Inspiration vs cold contemplation

Inspiration for a novel can at times be hard to surmise, so when someone ask's you the dreaded question, "what inspied you to write..." We sometimes draw a blank.
Sometimes we are provoked subtley, subliminally, even sarcasticly, but generally there is a sublime deeply rooted emotion catering to a genesis of expression thats not always black and white.
Tolemac's premise came to me in the summer of 96 spontaneously and without warning during a time when writing a full length novel was the furthest thing from my mind. I stored the idea in a drawer for a few years only to have it regurgitate untill I conceeded in creating characters and cunnundrums that flowed out of me like a shaken bottle of champagne.
About halfway through the novel it became too complex and I shelved it believing that I had bitten off more than I could chew, untill the urge regurgitated once again forcing me into obscurity for a time of marathon meditations that went on for days without food or social interaction.
It was during that time of gestation that Tiny the multidimentional wizard evolved along with the transitionals, the "Imputable Impetus" Tolemac's constitution and the complex systems keeping Tolemac going after the rest of the world digressed.
I became so intimate with the characters I could smell thier sweat, I laughed, wept and prayed through most of it never wanting it to end. I also learned things I never knew from my imagined friends, and this is why I say that I'm not sure if I was its true author or if it was written in spite of me. Perhaps I was another victim of some sort of conscious emergence. However writing the story left an indelable mark and openned my heart; oh boy did it ever open my heart, I can't watch a cartoon without getting weepy.
Tolemac's central theme is about the demise of civilization which can be a gutwrenching experience, yet between the lines it speaks of how we can prepare ourselves internally for such a calamity.
I will now leave you with a quote from the Imputable Impetus;

"Truth is the only separation of mind and man; ego is the only separation of mind and truth!"