Essential honesty

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Today I gave away the quilt pictured above. Recently our postmistress went above and beyond the call of duty, and I wanted to gift her with a token of my deepest esteem. She was thrilled, mentioned that she LOVED quilts, and as autumn is slowly approaching here in Humboldt County, also said this comforter would get a lot of love. I'm so pleased she liked it, and now the quilt queue lessens, lol.

That's not what today's post is mostly about, other than explaining the photo. I started revisions on the last installment of The Hawk, ten outta ten books, DUDE! The other day, noting this to my husband, I remarked that despite this story being about a guy who actually turns into a hawk (with no superhero overtones), it's also a series steeped in real life. Later on faith in Christ becomes a main theme, but not at the beginning. In the beginning it's a slice of life between two married couples in the early 1960s dealing with infertility, PTSD, as well as one woman's agony as her husband takes off for days, then weeks at a time, trying to keep the truth of such an unreal occurrence under wraps. Essential honesty is absolutely necessary to balance the magical realism, but then faith in God could also be viewed as a questionable endeavor.

I smile in writing that last bit, because Christianity is another theme within the novel. Life on Earth is full of absolutes (death and taxes just to mention a couple), as well as being hedged by so many gray areas. This saga touches on lots of different notions; survivors of Nazi terrorism, Korean War veterans, LGBTQ rights. A few kitchen sinks too, in that no one has a dishwasher, so.... You get the drift, in that this tale was the gift of prose that kept on giving. And part of the reason why was making it real. 

A guy might turn into a hawk, but his wife still works for a living.

And now I'm approaching THE END. The conclusion of over eight months' worth of edits, probably wrapping it up by the end of this month. I'm still undecided when to start releasing these books, as I thought by now my Smashwords account would have been migrated to Draft2Digital. However, that has yet to occur. In the meantime, I'm still plugging away on the LAST MINUTE TOUCHES of The Enran Chronicles Book 2, so there's plenty of authorial stuff happening. Not any writing, ahem, but now I'm of the mood to conclude The Hawk, then start another Enran novel. Yeah, that's a good plan!

Because when I am done reading The Hawk, my heart is going to need something to distract it from a cast that has been with me for over a decade, easing my entrance into grandmotherhood as well as saying goodbye to both of my parents. That's some magical realism if I ever I heard it!

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