How did The Summer of the Ennead come to be? - The Process

The story has been with me for quite some time, perhaps as long as fifteen years or since about 2008. In one of the initial plot ideas, I mentioned that I did not have any grandchildren yet, so I can be sure it was before my eldest granddaughter was born in 2010.
I had a kind of vague idea about a group of special children whom I referred to as “Aurora’s Children” at that time, because Aurora was the Roman goddess of the dawn and also of childbirth. In fact, I wrote, “Legend says that every 1000 years, there will appear an ennead of related children with exceptional abilities. These children will change the world.” Interestingly, at that time, I don’t think I was fully aware of the meaning of ennead although I did use it to describe the group of children.
Apparently, I started to revive this idea in about 2013 shortly before my second granddaughter was about to be born. I have looked over what notes I have left, and although there were similarities to the end result, it is apparent that I was still just groping for the final story. I even had character names, but many of those ended up being different in the end.
It was in 2018 that I really got going. By then, my third granddaughter was just over a year old. I started to look for locations for the story and began to do research on animal totems and numerology. The number nine was becoming clearer for me and I had a model within my family. My sons had three children and my brother’s daughter had four while his son had one with another on the way. I would soon have my group of nine all from one generation.
Over the next four years, I played around with biographies of characters but never really got it all together and then in January of 2022, I made a promise to get to work, which I did. Things started to come together, things such as the genders of the nine as well as their names. I decided to take all of the character names from my ancestors. As a result, some of the names are rather old-fashioned, but they mean a great deal to me as several were living during my childhood.
As I wrote the story which took me from early January to the end of August, it continued to evolve. First I had to get to know each of my main characters because I wanted them to speak for themselves. Over those months each character developed his or her own personality, which then showed up as the story moved forward. In addition, relationships developed, teams evolved, and personalities arose. It was very exciting for me. I had a plan for where the story would go, but the route was not always clear. In fact, it changed more than once. Sometimes, I would come to a roadblock and couldn’t figure out the best alternative path, and then I would awaken at four am with the answer, and I would grab some paper and a pen and I write it down while lying on my bed. That was the coolest experience of all and I learned to trust my brain to solve problems while I got some rest.