I was driving home to Idaho through northern Nevada one night. I was alone. It was dark. Even though there was no moon that night, I was thinking about how I’d been driving home on a similar night but there had been this enormous moon ahead of me coming just over the hill. That other night had been surreal. This night, just very lonely feeling.

There were clouds keeping the stars at bay. It was around the holidays so the air had a chill to it which just seemed to make everything extra quiet. All I had was the road noise and whatever I was listening to. It was late enough that I was practically alone on the road.

That’s when I looked up and saw this glow on the the mountainside. Because this mountain was fairly close to the road, I’d hoped that I’d be able to identify the source of the glow. I watched it for a long time. It got bigger, brighter. I never did determine what it was.

There are several mines in that area, so even though I logically knew that it couldn’t be a mine there, that’s what my creative voice wanted it to be. And, that little voice wanted to play with the idea of the light burning at night being a sign that the miners were working though the night. They were digging out Thyst, a type of magical gemstone. They had three days to get it out before the vein of Thyst they were mining vanished. Thyst, after all, has a mind of its own.

I also knew that the Thyst had chosen someone and they were trying to tell her that they were unhappy. But would she listen? What would happen if she did?

That is now my story for Stonecharmer came about. If you’d like to learn more, please check out my Kickstarter campaign. We are close to funding and I’d love to see books going out to readers early.

Keep digging!