Not too long ago, a friend asked me if the wave scene at the end of Journey to the Fringe was inspired by the tsunami in Japan in 2011.  And, while I actually wrote that portion before the tsunami occurred, it’s not difficult to see where she got that idea.  The recent destructive and tragic effects of storm Sandy, and all the footage we see from these events, definitely reinforces the power of the elements, and our own relative helplessness in the face of them.

As a child I don’t recall being afraid of ghosts, monsters, snakes, or spiders, but I had a very real fear of natural disasters.  I had a series of nightmares and premonitions about winds, fires, storms and earthquakes that kept me awake at night with a pit in my stomach.  Of course, childhood fears tend to loose their potency as we age, and yet while my childhood fears have gradually lost their edge, they have not altogether disappeared.

When I wrote about the waves in the end of Journey to the Fringe, I liked the idea of the power of the water coming from the hands of our desperate heroes, while simultaneously recognizing that they could not completely control them.