Where did the story about Marcy Max come from? I believe that God gave me this story. It started as a vision I had while laying down on the couch recovering from chemotherapy on January 7th or 8th. The vision was the main scene in the book where Marcy has the light encounter. Her name was Mindy in the beginning, so the book was originally titled, Mindy Max. The reason I changed her name to Marcy was because the domain name mindymax.com was already taken, and I wanted to have a website with the same name as the book. I researched various names with an emphasis to what a black woman’s name would be, even though Marcy has a mixed ethnicity. I settled on Marcy because marcymax.com was available to register, which I did.
The story about Marcy evolved over time as more scenes were added. I first saw each of the scenes (chapters) of the book in my head. Behind each scene, and even the book as a whole, is a message highlighting biblical or Christian concepts. However, I did not start out creating the book with the idea of embedding Christian concepts in the story. That was one of the evolutions of the book.
Marcy Max came from within me. It is an expression of what I believe, think, and feel regarding life on earth as a Christian. I feel the things that Marcy felt. I believe the things that were said, especially by the Wilsons. The great martial artist, Bruce Lee, once said that we should express ourselves. To him, his martial arts was an expression of himself. Marcy Max is an expression of me. It doesn’t necessarily tell my life’s story, but it is an expression of it. I am expressing myself to you, the reader, through the adventures of Marcy Max.
My Struggle
One major struggle that I had while writing the book was the realistic aspect of it. I wanted it to be something that people could relate to in their real life and at the same time allowing myself some freedoms of writing a fictional story. Marcy Max is fiction but embedded with reality. That gives me the freedom to create incredible things in the story and at the same time keeping it real so to speak.
It’s like when we watch an action movie or a kung fu flick. We know that some, if not most, of the things they do are not real, i.e., humans can’t do some of those things in real life situations. However, we still tend to place ourselves in that character as if we were doing those incredible things. That is the kind of effect I hope to cause n the Marcy Max story.
However, I must admit that the Marcy Max adventures are still evolving. Some scenes may be realistic drama and some may be incredible superhuman feats of speed, strength, wisdom, etc. It all depends on what comes to me while writing.
The Chapters
I did not sit down and plan the book’s content. I did not decide on an overall outline and then started writing according to that structure. Instead, I put together in my head a series of situations and wrote them down. I later divided the story into chapters accordingly. So, the chapters are just a way of adding structure to the story and providing convenient breakpoints for readers.
I began educating myself about the writing process and the like during the writing of Marcy Max. I’ve learned a lot during that time and am still learning. I learned that one technique for writing a story is to outline the book first. I may practice more of that philosophy for book two. However, I did not follow that for book one. Even now I still see the events of the story in my head and I just write what I see down. This gives the story the flexibility to evolve however it wants to during the writing process instead of forcing the story into a preconceived outline.
The Series
I started writing the first book on January 8, 2020. At that time it was called Mindy Max: The First Light. It has since evolved and had its name changed to Mindy Max: The Light Encounters. I decided that this would be the first book in a series of books depicting the adventures of Marcy Max.
I have already started working on book two as of August 16, 2020. I have already developed a major scene in the book and will develop more as time goes by. I am going to try to get the second book done quicker than the first. However, I must admit that I was going through chemotherapy while I was creating book one, so that slowed things down. Just for the record, a title for the next or future book is Marcy Max: Training Day. We’ll see how the next book evolves.
The Cover
The cover shows a Caucasian looking woman on a bike with a spotlight shining on her. I don’t want to give the details of that picture because it comes from the major scene of the book. However, Marcy is not a Caucasian woman. The cover was just the limitations of the illustrator that I hired to create her. Marcy has a mixed ethnicity as mentioned previously. I did not purposely from the beginning decide to make Marcy a black woman, white woman, Asian woman, or whatever. She was just a woman. The only thing I saw in my head was that she had light skin, shiny (Asian-like) hair, and Asian or Native American facial features. She had an athletic build and was very outgoing, yet protected her personal life vehemently.
You can read more about Marcy on the page “Who is Marcy Max.”