USP [unequivocal self-promotion]

Here's how being came to be.

I was in France, driving along the Atlantic coast, at night.  It was clear and starry and a full moon hung low in the sky.  My husband sat in the front seat with one of our friends--Maxime--who drove.  I sat in the back.

I was tired after a long day of visiting here, there and everywhere, yet we were on our way to dinner.  (The French eat late by my standards.  Dinner started at nine.)  So I tuned out the front-seat conversation and settled sideways, watching the moon-lit world go by.

Then there it was:  Carnac.

At the time, I didn't know about the thousands of megaliths along the coast of northern France.  We'd been sailing all day; touring islands.  I didn't know that what I was seeing--hundreds of standing stones, drenched in the light of a full moon--was common.  All I knew was that it was the most haunting, vivid scene I'd ever laid eyes on, made more-so, I think, by the fact that from a moving car the stones and their moon-made shadows seemed to dance.

Fast forward six years.

My husband was away on a business trip.  I woke up in the dead of night, bathed by moonlight pouring in from the window above our bed.  But all I saw was that night in northern France--and a boy named Shepherd, standing in the shadows, whispering his name.

It was so bizarre I got out of bed and started writing the boy's story.  I wrote it first in third person.  Then from his sister's POV.  I wrote it from Tienne's perspective.  Then Luq's.  But it's Shepherd's story and I felt compelled to give it back to him.  So I did.

Being is my first novel.  My baby.  I thought I'd never publish it but, around last October, I realized the story needed to be free.  If you choose to read it, I hope you enjoy it.  I've read it dozens of times; maybe hundreds.  I still love it.  Even after all that editing and re-reading, it's still at the core, the magical moment from which it grew.