I first heard the legend of the lost colony when I was in middle school. It was in, if I’m not mistaken, a Highlights magazine. Back then, every kid in the school used to get one of those magazines for free when new editions came out. It was such a great true story. For those of you who do not know already, the colony really did exist on an island off the coast of North Carolina, and the entire population of that colony really did vanish in 1587.
Roanoke Island, wikipedia
The romance surrounding the lost colony’s legend immediately sucked me in, especially with the added mystery of the word Croatoan that had been carved onto a post. It was a true story just begging to be made into a movie or a book. In the years since then, I’ve learned that the prevailing opinion on the colony’s disappearance is associated with a nearby tribe of American Indians, the Croatan. As messed up as this may be, I was terribly disappointed when I learned this. It made one of my favorite stories seem so much more mundane, like one of the great mysteries of the world was no longer a mystery. I’m sure that’s a big part of the reason I wrote this book—to put some of the mystery back into the legend.
pavement shimmers, dadonthemove.blogspot.com
As for the pavement shimmers, finding a way to reach one of them before they disappear has always been a daydream of mine—again, starting as a child. My mother used to take my brother and me on camping trips when we were kids, and those trips always involved long rides in the car. Long, boring rides in the car… plenty of time for daydreaming. I’d see those shimmers and think, “I wonder what would happen if I got to one before it went away?” I knew they were a mirage from the sun, but what if they were more than that? I mean, really—what if they are? We’ll never really know, will we? Not unless, of course, someone invents a way to teleport…
vampire, pixabay
I don’t have a good reason for including vampires in the story except that I needed a villain, and I needed one that people would eventually be able to identify with. Using the Core as a catalyst made that possible. It also made a believable martyr of Silas, which—in book two—I think every reader will find to be true, despite what he may seem thus far.
And honestly—who doesn’t like vampires? I freaking love vampires in stories.
I’m very excited about Fade, the next installment in this series, which will chronicle Silas’s life right up to the moment Shimmer ended. It will include his childhood, the centuries he lived before Alex was born, and what he was doing, how he reacted and how he felt throughout the course of the events in Shimmer. I am confident readers will find it to be an even better story than Shimmer as Silas is such an interesting person. I expect it should be ready sometime late winter or early spring.
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Matthew Keith Interview – Nightmares, Inspiration, and a Nameless Character
