Out of Body follows a teenage girl experiencing weird dreams who discovers they are not dreams but out-of-body experiences. What inspired the setup of your story?

Sometimes I dream that I’m flying, and after one particularly vivid dream, I wondered, “What if these aren’t dreams? What if my spirit actually leaves my body while I’m sleeping and goes flitting around town?” My next thought was, “What a great premise for a novel!” The idea marinated in my brain for a couple of years before I finally got around to turning it into a novel.

In many contemporary coming-of-age fiction novels, authors often add their own life experiences to the story. Are there any bits of you in this story?

Absolutely. I have vivid memories of my angsty teenage years. Unrequited love, shifting friendships, school drama—I lived it all, so it was easy for me to incorporate those elements into my story. For instance, in Out of Body, Abby has brilliant imaginary conversations with the boy she likes, but when she encounters him in person, she morphs into a tongue-tied idiot. Yep—been there, done that!

This sets up the novel to deliver some very entertaining scenes. What scene was the most fun to write?

At one point in the story, Abby’s astral travels take her to a very bizarre place, so I had to do some serious world-building. Those scenes were fun to write because I could let my imagination run wild. Since this was a made-up fantasy world, I didn’t have to worry about adhering to the laws of physics or biology. I just had to make sure everything seemed plausible in the context of the story. Constructing that world from scratch made me feel a little bit like a demigod: powerful, omnipotent, creative.

Will there be a follow-up novel to this story? If so, what aspects of the story will the next book cover?

Astral projection is a fascinating subject, one with infinite plot possibilities, so there could very well be additional books. Since finishing Out of Body I’ve been working on an unrelated project, but I do have a solid idea for a sequel. In Out of Body, Abby sets out to save her cousin after he gets lost on the astral plane. Without giving too much away, I can say that in the sequel, Abby will be the one in trouble, but it will be a different sort of trouble. Her world will be turned upside down, and she will have to go on the run as she figures out how to save herself.

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Original source: https://literarytitan.com/2024/09/01/vivid-memories/