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Maria McKenzie | What Inspired The Unchained Trilogy
Author Guest / October 22, 2012

It’s fascinating how an idea can be transformed into a story.  I always enjoy learning what inspires an author’s work. For instance, Stephenie Meyer had a dream that inspired her to write TWILIGHT, and Margaret Mitchell modeled Pansie O’Hara (who later became Scarlett O’Hara) in GONE WITH THE WIND after herself, and her experience of falling in love with the wrong man. One of my favorite movies is Finding Neverland. In it, we see how Scottish dramatist J.M. Barrie, through imagination and his real experience of befriending three boys (and their evil Captain Hook like grandmother) came up with the idea for the stage play Peter Pan. “With a wee bit of imagination,” Barrie says, “anything is possible.” For a writer, truer words were never spoken! I am very excited about the release of my new novel, ESCAPE: Book One of the Unchained Trilogy. I came up with the idea for this story when I thought how sad it would have been if my husband and I had met 150 years earlier. We were living in North Carolina at the time, and being an interracial couple, we wouldn’t have been allowed to marry a century and a half earlier. The…