When people hear about Secret of the Crystal Skulls they often ask me how I came to write the story. Like most stories, it was written from a combination of personal experience, research and imagination.
I first began writing Secret of the Crystal Skulls in 1993 after living on Kauai for a year and a half. Those eighteen months were packed with several profound life and near-death experiences. I was inspired to contemplate the effect such intense and often, traumatic experiences have on shaping your life.
I came to Kauai with my husband in January of 1991 when I was 6 months pregnant with my second child. The first event of note was my husband’s near-drowning on Easter at Secret Beach. Next, I straddled the edge of life and death during the later stage of my pregnancy and during the birth of my son. Of course, his birth was also a profound experience of life at it’s beginning.
The event that foreshadowed more to come was the Anahola Flood in December of 1991. The rain came so hard and so fast in the darkest of the night, it seemed like a Biblical event. It took four lives. Then came devastating Hurricane Iniki on 9/11/92. Yes, for those who don’t know, we had our own 9/11 on Kauai long before the infamous one. Hurricane Iniki was my second major hurricane experience. The first one happened when I was 9 months pregnant with my first child. My first husband nearly died in that event.
As you can see, I have lots of experience in the life/death/disaster arena. What I know about these experiences is that they absolutely put you in touch with who you are, what you are and what truly matters. The paradox of being close to death is that it makes you more aware of the gift of life than perhaps any other experience.
For Secret of the Crystal Skulls, I wanted to create characters who were unable to completely embrace life due to some deep pain they were not acknowledging. The experience of trying to survive on the Na Pali coast during a raging hurricane would put them directly in touch with that pain and the desire to live life fully.
After my initial work on the story, I put it aside. It seemed to be waiting for something. That something came in 1999 when I went to Glastonbury, England by myself on a pilgrimage. One afternoon while visiting the Chalice Well, a woman came up to me and told me her crystal skull had chosen me to hold it during a meditation/activation ceremony that was beginning in a few moments. I had never heard of the crystal skulls, but felt compelled to participate.
What followed was an incredibly amazing experience that influenced my destiny in a certain way. I was so altered by the ceremony that I didn’t even get the woman’s name or the name of the crystal skull. Much of that experience has been written into Secret of the Crystal Skulls.
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