Why is Part 2 taking so long?

A potential publisher for The Gift of the Seer called me recently to say they do not publish historical fantasy like The Spirit Keeper.  I tried explaining that TSK is fiction, not fantasy, but I was assured the “supernatural” elements in TSK push it into the realm of fantasy.

Obviously this person has not read my books.

In The Spirit Keeper, one of the few things Syawa tells us about himself is that he can “see.”  Beyond that, all we get are Katie’s assumptions, and anyone who’s read the story knows that Katie is wrong a LOT.  Only after much trial and tribulation does she learn the Indians are not the ignorant “savages” she assumed they were, nor are their “supernatural powers” some sort of mysterious Merlin-esque sorcery.

I am aware that many readers of TSK have been enamored with the notion of Syawa’s “magic powers,” and that’s fine.  Stories are meant to be interpreted.  But I would point out that Syawa exhibits no powers which are not accessible to the average human being with a healthy brain, regardless of race.  It does not take supernatural powers to discern which way the wind is blowing or to understand the implications of a turning tide, and it does not take a Seer to perceive that alien invaders from another world might prove to be a problem down the road.

I should probably admit I, personally, do not believe in supernatural powers.  I believe all human powers are natural, and many of them are super, but, alas, few of us achieve the extraordinary potential embedded within the complex layers of our human consciousness.  Those special few, like Syawa, who commit themselves to comprehending the vastness of all Creation may seem magical to the rest of us, but what people seem to be and what they actually are can be two very different things, as Katie learns the hard way.

So why did this publisher call me if they had no intention of publishing my book?  Um, I’m not sure.  There seemed to be some concern over my writing about Indians when I am clearly of Irish descent, which makes me wonder if this isn’t why I’m having such a hard time getting anyone to publish The Gift of the Seer.  By acknowledging the casual racism of America’s past, my books might be interpreted as racist themselves.

The joke, of course, is that TSK and TGS are not about Indians!  They’re the story of a colonial girl confronted with an entire world of people and ideas that are incomprehensible to her, and her challenge is to find a way to survive in spite of her overwhelming ignorance.

So, obviously, my books are about me.  Though I have spent a lifetime arduously learning about the world I inhabit, I still find it mostly incomprehensible.  Every day I experience examples of how most people are still very much like Katie, making rapid assumptions about the behaviors of others and feeling entitled to “correct” that behavior if it doesn’t conform to some arbitrary standard.  Therefore, I’m not surprised someone might consider my books racist because they contain the word “savage”; I’m only surprised I got anything published in the first place.

Is it true that I have no right to write about my own ancestors if our story happens to have some Indians in it?  I don’t know.  All I know is I grew up eating vegetables that came out of soil saturated with Indian blood.  Thanks to the magic of chemistry, I was transformed by that knowledge and inspired to develop a supernatural power in which I can conjure worlds inside the heads of other people–even people on the other side of the planet, people who haven’t been born yet, and people who may not exist for another five hundred years.

Do those supernatural elements mean my life is a fantasy?  Nope.  But it sure as hell is a fantastic piece of fiction.