So the quote is from Joseph Campbell, the famous mythologist and author of the Hero’s Journey. His premise was that all epic stories follow a type of template. And that template is sort of ingrained in our psyches as a story that we crave to hear over and over and over again. From Gilgamesh to Luke Skywalker it’s the same story over and over again. The full quote is:
“I don’t think [the meaning of life] is what we’re seeking. I think [it’s] an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”
This quote resonated with me deeply. Ultimately all of life is experienced inside our minds anyway. But of course that wasn’t the only reason I chose it as the title of this book (and each section of the book was demarcated by a similarly resonant quote from Joseph Campbell). I wrote this full length novel – The Experience of Being Alive – initially as a marketing gimmick to get people to read The Madrona Heroes Registers books. My thought was that people love fan fiction, so if I wrote some fan fiction starring one of my characters from my books interacting with characters in other more famous books I could get people to notice my fledgling series. Going for broke I had my Binny Jordan team up with Hermione Granger from Harry Potter, Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games, and Arya Stark from A Song of Ice and Fire. I figured if one fandom would be good, three would be a home run.
I was wrong.
Nobody noticed or cared. But I got over that pretty quickly because I actually really enjoyed writing this book. After I’d written two entire books in the Madrona Heroes series I had the confidence to write a novel in a new universe.
Here’s the synopsis: What happens to the characters in books when those books aren’t being read? Where do they go? What do they do? Binny Jordan, the protagonist in a new novel wakes up to find herself staring at three of her literary heroes. But in The Stacks, characters don’t always act the way they do in their books, and things are not always as they seem. The quartet of young female heroes travels from novel to novel meeting characters from across the literary spectrum trying to uncover the truth of what is really happening in The Stacks.
Basically, it’s the plot of Roger Rabbit or Toy Story, but for characters in books. Fun! Back to the title now… the book is called The Experience of Being Alive and ultimately that’s what this book is, an exploration of how these characters react when they find out they’re just characters in books. What is their experience of being alive?
One final note on this book, since the entire world of The Stacks is created from locations, objects, and characters in actual books (and I was meticulous about this) I did footnotes throughout the entire book to make sure to document where every reference was from. Honestly, I’m super proud of this entire creation. I’ve also been pretty vague about promoting the actual content for fear that the fan fiction police will remove it from the place its sold. Not because i care about making money on this book. I don’t. But because i love being able to get printed copies. Anyway, grab it while you can. Hope you like.