I tried to write a different blog just now. Based on a TikTok oracle card reading I did yesterday – but my phone went into a meltdown, I couldn’t access any information and it all went haywire. Until I decided to abandon that idea and write about the inspiration for my writing. So, I guess I am writing about my writing!
In 2023, I sat in the church service held by my son’s school to commemorate Easter where the germ of inspiration for my trilogy of the Book of Sarah was born. For the last couple of days, I have been thinking about that inspiration. We are close to Easter as I write this, and perhaps that is what is prompting my memory but it feels almost visceral how I am remembering that entire day.
There were two things that inspired me that day, that brought about the first idea to write the Book of Sarah. Not that it had a title then or that I had any idea that I was going to write a trilogy. The first inspiration was, as I say, while sitting in a chapel attached to my son’s old school listening to the Easter service. I will be honest, I couldn’t usually bear these things. Not the children’s performance, they were always wonderful, but the music the teacher would have written. One year it was so awful the parents were desperately looking at each other trying hard not to giggle. But the big difference in 2023 was that the vicar was addressing us from a laptop screen. She’d contracted the dreaded Covid virus and so was speaking to us via a Zoom link sounding – and no doubt feeling – dreadful. I often wonder if that was what made my mind wander as it did. The fact that she wasn’t there in person. I don’t know. But as she began to speak of the resurrection of Christ, of how Mary Magdalene entered his tomb after his crucifixion, she found his body gone. As she turned around, there he was accompanied by angels. And I found myself wondering…what would that feel like?
I wondered what it would feel like for Mary if she had been the wife of Jesus? Or even his love. How would it feel to be mourning the loss of the man you loved only to turn around and see him standing there. Healed and resurrected. What would you say? What would you do? If he was corporeal would you hug him? Kiss him? How on earth would you let go of the person you had witnessed die an horrific death? The man who, if the gnostics are to be believed, had favoured you above all other disciples and of whom Peter was bitterly jealous as a result. And as I sat there wondering this, I felt Mary’s joy, pain, fear, wonderment…and cornucopia of emotions. And I wondered…what if this was real? What if it was true that they were married or at least in love. What an amazing story it was and what a terrible shame that the Church would have buried it.
Later that evening, I was idly watching the film version of Dan Brown’s book Inferno. I don’t mind those films as a bit of mindless entertainment interwoven with some very interesting messages. But in this particular film, one of the antagonists sacrifices their life for the cause they are promoting. And the other antagonist, his girlfriend, has to say goodbye to him. She has to continue his legacy and cannot join him in his quest. Again, I wondered how it would feel to kiss the man you love one last time. To be hugged by him for the final time. Would you breathe in his scent? Would you try to imprint his body on yours? Memorise how his arms feel holding you? As I thought about that, I was reminded of the vicar’s words and how I had felt about Jesus and Mary Magdalene. And the idea was born.
What if I wondered, the couple in the Inferno film were a reincarnation of Jesus and Mary Magdalene? What if as a couple, they had travelled through the millennia in various different lives, each one ended by the tragedy of his sacrifice for the greater good? Would you not, as the other person in the relationship, get to a point where you think ‘enough’. How could you keep on losing the other half of your soul? Was there never to be the thought in your head of begging for your loved one to care less about the fate of humanity and more about one human in particular? You? To have one life where you could grow old together, live a normal life whatever that is. And that was the genesis of the Book of Sarah.
It was meant to be a romance. One book that detailed how the male character set out to woo back his lady love because in this lifetime she had left him, unable to tolerate the thought of losing him again in this lifetime. This time around, she was determined to live a ‘normal’ life and meet someone who wasn’t going to leave her by violent death too soon. That night I began to jot down an overview of the book, but very soon actually started to write it by hand. It flowed out of me and I could not stop writing.
A couple of days later, as I stood in the queue for a Starbucks, I was ruminating about the book. It had started to take on a life of its own. The main couple weren’t just any ordinary human beings. No, they were enlightened. They remembered every single lifetime they had together and they were sent by Source (or God/Divine/Universe) to keep the balance in the universe between dark and light. The main couple were the light, the dark was their age old adversary. It became less of a romance and more of a spiritual thriller. And as I stood there thinking about this, the idea for the trilogy began to form. It was as though the thoughts were being placed in my head, I could see it all so clearly. How the story would unfold, why it needed to be a trilogy and not one book to get the full story across.
I began writing book one in April 2023 and completed the first draft in February 2024. During that time I was made redundant and my world had started to fall apart around me financially, but I carried on writing. As I edited book one with my editing friends, I began book two. I started to write that in May 2024 and completed it in December 2024 I think. I know it was much quicker than book two despite the fact it seemed more difficult. In that time, my life was still falling apart, we had little to no money and I was cleaning for a living. I remember one night waiting for my salary to be paid into my bank account because we had no food in the house and no money to buy any. That wasn’t the last time that happened. I started writing book three in January 2025, and completed it in October 2025. And in that phase of my life we lost our home, I had a heart attack, and we began to live in our friend’s pub. Tumultuous times as I wrote my trilogy doesn’t come close to how it was. I self-published all three, they sell steadily enough though I would love it if there was a sudden explosion of interest in them – but then, I need to do more to promote them to achieve that!
Around this time three years ago I began to write my first book that I would publish. I had no idea then (though I knew redundancy was a distinct possibility) the journey I would embark upon. Those books became my life, writing became the thing I defined myself through. I inhabited the characters to a very in-depth level and can feel myself being pulled back to them now. I love to write still and have many ideas for new books though little time at the moment to actually write them. But I will.
Louisa Simpson 