Killian McRae 12.21.12 Blog tour Guest post

Heres A blog post that Killian kindly wrote for us for her blog tour

Author: Killian McRae

Paperback: 238 pages

Publisher: Omnific Publishing; 1ST edition (2010)

Victoria Kent was the first character that I conceived, and she formed in my mind long before the story did. I visited the ruins of the ancient city of Ephesus during a trip to the Aegean coast of Turkey in 1997. As I stood in front of the existent facade of the library, I began to marvel at the prospect of having been able to stand in the same place since the height of the town and watch history pass me by. Often when traveling in this region, one becomes overwhelmed at the multiple layers of history that can exist in just one square foot of space. It makes you feel transient, small.

At university at the time, I was studying the Hellenistic world. Egypt has always fascinated me, both its history and his rich, diverse, and evolving religious beliefs. I began to wonder what Victoria would have been like in the times of the Egyptians. Leading up to the Y2K hype in 1999, I remember hearing on several documentaries about other supposed doomsdays through history, and one of them I learned of was the Mayan Prophecy of 2012. In April 2000, I wrote out the first outline of what later became 12.21.12. In that process, the first conception of University-professor Sheppard Smyth and antagonist Dmitri Kronastia came to me. The story burned inside me, and I wrote out several scenes and character sheets in mid-2000. However, I had a young daughter, had just graduated college, was holding my first real job, and had just moved across the country. Real life needs and concerns began to push away at my writing time, an soon I had all but given up. The hand-written pages of 12.21.12 were thrown in a file, along with several other partial and full manuscripts and sketches, and I went on with life.

In 2009, I finally was able to drag out my old drafts and reconsider them. I rewrote the first chapter of 12.21.12, and added an occasional 500 words to it here and there. Then, one day it just consumed me. After having written the first one-third of the book in slow, occasional pages, the last two-thirds of the book came to me in the span of several weeks.

The biggest obstacle in 12.21.12 was crafting Dmitri Kronastia. I needed to make his loathesome, and yet make him forgivable in able to pull of the twist that comes at the end. I still question sometimes if I accomplished this. I'll admit that it's my own latent fear that Dmitri still needs to have a chance to serve for his sins that has me contemplating a sequel. Or maybe just another sketch to store away for another decade.

Thanks Killian!