Jacinda A. Scarborough

Take a Journey with me

Category: World-Building

  • The Land Remembers

    The Land Remembers

    Before anything else existed in Mirror Me, there was the land.

    When I began building Sam’s world, I imagined a place that was open, vast, and untouched by human hands. Here in Charlotte, North Carolina, we live among the history of many Indigenous peoples. Long before modern neighborhoods and roads, tribes walked these hills, lived in these forests, and cared for this land. Their history became the foundation for the story.

    A Gathering Place

    In Mirror Me, the land where Sam’s house now stands was once a gathering place for women. I imagined women from different tribes and different communities coming together simply to be with one another. It was a place to hold ceremonies for young women entering adulthood.

    One idea shaped this part of the story from the beginning. The women believed the earth held something deeper, something worth listening to.

    Throughout the world of Mirror Me, vibration sites exist like the one hidden in Sam’s backyard. At these places, the earth responds to the women who gather there. During ceremonies, elders present young women with gifts formed from the land itself—a necklace of stone or a necklace of shell. Those gifts symbolize a lifelong connection to the earth beneath their feet. Different cultures may practice differently, but the purpose remains the same: to ground a young woman as she enters a new stage of life.

    Ancient Stones

    Massive stones mark each vibration site. Lava formed them more than 400 million years ago. North Carolina is home to remarkable stone formations, and you can still find them along the roads around Concord. Some seem to rise directly out of the earth.

    Those formations inspired the sacred site at the center of Sam’s land. In the novel, the stones do more than mark a location. They connect to other vibration sites across the world, suggesting that the land remembers something humanity has forgotten.

    Listening

    Vibration is more than something you hear. It moves through you. It changes you. At the same time, it grounds you.

    In Mirror Me, that power doesn’t belong to Sam alone, nor does it belong to one particular tribe. It belongs to the relationship between people and the land itself.

    If we’re willing to listen, the land remembers.

    Mirror Me launches February 2027.

  • Birdie Whittaker

    Birdie Whittaker

    Birdie Whittaker is one of the most amazing characters in Mirror Me. She became pivotal for me because she’s the bridge—between the history of the land and the house, and the present, where Sam is standing.

    A Life Spent Searching

    I imagined Birdie as someone who never let the world tell her who she could or couldn’t be. Always curious, always researching, always growing—almost an archaeologist, traveling the world to learn about different indigenous peoples and cultures. I sometimes think of her as a female Indiana Jones, minus the ropes and the whip. She never married because, in a real sense, she was married to the truth—to understanding what this world was built for and what the earth was trying to teach us about ourselves.

    What makes Birdie remarkable, however, is that she understood something was being lost if it wasn’t written down. She kept journals throughout her travels, documenting the vibration sites she discovered and learning how different cultures understood them. Over time, she began connecting the site on Sam’s land to places all over the world. She may never have completely cracked the code, but she devoted herself to understanding how it all fit together. Through those journals, we learn about Sam’s family, the land, the house, and even a little about ourselves.

    A Teacher, Not a Savior

    One of the things I love most about Birdie is that she never spoke in riddles. She was plain-spoken and straightforward, and she was careful about what Sam needed to know—and what she didn’t. Instead of handing Sam the answers, Birdie gave her the tools to discover them herself. She didn’t say, “Go here, push this, do that.” She opened the doors, left the path lit, and trusted Sam to find her own way.

    For me, Birdie is one of my favorite characters—not because she was perfect, but because she was fearless. She wasn’t afraid to live alone in the Whittaker house. She wasn’t afraid to stand up to the people who wanted to take the house and the land from her. Nor was she afraid to face the supernatural truth that lived within the property or to keep learning long after most people would have stopped.

    Carrying Truth Forward

    In the end, Birdie understood that what she was learning was bigger than herself and couldn’t be lost when her time on the land was over. Life experience only lasts as long as someone remembers it. The land has memory. The house has memory. But we have to be the ones who carry it forward.

    Because of that, Birdie documented everything. She kept journals, studied relentlessly, and researched until she was confident what she’d learned could survive beyond her lifetime. More importantly, she made sure it was ready to pass to Sam in a form that Sam could one day pass on herself.

    Birdie was a steward of truth. A researcher of life. A historian. She’s the adventurous spirit in all of us—the one who believes that writing something down, making it plain, and passing it to the right person can make all the difference in the world. She’s exactly the kind of person many of us aspire to be.

    Mirror Me launches February 2027