The Honeylicker Angel

Announcing the release of my new novel!
Available on amazon.com in print and as eBook.

I could say the story started with a photograph I saw: a beekeeper smiling, head absolutely covered in bees. I remember reading the caption and learning that bees can sense fear. The man was unafraid.

Or the story started while spending the winter of 2003 studying fear and love in a theological commune high in the Swiss Alps.

Or maybe while ghostwriting later that summer on the Costa Brava in Spain, hearing a friend tell me, in her French accent, about the last beekeeping barge on the Canal du Midi in France.

I began to think of a story—a story about overcoming fear.  The main character would be deathly afraid of bees . . . and would end up face to face with far more than potential anaphylaxis.  And so, when a photo, a study, and a story came together, The Honeylicker Angel was born.

I began this novel in my mid-twenties, at the “quarter-life crisis” of establishing my identity. I worked on the novel off and on over the last decade. It has travelled through various geographical continents and continents of the heart. Seven years ago, it plumped up to 80,000 words after another Swiss winter, and then it slimmed to 50,000 after a couple of years on a tropical island.

And really, stories about fear and love have been around since time began. This particular one just happens to take place in the douce France—gentle France. It is a douce story of sweetess and light—an “Everywoman’s” story, as told by the protagonist, Melissa.

I wrote The Honeylicker Angel especially for women who are navigating their destiny. May there be lovely surprises along the journey.

O taste and see. . . .