The Story of my Book
The Journey from Heaven
Hey, look, I got my blue plaque today! I’m a verified Book Author.
Specifically, I’m verified as the author of The Journey from Heaven. Maybe I could say a few words about that?
The Journey from Heaven is a novel. Told by an angel. Chandrael is the guardian angel of a young child, Megan Rose. He meets her — he is called to her side — just at the point in her life where she begins to need him. Unknown to everybody around her, Megan is in the very earliest stages of a potentially terminal illness. She will need a miracle to survive.
Patricia Finney wrote this review. It appears on the publisher’s website.
“If you were an angel, what would you do? Could you obey the rule that you’re not there to stop experience or pain? I defy you not to cry as William Essex writes compassion into the warp and weft of this outstanding book. Buy it and learn how an angel feels.”
Thank you, Patricia.
I started to write The Journey from Heaven more than a decade ago. I started it at the end of a long day spent writing a commissioned article on fintech; I forget the exact subject. A question — a phrase — had been nagging at me all day. So when I finished my article, I opened up a new Word file and typed in the question: “Where are the angels?” And then: “Where are you?”
And that was it. I couldn’t stop. I kept writing until I reached the words “I vanish from his sight.” And sat back. Wow. I’d written a self-contained story (pages 7 to 13 of the current paperback edition, to give you an idea of length; it would be inside the free 10% of the ebook), but I could feel that there was more to come.
I wrote another self-contained story the next morning, as the dawn came up over the valley outside the window of my office, and another the next morning, with the early sun in my eyes, and so on. All the stories fitted within the overall narrative that became The Journey from Heaven, but at first, they were readings: I read selections of them at reading groups, in churches, at a festival, once at a hospice, and to friends and gatherings.
It was a time that I choose not to explain to myself. Call it inspiration. It just happened. I hadn’t planned to write a novel — certainly, planning hadn’t come into it — and I remember waking up every morning curious to find out what today would bring. I also remember sitting back, knowing when I was done for the day, and going down to make coffee and breakfast.
The Journey from Heaven is done now, if a book is ever done. It has its own life. People have read it, and people have told me about reading it. Some have told me that they cried. Next week, I’m due to record the first of a series of readings from it, so perhaps my end is also a new beginning.
The Journey from Heaven by me, William Essex, is published by Climbing Tree Books as an ebook and a paperback. The paperback ISBN is 978–1–909172–75–3. Find it wherever you look for books, and if you do read it, I hope you enjoy it.
An extract from The Journey from Heaven, conveniently titled ‘The Journey from Heaven’ may be found here.
