The Idea Evolves

When the idea of an underworld society secretly protecting the world came about, I then invented Purgatory as the name of its headquarters.  Those part of the society were at first dubbed "Purgators" but I felt it was too campy, so I went with the idea that the armor made them invisible, and thus they became ghosts.  Where the world thought they were experiencing echoes of the past or trapped souls, it was actually the armored warriors of Purgatory.

Originally, the idea was intended for a game that I knew I'd never create.  I was really into Mass Effect and Fallout 3 at the time, and thought the story would definitely suit that medium best.  But I knew it also wasn't innovative enough to catch anyone's interest in creating it to the scale I thought best.  The idea remained with gaming in mind for whatever reason.

I pushed the idea aside to focus on school for a while.  Every now and then an idea would pop into my mind, such as the idea of those within Purgatory being there against their will.  I wanted a better reason than the evil overlords threatening the lives of the people they loved.

Eventually, the woman behind the visor was given a face, and as soon as I completed it I sat back and knew her name was Helena.  She was inspired by a woman I went to school with who not only had a really cool heritage, but expressed herself less feminine than I ever did, and yet still kept a womanly presence.  She usually kept her hair short, and one time she styled it in a really cool faux hawk.

I had just completed a Classics of Science Fiction class, and I remember my professor speaking about an author who only wrote female leads in a not so typical form.  I wish I could remember the author's name, because I found the idea really neat.  I was so used to the mindset that only heroes could captivate an audience, and the idea of a woman being herself and still be interesting enough to read about interested me.  I wanted to create a character like that, and I knew Helena could be that.

Commander Shepard from the Mass Effect series greatly influenced the initial concept of Helena.  I love how FemShep was a leader everyone was willing to stand by, and no matter how you played her either.  As tempting as the idea was, I did not want to make Helena a willing leader, or impose leadership onto her.  I wanted to take a stance to show that there can be interesting female leads who aren't leaders.  I wanted to make her more relateable and less of a daydream.

After I graduated, landing a job was difficult.  I did little odd things like making necklaces and selling them on ebay, or taking art commissions in exchange for a little money, but I could never find a work place that would hire me.  I debated on the idea of turning Helena's story into a web comic, even though I know very little of sequential art.  My husband had told me about the success of a lot of web comic artists out there and how their sites gain revenue through adds.  I hit a roadblock as soon as I realized this story was set in a futuristic city, and I was terrible at drawing backgrounds at that time.

Two years passed before I finally sat myself down and began to write it all out.  I wanted it to be only one book, because I felt like sequels are too forced in today's entertainment.  It was a mindset I had adopted after watching some of Christopher Nolan's works.  I loved how the stories he told all came to a lovely close at the end, and that he never really pushed for sequels.  I wanted that in at least this story, but I became too immersed in the lore.  It started to unfold more like LOST as I began to write it all out, and I was concerned that I'd have more questions than answers at the end.

While I feel Purgatory does come to a close and that it wasn't completely open-ended, there were still questions I left that I just wanted to answer.  One book became two, and now the idea has unfolded to three.  There is an idea for an innovative perspective on a game involving the start of the Purgatory program, and I've also debated on writing short stories about the other characters.  I feel like I've gotten carried away.