Deeper Levels of Trust

Saturday, October 6 ~ Santa Fe, New Mexico


I'm at The Ark bookstore reading from my novel The MoonQuest as part of the Santa Fe Short Story Festival.

"When's the sequel coming out?" someone asks.

When, indeed?

I've been so focused on getting The MoonQuest out into the world and completing The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write that I haven't given a lot of thought to The StarQuest.

It's not that I haven't begun writing The StarQuest. I've begun it twice.

Unlike The MoonQuest, though, whose first two drafts each took me less than a year to write, The StarQuest, which has no completed drafts, has been in my life for more than nine years.

When, indeed?

That the question was asked by someone named Ben is significant. There's a Ben in The StarQuest. He's the main character's son. And he's the main character in The SunQuest, the final book of this projected trilogy.

It's almost as though the character himself leapt off the page to find out when I plan to complete his story.

When, indeed?

With The MoonQuest, I rarely knew from one day to the next — some days, from one word to the next — where the story was taking me. It was frustrating, stressful and scary to be forced to live moment-to-moment, word-by-word, in trust that the story would ultimately reveal itself.

It did, of course. In its time, not mine.

As I ponder Ben's question, I realize that what has held me back from completing The StarQuest is a deeper level of the same trust The MoonQuest demanded of me. By this point in The MoonQuest, in terms of page count, I had a sense of what the story was about. Not a complete sense, but enough to keep me going.

The StarQuest has yet to similarly reveal itself, and I realize now that I have not trusted it enough to continue.

I was ready to trust The StarQuest only to the extent that I had trusted The MoonQuest. Where's the growth in that?

In writing as in life, we're constantly being pushed to have more faith, to trust more fully, to surrender more completely. It's true for Toshar, The MoonQuest's protagonist. It's true for Q'nta, The StarQuest's protagonist. No doubt, it will be true for Ben as well, when I get to The SunQuest.

Meantime, it's certainly true for me -- in my writing as in my life.

I still can't answer Ben's question, but I can commit to whatever level of trust my stories (and his) are asking of me. And I do.

While you're waiting for me to finish The StarQuest, check out The MoonQuest.

It's a five-star selection on Amazon.com and a story the Midwest Book Review calls "an evocative and emotionally moving tale of adventure." The Mindquest Review of Books calls it "an exceptional, timeless novel."

The MoonQuest makes a great gift for the holidays! (Find out where to buy it and read/hear excerpts at TheMoonQuest.com.)