How does one ever get started on a journey? You think about where you want to go, about how to get there and then plan your itinerary. Once you’ve arrived, maybe you hadn’t planned well for the weather or you find one of your destinations isn’t open that day. This is the best metaphor for writing my series of books about Calliope O’Callahan, the telepathic teenager. The novel I intended to write had its origins from a dream. It was to be a thriller about a mother in her forties having to deal with a newly acquired psychic skill called “Psychometry” or the ability to touch an object and know its history. I will be the very first person to tell you that I’m neither a psychic nor did I know much about psychic ability when I started beyond what popular culture had to offer me. I knew my destination (or so I thought) and now came the method for getting there.
I am fortunate enough to live a mere hop, skip and twelve miles away from the oldest American Parapsychological Research facility called the Rhine Research Institute. My fortunes extended to their offering open meetings about Psychic research on Wednesdays. Some would find walking into a room full of researchers in a field of which you’re completely ignorant quite daunting. I pleaded for mercy as an ignorant rube introducing myself as an aspiring novel writer wishing to be as accurate as I could be regarding the psychic realm. I expected to sit in the corner, basically ignored, while scribbling furiously in my bright pink notebook gleaning from the masters the crumbs of their knowledge. What a pleasant surprise to find that I was included, heeded, tolerated and welcomed by most if not all of those present and continue to be welcomed now as a member.
The Evolution of a Story
After attending weekly meetings on Wednesday afternoons and participating as a lab rat for an experiment (I call myself the negative control subject), Sally Rhine Feather, the dynamic offspring of J.B. Rhine and Louisa Rhine, talked to me a bit about the novel I was writing. “Once you’re done with your book, you should write something for young people. So many people write letters to us asking about what they’re going through. It would be helpful if someone could write about psychic ability in a way that they can identify with.” Challenge accepted. Honestly, writing about a teen with psychic ability seemed more appealing to me over the dark thriller I was plodding through. I could write about all of the abilities that fall under parapsychology and not just about psychometry. As an added bonus, this series could actually help young people who simply have a more sensitive set of senses than the average person. The obvious down side to writing about all the psychic abilities is that there is so much out there to learn and I had only just skimmed the surface. Thankfully, National Novel Writing Month was coming up and I was going to get those 50,000 words written in 30 days.
After finishing up the NanoWrimo phase of the first draft, I went back to researching other things I wanted to draw out in the first novel “Calliope O’Callahan meets the Psy Syndicate” and found I had more than enough to complete at least five more novels in that series. This blog is dedicated to expanding on the things I learned from psychics that I have met, listened to, or read about. It will also go in depth regarding research into parapsychology, the benefits of understanding Psy (psychic ability), the need for expanding research to include neuroscience, physics, biology and other disciplines and also to discuss the reality of Psy over the claims made by those who may not be so above board (Hint: reality ghost hunting shows).