Aunty Kylie, you need to write more books...

When I was a little girl - about six years old - I had an imaginary land I would adventure too called 'A Land in the Clouds' it was - technically - my first stab at world-building and storytelling.

The basic story of this world was that two opposing lands were at war. They hated each other for being different, despite being the same.

And plonked right in the middle of this war was your average girl, who was tasked with protecting a prince.

When I was six years old, I told myself stories I enjoyed. Adventures, epic wars, weird political intrigue about princes and princess: things I probably shouldn't have known anything about. Still - to this day - I am trying to figure out how six year old me had such a vast imagination.

Anyway.

Eventually 'A Land in the Clouds' took a back seat, and the prince of that world kind of just...ended up sitting in my imagination, locked away.

Sometimes I'd go back to the story, when I ran into an imagination block with Dynasty - but I never really got anywhere with it other than just maturing the once childish world. Yet it remained a constant thought, sometimes I would have epic dreams about the world I'd left behind in my childhood.

It was still there.

Waiting for me to go back.

That vast land in the clouds - it was waiting -

But I never could return, because I could never figure out a plot to go with the world, or the characters in that world.

Then, about two weeks ago, I collapsed on my bed after doing an hour walk on the treadmill. I wasn't really thinking about anything other than the pain in my body - when suddenly - the entire novel literally just fell into my head. Sometimes writer's get asked:

"Where do your ideas come from?"

Well, they germinate for years, and then, suddenly - problems solve themselves at the most random moments.

I sat up and ran to the computer and I just threw a basic plan out, outlined the character profiles, and a few hours later, I had two chapters written.