Prism started life as a book I intended for the ephemeral “Unbelievable Romances Series” that has never gotten off the ground. The book was to be my version of a Hallmark Christmas story with fun people meeting in a happily ever after kind of story. In fact, that was the working title of the book, “Christmas”.

But that’s not where the story took me.

Not even close.

Within Harley Austin, as within every author, there are a plethora of stories clawing to get out and be told. As the story began to take shape, a kind of new story began to emerge within the pages of “Christmas”; and the further I progressed, letting the characters and people tell their story, the more I realized what was being written was really more backstory to my Awakened Series. I moved the book to the Awakened Chronicles Series and kept writing.

What eventually arose from the beginnings of my Christmas novella was a deep and powerful back story, and a foreshadowing of things to come within the main Awakened milieu that I was not expecting.

To me, this is the fun of writing. In many ways, I’m just like you are reading a Harley Austin novel—I never really know what’s going to be in a book until I read what I’ve just written. I know this doesn’t make sense to a lot of authors who need to know the whole story and have it all planned out beginning to end before they even begin writing the first page.

That kind of writing would give me hives.

Let the story tell itself.

I was surprised and delighted by the story that ultimately emerged as Prism. Not only did Prism become the third book in the Awakened Chronicles Series, but it spawned the following books of Travada, which led to Primal, which dove-tailed into an already planned Atlantica and then Oblivion which I had already written but didn’t know where it would play out within the Chronicles series.

But everything just fell into place like clockwork, like I had planned the whole series, beginning to end, from the outset. I assure you I did not; and I was just as delighted and surprised by these stories in how everything just came together. In many ways, I feel very blessed to be able to write the way I do and share my stories with all of you. Thank you so much for reading.

~ Harley