Ten years ago, I sat in a car waiting to go onboard a ferry wondering, “How can I get out of this?”

I’ve spent the time since asking, “How can I get back?”

 

On July 10, 2004, I was away from home for the first time. I was on a trip to a Stargate convention in Vancouver, and through lots of planning and setups it had been decided that it would be much easier to meet up with friends near Seattle and just drive up rather than dealing with customs at the airport. Crossing the border in a car was, I imagine, infinitely easier than flying, and I’m basing that solely on how long the lines probably would have been. At that point Seattle was just a convenient stepping stone for me. I didn’t give it a second thought. When the people I met up with planned a side trip on the drive up to Canada, THAT was when I started having second thoughts. They wanted to go whale watching, which would have involved being on two boats. I was in no way a fan of that idea, so I spent most of the morning trying to think of ways to get out of it without looking like a dork.

People who have only known me for the past couple of years may be frowning at their screens right now. “You didn’t want to go on a boat? You didn’t care about Seattle?” Yep. I had no interest in Seattle. I actively tried to get out of going to San Juan Island and I only went to save face. If someone had given me the red pill/blue pill option of getting out of it with no stigma, I would have without a doubt stayed on the mainland.

I’m not sure when the shift happened. I think it might have been on the ferry to the island. It was just so beautiful and peaceful, and I remember walking around the ferry deck and just staring at everything. I got so many pictures of that ferry ride that I almost didn’t have enough film for the actual island. We went whale watching, and that might have sealed the deal. I was on a little boat out in the middle of this vast body of water (land was in sight, but I was farther from it than I’d ever been) and there were KILLER WHALES close enough to touch. They were playful buggers, too… they spent most of their time hanging out around another boat. When we turned to go back in they immediately came over and chased us. You could almost hear them saying “Aw, come on, don’t go away! We’ll play with you too!”

Afterward we were waiting for the ferry and I wanted to call my parents with an update. So I had to find a payphone (ten years ago! It’s like the past!). There was one between two restaurants, and I looked out over the harbor while I was talking. That’s the moment I think about when my mind wanders back to that day. I remember standing there in the mid-sixty temperatures (in JULY!) and thinking, “This place is special.” At the time I was setting my original stories around Chicago just because it was Random Midwestern Town. That day I decided I would move my characters to a Pacific Northwest island. Why not? What could it hurt?

To this day, I think the Squire’s Isle setting was a big part of what made On the Air special. It was a fine story and I stand by it, but would it have been as good if it was just some random town? Maybe. But I built up my little island during that story, and I fell in love with it in the process. I fell in love with the idea of this beautiful little paradise tucked away in the corner of the country where one woman took a stand and changed things for everyone who lived there.

Ten years have passed. I was an unpublished author standing on an island en route to a Stargate convention. Now I’m a published author who has an official Stargate SG-1 title to my name. I made the conscious decision to move my characters to Washington State, and when Tello decided they wanted to produce Riley Parra, I couldn’t help but laugh when they said they would be filming it in Chicago (of all my stories, that one has the most Chicago-ish setting). It seems ironic that I made the changes, got to this point, and now I’m back where I began but in a much bigger way. I went to the convention as a fan, and now I’m a tie-in author. I moved my characters away from Chicago to give them life and now a producer wants to bring some of them back. It has a beautiful full circle feel to it.

Ten years ago, I was dragged to an island I didn’t care about. I spent maybe a grand total of four hours there, but in a much more accurate sense, I never really left.