by Marisa Montes
A Circle of Time was the fourth novel I wrote, but the second novel to sell. In fact, it was rejected once by the very same editor (Karen Grove) who bought it. I had sent Karen a query with a few sample chapters and a synopsis. From my synopsis, Karen noticed that the story took place around the time of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, so she returned it saying she already had a time-travel book on the 1906 earthquake. But after Karen bought my first novel, Something Wicked's in Those Woods, I asked her if she'd take a another look at Circle. This time I sent the whole manuscript. Two months later, I had a contract. Karen bought Circle without revisions (though I did revise some before publication).
The original idea for A Circle of Time, came to me because I've always been fascinated by patients in comas and what is happening to their brains, their thoughts, and their dreams during their comatose state. Do they think? Do they dream? Do they realize what's happening? Do they hear what others around them are saying? Do they try to move and find it impossible? If so, how terrifying! Then I decided that I believe the answer to all these question is "Yes!" and I was compelled to come up with a story about a teenage girl who became comatose as a result of a car accident.
But although the story of a girl who is alive and thinking and reasoning inside a comatose body is compelling, it can't fill the pages of a novel on its own. I had a shell for my story, but I needed another story to fill the shell—a story within a story. So I decided to use my favorite themes of love and transcending death.
When I write, I'm often influenced by old movies. I've always been intrigued by stories of people who die before their pre-ordained time and get a chance to come back and finish things that were left undone or to rectify wrongs, like the old movies "Carousel" and "Heaven Can Wait," "Ghost." I also like love stories with supernatural undertones like in the movie "Brigadoon" and stories in which one of the lovers turns out to be a ghost. And I love time-travel and mysteries. So I decided to put all these together.
But I'd never written a love story, and wasn't sure I could write one without figuring out what made them work. Fortunately, I'm very much a romantic, I've experienced true love, and I've read many love stories and seen dozens of romantic movies, so I sat down and made a list of which movies and books I found to be the most romantic. Then I analyzed them. Two of the movies in which I truly felt the romance—actually experienced it with the actors—were "An Affair to Remember" and "Batman." "Affair" is a no-brainer—Cary Grant was always romantic, but there was something more in this movie. But "Batman"! Why was that romantic? Then I figured out that in both movies, the lovers bonded when the woman was introduced to a beloved family member of the man and they shared family stories. Cary Grant brought Deborah Kerr to meet his beloved old grandmother in her villa, and the grandmother told Kerr stories about Grant's childhood. Batman, as his alter ego Bruce Wayne, introduced Vicki Vance to the old butler who had raised him, and they spent the whole night in the kitchen telling stories about Bruce's childhood. So in Circle of Time, I had Joshua finally bond with Allison by taking her to meet Magda, the woman who had raised him. Each time Allison went back to the past, Magda was the glue that helped to bond her and Joshua.
Another topic that has always interested me is abnormal psychology. After watching the movie "Three Faces of Eve" as a child and reading the book Sybil, I've been especially intrigued by multiple personality disorder. It occurred to me: What if during those "blackouts" when the person becomes another personality, it's actually another spirit or a time-traveler possessing the person's body? That question inspired the creation of Becky.
Even my ending was influenced by my favorite movie—"Heaven Can Wait." See if you can figure out the similarities.