Background on the writing of Soul Dancing by Gail Priest

Background on the writing of Soul Dancing by Gail Priest

It all began with a conversation my best friend Patt and I had one spring day several years ago as we sat under a huge tree in Chanticleer Gardens in Wayne, Pennsylvania. I told her that I had an idea for a new novel. I couldn’t say if it came to me in a dream or I just dreamed it up, but I warned Patt that this plot concept was out of the box. Although my Annie Crow Knoll Trilogy was very much grounded in reality, Patt met my creative thought pattern with enthusiasm, as she always has since we were college roommates back in the mid-1970s.

I asked her to consider an elderly woman dying but instead of going to the light, she ends up in the body of a young woman giving birth. I love relationship triangles as revealed with Annie/Drew/Packard in the Annie Crow Knoll books. This triangle would be the woman, her elderly husband, and the young man who appears to be the father of the baby she is birthing.

When Patt was enthralled with the concept, I began to believe that it could work. I felt encouraged, made some notes for later reference, and concentrated on finishing and launching Annie Crow Knoll: Moonrise, the last book in Annie Crow Knoll Trilogy. 

The day after the Moonrise launch party, I got out my notes and began writing Soul Dancing. I had no idea where I was going, which is actually good for me, but I wrote. One of my favorite writing tasks is coming up with character names. The protagonist is ninety years old, so she needed an old-fashioned name.

Shirlene popped into my head, but I had to make sure it was okay with my cousin-in-law Shirlene. She loved the idea of having a character named after her. I like alliteration, so her ninety-year-old husband became Stan. Shirlene’s best friend is black, and it seemed her parents might name her after Harriett Tubman with the nickname of Hattie. Cameron fit the young man, who preferred Cam or Mike, using a shorten version of his last name Michaels. The young mother-to-be, who gives up her body and her baby to Shirlene, had a rough life with addiction and dead-end romances. A happy, sunny name wasn’t going to fit her, but Rain seemed perfect. 

After writing quite a bit of a first draft, Cat and Mouse Press approached me about writing a collection of short stories set on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. They loved the Annie Crow Knoll Trilogy, which is set there, and thought I was the person for the job. I put Soul Dancing on hold and took a year to write Eastern Shore Shorts. When I returned to Soul Dancing, I felt a little lost. Luckily the South Jersey Writers’ Group was holding a novel outlining workshop.

I usually feel that outlines hamper my creativity, but I needed help so I attended. That’s where I learned I could use a mind-map outline format. Armed with a large piece of easel paper and various colored markers, my creative juices were once again flowing. I mapped out characters and connections and themes and events all over the large sheet of paper. During this process, I discovered that Cameron has a brother who is the biological father of the baby. 

Now, I must go back to my friend Patt, whose father passed away in 2022. Patt and her dad, Charles (Chal) had an extraordinary relationship. One that I admired. Patt and Chal inspired more than one story idea for me. Like the time, several years after her mother passed, Patt set her father up on a date with her new neighbor Barbara. Chal was resistant, but Patt was insistent that he and this amazing eighty-year-old woman would be a match.

Chal decided to march over to Barbara’s house and introduce himself and warn her about his daughter’s meddling before the day of their “date.” Chal and Barbara both experienced WWII, loved the swing music, and shared a lot in common. They became close companions during the years before Chal’s death. I stole all of this for my short story “Antiques” in Eastern Shore Shorts. 

Then it dawned on me. Chal was about the same age as my character Stan, and he had been a fighter pilot for the USA. What if his WWII story was Stan’s story? Chal agreed to let me interview him about his service in the Army Air Corps flying  twenty-six bombing, strafing, aerial combat missions over Belgium, Holland, and Germany in his P47 Thunderbolt. I spent a fascinating few hours listening to him.

Although I loved my best friend’s father for over forty years, I felt even closer to him after that talk. Chal was happy to let me use his story for Stan. He even shared some stories about falling in love with Patt’s mom during the war, and I borrowed some of that for the history of Stan and Shirlene’s early relationship. Sadly, Chal passed away before Soul Dancing was to be published. I’ve dedicated the novel in his memory.

I learned that although my story idea was unique and the readers need to suspend their beliefs, in the long run, I’m still writing about families, second chances, and forgiveness. I hope you’ll enjoy everything that Shirlene, Stan, Cameron, and others have to offer in Soul Dancing.

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SOUL DANCING

When ninety-year-old Shirlene Foster dies, she is shocked to wake up in another woman’s body. Even more astonishing, she’s in a hospital delivery room, about to give birth. Fearing no one will believe her, she attempts to hide her true identity, but acting like a twenty-year-old proves impossible, and she realizes she must tell someone.

Cameron Michaels vowed to raise his niece after his brother abandoned his pregnant girlfriend, Rain. But after Rain has the baby, she changes… drastically. When Shirlene confesses she is inhabiting Rain’s body, Cameron hesitates to believe such a wild story, but it does explain Rain’s complete transition.

While adjusting to her new life and relishing her second chance at motherhood, Shirlene struggles to keep her growing attraction to Cameron in check. But Shirlene soon discovers that her new body may not belong to her for long.

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Gail Priest has a passion for women’s fiction. Her degrees and work in theatre and counseling psychology inspire her stories of healing from trauma and secrets within families. A dash of romance and her love of second chances are always in the mix. The settings of her novels are influenced by her time spent on the coast of New Jersey and the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

Gail lives in New Jersey with her husband and their Havanese dog, Annie. When she’s not writing, Gail can be found reading or looking for birds and sea glass along the beaches and bays of the East Coast.

Gail is the author of Soul Dancing, the Annie Crow Knoll Trilogy and Eastern Shore Shorts. She’s a member of The Women’s Fiction Writers Association, Eastern Shore Writers Association, Novelitics Writers Collective, and the South Jersey Writers Group, where she was named Writer of the Year.

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing