed, relearning how to focus my eyes and pay attention to the radio. I slowly began getting better, but when I tried to go back to my beloved job a year later (they were so nice to give me so much time to heal), I wasn’t able to do it. I would forget what I was saying, forget where I parked my car, and was unable to participate in a meeting. Eventually, I had to resign from my tenured position. 

What was next? Like Mia, I got involved in alternative healing techniques. Western medicine had nothing to offer me, beyond drugs, so I looked farther afield. Psychotherapy, EMDR, chi kung healing, and meditation were standbys that helped me to heal. But it was slow. And I was never able to go back to teaching. I tried a variety of things and eventually ended up with writing, which I can do at my own pace and in my own home. Mia has to go through similar steps before she decides how to adapt to the changed person she is. 

Not everyone has a brain injury, and certainly few people are astronauts or even college professors, but I believe that most people have something in their lives that changes the course they had designed for themselves. Maybe it’s a serious illness, the death of a loved one, or an accident of some kind that changes a person. But after that happens, they might eventually become a person who is closer to their true selves. Think of it as an unwanted gift, but a gift nevertheless. 

Mia goes through the stages of loss: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, in accordance with her personality, which is stubborn and determined. Others will go through this in their own ways. 

This novel is not a self-help book, but instead an adventure story about a woman who thinks her journey is to space, but instead it’s into her own heart. 

—

Diane Byington has been a tenured college professor, yoga teacher, psychotherapist, and executive coach. Also, she raised goats for fiber and once took a job cooking hot dogs for a NASCAR event. She still enjoys spinning and weaving, but she hasn’t eaten a hot dog or watched a car race since.

Besides reading and writing, Diane loves to hike, kayak, and photograph sunsets. She and her husband divide their time between Boulder, Colorado, and Dunedin, Florida.

MIA’S JOURNEY

Three weeks before her first space launch, astronaut Mia Gray is involved in a car accident. Her injuries not only keep her from the mission but also mean she may not ever be able to do her job again. Mia is devastated, but she refuses to give up on her lifelong desire to see Earth from space.

Mia discovers that there are other options besides working at NASA, ones where her limitations might not be an issue. Leaving her husband and old life behind, she moves across the country to live with her mother and find another way to travel to space. Mia doesn’t care that the alternatives are dangerous. She will do anything to reach her goal.

A new program places Mia in a long, perilous simulation run by a questionable organization. During the grueling ordeal, Mia will be forced to decide which is more important: her dream or her life.

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Category: On Writing