What inspires me to write
Is the old adage that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration also true of writing? Perhaps, when it comes to turning that great idea into a fully formed story and a published book. Often it is that 1% of inspiration that sustains me, nudges me along and even entertains me as I allow my characters intrude on my psyche and insinuate themselves onto the page. For me the core inspiration for many of my stories is a situation I observed that provoked a response, usually one that starts with a question and a desire to understand more fully what I have observed.
Two years living on a remote Caribbean Island provided enough inspiration to write my first three books. Across the Great Divide explores the divisions of race and socio-economic circumstance and the ability of the human spirit to bridge the divide. In my collection of short stories, Cracked Conch, a colourful cast of misfits and mischief makers work, play and con their way through a series of adventures that see them triumph or become undone under the tropical heat. Each story had its genesis in the real circumstances of life on the island but it is in fiction that the essence can be explored.
My most recent publication is a Canadian story that captured my heart over a decade ago. Shortly after returning from the Caribbean I started to follow a story in the Winnipeg Free Press: “Animal Activists fear circus may try to flee with bears,” read the headline. A Mexican based circus that traveled around the Caribbean was in Puerto Rico with seven polar bears as part of their show. Polar bears in a circus in the tropics! It beggared belief. I had lived in shorts and t-shirts with a constant film of water on my skin for two years. How intolerable must those same conditions be for a creature covered in fur and adapted for life in the Arctic? A collaborative effort between animal welfare organizations, U.S. authorities and a groundswell of outrage and petitions from Manitobans eventually resulted in the bears being rescued and relocated to zoos in the northern states.
How had these bears, whose origins were believed to be from Manitoba and Alaska, ended up in a circus in the tropics? Here was a story worth uncovering. I started a file, read reports, contacted animal rights organization, PETA, and the zoo that had taken one of the Manitoba bears. But life and other books demanding to be written took precedence. It wasn’t until a chance trip to Seattle in 2014 and a visit to the Tacoma zoo where one of the bears had been placed that I resolved to explore this question more fully and shed some light on it.
Pihoqahiak – A Polar Bear’s Story was conceived and with the help of some very interesting sleuthing, along with a cast of spunky young fictional characters that 1% of inspiration was put to work and the story unfolded. It is the story of one polar bear from his birth on the shores of Hudson Bay to capture and relocation to a zoo in Germany, his life in circuses in Europe and Mexico, and his final rescue.
