Birth of a Book
It’s March 28, 1994. Boxes are still stacked against the walls of my westside Toronto flat. I moved in four weeks ago, but I almost immediately put my back out, so I have been slow in getting things put away.
I won’t be doing any unpacking today, however. I’m hosting a writing class here this evening, and I need to come up with some ideas for the six students who will be ringing my doorbell in a few hours.
I settle into my favorite armchair and shut my eyes in meditation. When I open them a timeless period of time later, I still have no compelling program for the evening. Then my eyes light on the pastel shades of The Celtic Tarot, which has been sitting on a table across the living room for a couple of days, ever since I brought it home from Toronto's Omega Centre bookstore where it so seduced me that I couldn’t not buy it, even as I failed to understand the impulse.
Now I do. I will have each student draw, closed-eyed, one of the deck’s major arcana cards. Then with their eyes open to the chosen card, I will lead them through a guided visualization into writing.
I never write during workshops I’m facilitating. Instead, I keep an eye on the participants in case anyone needs my help.
I can’t know it yet, but this class will be different.
Once the six women are engrossed in their writing, an inner imperative – the voice of my Muse – insists that I draw a card of my own. I rshut my eyes, each into the deck and choose a card. It’s the Chariot. Without full awareness of what I’m doing, I pull my yellow-paged notepad toward me, pick up my pen and begin to write.
What emerges after a rambling preamble is the tale of an odd-looking man in an odd-looking coach pulled by horses as oddly colored as those on the tarot card.
Next morning, I'm drawn back to the story. I add to it. I keep adding to it daily, almost obsessively, often stressfully because I rarely know from one day to the next (some days from one word to the next) what the story is about or where it is carrying me.
A year later in rural Nova Scotia, on the March 28 anniversary of that Toronto class, I complete the first draft of my first book — a novel I never planned to write, a novel I knew nothing about except as I wrote it word-by-word, a novel that wouldn’t even reveal its title to me until about a third of the way through: that novel was The MoonQuest.
It is now March 2021, many thousands of miles and countless Chariot rides later. Through the 27 years since that writing class, The MoonQuest has won six literary awards, earned dozens of five-star reviews, attracted the serious interest of an independent film producer and become a global YA and adult favorite. It also spawned The StarQuest and The SunQuest, two sequels in a fantasy series that my Muse must have known about, even if my conscious mind was largely clueless, because without realizing I was doing it, I set up both The StarQuest and SunQuest in that first book.
As it turns out, I also set up The Bard of Bryn Doon, a fourth story in a series that I long believed to have concluded with The SunQuest.
What happened? Two years ago, in the lead-up to The MoonQuest's 25th birthday, I suddenly recalled something that Elderbard Eulisha tells Toshar early in that book: "There’s more to every story," she says. In that moment, even as I had no idea what a SunQuest sequel could possibly be about, I knew there would be a fourth story...perhaps even a fifth and sixth!
New writers often ask me how long it takes to write a book. I wish there were a simple answer. There certainly hasn't been for me. It took me 11 years and three attempts to complete a first draft of The StarQuest. By contrast, The SunQuest's first draft took me only three weeks!
And Bryn Doon? Who knows. I would love to be able to tell you that I'm on the home stretch and that publication is imminent. And maybe it is! All I can say is that The Bard of Bryn Doon is moving considerably more quickly than The StarQuest, but nowhere near as expeditiously as The SunQuest.
At the same time, for the first time since those early days with The MoonQuest, I am writing a novel that I know little about from one word to the next and that features characters I have never met before. So because I never outline, anything, it's hard to know just where I am in the process of getting the story out.
Still, I'm confident that The Bard of Bryn Doon will be in your hands this year. I'm so confident, in fact, that I have designed a cover and I'm already accepting preorders of signed copies here on my website.
Speaking of covers, one of the ways I'm celebrating this addition to the Q'ntana family is with new covers for the three existing books. As with Bryn Doon's, they are built on the compelling photography of Kathleen Messmer, whose images already grace the covers of eight of my other books. Kathleen is also responsible for most of my author photos and all the pics of me on this site.
I am also often asked which of my 18 books is my favorite. As an author-parent, I know I shouldn't admit to having one. I should love all my books equally. I should…but if you promise not to tell anyone, I will confess that my Q’ntana books are my favorites. As much as I have written each of my books from a deep inner place, the Q’ntana stories feel as though they have emerged from a still-deeper place, from the deepest depths of my soul.
That is turning out to be no less true for The Bard of Bryn Doon than it was for its predecessors. It's an exhilarating journey, and I can't wait to share it with you!
Get your copies of The MoonQuest, The StarQuest and The SunQuest today! Look for them in paperback or ebook from your favorite online bookseller, or order from the books page on this website and let me sign copies to you!
Be first in line to read The Bard of Bryn Doon: Preorder your signed copy today!
Q'ntana books also make great gifts for the fantasy-lovers in your life – teen and adult alike!
Photos/art – 1. Chariot card: Courtney Davis. 2. The westside Toronto building where The MoonQuest was birthed. 3. Q'ntana book covers: my design, Kathleen Messmer's photography.
The "birth" of The MoonQuest adapted from Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir.
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