Researching the Self You Don't Remember

Researching my character’s past lives was one of the most interesting parts of writing both Transcendence and Intuition. Going into it, I didn’t have much of an idea about the time periods that they lived in, but I used the philosophy I developed as a guide to how many lifetimes each character would have had and how many years apart they would be.

I wanted my main character Cole to have a ‘flashback’ of a lifetime while she’s on vacation in London. I set the first scene at the Tower of London, so I researched what would be happening when the Tower was most active in the 1500s. There is a tower on the grounds that contains graffiti carved into the walls by prisoners and one from 1538 caught my eye so that is the one I used for inspiration. I researched many of the beheadings that took place there in order to lend authenticity to the scene, which was grisly but really interesting. So I knew that one of Cole’s lifetimes ended in 1538 and that she was 19 at the time. The other main character Griffon was also alive at that time, so using those dates, I set up a chart that would show their other lifetimes, the dates, where they were, how old they were when they died and whether they were a boy or a girl (in my book, characters don’t always come back as the same race or gender).

Another big thread is the lifetime she lived when she came to San Francisco in the late 1800s . I needed to find a building that was still standing from that time period (most of the buildings were destroyed in the earthquake and fire of 1906) and used the Pacific Union Club on top of Nob Hill – if you read the book, it’s pretty amazing to walk up the same hill and see the same scene that Cole sees as she approaches the building in the story.

In Transcendence, we see flashbacks of Cole’s lifetimes in England in the mid 1500s, San Francisco in the late 1800s and a tiny hint of a lifetime as a boy in India in the 1930s – that lifetime is expanded in Intuition. Although I didn’t use them in these two books, there are other lifetimes in other places outlined throughout the centuries. We also see the influences of lifetimes in Italy and China in Griffon’s story.

The best part of writing these other lifetimes – nobody can come back and tell me that I’m wrong about reincarnation. Would you like to remember who you’ve been in the past?

About the Author