[Note from Frolic: We are so excited to have author Abigail Owen guest post on the site today. Take it away Abigail!]
You never know what life experiences are going to end up in a book. Especially when you write paranormal romance. I mean, how can anyone draw from experience when writing about turning into a dragon? It’s not exactly an ability we humans have access to. In general, this means I’m digging into imagination for most of my descriptions.
Enter that perfectly good airplane (by the way, as every skydiver will tell you…there’s no such thing as a perfectly good airplane).
I should probably start by sharing the little fact that I’m terrified of heights. I LOVE the mountains, and would live in Estes Park, Colorado, if I could. That said, driving anywhere near a sharp drop (let alone a sheer drop) is my personal form of panic-inducing torture. Planes and flying don’t bother me, but edges do. So do elevators, floating stairs, skyscrapers. Now that I think about it, it’s not the heights that bother me, it’s what I’m going to hit on the way down. (shudder)
So, when I met my college sweetheart, and discovered that he, and ALL his friends, were skydivers, I was immediately like, “No way, pal. Not gonna happen.” Except all they did was talk about skydiving and they spent all weekend–every single weekend–jumping out of planes. And if I even dared to show my face on the drop zone, I was immediately encouraged/asked to try it.
At the time, I didn’t get it. Once I caught the bug, I tell every person that skydiving should be something tried at least once. Anyway, after a few months of this harassment…errr…encouragement, I tried it for my 21st birthday, just to see what all the hype was about.
I caught the bug. Shocker. (To everyone except my dad, who had been on the Texas A&M skydiving team when he’d been in college. Now I would be on the Texas A&M skydiving team. We go back generations at that school.)
Skydiving is not a rollercoaster feeling of falling, because there’s no up and down and nothing relative to you to give you that sensation. It’s more like flying and floating at the same time. The most you’d have to be afraid of is a map, because that’s what the world looks like from the air. Still an absolute rush, but it wasn’t the rush I necessarily got caught up with. Once I built some skills and figured out I was pretty decent in the air, gaining confidence, my addiction quickly became the competitions.
After getting my license, I started competing on our collegiate team (usually the only civilian teams competing at Collegiate Nationals each year). After college I joined a semi-pro team for a couple of seasons and even considered moving to one of the bigger drop zones and becoming a DZ bum to try to work my way onto one of the better (and sponsored) civilian teams like Arizona Airspeed. In fact, I even considered joining the Air Force or Army just to aim at being on one of their teams. (When I dream, I dream big.)
I competed in formation skydiving—which is NOT about being pretty. You draw a set of formations from a hat and have to do those over and over. Each formation is a point (in general) and the more points you get in a minute, the better you do. It’s about precision and speed in a 3D situation. I LOVED it. You might find it funny that I never did enjoy sitting by the door of the plane. Something about those edges. You know? My teammates used to tease me and point out that if I fell out I had a parachute and knew what to do with it. All true. Didn’t help any. Lol.
I quit the sport after my first child was born, because they were (and still are) the most important thing to me. Depending on the state of my old body when they go off to college and have (fingers crossed) become self-sufficient, I may take my sport back up. On days with clear blue skies, I still look up and wish I was falling through the air. I miss it.
But guess what? I get to relive it in my books.