“THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT DAYS IN YOUR LIFE ARE THE DAY YOU ARE BORN,

AND THE DAY YOU FIND OUT WHY.”  ~Mark Twain.

“I who am blind can give one hint to those who see: use your eyes
as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind …”

-Helen Keller

Today is October 4, 2010—a day that Erika Marks will never forget; it’s the day her debut novel Little Gale Gumbo launches into the world. I met Erika, who is talented, lovely, and genuinely kind, via social media, and I’ve enjoyed watching the excitement build toward this special day. She’s worked hard to claim her place in the world of published authors, and I’m delighted to be featuring her here on Brava!

Please welcome Erika as she shares personal thoughts on the art of story.

People often ask writers where their story ideas come from.

Speaking for myself, that inspiration can change from manuscript to manuscript. Sometimes it is the germ of an idea that comes from passing an abandoned house on a road trip or overhearing a conversation standing in line at the grocery store; other times it’s something less fleeting: a plot idea you’ve been growing for years that finally fruits, or that character you’ve sketched a hundred times in your mind who finally steps out of the shadows and into the spotlight.

In the case of my novel, LITTLE GALE GUMBO, place had as much to do with my inspiration as character. I had moved to New Orleans in 2002 to pursue a degree in Historic Preservation. It was love at first sight and I knew at once I would eventually write about the city. (I defy any writer to spend even a week in that glorious city and not find themselves so smitten, so inspired that it takes great effort not to write about it!)

But I never imagined that it would be a natural disaster, an event that would threaten to devastate my beloved city that would ultimately bring me to the story of LITTLE GALE GUMBO.

Though I ended up setting my novel a few years before Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, it was my experience of evacuating the city after the storm that had a tremendous impact on my story. In the days after the hurricane, when my husband and I finally had to leave the city, we—along with the world—began to comprehend the upheaval that would now face so many thousands of people displaced by a single event. Knowing New Orleans as I did, and knowing how unique and remarkable its residents are, I could not imagine how hard it would be for New Orleanians, some of whom had never lived anywhere besides New Orleans, to relocate without warning, without the pieces of their lives, and in so many heartbreaking cases, even without members of their families.

It was the concept of this life-changing upheaval that ultimately inspired me to create my story. What happens when someone has to start over in a new place, without time to prepare, without the ability to bring any of their belongings with them—how do they cope? How do they survive? But ultimately, how do they thrive?

For Camille Bergeron, it isn’t a hurricane that takes her and her two teenage daughters to a new life on an island off the coast of Maine, but the desire to put behind her a storm of another kind. Though she hasn’t time or the means to transport her worldly possessions, she still manages to arrive on Little Gale Island with the most important pieces of her heritage and her identity: her mother’s Creole recipes, her love of jazz music, her Voodoo spells, and most of all, her daughters. It doesn’t happen overnight, and it certainly doesn’t happen seamlessly, but eventually the Bergeron women find a way to bring New Orleans to Maine, and every life on the island is richer for it.

Which proves, perhaps, that we don’t have to go far to find our stories. Maybe we don’t have to go anywhere at all. Maybe—so long as we keep our eyes and our hearts wide open—it’s our stories that ultimately find us.

Please visit Erika’s website HERE.

You can also find her on Twitter @erikamarksauthr and Facebook