As I sit here at my retreat enclave, feeling gratefully reflective and enjoying buttery afterglow effects, today in looking back through my records I realized: the three novels I have completed over the past three years–The Last Furies, No One Dreams in Color and None So Distant–while not conceived as a trilogy, are energetic kin, or derived from a specific phase, in that they were all born during the pandemic era, its “official” timeline running from March 2020 thru May 2023, with the first of the three books started in 2020, and the last of the three books having been completed this week. As I sat outside, reflecting (one of my favorite pastimes), it felt as if I was coming out the other side of a passage, a strange, dark, dreamy, fruitful, transformative passage, with works chronicling the long day’s journey within.

Shift happens. Alchemy is a fierce dragon, breathing down our necks, demanding movement. Metamorphosis is hard bop. As a fan and devotee to the work happening in the shadows, to the worlds behind the worlds, to dream-feed beyond the veils, it has been a ripe and raw period of vagabond graffiti tagging bones, of basements excavated and attics spelunked, of fractures reforming into new structural foundations.

This afternoon, sitting at Iconik Coffee, enjoying an Americano, David Bowie’s “Changes” came over the radio, and I felt a good happy glow inside and I wanted to travel to the distant star where the Thin White Duke was hanging out and squeeze him to no end.