Jean Hoefling's Blog

My third book in the Chronicles of Genesis series will be published in June of 2025! The title is Stones of Fire: A Biblical Supernatural Novel of the Preflood Prophet Enoch

And Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. — Genesis 5:2

Why write a novel about this Atlantian-era guy who never died? Because being air-lifted into the sky without dying first is a big deal. Being “taken” by God—a divine abduction, if you will— doesn’t happen every day. I for one want to know as much as I can about this person, and have loved every minute of speculating about him.

But what about all the years before God took this unusual man out of the world at the age of 365? Civilization before Noah’s flood was very different from ours, yet Enoch was a human being like us, with all the complexities that go with that humanity. We can only guess about the bulk of his life, and that’s what I’ve done in Stones of Fire.

Here’s a description of the book:

In a world teetering on the edge of ruin before Noah’s flood, Enoch stands defiant against the Shining Ones—fallen angels whose seductive power corrupts all they touch—and their formidable offspring, the Nephilim. With the beautiful and resolute Eeda fighting beside him, Enoch is content with his legendary calling, one that seems written in the stars.

Until God beckons him to a higher purpose that demands the ultimate sacrifice.
Transported to and from the celestial realm, Enoch is witness to mysteries and cosmic wonders no mortal was meant to comprehend. Though his spirit soars with newfound wisdom, his heart aches in the absence of Eeda’s steadfast presence.

When the finally returns to an earth hanging in the balance, Enoch must summon every ounce of his newfound strength. Can he banish the Shining Ones to the abyss of hell God has ordained? And will the profound, unbreakable bond between him and Eeda endure their most challenging trial yet?

Stones of Fire— Based on the ancient I Book of Enoch, where evil falters, pure love emboldens, and the light of divine justice illumines primeval humanity’s greatest victory.

Coming June 2025 on Amazon.com!

The post What About Enoch? first appeared on Jean Hoefling.

I’m thrilled to announce that the audiobook for my latest supernatural fiction novel, The Seed Bearer’s Bride, is now available on Audible. My fabulous Canadian voice actor, Talita Jolene, is a gifted artist in many areas, with a voice that’s sweet as honey and solid gold. A true intuitive, Talita’s voice adapted perfectly to the kind of fiction I write, full of its flawed and winsome little known Old Testament characters who battle fallen angels, giants, snake ladies and minotaurs every day on a strange and wondrous earth, just like the rest of us.

Contact me using my contact form if you’d like a complimentary copy of the audiobook, in exchange for some stars on Audible.com

It’s also really nice to receive an award for The Seed Bearer’s Bride. The book is a finalist in the 2021 Foreword Indies book award contest for religious fiction. I’m getting positive reviews, and am so happy readers like the concept, plot, and characters. I just love bringing ancient history to life.

I’m working hard on the next book in the series. It features the mystical Enoch, the man who walked into heaven in middle age (365 years old) instead of dying like the rest of the antediluvians in those strange centuries before Noah’s flood (See Genesis 5:23-24). What kind of person might Enoch have been, this guy who is mentioned in several places throughout the Bible besides Genesis, is featured in the apocryphal Book of Enoch, and who “walked with God” so closely that God “took him” from the earth while still alive.

Like many people who turn out to be great, I believe this Genesis patriarch didn’t have it all figured out from the beginning. He had to grow into his greatness. On the day he disappeared from the earth, he probably still didn’t have every duck in a row. I’ll bet he left more than a little unfinished business behind–messy relationships, unfulfilled goals, and all the rest. I’m also guessing this amazing man could hardly bear to leave the woman he loved. In fact, I’m counting on it. It cost Enoch dearly to walk with God as closely as he did. It costs anyone who tries.

Stay tuned.

The post Sweet as Honey, Solid Gold, and a New Book Award first appeared on Jean Hoefling.

I’m ready to publish again! The year 2019 was a tremendous challenge after the deaths of both my husband and youngest son. But, wonder of wonders, I’ll be launching The Seed Bearer’s Bride, the second book in my Thrones of Genesis series, in late August. Sign up here on my website to get an alert the day it’s available. Meanwhile, I can hopefully whet your appetite for another story about spiritual realities in the world before Noah’s flood with this, the introduction to my latest book:

We humans are hard-wired for mystery and transcendence. We crave a higher reality, one that’s hard to project against the mundane details of our material world. And one of the best sources for that kind of transcendent mystery is the Bible. A great example is Genesis 6:1-4, about an intriguing event that forms the premise for The Seed Bearer’s Bride:

“And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose… There were giants in the earth in those days…when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”

Looking at the text in the English translation, it’s natural to assume the “sons of God” refers to human men. Who else would be marrying those good-looking daughters of men and having kids with them? But the Hebrew meaning of the term, bene haelohim ( בני האלוהים), refers to a being directly created by God, in this case angels (see Job 1:6, 2:1, 38:7 and Luke 20:36). In traditional Jewish and Christian theology, with the exception of Adam (the first human man), human beings are not directly created by God, but are Adam’s DNA progeny. We have navels to prove it.
On the other hand, “daughters of men,” benoth adam ( בנות של גברים), translates to daughters of Adam, which became “mighty men, Nephilim, giants. Nephilim הנפילים) means fallen ones or mighty ones. Humans mating with humans doesn’t produce giants, but supernatural beings mating with humans might. And voilà, a great foundation for a fantasy novel.

It’s a challenge to our sense of the incredulous to think of angels interacting sexually with humans. In Christian theology, the role of angels is to praise and serve God in various ways, not procreate. Angels are called the “bodiless powers,” and bodies are needed for mating as we know it. Yet if we accept that the Bible is full of concepts and events we adhere to without fully understanding (such as the concept of the Trinity or the resurrection of the dead), then procreation between humans and angels, though forbidden, might be possible.

Angels are all over the Bible and are biblically described as men (Joshua 5: 13-15; Mark 16:1-5; Genesis 18 and many others). These celestial ones apparently have the ability to take on some version of material bodies in order to interact with people. In Genesis 32, the patriarch Jacob wrestled all night with an angel, who injured Jacob’s hip socket. In Genesis 19:16, an angel took Lot by the hand and in Genesis 18:8, three “men” whom Abraham recognized as God ate food Abraham and Sarai prepared and allowed their feet to be washed.

The First Book of Enoch is a non-canonical work that was revered by Jews and then Christians for several centuries before and after Christ. Part of the work is a narrative of two hundred Watchers (a classification of angels, meaning “wakeful one,” and mentioned in Daniel 4:13), who “kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation” (Jude 1:6) in order to cohabit with women, producing enormous, hybrid offspring that dominated the earth. The narrative of The First Book of Enoch coincides with the Genesis 6 account.

We also have the clear endorsement of the early Church Fathers on this subject. Irenaeus, Ambrose, Clement of Rome, and Justin Martyr, among others, concurred on this phenomenon of the antediluvian world expressed in Genesis 6:1. Tertullian referred to the Nephilim giants as a “demon-brood” whose “great business is the ruin of mankind.” Irenaeus wrote this in his Discourse in the Demonstration of Apostolic Preaching: “And for a very long while wickedness extended and spread and reached and laid hold upon the whole race of mankind, until a very small seed of righteousness remained among them and illicit unions took place upon the earth, since angels were united with the daughters of the race of mankind; and they bore to them sons, who for their exceeding greatness were called giants.”
The renowned first century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus also wrote of the Nephilim in his Antiquities of the Jews.
But what would be the motivation for this massive cosmic disobedience, this enmeshing between angelic beings and flesh-and-blood bodies? Sexual attraction is obvious from the text, but more sinister is the possibility that in their fallen state, these celestial beings wanted to disrupt the human gene pool in order to prevent the coming of the savior figure promised to Eve in Genesis 3:15, whom I call “Anointed One” in The Seed Bearer’s Bride. In Hebrew, the meaning of the word Messiah is “anointed one.”

For those who want even more fodder for speculation, compare the Greek word oiketerion (“habitation”) in Jude 6 with the same word translated as “house” in 2 Corinthians 5:1. Both times the word indicates a change or transfer in bodily form, in the first case for angels and the second for human beings during the resurrection of their bodies at Christ’s Second Coming.

It’s not like the idea of giants is anything new. The lore of ancient cultures is full of these intriguing characters. Think of the Titans of ancient Greek mythology; the cannibalistic race of the cyclops found in Homer’s Odyssey; Gog, Magog, and the giants of the island of Albion (ancient England and Wales), who were said to be “ill favored” and possessed by evil spirits. For what it’s worth, enormous effigies of Gog and Magog are still wheeled through the streets of London every November in the Lord Mayor’s Show. Giants are alive and well in the legends and art of ancient Sumer, Crete, India, Africa, Scandinavia, ancient America, and everywhere in between. Myths aren’t created in a vacuum. Their roots usually have a foundation in reality.

As to the angels in my book, some of their identities and functions will be familiar, such as guardian angels. Other castes and hierarchies that I discovered in my research were new to me, like the “harps” and “glories,” which can be found in On the Heavenly Hierarchy by Dionysius the Areopagite, a fifth century philosopher and Athenian bishop. Besides my use of The First Book of Enoch and other pseudepigraphal sources, and allowing for some poetic license, I’ve tried to communicate my basic presuppositions about the nature, function, and history of angels, taken from the Bible and established Christian tradition. One interesting Christian belief found in 1 Peter 1:12 is that there are mysteries about Christ “into which angels long to look.” They aren’t omniscient; like us, they are always learning.
Along with angels and giants, the constellations also play a role in The Seed Bearer’s Bride. Let me stress that what I learned in my research regarding the most ancient beliefs about the role of stars has nothing to do with modern astrology as we know it. For an excellent introduction to these very old, non-occultic beliefs about the constellations, I recommend The Witness of the Stars by E.W. Bullinger. I’ve used the Hebrew names from Bullinger’s book for the constellations I animate in my story. In several chapters I personify some of the more familiar constellations as a way to raise the story’s stakes and advance my characters’ beliefs about the savior, Anointed One. The ancient Egyptian Denderah Zodiac, as well as Hebrew, Assyrian, and other old beliefs about the prophetic purpose of the stars are remarkably similar to each other. They are a “book without words” written in the sky, and the focus is a messianic figure.
The Bible offers other insights into the purpose of those tiny lights in the sky. Genesis 1:14 states that they are “for signs and for seasons.” Revelation 12:1-4 gives a fascinating description of a “great sign [that] appeared in heaven, a woman “clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars,” possibly a reference to the Virgin Mary or the alignment of the stars and planets at the time of Christ’s birth, which produced the famous light of extraordinary brilliance that brought the Zoroastrian magi of Persia to the Christ child in Bethlehem. The ancient Hebrew name for that constellation is Bethuleh, which means “a virgin.”
Whatever you believe, buckle up for some entertaining fiction set in the antediluvian world and teeming with characters who love, hate, dream, scheme, and vacillate between doubt and faith as they try to figure out life, just like the rest of us.

I hope you’ll soon be enjoying The Seed Bearer’s Bride!

Yes, my second biblical fiction novel, Ashes Like Bread, will be published November 2, 2018! And though my carpel tunnel syndrome may never forgive me for it, I wouldn’t trade the agony and ecstasy of hunkering over that computer for the past year for anything. My hope is that once again, my readers will find themselves deliciously immersed in the mysterious world before Noah’s flood–that most ancient of ancient civilizations about which we know little but love to speculate about.

Readers’ Favorite had this to say in their five-star review: Lyrical, evocative, and filled with religious symbolism, Ashes Like Bread is a riveting read. It is told in a language that is atmospheric, rife with mystery and biblical references, deeply moving. 

In Ashes, I explore the Genesis 4 story of Lamech– a swaggering descendent of the world’s first murderer, Cain– and Lamech’s two wives. My lead character is Zyla, one of those wives, who’s not your everyday iron age wife, but a brilliant woman with the gift of prophecy and the determination to express that gift, no matter what it costs.

So what did I learn from the characters I created in Ashes Like Bread?

Like water, my book characters sought their own level.

You can’t force water to flow uphill. I had certain ideas about who my characters should be, based on the Genesis 4 passage and The Book of Jasher,  my supplemental text. But my characters didn’t always agree with me. They found their own way as I wrote them, tweaking the story for me in unexpected ways as I worked to create an intriguing and contextually accurate story about people from the dawn of human history. Just as we have to trust our friends in what they choose for their lives, so it is with book characters: They usually know the way they should take.

Like children who finally grow up, one day my characters no longer needed me.

I spurred my crew on relentlessly, wanting them to be all they could be before I turned them loose on readers as heroes and heroins, villains and foils. I worked until they started to resist; until my fingers almost refused to touch down on the keyboard because the time to make changes was clearly over. It felt great to drop those kids off at college and walk away.

 Like good therapists, my characters taught me more about myself.

Stephen King is quoted as saying, “I was born with a love of the night and the unquiet coffin. That’s what I have.” In the same vein, what I have is an insatiable interest in bringing biblical characters to life for postmodern readers. In creating those characters, I find uncanny conveyances for working out some of the kinks in my own life. In Ashes, my character Zyla says to a man she’s grown to love: “What would you do if you wanted something desperately and could find no remedy except one that might kill?” Ohhhh, the story that line could tell!

Would you like to read a free advance copy of Ashes Like Bread before publication this November 2, with the commitment to write a review during launch week? Contact me at [email protected].

 

 

 

Evil, or just mischievously restless?

Think of the Genesis snake and images rise up of a snub-nosed reptilian with fire in his eyes and the downfall of humanity on his mind. We assume this guy was the embodiment of Satan itself, or at the very least a slimy and unpleasant creature we can’t imagine Eve giving the time of day.

Millennia of cultural depictions have reinforced such notions about the notorious creature whose testy oratory was more appealing to Eve and Adam than a loving Creator’s one prohibition. It’s no surprise that in a 2001 Gallup poll, 51% of American adults reported that snakes were at the top of their fear list. Let’s face it: We all love a scapegoat, and the snake who whispered sweet somethings to Eve back in the day seems fair game as a villain in that story.

Innocent until proven guilty

But was that infamous serpent really serving as a tidy camouflage for Satan as we so often assume? Was it evil in itself? According to Professor John H. Walton, in his head-exploding book, The Lost World of Adam and Eve, ancient Near East peoples had a relatively undeveloped idea about Satan compared to today, so they may never have associated the two. Serpents in their cultures symbolized both positive and negative things. Genesis 3:1 only says, “the serpent was more clever than any other creature that the Lord God had made.” And it had the novelty of being able to speak in a way Eve understood, which makes me wonder if this snake was a sort of Big Mouth of the day. Its statements to Eve are wily but not untrue, for it was a fact that Adam and Eve would not die on the very day they sinned, and that their eyes would in fact be opened to good and evil, making them in certain ways like God. The serpent reminds me of the kids in my neighborhood who once dared me to rub the mean neighbor’s dog’s nose with lipstick to see what would happen. I can tell you, there was fire and brimstone from that neighbor in the aftermath, while the other kids slunk away. Like the snake, they weren’t out for blood; they just wanted to find out what would happen if I bit on their dare.

An expert in ancient Near East beliefs, cosmologies, and languages, Dr. Walton proposes that people of the day understood snakes to be in the category of “chaos creatures,” which were simply more mischievous, less subdued animals who were part of the undeveloped earth that early people had been commissioned to manage and rule over (Genesis 1:28). In other words, the world may not have been in the pristine state we assume it was at creation. God’s intent was for human beings to co-create something amazing with him, including the arrangement and cultivation of the sacred space of Eden.

The snake gets even more interesting

In his chapter focusing on the serpent, Dr. Walton asserts that, “neither his contradiction of God’s statement nor his deception about the consequences are part of an evil agenda.” It was Adam and Eve who preferred the I Dare You irreverence of a smart-aleck creature over the holy wisdom of God. Like us, those two people had everything, yet they wanted more. The buck always stops here.

 

Think of the Genesis snake and images rise up of a snub-nosed reptilian with fire in his eyes and the downfall of humanity on his mind. We assume this guy was the embodiment of Satan itself, or at the very least a slimy and unpleasant creature Eve was nuts to give the time of day. Millennia of cultural depictions have reinforced such notions about the notorious creature whose testy oratory was more appealing to Eve and Adam than a loving Creator’s one prohibition. It’s no surprise that in a 2001 Gallup poll, 51% of American adults reported that snakes were at the top of their fear list. Let’s face it: We all love a scapegoat, and the snake who whispered sweet somethings to Eve back in the day seems fair game as a villain in that story.

Innocent until proven guilty

But was that infamous serpent really serving as a tidy camouflage for Satan as we so often assume? Was it evil in itself? According to Professor John H. Walton, in his head-exploding book, The Lost World of Adam and Eve, ancient Near East peoples had a relatively undeveloped idea about Satan compared to today, so they may never have associated the two. Serpents in their cultures symbolized both positive and negative things. Genesis 3:1 only says, “the serpent was more clever than any other creature that the Lord God had made.” And it had the novelty of being able to speak in a way Eve understood, which makes me wonder if this snake was a sort of Big Mouth of the day. Its statements to Eve are wily but not untrue, for it was a fact that Adam and Eve would not die on the very day they sinned, and that their eyes would in fact be opened to good and evil, making them in certain ways like God. The serpent reminds me of the kids in my neighborhood who once dared me to rub the mean neighbor’s dog’s nose with lipstick to see what would happen. I can tell you, I’ve heard little since as spicy as that neighbor’s fire and brimstone upon me in the aftermath.

An expert in ancient Near East beliefs, cosmologies, and languages, Dr. Walton proposes that people of the day understood snakes to be in the category of “chaos creatures,” which were simply more mischievous, less subdued animals who were part of the undeveloped earth that early people had been commissioned to manage and rule over (Genesis 1:28). In other words, the earth may not have been in the pristine state we assume it was at Creation. Human beings were to work with God to create something amazing, including the arrangement and cultivation of the sacred space of Eden.

The snake gets even more interesting

In his chapter focusing on the serpent, Dr. Walton asserts that, “neither his contradiction of God’s statement nor his deception about the consequences are part of an evil agenda.” It was Adam and Eve who chose the I Dare You irreverence of a smart-aleck slime ball to the holy wisdom of God. Like us, those two people had everything, yet they wanted more. The buck always stops here.

                          They had everything, yet wanted more. Painting by Raphael

Did you ever wonder what life was like for Adam and Eve after they were exiled from Eden for eating from The Wrong Tree? Imagine having to leave paradise, a place where your feet barely skimmed the earth because the human body was more spiritual than physical then. Where your skin shimmered with angelic “bright nature” and your eyes were powerful enough to see beyond the stars and deep into the earth to marvel at hidden treasures there. Brilliance of mind and love of all creatures was effortless, and work was easy. No unrequited longings or doubts gnawed at each day’s bliss. You breathed in sync with the Eternal Now, while the One who had created you spoke with you face to face.

When you think post-Eden, think PTSD

Picture then Adam and Eve’s shock when the gates of Eden slammed behind them (metaphorically or otherwise). Their bodies were naked and coarsened, while shame, fear, back-breaking work and above all, remorse, now plotted their every step. They blamed the snake, each other, probably God. Did they ever recover from the shock of what happened? I’ve always wondered.

So when I discovered the ancient, pseudepigraphal work titled The First Book of Adam and Eve, a fabulous life-and-times account of Adam’s and Eve’s struggles outside Eden, I got a whole new bead on how those two might have responded to how bad it really was. The stories in this brief work have a larger-than-life quality to them (remember, our mythology is full of heroes, giants, and gods for a reason) and I’ve got a hunch we postmoderns with our blasé sensibilities might benefit from a dose of this kind of preoccupation with unholy shortcomings.

To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. On every page of The First Book of Adam and Eve, we feel the passionate sorry-ness of these two people in proportion to the gravity of their sin. For after all, it isn’t everyday somebody upsets the equilibrium of the entire cosmos with one act of disobedience. Here are a few of our forebears’ actions that moved me with their pathos and sweet sincerity.

Getting creative to show you’re sorry

In chapter 5, God sends Adam and Eve into a dark cave for forty days, to symbolize the darkness they had brought on the universe and into their own selves. Adam prayed with such fervency that he fell into a sort of coma from the shock. “So he cried and beat his chest hard, until he dropped, and was as dead.” Is this a foreshadowing of Christ’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, when the severity of his prayers against temptation caused him to sweat drops of blood?
In chapter 32, after other adventures, Adam and Eve journey to a holy sea where they stand up to their necks, praying for 35 days. “And they stood praying; and besought the Lord to forgive them… and to restore them to their former state.” Notice that God didn’t remind them that they could never go back to Eden. He let them do what they needed to do. Maybe a month standing in cold water made them more sorry than ever for what they had done.
Later, in chapter 72, fallen angels visit Adam, tempting him to “marry Eve,” and filling his heart with lustful thoughts. Though it’s suggested that God had intended celestial celibacy. Adam lays out his case as he asks God about it: “Because if you do not give us permission, we shall be overpowered, and follow that advice of Satan; and you will make us… perish.” God replies, “O Adam, if only you had had this caution at first, before you came out of the garden…” Adam was learning his lesson. One ousting from God’s graces was enough.

 

What ideas do you have about the Adam and Eve story?

After my mother died on a cold January morning, I stayed in the hospice room for the next eight hours with my hand over her womb, contemplating my own impending death. No, I’d had no bad news test results, no aches or agonies. But in middle age, I was looking more and more like my mother. With a little imagination, that could by my body on the bed, empty of soul and out of time. In those hours of fresh grief, I sat with my oldest friend, Julie, and felt the last vestiges of my innocence about my own mortality fall away. For the first time, I knew with a pale, grim certainty that one day I would die.

Julie and I finally went out into the winter dusk for a bowl of soup, and there I poured out my misery. It wasn’t just my mom’s passing that engulfed me in mourning; it was that I saw myself for what I really was, a fearful woman who allowed that fear to rule my choices in lots of areas, and at the head of them all was the gnaw of my inadequacy when it came to my writing and the terror of trying to get published. To anyone who every wondered what the most boring question in the universe is, it is this: What if I’m not good enough?

Well then, and what if I am? I’d been fooling around for a year with a short, humorous manuscript about my experiences discovering the Orthodox Church. Now that manuscript, and my lack of attention to it, began to haunt me. I wasn’t finishing the book because …. because what? Because I’m scared, lazy, easily distracted, and live under the delusion that tomorrow is as good as today, that’s what. I knew that unless I got serious fast and wrote as hard as I could for the rest of my life, I would never be my truest self. I would be committing psychological suicide. Everything changed then. Serial rejection by publishers every day and month and year for the rest of my life seemed suddenly less torturous than the bleakness of never trying. I decided I would write my first book and have some portion of it on an editor’s desk before Thanksgiving.

 It’s a blessing that the stakes were high, and that death was looming. Out of desperation to stay alive, my motivation grew to the proverbial fever pitch. The lean, mean muscle of disciplined writing made those months exhilarating. I even met my self-imposed goal, literally running through the season’s first snowstorm because the roads were bad in order to get my manila envelope in the mail, full of precious chapters. It was very dramatic, very writer-ly.

The following year, Regina Orthodox Press published my book, Great Lent Unplugged (alas, that little experimental gem just went out of print). It was the rush of my life, right up there with other highly memorable rushes, all of which seem to have taken place when I as a teenager, like my first kiss and reaching the top of Mt. Rainier alive. Despite the book’s flaws, I still feel exhilaration when I pick up my copy to read favorite passages once again and look at the cover with my name on it. Note to everyone: one’s name on the cover of a book is a drug.

Of regret, British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes said this: “The only thing people regret is that they didn’t live boldly enough, that they didn’t invest enough heart…”

Don’t die; invest enough heart.

“Cain flying before Jehovah’s Curse,”  Fernand-Anne Piestre Cormonc. 1880, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

 

I’m happy to announce a republishing of Gold in Havilah: A Novel of Cain’s Wife through Westbow Press, a division of Thomas Nelson and Zondervan. The challenge of editing to Westbow’s specifications was a great learning experience; I’m glad I made the effort and am satisfied with the results. Click on any of the Buy buttons here on my site and the little publisher’s helper out there in cyberspace will patch you through to Amazon or Westbow. The prices are the same both places.

Meanwhile, I’m smitten, dizzy-in-love with the plot and characters in my second book in this series of ancient fiction stories centered around the early chapters of Genesis. The working title is, for the moment, Zyla: A Seer’s Tale. I’ll do a couple of things in this book, the first being to introduce an amazing new female lead, Zyla, one of the wives of the infamous Lamech, sixth from Cain and the first bigamist mentioned in the Bible (Genesis 4:19). Zyla is a cerebral, willful woman with a prophetic gift who must learn to use her gifting wisely. Being a book character, that’s going to be harder for her than it should, because that is how book characters are. Just like in the movies, these guys always, always go into the dark, creepy house while you pull at your hair and scream, “DON’T GO IN!”

I’ll also satisfy the curiosity of some of my readers who have been asking, “So what happened to Cain?” They’re right, for after all, I did leave Cain’s miserable self pretty stranded at the end of Gold, without a resolution to his story. Readers’ interest in Cain’s outcome made me realize I hadn’t yet exhausted my treatment of this annoying villain, the world’s first murderer. I promise I’ll sate people’s appetite for more about Cain, and his measly seven generations of progeny as well.

So get ready for Cain on steroids, with his scabs and scars and bad attitude and all the rest, just as you enjoyed him in Gold. And get ready to like Zyla, even if she does have to learn everything the hard way, which shouldn’t sound too unfamiliar to most of us.

 

 

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

–Ernest Hemingway

Fast advice to new writers who bemoan the intensity of the discipline sometimes includes throwing around that Hemingway quote about the typewriter and the bleeding. It’s pithy and ironic and makes the more seasoned writer quoting it sound like they know something Hemingway did. It also inspires hilarious imagery: to each writer, his or her own brand of macabre. I keep it simple: me swathed in Civil War-era head bandages barely able to crawl from a drippy crimson keyboard to the coffee pot for yet another cup of Whatever It Takes so I can get that paragraph right.

Bleeding out is not so bad. Even the practice of bloodletting, or “breathing a vein,” was for centuries an unquestioned, and sometimes successful, healing tactic. Ancient Greek physicians called the life fluid they drained from sick patients, plethora. In English, the word still implies excess or fullness, and then as now it suggests that too much of a good thing bottled up within a person needs coaxing out. If Hemingway’s metaphor for writing is accurate (and who’s going to argue with Ernest?), then bloody heroics and the prick of the knife to release some of an author’s life force is necessary to produce his best writing, no matter how gory and counterintuitive that loss may feel at the time. And to take it a step further, the writer as a person may never be healed without that sacrificial flow.

In December, after I finished and self-published Gold in Havilah, I thought I was ready to celebrate, to relax. I draped myself over the love seat with my own private tin of anchovies and a cream soda, ready to binge-watch the John Adams miniseries. Yet the rush of fishy salt had barely dissipated, the soda can was still half full, and John was only mid-Revolution when I sat up and considered it all sawdust and sickness. All I really wanted was to get back to the cold and lonely refuge of my office to breath my veins again, to heal what ails me. Maya Angelou said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story within you.” The wound was already primed to run red again.

And you? What do you believe is worth bleeding for?