It has been a beautiful fall, with trees holding their leaves. We had several near or at freezing nights and finally, yesterday morning, a harder freeze. True to their nature, the mulberry trees began their drip drip drip of big leaves piling up beneath trees and on nearby sidewalks. Walking Sophie, I had to lead the way, kicking leaves aside for my small plodder.
I too have been waiting—not for a freeze but for change from feeling frozen in time and space. I haven’t blogged in six weeks and at first couldn’t understand why. Still don’t, actually. It’s all theory.
I was working hard to bring my manuscript to a sense of completion before sending it off to my new copyeditor, but even before that, I felt its loss. Fifty years ago—as my daughter crawled around—I typed up an idea featuring a boy standing on a strange planet. That idea has kept me company over the years as I explored my characters’ world: ((Pawn Quest, Ty’s Choice), and what happened when they arrived on that planet: (Planet Quest).
Finally, finally, we’re nearing the end: (Quantum Quest).
Letting Go is Hard!
In bringing my heroes’ journey to a close, it never occurred to me that I’d experience this sense of loss, this great hole. There will still be additions, amendments, and the slog of preparing to book for publication, but this pause is a harbinger of the future.
Unable to bring myself to blog or tackle other projects, I turned to watching DVD murder mysteries and reading book trilogies.
Pari Thomson’s three Greenwild books begin with The World Behind the Door. Along with Daisy, we discover the magical areas protecting plants and creatures that have been lost in the gray areas of Earth. But even those special hidden spots are threatened by the Grim Reapers who somehow have found their way into the Greenwild.
The other trilogy I gobbled down is a set of worn paperbacks, read countless times over the years. Beginning with The Riddle-Master of Hed, I once again dived into Patricia McKillip’s gorgeous prose. The High One’s realm is an orderly one, but Morgon, Prince of Hed discovers there are more riddles than his riddle-master teachers ever taught him. Ancient Earth Masters now threaten the balance of landlaw. McKillip was writing during the 1970s, during the nuclear arms race.
In my Pawn Quest books, I leaped over the Global Warming crisis to take a hopeful look at the other side. But whether the threat is Earth Masters or Grim Reapers or corporate greed, the underlying metaphor remains the same in all these books.
Power always seeks itself. No matter who controls that power, it must be balanced by love, love of the whole, love for all peoples and species, for the sake of Earth’s health (and our own).
Kate Harrington 