I should be sleeping, but I’m hardpressed to finish the final edits on Wishin On Fire, Book Four in the Gemini Deiux Series, so naturally, I’m wide awake. There are a lot of references to eye color in the series, because those are very important to the story and the distinctions between characters.
Raven and Scot came first, way back when, and were introduced in Battle Lines for The Menagerie Series. I gave them gray eyes, as opposed to the spelling grey. Well, this has caused some questions- even though I’m American and gray is a perfectly acceptable spelling.
Gray also happens to be a surname in my lineage. The only thing I know about John Gray, is that he was married to my great grandmother, For a time, they lived in Hyde County, North Carolina, and she died in childbirth with twins. As the story goes, they were buried with her in a cemetery on church property, halfway between home and the tiny map dot called Fairfield.
After my parents divorced, my mom got a job, teaching in Hyde County, and we went to live there. I made a lot of friends there, and one in particular, who’s stuck by me through everything. The place holds a lot of memories for me, good and bad, but it became a new beginning in my life.
As a story teller, different things spark a story in my brain, and I often put little bits of home and Hyde County into my books.
Gray became an anchor of sorts, and holds a place in my soul. It reminds me of home, friends, and normal, in a time when my life was off the rails. It means so much to me that I gave one of my children Gray as a middle name.
Sometimes writers do inexplicable things in stories, or leave little tidbits of themselves on a more personal level between the lines. We are strange creatures, whose art decorates pages with words instead of color.
Susanna Evans 