Today’s Special Guest….Priscille Sibley!
Priscille Sibley is the author of The Promise of Stardust, a story of love and family, and the incredibly difficult decisions that need to be made in the wake of a terrible crisis.
She was nice enough to answer several questions I had about her writing process, inspiration and what role libraries played in the creation of her debut novel.
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1. This is your first book – Congratulations! What was your inspiration?
Thank you! I’m a registered nurse and early in my career I took care of a child who was in a persistent vegetative state. It was tragic and heartbreaking. His situation weighed on me for a very long time. When the Terri Schiavo situation was topping every news report, I couldn’t get that little child off my mind. One night, watching the news, I had a “what if” moment. That was the seed for The Promise of Stardust. But it took a few more years before I began to write the novel.
2. The Promise of Stardust is a story about loss and tragedy, but it is also a story about love and hope. As a writer how to you strike a balance between the two?
I suppose I saw it a little differently. There’s a family in the middle of a medical crisis. A beloved member has suffered brain death. Every one of them knows she would not want to be kept alive. They agree on that much, and that would be the end of the story if there weren’t something still at stake. There is. She’s pregnant. The baby, which is barely even a fetus, just eight weeks gestation, gives her husband something to cling to in his grief and in his denial. He has hope for something beyond death. Now there is a conflict because the family does not agree. People can love each other and still argue about the right course. I didn’t want to make anyone a villain. Even though there is one character no one seems to like, I do think he means well. I suppose that is how I created the balance. Their intentions are all good.
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