by Zia Wesley
I was in London on vacation and on my way to the Victoria and Albert Museum. I was walking alone, on a narrow cobbled street, when I stopped suddenly without knowing why. I looked around and noticed a tiny old bookshop across the street and immediately crossed and went in. “Do you have a copy of The Wilder Shores of Love?” I asked, “I believe I do,” the elderly gentleman replied, and within less than a minute, I was holding it in my hands.
Upon rereading it, almost twenty years later, I experienced the same strange effect. Once again, I tucked it away when I got home and went on with my life.
Another ten years passed and in 1997, my life took an unexpected turn. Following a devastating dispute with my long-time business partner, I walked away from the company I had founded and made successful. I was unprepared for life without a sixty-hour workweek and retired to my very remote little farmhouse in Crestone, Colorado. For the first couple of years, I did all of the things I’d never had time to do: created huge vegetable gardens and grew all my own veggies, learned how to can and pickle, refinished and repurposed old pieces of furniture, painted, landscaped, opened a tiny antique business in a local co-op, read voraciously, meditated, and did lots and lots of Yoga. I was busy, creative, happy and feeling quite pleased with my life when one morning I awoke as if someone had shaken me and yelled in my ear, “Get up! You need to write.”
I made myself a cup of coffee, sat down at my computer and began to write. I was watching a scene like a movie and simply wrote what I saw. “The sun was just starting to set on the island of Martinique, when two young girls crept silently out of their room at Trois Islets plantation. Wearing only their sheer cotton night gowns, they made their way across the expanse of manicured lawn and into the foreboding jungle.” The girls were Aimée and her cousin Rose and the story of their lives had just begun to unfold.
From that moment, for the next two years, I wrote an average of ten hours a day. I wrote as fast as my fingers could type without hesitation. At the end of each day I would excitedly relate what had happened (what I had discovered) in the story. I had never written a novel, and had no training in that area although I had written six non-fiction books between 1981 and 1995. Throughout the two years of writing Aimee’s story, whenever I became unsure of what happened next or who a new character might be, I would close my eyes and sit quietly until the images and information came to me. In this manner, I believed I was imagining events and characters that made the story work. It was not until a year later, in my third year of writing the book, that I discovered these imagined characters and events to be true. For the first two years, I did no research what so ever on the story. When I began investigating, I was shocked to find the very things I had “imagined.”
While sharing this information with my daughter, we began to consider the possibility that Aimée wanted her story told and might somehow be providing the information. Her life had been spent within the walls of the Harem of the Sultan of Turkey from the age of nineteen to the day she died. Despite the enormous contributions she made to Turkey and the world, very few people ever knew her name... even in Turkey. Due to the influence of this one woman, the Ottoman Empire was saved from Napoleon and adopted Western methods of warfare that allowed them to defeat Russian invasion. Through her and her progeny, the Empire opened to Western culture, music, dress, furniture, art and food and began its emergence into the modern world. Some would say she might have caused its downfall by these very acts.
In 2008 after completion of what I considered to be the first book, life got in the way of art and I put it away. I did not open it for four years when I’d decided to see if I thought it was worth resurrecting. After working diligently for the past year, it is finally finished.
Last month, while researching background on some of the Sultans, it occurred to me that I did not know the exact date the Ottoman Empire ended. When I looked it up, it happened to be my exact birthday, March third of an earlier year, 1924. Wow, I thought, that’s a funny coincidence. I wondered who the last Sultan was. In another minute I’d found him and when I saw his photo, my eyes filled with tears. That’s odd, I thought, why am I crying? When I looked at his dates of birth and death, all the tiny hairs on my arms stood up. He died in August of 1944, exactly nine months before I was born. I sat there, staring at his face and crying, feeling sad, grateful, excited and incredulous. I believe this is the person who wanted the story told because when he died, Aimée’s story died with him. He was the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Abdul-Majid Kahn II, the blue-eyed great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grandson of Aimée Dubucq de Rivery, Nakshidil Sultana.
About the Author
Zia Wesley (Hosford) is the best-selling author of six non-fiction books on natural beauty and cosmetics.
Her latest books in this genre include: Zia’s M.A.P. (Master Anti-aging Plan) to Basic Skin Care, Zia’s M.A.P. to Growing Young and Zia’s M.A.P. to Men’s Skin Care. They are currently available online through all of your favorite e book sites.
The Stolen Girl is Zia’s first historical novel.
You can follow Zia on her website and social media for updates and more information about the Veil and the Crown Series.
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