It took all the courage I could muster at age 20 to call Gay Montreal and stammer "I-I think I'm gay" into the phone, then take the bus downtown and purposefully talk about it, face-to-face, with a gay man.

Although I don't write "gay fiction," Bernie Freed and Erik Donnekin, major characters in all three of my "Sara Stories" novels are gay, and their stories, including Bernie's coming out, are integral to the plots of Sara's Year, After Sara's Year and The Emmeline Papers.

And although the following scene from Sara's Year didn't play out identically in my life, I did have a similar experience with a friend who, with good but misplaced intentions, tried to push me out of the closet by telling me that I was gay. He was right, of course, but it would take another year for me to get to the place I describe in my Acts of Surrender memoir.

I am still The MoonQuest story, just as I was that March evening in Toronto 30 years ago…the story of a bard who follows his heart and lets the tales that move through him reveal the way forward as he journeys on a quest to return story, imagination and vision to the land.

When at age twenty, a few months into my first job out of college, I announced that I was moving out, my mother announced that if I was going, my dog would have to go with me. Seven years of pee stains had been enough. She wanted her house back. (This story may appear to be unrelated to this Yellow Brick Road journey of mine. However, if you read through to the end, you'll see that it has everything to do with it!)

It’s a scary, tightrope-walking way to write. It’s an ever scarier way to live. In both instances, however, at least in my experience to date, the results are always more wondrous, enriching and miraculous than any conscious mind could ever conjure up, because our conscious minds have access only to the visible portion of the iceberg.

Sedona has kept me here just long enough to launch two extraordinary (and unanticipated) projects. Now, it’s time to move on. But where?

“The bigger miracle, however, showed up a few days later: One of the people who listened to my DIY recording , someone I barely knew, offered me a generous seed money donation to get The MoonQuest audiobook project started at a local recording studios. My acting as though was making it so!”

The problem with suspending public posts about my Yellow Brick Road journey, which I did back on June 21 (Day 144), is that it’s hard to know what to say to fill in the gap, other than that I’m still here and still traveling. 

I’m on the right track. Is there anything more I need to know? There may be plenty more I want to know. But there’s nothing more I need to know. 

My mother, who died thirty-nine years ago tomorrow, would never have understood this journey I’m on, nor much of the life I have lived since her passing. She would have worried incessantly for my well-being, as mothers do, yet she would never have tried to persuade me to change course.

I think parts of me can’t quite believe that I’m here, that I did it, that after all these years and despite the fact that I’m still floating, California is now my home state. Officially.

Although I don't write "gay fiction," Bernie Freed and Erik Donnekin, major characters in all three of my "Sara Stories" novels are gay, and their stories, including Bernie's coming out, are integral to the plots of Sara's Year, After Sara's Year and The Emmeline Papers.

And although the following scene from Sara's Year didn't play out identically in my life, I did have a similar experience with a friend who, with good but misplaced intentions, tried to push me out of the closet by telling me that I was gay. He was right, of course, but it would take another year for me to get to the place I describe in yesterday’s Acts of Surrender excerpt.