Written by W.L. Hawkin
Thank you for the opportunity to read from my romantic suspense novel on Readers Intrigue. Reading aloud to my students was one of my favorite things to do when I taught high school English. Here’s a little more about the making of LURE.
I wrote the first draft of Jesse and Hawk’s story thirty years ago when I lived in rural Ontario. I was something of a wild child and quit high school with only grade ten. In my mid-thirties, I felt the need to graduate, so returned to high school by registering for one correspondence course at a time. Along the way, I enrolled in a course called Native Ancestry that changed my life.
One night, I was sitting at my kitchen table reading the chapter on Animism—the belief that all beings, be they rocks, trees, deserts, fish, or winds, are alive with spiritual force—when I realized I knew this. I totally resonate with this. That epiphany set me on a new path. I’d just started my B.A. in Indigenous Studies at Trent University when I wrote the story of Jesse and Hawk. I was reading books by Anishinaabe (Ojibwa) storytellers; learning with traditional teachers and Elders; going to powwows and feasts; attending ceremonies; and soaking up a culture I resonated with. Then one day, my seventy-five-year-old mother casually said, “I’m not surprised you’re into this. My great-grandfather married an Indian. She was Tuscarora, and he was Dutch.” I don’t know if there’s such a thing as ancestral memory, but perhaps my mother was right. While researching my ancestry, I connected with a previously unknown line of the family who confirmed my mother’s story and sent me a tin-type photograph of my Indigenous great-great-grandmother.
I found the manuscript of the thirty-year-old draft, wrapped in brown paper, a few years ago while packing to move. When I read it, I was surprised and intrigued. It was a romance! I started to rewrite it, then Jesse found the bones of a missing Indigenous girl in her shed. Ruby Little Bear started to speak, and the story took off in another direction.
If you’re curious to know more, go to my website: http://bluehavenpress.com or drop me a line at wendy@bluehavenpress.com.
Get the book (affiliate link).
