Between Two Worlds [Excerpt Only] | NOW A PUBLISHED NOVEL

Author's Note

To Rosemary Sutcliff, for revealing to me, now many years ago, the ancient beauty of the Celts and the Romans, and who, by her literary talents, developed a passion in me for their culture and history.

And to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gives us all a hope and a future.

Author's Note:

This book began, in all honesty, with a dream.

Not any sort of grand vision or inner voice that demanded this story be written or that it was worth all the gold in the world. Not anything great like that. More like the sort of odd, vivid scenes that cross your mind when deeply asleep, that later you wake up and wonder how they ever managed to pop into your head.

I remember texting my friend, Bekkie, about it the next morning, saying how funny I thought it was, coming out of nowhere. She replied that yes, it was interesting, but more so, that I needed to turn it into a story. So I suppose that this book really owes its existence to her.

At the time, I had laughed and said something along the lines of, "Sure, one of these days when I've run out of other ideas to write." A few months later, when everyone was announcing their NaNoWriMo projects and encouraging me to give it a go, I succumbed and, hardly realizing what I was doing, began planning out Between Two Worlds. So with thousands of writers around the world during the month of November, I was typing furiously.

27 days. 52,173 words. And the first draft was done. It took months of editing to make the novel what it is now, but the heart of the story remains the same.

I have tried my best to present an accurate picture of Roman life during the first century A.D., including the treatment of slaves and the persecution of the early Christian martyrs. That said, there are some details that I have chosen to take liberties with.

For instance, while history says that both of Boudicca's daughters were raped and then murdered, I have kept one of her daughters alive for some years longer. Furthermore, there are no dates for the deaths of Aquila and Priscilla, only that they were martyred during the first century.

As the Bible was compiled into one volume much later in history, I have only the letter to the Romans as Scripture in here. Herodotus' Histories is also mentioned, though there is little evidence that they were widely read by women. Although many women were scholars in their own right, they were few and far between; people like Julia and Enid were not the norm.

At the time when I was writing this book, I didn't have any grand schemes for it. I even said that I was surprised how much I ended up being proud of the thing. For me, it was just "a fun story" in a time period that I personally enjoyed reading about. It wasn't until later that I realized it was so much more than that.

Closing up the fifth round of edits in preparation for querying, I was reading over the last few lines of the book. I had been working hard on it for months and felt completely one with the story; then, reading the very last line, I was so oddly disconnected I ended up staring at the wall for several minutes, trying to understand what was going on. I hadn't realized that through Enid and through her story, I was, in many ways, telling my own. Many of the events in my own life inspired happenings in hers—albeit not exactly the same. And because of this, there was no difference between her character and my own; they had felt one and the same until that moment.

It was then that I finally understood that Between Two Worlds is more than just an interesting story. At its heart, it is a quest for identity in the midst of loss and pain. I hadn't realized until then how much of Enid's struggles and searching was a mirror of my own.

This story, though polished from its first draft state, is still raw. There are some things that cannot be smoothed over by editing; history is too stark a contrast against what we often romanticize it to be. But I do hope that you enjoy it, even if just as entertainment, if not more. And I hope, for Enid and Lucius' sake, that I've done them and their story justice.

So, if you are willing, let's travel back some centuries to Roman-occupied Britannia...