COASTERS RULE originated roughly twenty years ago from a dream I had one evening. I awoke not remembering the dream itself, but Coasters and Dwellers were flashing in my head.
Over the years, I would wake up in the middle of the night and scribble notes about both the Coasters and Dwellers. I’m not sure if I actually dreamt about them or if my mind was working overtime. What was quite obvious was that the Coasters rarely left their coastal home, and the Dwellers were literally bottom feeders who enjoyed living on the sea floor rather than the open water or rocky shoreline.
One of the first things that came to me was the Dwellers and Coasters were adversaries. The tribes are total opposites. From where and how they live to how they are led couldn’t be more different. Although they are both merfolk, I wanted to build their physical appearances to contrast as well. This is where the story really began to take shape.
The other part of the novel which dates back to notes I made many years ago was the creation of the Eternal and Immortal pools. I have no idea where they came from, but I knew the fantastical powers and watercolor of each right from the beginning. The two threshold pools were added later.
Both the one-page prologue and afterword were originally written about fifteen years ago. Even though I had no story or characters, I did have a beginning and ending. I recently found a handwritten first draft of both and it is similar to the finished pages.
There were other notes I kept for a long time, but eventually lost track of them. There were also times I even forgot “Dwellers.” I would rack my brain trying to remember the name of the tribe, and sometimes it took days to think of it.
For over a decade, life took precedence over writing my novel. Along the way, I would make mental notes about characters, settings, and so on, but never wrote them down. As expected, those mental notes did not last long and disappeared.
When the Covid-19 lockdown hit, I decided to throw myself into my unwritten novel. I had nothing but the names of the two merfolk tribes and a few of their characteristics. The first thing I did was research a location for the novel to take place. Luckily, I know people who vacation on Grand Cayman Island and it was initially my first choice for the book’s setting. After studying photos of all three Cayman Islands, I knew the basalt and limestone interior of the bluff on Cayman Brac was going to be home to the Coasters.
Now that I had a location, the next thing I did was research the flora, fauna, and history of the island. Everything from average daily temperatures to sunrise and sunset times, to beaches and destinations were investigated. Much of this fact-finding made its way into the novel one way or another and is one of the most important aspects of making the story feel authentic.
From this point, I began creating the characters, even though I had no story to attach them to. These characters will be discussed extensively in a later blog.
Thank you for reading!
DRB