November Novel Essential Information

Novel Title: Transformation

Time Setting: 2019

Genre: Life

Minimum Word Goal: 120,000

Timespan: November–January

Locations: Salmon Arm and Taylor, British Columbia, Canada; Sydney and Adaminaby, New South Wales, Australia; Greymouth and Invercargill, South Island, New Zealand

Main Characters: Elianne Easton, Taylor Creighton, Ian O’Neail

Background Information:

The oldest of three girls, Elianne has spent her entire life living out in the beautiful country outside of Salmon Arm, the winters with her father, Quinn, and the rest of the year with Quinn’s parents while Quinn competes internationally as an endurance rider.

Elianne is an avid lover of horses, having been taught to ride at an early age by her mother, Jocelyn, and even though her mother was killed in a car accident during a snowstorm two years ago Elianne’s riding education has not been curtailed.

At this point in her life, Elianne’s not quite sure what riding discipline she really wants to pursue, although her bias is definitely toward endurance riding, not only because Quinn does it, but because Jocelyn had done it until choosing to become a mother.

It seems, at least to Elianne, that since Jocelyn’s death the interest her younger sisters had in horses and riding has waned, and even the encouragement Quinn and her grandparents once directed toward her own pursuit of a career in riding has waned, which seems odd to Elianne, considering that it was a car accident completely unrelated to horses that killed her mother.

Even still, Elianne remains committed to pursuing some sort of career that has something to do with horses, and she sees nothing looming in her future that will prevent that dream from being realised.

Not only the only son of two children born to his parents, but also the only biological grandson of his paternal grandparents, Taylor was the youngest of two children born to a footballer whose career was curtailed by knee injuries and an aspiring actress whose career was quashed for the marriage.

His parents never really liked each other, but were pressed to marry by their parents, and so took advantage of every opportunity to be apart; his mother led the way in this by starting up an acting career for his older sister when she was young that soon had them jetting across Australia and even the world to pursue roles.

Because his father chose to isolate himself from his wife by way of working extra-long hours, this largely left Taylor alone, which wasn’t a problem during the school year, as he was enrolled in a prestigious all-boys’ boarding school, as well as pursuing a number of athletic activities just as his father had done when young.

During the summer, however, Taylor had no one to spend time with, so his mother’s parents took it upon themselves to host him at their house in Orange, New South Wales, and enrol him in riding lessons, among other pursuits.

When he was thirteen his father was found dead after having attempted to hang himself from a bridge. Immediately his mother took advantage of the death to permanently move herself and his sister to Los Angeles, California to pursue and promote his sister’s acting career.

Taylor wasn’t invited to come along and so was put into the custody of his father’s only sister, a somewhat eccentric woman who communed regularly with the ghost of her fiancé and surrounded herself with birds that he was not fond of.

Thankfully he only had to live with her for the summers, and because he’s rather a natural athlete he was able to pack his days with all kinds of activities to reduce his interactions with her and her birds, although he didn’t actually need to do so for long, because she developed a relationship with her fiancé’s brother that resulted in their moving into a house where there was a special room for the birds to stay instead of having the run of the whole house.

Even still, Taylor has done his best to pack his days with activities that have increasingly centred around horses thanks to his maternal grandparents having enrolled him in riding lessons and his taking of a summer job at a riding stables, through which he was introduced to endurance riding.

Last summer Taylor rode competitively on an Australian endurance riding circuit and was introduced to one of Australia’s finest endurance riders, Whitney Myers, by way of defeating his nephew Oliver Myers.

At the end of the summer Taylor returned to Sydney for his last year of high school, after which he has plans to move to Adaminaby to train under Whitney and start into endurance riding at the highest level.

The youngest of three children his mother had by way of brief trysts with different men she met, Ian spent his early years in Palmerston North, North Island. He was seven years old when his mother finally met a man she loved enough to marry, however, the marriage fell apart within four years.

It wasn’t a lack of love between his mother and stepfather that caused the devastation of the relationship, but a series of events that saw Ian’s paternal grandfather, stepfather, mother, brother, and sister all arrested for various crimes.

Ian was sent to stay with an aunt and uncle who owned a fruit farm north of the city, where he befriended a kindly Canadian-born woman named Jeanne who worked at the farm, and when his aunt and uncle were nearly killed in a car accident a couple years later Ian meant to enter into her care.

Jeanne, however, was seventy years his senior, and so was too old to care for him, but one of her granddaughters and her husband had been approved to foster children, so Ian was put into their care and moved with Jeanne to Invercargill, South Island where she was moving in with her oldest son while Ian moved in with her granddaughter.

Because Jeanne’s oldest son bred horses Ian was offered the opportunity to take riding lessons, which he accepted gladly, taking up riding quickly and easily, to the point that he decided he wanted to pursue a horse riding career.

He chose — thanks to the fact that his foster grandfather bred endurance horses — to pursue endurance riding, and it was through his pursuit of that career that he met a lovely Canadian young woman whom he made his wife and had a daughter with.

However, he was horribly injured in a plane crash in Australia, which sent him into a tailspin his wife only made worse by leaving him to go back to Canada and divorcing him — as well as stripping him of any custodial or visitational rights relating to their daughter.

Thanks to his foster family Ian has been able to get back onto his feet, although he chose to move away from Invercargill, to Greymouth, where he’s taken work teaching riding lessons, only returning to Invercargill for all the major holidays that usually feature familial gatherings.

Over the years since the failure of his marriage Ian has considered remarrying, but as yet hasn’t convinced himself that he is willing to risk his heart in another romantic relationship, and even debates whether he should try to reconnect with his ex-wife and daughter.