My SolutionQuest!

As I was reading D.J. McIntosh's The Witch of Babylon the other day in preparation for my June 18 radio interview with the author, I had an aha about The StarQuest (Book II in my Q'ntana Trilogy of fantasy novels) that was so obvious that it shouldn't have been classified as an "aha" at all.

You see, there has been this recurring descriptive detail in my sequel to The MoonQuest  that has never felt right, no matter how much I have tinkered with it; and I have tinkered with it...in every draft since I began the first in (gulp) 1998! Suddenly, though, one throwaway phrase in McIntosh's thriller offered up a simple solution to my elusive problem!

Perhaps that's why The StarQuest told me soon after that it's finally time to release it...as soon as I make the appropriate alterations, of course. (Yes, I talk to my books; why wouldn't I, when they know their story far better than I ever will!)

Then, yesterday, as I began skimming through the manuscript to make the necessary revisions, I stumbled on a phrase of my own, on page 74. "You idiot!" I shrieked out loud. The solution to my "problem" had been right in my own manuscript -- probably since the first draft! At the same time, that solution probably couldn't make itself known until the book was ready to be published.

I'm still grateful to Dorothy McIntosh and will be certain to tell her so when she's on The Electric Muse with Mark David Gerson  in a few weeks. For now, though, I'll be spending the next while prepping The StarQuest for publication.

My goal? A July 9 release, to coincide with the 16th anniversary of my "accidental" arrival in the U.S. (a story I share, along with many others, in Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir  ). And as July 9 is a Tuesday, the day  The Electric Muse with Mark David Gerson  airs, I've recruited author/singer/songwriter Amy Robbins Wilson and asked her to interview me on that show -- a show all about The MoonQuest, The StarQuest and The Q'ntana Trilogy books and movies.

What about The SunQuest? Well, if Amy asks during the show, I'll tell her that I aim to get this final Q'ntana installment out before the end of the year: on my birthday, October 3. That means that by the end of 2013, the 19-and-a-half-year-long literary odyssey that began in March 1994 with The MoonQuest book will have come to an end. To quote Charity in the musical Sweet Charity, "All I can say is WOW!!" What a journey!

The StarQuest will be available on July 9 in the Kindle, Nook, iBook, Kobo and Google Play stores, where you can also find The MoonQuest, a multiple award-winner and on its way to the big screen. The MoonQuest is also available in paperback at Amazon.com.
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