Wednesday, May 24, 2017

The Emotional Impact





There’s a simple reason some people enjoy reading particular books, authors or genres. Though they might not realize it, they’ve experienced an emotional impact.



I am currently reading The Forgetting Time by Sharon Guskin. It is a heart-wrenching story, difficult to read at times and yet I can’t put it down. From the very first page, I was sucked in by the enormous emotional impact.



Noah is a four-year-old who has always been terrified of water and who knows things that can’t be explained, like the identification of lizards, how to score a baseball game or every scene in Harry Potter. His mother chalks it off to an active imagination or even that he’s a liar. But when his stories of being held underwater threaten to involve social services, she has no choice but to find out what’s wrong with him. She goes into debt, her business sidelined and the medical bills mounting yet test after test reveals nothing wrong. Until finally, she is forced to consider the impossible.



What if Noah is the reincarnation of another boy that was killed at the age of eight? A boy that simply disappeared, a boy whose mother is convinced he is still alive and one day he will come home to her? And what if Noah remembers exactly who shot him, exactly who tried to drown him, and exactly where his body is buried?




As an author, I am confronted with the emotional impact with every book I write. I write for my readers and sometimes that means they want to fall in love. Sometimes they want to be whisked away to an exotic location. Sometimes they want to be pulled back in time, perhaps looking for a simpler place, a simpler time only to discover a different set of obstacles. Sometimes the emotional impact comes in the form of having to know what is going to happen next, of solving the puzzle, of learning the answer. Sometimes it’s a heart-thumping read and at other times a breathtaking vista.



When I wrote Clans and Castles, the first book in my new Checkmate series, the emotional impact was even greater for me because I was writing about my ancestor, William Neely. There is something about envisioning an ancestor as a young man filled with hopes and dreams and desires… Knowing he loved deeply and lost intensely… Knowing he left everything he had ever known to forge a new future in a foreign land amidst odd customs, different dialects and warring factions. In a world that is divided today by religion, the divide between the haves and the have nots, power struggles and political alliances and upheavals… and then moving back in time to discover this has occurred for almost as long as man has lived on this earth. Some would flourish despite the odds; others would falter and still others would die far too early in their lives. It is the emotional journey that kept me writing and, like every author, it is the emotional journey that I hope keeps the reader reading…





p.m.terrell is the author of more than 21 books, including her bestselling book, Songbirds areFree, the true story of Mary Neely’s capture by Shawnee warriors; her award-winning River Passage, the true story of the Neely family’s journey westward with John Donelson; the award-winning Black Swamp Mysteries Series and award-winning Ryan O’Clery Mysteries. Discover book trailers, download free excerpts and read more about her books at www.pmterrell.com.