Excerpt

As a sixteen-year-old girl, she had simply walked out of the house and never looked back. The act itself had been personally invigorating, her primary motive being to liberate herself, from her fathers abuse.

Very little else had mattered at the time.

It was far more important to run from that man than to progress to something targeted or meaningful, which could come later.

However, after a few days, the reality of life on her own, living with her personal choices and her own responsibilities, had struck hard.

Her initial stop had been in Richmond, where she had landed in the home and spare room of her friend, Sharon. Since she had been allowed to forego the rent payment for the first month, the arrangement had met her immediate needs.

The downside started when Sharons new boyfriend, an indolent waste-of-breath named, Ricky Hammons, began to go through Kanatas room, looking for money, drugs, and who knows what else.

While Sharon was working at the Medical College of Virginia, as a nurses assistant on the new Virginia Commonwealth University campus, Hammons had been given too much time to consider how he might get into more trouble with the law.

In addition to his predilection for thievery, he had been arrested twice for soliciting prostitution by the downtown Richmond police. By the time Kanata arrived, Hammons was already on what he jokingly referred to as full, semi-permanent, probation.

In fact, his probationary officer had issued strict guidelines and consequences for his behavior. If he were to step out of line again, in any way, he would be going back to jail for a long time.

Kanata had only a few possessions, and fewer still carried any intrinsic value to anyone but her. Nevertheless, Hammons had violated her space, which was reprehensible!

She had confronted him assertively and had left quickly, enrolling at Tensor the following week, with just ten dollars in her pocket.

Later, she learned that she had escaped the worst.

According to Sharon, who subsequently joined her at Tensor the following semester, Hammons had returned to jail almost right away for violating his probation, related to drug possession.

Less than three years later, following their graduations, Sharon had moved out west and set up residence in Concord, California. She had fully intended to set aside her formal training, work as a telemarketer, and manage a private herb garden.

What could be less stressful than that?

Nonetheless, she had become successful financially by writing a column in the Garden Section of the San Francisco Chronicle that dealt with growing and maintaining herb gardens.

Lisa had moved to Charlottesville and had set up residence in the English Department at the University of Virginia as an associate professor of literature, which was her true passion.

Kanatas path had been slightly different.

She had found herself sitting opposite Dr. Nicholas Stennison two days before graduation.

He had advised her to expose her passion for writing and always to pull the pages from your heart.

She had never forgotten that.

It had changed her life and served to shape not only her writing style but her daily mission, as well. Over time, it had become her nature and had found a permanent place in her character.

She had spent three glorious years with Professor Stennison at the academy, where she had honed her skills by handwriting a minimum of twenty pages of content every day, seven days a week. It had been tortuous for most of the other students, sometimes even for Kanata.

In recent years, she had relied heavily on that experience. It had improved her stamina and had increased her ability to concentrate over longer periods.

At the same time, her good fortune had been salted with her share of tribulations, perhaps the worst of which related to her meeting with her first publisher.

She could still recall it, as vividly as though it were yesterday.

The Marshall Publishing Company had been located in downtown Richmond on Main Street at Shockoe Slip, which had initially sparked her interest in history. Founded as a trading post in the late 1600s, Shockoe had flourished as the primary commercial center for the entire state, until the final days of the Civil War.

Nine contiguous city blocks had been closed off and lined with cobblestone, featuring the financial district, the downtown expressway, and the railroad.

Over the years, the north end of Shockoe Slip had become replete with modern restaurants, single-stage saloons on the boards, as well as other common storefronts.

Willis Reardon Branic, Marshalls Vice President of Marketing had invited Kanata to dinner at The Tobacco Company, while promising to examine her work and to provide her with his professional feedback.

Kanata had just completed a draft of Roseate Beau, detailing her fathers relationship with her mother, yet the man had not bothered to read a single page of it.

When she arrived for the meeting without legal representation, because she had not known she needed any, Kanata had spent the entire time dodging the mans sexual advances. She had capped the evening off by throwing her drink in the mans face and walking out.

Later, she managed to get her manuscript back, and ultimately she was able to get it published by a small firm in Chicago. In the end, it had sold only a few hundred copies in the original printing, but it had taught Kanata an important lesson about how the business worked.

Her reward came several months later, when The Fikaris House purchased the publishing rights for a hundred-thousand dollars, which included a bonus of over twenty grand, and initiated a strong marketing campaign for re-print.

Book sales immediately shot up.

Yet, she had not begun to write seriously again, until the stress of her girlfriend Lisas death had pushed all of her buttons.

It had been another seven years, nearly to the day, before she had completed The Cry of a Lamb, which had detailed what she had later referred to as the pages of my soul, as a tribute to Dr. Stennison.