The day Beyond the Lost Horizon found its soul
Some stories don’t find their soul until you lose something irreplaceable, and that was the case with Beyond the Lost Horizon.
You never know how powerful your brain’s hard drive is until a moment so real sets in that it feels surreal. Hell, it’s a moment you don’t want to be real, because a door that had been open for the first 33 years of my life was about to close.
August 17th, 2024, was the last day I saw my grandmother alive. And it was the last day my immediate and extended family were together with her.
No, not at the house, where we’d have liked it to be. But in a hospice center about 40 minutes away near Wheeling, West Virginia.
While we were there for that last hurrah, flashbacks that never crept to the forefront in years swam through my mind. One after another, for the entire three hours we were there.
That’s when Beyond the Lost Horizon found its soul.
I added detail to Beyond the Lost Horizon that night
I got home that night knowing the next time I’d see my grandmother, it’d be in a casket. Luckily, she spared us the details after she passed on September 1st, when my mom told me she rolled with cremation instead.
Yeah, thank goodness. But then again, thinking back on it, my grandmother wasn’t about to let anyone in the family see her lying dead like that, so I should’ve known.
Anyway, through all the emotions that decided to unleash themselves all at once, I knew I had to stick it out. There was no other way to make Quinn Cozens as real and believable as I could make him than that evening, so I fleshed out his backstory.
During the first half of Beyond the Lost Horizon, Quinn has quite a few flashbacks, since it’s the first time he’s been in his grandparents’ home since they both passed. And Quinn’s flashbacks in that book are the same flashbacks that I had that evening.
They included:
- Blowing out his younger sibling in Madden NFL
- Scaring that same younger sibling until they ran for their mom
- Playing a make-believe NASCAR race with Matchbox cars
- Reminiscing about countless NFL Sundays
Fit for a dystopian survival thriller?
Okay, TC, so you added to your work while feeling beyond sentimental. Um, that’s nice and all, but you know you’re trying to run the world’s most unprofessional author business, right?
Do these random flashbacks even fit in the dystopian survival thriller genre? Wouldn’t even your libertarian audience get pissed at you for a genre mismatch?
Hey, I don’t know about you, but if terrorists launched a coordinated assault in my neck of the woods and I had a moment to breathe, you better bet your ass I’d be flashing back to better days.
Maybe I wouldn’t be using my grandparents’ place as a temporary base, but I’d be thinking, longing really, for the way things were before society went to hell. Jesus, wouldn’t we all?
This is assuming your life didn’t suck beforehand. But if it did and that, by contrast, is same old, same old, then I sincerely feel bad for you.
So yeah, maybe some will call it a genre mismatch. But I digress, knowing what the hell I’d be reminiscing about.
The flashbacks were just half of the equation
When Quinn and Yui take refuge at his grandparents’ place, they cross a lot of decor that are carbon copies of what stood the test of time in that old home. I won’t go into detail here, but you’ll get the rundown:
- The brick wall full of photos
- The rec room
- Items hanging in the most random spots
- Lyrics from old songs
- Newspaper clippings of old high school games
- The cabinet from Italy
The house’s entire layout mirrors that home away from home. Three bedrooms, one bathroom, a closed-off room in a half-finished basement…that’d be the rec room.
Initially, I wanted to base the home on my grandparents’ place, but on August 17th, 2024, that changed. And when September 1st rolled around, I’m glad I made that change.
Beyond the Lost Horizon and its soul immortalized a home away from home
One day, I’ll write a nonfiction book about that home that was like so many others in that little village that’s also like so many others. But they were mine in so many ways.
Childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, and, these days, approaching mid-adulthood. Places I know better than the back of my hand and could navigate blindfolded if I wanted.
And places that pop up in every other book I write. Immortalized in books like Beyond the Lost Horizon, The Arcane Prophecy, Wind Wielder, and Liza Fury: Catch 22.
One day, I’ll look back on all those works, with their hardcopy versions on every bookshelf I’ll ever own, with wonder. And I’ll have something to pass on to future generations, letting that house and the edge of the village where it stands to live on for centuries to come.
Ready to enter a home built on memory, loss, and the will to survive twisted into a survival thriller?
