The Perilous Past is the book that I never thought I would finish, let alone live to see published. Thanks to surgery and six rounds of chemotherapy last year (2024), I not only finished that fourth book in The Guild of Ornamental Hermits series, but I also wrote quite a lot of articles and blog posts as well. (See my author website.)

It is strange to think that I began the first book, The Dire Deeds, on the first of November, 2016 (shortly before that unfortunate federal election) and saw the publication of the fourth book shortly before this last unfortunate inauguration.

In this period I wrote my heart out during what I call my “post-divorce crazies.” This meant leaving the San Francisco Bay Area and moving to Hawai’i Island; coping with loneliness and homesickness; a return to California; a two-week long wildfire evacuation; pandemic isolation; the aquisition of five more cats (to add to my family of two); some particularly painful family dramas; a move to Oregon; the fateful meeting with my last, great love; and then…a stage four cancer diagnosis. Add losing all my hair as yet another jolting experience.

I know a wealth of experience is considered appropriate for a writer’s bio, but c’mon! This was overkill. Seriously!

Writing, or doing anything, while enduring surgical recovery and chemotherapy, took a lot out of me. But I was trying to hang on to what was left of myself as I struggled with the new, functional “identity” of being a cancer patient. I live alone, and though friends came to help sometimes, the whole experience was rather grueling. But, I got the writing done and huzzah for that!

This fantasy series–bookended in time by two far right regimes–have always had political undercurrents and a dollop of social commentary. They are set in a future time when the American empire is crumbling as the result of a series of pandemics (and that was pre-Covid, folks!) and the occupied Hawaiian Kingdom (plus a number of other US territories) were setting themselves free. Some aspects of thorny issues such as entitlement, colonization, and cultural appropriation are touched upon in my books, particularly as they concern the Hawaiian Islands.

I also created people I wished I knew and a community I would have liked to join, in envisioning the first Hermitville as just a few miles away from where I was living in Pahoa. I longed for aging, arty misfits–mostly queer and kinky–and for paranormal adventures. I wanted to build a world of humor, sweetness, queerness, danger, and paranormal romance. I wanted older people to have magical adventures. I think I succeeded pretty well.

“Woke” without apology, my Hermits and Elves are emblems of who we could all really be–even as we age–if we only let ourselves bloom. I expect my books could be banned as a result, if anyone paid them any attention.

I am in remission now and being treated with immunotherapy instead of chemo. I am feeling pretty good, planning another move, and a prequel to the series called Hele to Hermitville. I am longing to get into Ginger Croom’s story and her rather fraught romance with the dashing Professor Almond.

I hope to finish that one too, and live to see it published.

☽☆☾