In creating this background for Molly, I was establishing early in her life the conflict that would compel her throughout her adult years: intellect vs faith. In the early 1990s I read an article in the Boston Globe in which a high ranking member of the Church stated he could deny someone access to God if they belonged to an organization he disapproved of. What he meant was, he could deny a member of the Church the rites, rituals, and sacraments of her faith if she were pro-choice.

Some would assert that, if you want to be a member of an established faith, you should be willing to follow all of its rules. I believe that faith is an individual matter, that each of us not only has the right to believe something that is unique to us, but automatically does so. No two Catholics believe or wroship exactly the same way because they are different people with different needs. Maybe subtly different, but different nevertheless. In my mind there is no one right religion to the exclusion of all others. No one person or group of people has the rulebook on how God expects us to worship.

Molly O'Dwyer is a scientist, a passionate believer in the truth. But she is also a loyal observant Catholic. In HUNTING THE KING and its predecessor TRACES OF A LIFE Molly searches for ways to for her intellect and her faith to coexist. One can only hope that we are all able to do that. The alternative is what we are seeing all artound the world today.

Let's start from the beginning. My novel-to-be, HUNTING THE KING, is about an archaeologist. She likes to go digging in the far past. You would have to go almost as far back as she does in her hunt for the king to find the roots of my writing career. And, trust me, the dirt and dust are just as deep.

I don't know what led me into writing. I had no interest in high school or college. For that matter, I didn't really become a reader until college, anything to escape studying, learning. No direction whatsoever. Then after reading one of my father's books, a Heinlein, I got into science fiction. Asimov. Bradbury. Farmer. Anything I could get my hands on. But still I didn't have the slightest inkling I would become a writer. In fact, approaching graduation, I didn't have any career in mind. I'd just graduate and see how things developed. As it turned out, they developed into my cleaning toilets at a Boston hotel. And that's only because I had a contact. Thanks for the brush. So much for the alumnae association.

But I had begun to write. After taking my last college exam, I sat down without any idea what I was doing and wrote a sci-fi novel called THE THIRD WORLD. Without going into the gory details, it was my first stab at trying to entertain and be political at the same time. Book went nowhere, and over the years neither did anything else.

I did manage to pick up agents on the way. The first turned out many years later to be considered one of the worst agents in America. She lives in New Jersey. I won't give out her name. But she gave me hope at the time because she was sending the manuscript out to publishing houses and getting responses. (Death threats, dried spit, loud laughter). I got an agent in California, too. That was in my screenplay phase when I figured it would be easier to hit the screen before I made it to the bookshelves. This agent was earnest (another contact gave me her name), but she quit after a month. Next I got an agent from Arkansas. Now, shouldn't I have been a little wary about signing a contract with an agent from Cow Bottom, Arkansas? Well, yes. Was I? No. I was desperate, and she thought the book I sent her was the best she had ever read. I was sold. But the book wasn't. She tried but also quit out of frustration. Perhaps I should have sensed this relationship wasn't working out when she told me her husband was trying to institutionalize her. But at least she survived representing me. Others have died moments after saying something nice about my work. It got so bad I figured that if an agent ever did succeed on my behalf I wouln't be caught dead riding with them in a car. They wouldn't make it alive to our appointment. Then finally, not too many years ago, I got a New York agent. (Through yet another contact. The only thing I want to get out of a contact from now on is leprosy.) This agent was truly legit, representing the prequel to HUNTING. But she, too, became so frustrated by the response she was getting from publishing houses that she quit. She will only represent non-fiction from now on. So, there I was dangling again in the midst of writing HUNTING with no one to represent it.

After many months of doing the same thing all other wannabe writers do, sending out scores of letters to agents and getting nothing back of any interest, I went onto a website called firstwriter. I decided the hell with agents, I'm going directly to publishing houses. To hell with America, I'm going to cast my net everywhere. Checking out publishing houses in Canada, I found Kunati Books. They wanted innovative, controversial page-turners, and I thought I had just the book they were looking for. And, by God, they were.

I suppose all of you, during the years, you were trying and getting rejected, imagined what it would be like to finally get that call, letter, email that said, 'Congratulations We want you.' I had decades of dreaming that. I had a good friend Jennifer, who was my boss for thirteen years. We used to kid each other about our mutual failings in life. I pictured some day that I would hear the good word while at work. I'd leap up from my desk, run into her office, shouting, "I did it, Jennifer! I did it!" But that time never came. Until Kunati came along much later and stunned me one regular not-out-of-the-ordinary Thursday ( August 8, 2007, I'll never forget and have saved the email) when Derek Armstrong emailed me saying he wanted to extend an offer. I can't tell you how I felt at that moment after all those years and all that wasted hope. I couldn't believe it because I truly came to believe that that moment of exultation would never come, that I would ride off into the eternal sunset never having accomplished anything, never having achieved my heart's deepest longing.

Now I want to be able to leap up from my desk and run into Jennifer's office and shout to her. But I can't for several reasons. One, I was fired at the old job. (Got my new job via a, you guessed it, contact). And two, Jennifer passed away two years ago in the prime of her life. So, this is for you, Jennifer.

If there is a life after death, a transmigration of souls, a heaven or anything like that... if you can read what I am writing today, watch me at the keyborad, or read my thoughts, Jennifer, "I did it!!!"

Thank you, Kunati.