Hi, my name is Julie Campbell and I’m the author of Arabian Dreams, a young adult fantasy about a girl who travels to other worlds on horseback. The concept for this novel first started out as a series of short stories about a girl who had magical adventures on her Arabian mare. I had visions of unicorns, and fights with dragons and mysterious strangers. When I started writing the first story for NaNoWriMo in 2005 it turned into a whole novel by itself. I never ended up writing any short stories. The first draft of Arabian Dreams shall never again see the light of day. I have a well-hidden copy lurking in the recesses of my storage devices, but that’s only because I never get rid of anything I’ve written. I pity the three or four people who were scarred by the early rendition of this novel.
I never intended to do anything else with Arabian Dreams, so I shelved it and went back to another novel I was working on. Fortunately, Arabian Dreams kept haunting me. I spent a long time working on that draft to make it into something presentable. I also wrote a sequel that, in many ways was better than the original. I still wasn’t completely happy with the story and shelved it again.
Last spring I finally decided it was time to completely rewrite the novel. I was resisting because I didn’t want to get stuck reworking the same projects over and over and never touch anything new, but I couldn’t ignore the novel any longer. I rewrote Arabian Dreams completely from scratch. Four of the characters are the same or very similar, and the concept is the same, but the adventure is completely different.
Arabian Dreams is inspired by my own adventures on my Arabian mare. Unfortunately, she doesn’t literally transport me to new worlds, although I put my main character through a lot of danger so it’s probably just as well. I don’t see myself as my main human character, however the main equine character, Sabaska, is inspired by my horse and they have a lot of similarities, including appearance and attitude. I’ve spent a lot of hours in the saddle, trail riding in the beautiful Rocky Mountains. In between keeping an eye out for mountain lions and holes in the ground I usually daydream about story ideas and this novel wouldn’t exist without my mare and those trail rides. I’d still write but my stories would be different.
The animals in my life have inspired many stories. My male cat Tux is very intelligent in an evil genius sort of way. He inspired a series of comics about his misadventures while trying to take over the world. Those poorly drawn comics starred all the animals in my life at the time, including my friend’s dogs. My most recent animal inspired story is about a Border Collie who hunts vampires. I don’t think I would have thought of it if I didn’t have a Border Collie puppy enriching my life. Not all of my stories feature animal main characters, but many of them have some sort of animal hero, even if it’s a minor role.
Arabian Dreams will be published by Quake as an ebook. If you want to find out more about my writing, you can visit my website www.writerjacampbell.com or my livejournal http://phoenixfirewolf.livejournal.com/. Thank you very much for dropping by.
