How I Wrote My First Novel –or-
What Might Happen When You’ve Been Poisoned and Your Brain’s
Been Deprived of Oxygen
There are always stories within stories, especially about
the making of a story. The Education of Temple Fox didn’t start as a book. It
all started when my former husband and I left our home in Santa Fe, New Mexico
for a two-week “working vacation” in El Rito, New Mexico, home to the Hispanic
“low riders” in the early ‘80s. A friend gave us access to her adobe getaway in
a town where the locals still hung cattle in their trees for butchering. The
tiny boomerang shaped adobe was made of thick timbers and was half buried in
the ground. It was a one bedroom, one shower, but no bathroom arrangement with
an outhouse down a path in the wood that didn’t have a door, but featured an
ornately arched entrance that looked like a confessional. It was in this
setting that I started the book.
My husband, Phil, was rewriting a book at the time. Since
this was a “working vacation” I brought watercolors and a box of sculptor’s
wax, along with the tin pie plate to melt it in so I could work on a portrait
bust of Phil. It was November and it was already cold in the mountains. Our
cozy adobe was heated with a wood stove, which also functioned as our cooking
stove and a place to melt my wax.
One day I was so absorbed in painting, and Phil with
writing, that neither of us noticed that we were working in a thick cloud of
smoke. I brought this to my husband’s attention. He’s not a fix-it kind of
fellow, but after he climbed up on the roof he discovered the pipe was blocking
the flow of air, and a section needed to be replaced. So, off he went to the
general store in town, which sold food, car parts, clothing, candy, sodas,
cigarettes, boots, kerosene, gas, hardware and stove pipes! It was the only
store in El Rito in 1984.
I had no idea I had been poisoned, not until early the next
morning when I woke with uncontrollable dry heaves. The oxygen had drained from
my brain and I was as white as a sheet of paper. The carbon monoxide poisoning
had left me helpless on the floor and with a headache that rivaled Marie
Antoinette’s. In spite of the snow falling outside, Phil opened all the windows
and piled blankets over me so I wouldn’t freeze. And there I laid for two days,
gasping for fresh air and relief from the excruciating pain.
While I laid in bed I had remembered something I once did
when I was a kid and had the flu. While vomiting in the bathroom sink, I
decided I could detach from the illness by thinking of something else. I was in
college at the time and had just read a book on Einstein. So I thought about
the theory of relativity while puking up my breakfast. It seemed to work pretty
well, so I tried this when I was in El Rito lying in bed incapacitated and in
anguish.
That is how the book was born. First it started as a thought
of where I’d rather be at that moment. I saw myself on a sunny island with
indigenous people who hadn’t encountered Whites before. I scribbled down these
random thoughts and the thoughts grew into a short story. I took it home with
me and worked on it more. And, then,…well,….it just grew. Five years later I
had my first novel.
Ya just never know what you’ll do when your brain is
deprived of oxygen.
It’s been sixteen years since I resurrected this book from a
forgotten box in my dusty storage room. And yet, The Education of Temple Fox,
Book One of the series, The Last Scroll, feels as fresh to me as it did sixteen
years ago. This spiritual fantasy adventure reflects my deepest thoughts and
the fantasy world I inhabit in my imagination.
Pat Christy
Dec. 28th 2011
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