The real story isn't in what you read. It's in what you feel

 

Sometimes an author comes across a quote that sums everything up–their writing, their experience, the message they're trying to communicate to readers.

C. Joybell C. is a poet. An incredibly talented one who just happens to be kind and incredibly generous. Something she wrote is the perfect way to communicate the overall theme of my work. Here it is:

 

“Some people live in cages with bars built from their own fears and doubts. Some people live in cages with bars built from other people's fears and doubts…Some people live in cages with bars built from the choices others made for them, the circumstances other people imposed upon them. And some people break free.” — C. JoyBell C.

 

If you told me you've heard something as beautiful, tragic, meaningful, and just plain awesome than that lately, I wouldn't believe you.

 

In the Hyde series and The Heights, I've used epitaphs: those short quotes you find in the beginning of books that convey a little of what you're about to jump into. It takes a really long time for me to find the perfect one for each book. Here are the ones I chose:

 

Hyde:
“…I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but two.
There was something strange in my sensations…an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil…”
– Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1886

Jekyll:
“When the people of the world all know beauty as beauty,
There arises the recognition of ugliness.
When they all know the good as good,
There arises the recognition of evil.”
– Lao-tzu

Strange Case:
“…everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”
– Marilyn Monroe

Unseen:
“No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.

~~~~~

I still haven't found exactly the right one for UNEARTHED. If you ever happen upon a great quote, feel free to post it on my Facebook page. You may just see it in my next book. :)