I finished the first draft of the first book in my twelve book series back in April.  Approximately   51,000 words in 13 days of writing.  It was the third novel I’d penned from start to finish.  I was elated, primed to move on to book number two immediately following the completion of the first.  The number one.

The Ram.

One thing I’d noticed during my time writing The Ram and thereafter, whenever I thought of the first arc in my ambitiously-long series or picked up the manuscript for a pacing and tone read-through was this: synchronicity.

All people experience it.  And it’s not my aim to question whether or not there is such a thing as events, seemingly wrought by fate and not through casual means, popping into one’s life and pointing out a path.  Some think it’s hogwash.  Others believe that if they aren’t experiencing regular dalliances with synchronicity, they are doing something wrong with their lives.

I tend towards the latter.  Not that I’m superstitious or allergic to rational thought.  I weigh most of my experiences with a healthy bit of skepticism and objectivity.  But while writing The Ram, I happened to see sheep everywhere.  I saw visages of rams on artwork.  People told me of hikes in the foothills that lead them to wandering, seemingly unwatched flocks of sheep.  Bible quotes about shepherds were on billboards.  I was surrounded.

Either I can look at these occurrences and think, so what, I’m just tying import to randomness with string made of hoodoo and nonsense, or I can consider them and take them for what I choose to take them for: rallying cries from the universe, cheerleaders with wooly hides, positive omens.

One of the main characters of The Ram is a woman that has begun to live her life paying attention to synchronicity.  It propels her actions in a particular direction because of the way she decides to interpret what she sees as signs.  She explains away her actions to herself by allowing what she considers to be “universal guidance” to lead her down her questionable road.

And I suppose I do the same thing.  While all writers put a bit of themselves in their characters, Peach and I definitely share this penchant for watching for signs and letting the undefinable and unimaginably complex intelligence of the universe whisper to us both.  Via a television commercial, a dogeared page in a library book, the mutterings of a passing stranger, Peach and I are listening, straining to hear.

The Ram was not formed by me alone.  It was goaded on by synchronicity.  I can only hope that once The Ram and all the others in the series reach the eyes of readers, they’ll consider their own relationship with those awesome, but often times quiet rendezvouses that defy causality.