Babe in the Woods

First draft finished yesterday morning at about 111,000 words.

Now I need to let it sit for a few days, then re-read it making notes of what it needs to be a finished product. But I’m really happy with how it came out.

What really happens inside a mystey school? Or, to put it into contemporary terms, what happens when two dozen people spend a week together intending to learn how to access altered states at will? They bring their eccentricities, their weaknesses and their splendid humanity with them — it isn’t all love and light, and it isn’t all seriousness either. It’s fun, it’s frustrating, it’s enlightening, it’s exhilarating, it’s — a lot of things!

So, center on one participant, a middle-aged news reporter named Angelo Chiari who thinks maybe he’s there to do an expose. He doesn’t even believe in what they’re doing, but he’s fair enough to make an honest effort. Along the way he interacts with these people, and with altered states, and he winds up a long way from where he started.

The exhilarating thing to me is that I didn’t need to “imagine” any of the things that could happen. Many of the things related did happen, in one form or another — many of them recorded in my non-fiction book Muddy Tracks — and much, much stranger and weirder and wilder and more wonderful  stuff happened in real life than I have dared to write here!

Ever wonder what it would be like to learn to go beyond everyday life? Here it is. And eventually it’ll be in print and you can read it then. Meanwhile, I’m purring.