I've always written journals and I have a stack of them by my desk. Occasionally, I reach down and browse my past, and in one such wandering down memory lane, I found these pages from 2004. [Click the images to see them in higher resolution.]

In that year, I traveled from New Zealand for a holiday in London, and then onto southern Spain and Egypt. This particular journal covers a span of about 5 months: May to September. It's an adventure diary, so the pictures were already in the book – I'm not a visual artist!

There were musings about writing a novel at that stage but nothing serious. Then I found these notes, which are the embryonic idea of what would become Stone of Fire, ARKANE #1 (previously Pentecost).

“professors in Oxford .. they trace the stone to the tomb of Jesus – its power unlocked by blood or fire (maybe it's wood but does not burn? or it seems to bleed – the dreams come by night, images of fire and burning …”

and then later

“the broken pieces taken by the early church to different places in order to hide them – letters to the churches – find references to them. When Christ was resurrected, the slab he laid on was broken into pieces and shards of rock – apart they are nothing, together, an unbreakable evil that will help to bring down good in the world – searched for by many and held now by the legacy of those who persecuted.”

I started writing the book  in November 2009, over 5 years after this journal entry was written. Until I found it today, I had no idea that the kernel of the story had started so far back.

What's even more interesting is at the bottom of the page is a reference to Gates of Hell as a title, a book I published in Jan 2015, which also contains my experiences in Granada and Cordoba, places that I write about in the same journal.

It just goes to show that the subconscious can hold onto ideas for a long time, and then they can emerge in strange ways down the line!