THE OTHER HALF OF THE STORY - a guest post by Heidi Catherine

Today I have a very special guest on my blog, all the way from Melbourne, Australia: the fabulous Heidi Catherine, whose astonishing and award-winning debut novel The Soulweaver is released on 19 January - just one week from now.  

Welcome, Heidi!  Please tell us a bit more about the inspiration for The Soulweaver.

According to Plato’s Symposium, humans once had four arms, four legs, two faces and were both male and female. They were strong, fast and powerful, making the gods so nervous that they slit them in half to weaken them. This of course made the humans miserable and they would go in search of the other half to their soul. When they found them, they would know it immediately, lie down with them and be filled with unparalleled joy.

This is such a romantic idea, even if being cut in half is a little gruesome! And although it fascinates me (so much that I wrote a whole book centred around the idea of soulmates) I don’t quite believe that a soulmate necessarily needs to be someone of the opposite gender – or even someone who’s a romantic partner. It’s possible to form a deep soulmate connection with your sister, your father, your friend or same-sex partner.

I’ll let Reinier, one of my characters from The Soulweaver, explain it for me in this short excerpt. To set the scene, he’s being questioned by Lin, whom he tracked down after a long search. She describes the feeling of meeting him as having seen him a thousand times, yet having seen him never. It begins with Lin asking Reinier why he was looking for her.

‘So you’re telling me that with all the people you remember from all your lives, you’ve come looking for me. Why?’

‘Because you’re my soulmate. The other half to my whole.’ He looked at her with those eyes again and she felt herself being drawn in. Her soulmate? That sounded awfully romantic.

‘I thought you said Matthew was my soulmate.’

‘I said he was your intended. That doesn’t make him your soulmate. It’s a common misconception that soulmates must be only of the romantic kind. It’s possible to have a romantic relationship with a partner who isn’t your soulmate, just as it’s possible for your soulmate to be someone other than your partner.’

Her cheeks flushed. ‘Right. I understand.’ It was like he’d read her thoughts. So he didn’t think of her in a romantic way. She was clear on that now. The feeling of embarrassment washed over her once more.

‘You and I have travelled through each lifetime together, always finding each other no matter where in the world we’ve been placed. In some lifetimes I’ve been your husband – your intended – in others I’ve been your brother, your cousin, your son, your best friend. In each life, we meet and help each other on our paths. When our life is done we return to the stars and wait for each other before being born again. Except this time. Mother sent you back without me. She sent you far away, hoping I wouldn’t find you. But as you see, even she’s not powerful enough to keep us apart.’

They sat in silence while she tried to absorb what he was telling her. His story was laughable. Then why wasn’t she laughing? Each word he spoke made sense. Each piece of information filled a piece of the puzzle that’d been bothering her since her earliest years. She had to hear him out.

I would love to hear your thoughts on soulmates. What do you think of what Reinier just told Lin? Was Plato on the right track? Or do you have other ideas about how it might work?

Heidi Catherine can be found on Facebook, Twitter or at her website. Her debut novel, The Soulweaver, is available for order now. She also has a free prequel novelette called The Moonchild, which introduces you to two of the main characters from The Soulweaver in the lifetime they lived before the book takes place.