Goodreads asked Gary Martin:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Gary Martin Across the Great Divide was inspired by several events in my life. I wrote it at a time when I was undergoing surgery to restore my eyesight. At that time I heard quite a few people relating what we call 'near death' experiences. Some of them seemed to leave their bodies as they flatlined in hospital—others went on journeys and were later able to convey events and conversations they witnessed as they were momentarily freed from their physical bodies.

When I was able to, I did some research on the beliefs of various Christian groups throughout history regarding what happens to the soul at the point of death. A few mystics from various early church movements taught that the soul could linger for around three days, before finally making the journey to heaven.

Across the Great Divide was the result of the research I did around the idea of the 'wake' and other traditional and mystical teaching of the the church. I combined these with a dramatic end-times story of a blind woman struggling to survive on her own at the end of the world. The story is 192 pages long, but it only took two months to finish it.

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