If there's something about my writing process that few people know, it is that I don't write linearly. I won't always start with Chapter 1, followed by 2, then 3, and so on. I write scenes based on characters when they speak to me. Yup, they actually speak to me. So yesterday, I wrote a scene that's the start of the rescue of Diwa from the clutches of Cayetano. Ron talks Fritzso into tagging along to help him with this crazy-assed mission, and his Irish bro is none too happy.
Ron
DECEMBER 2014
EN ROUTE TO THE PHILIPPINES
_________________________________________________
In Fritzso’s book, I did what might be the most forbidden thing two bro friends could do, and I couldn’t help but add some levity to our mission.
He stares at me agape—yep, that weird word that could only describe Fritzso’s stupefaction on why the hell I extended a pinky finger toward him across the aisle of the plane while in flight to Manila offering—no, daring him—to hook his in mine.
“What the almighty fuck is that?” I didn’t have to look at him to know he was glaring, his mouth hanging to his chin and he was breathing so much fire I could feel the heat from where I was sitting. I was smiling slightly. Or maybe I was smirking.
So I turn to face him slowly. Dramatically. With a goofy smile like I’m in love with him, I say, “Yubikiri.”
He slaps his hand away from me. Hard.
“Ow,” I cry in my best girly wimpy voice, cringing and waving my hand in feigned pain.
“I know what the fuck yubikiri is, but seriously, dude? We are not two ten-year-old girls in middle school.”
“But you mean so much to me, Fritzso,” I say, batting my eyelashes.
“Keep it up and I will disembark in Manila and get on the next flight back to Hawaii and leave you to your ridiculous James Bond rescue mission.”
God, he looks so serious.
“And that will be the end of our friendship. I don’t care how much I owe you for getting me a dream job in Hawaii.”
Intruders—three of them—dressed in black like graceful ninja warriors, their faces masked by the sheen of used ladies’ stockings, slipped inside her home. Security was breached in this gated community with paid guards at the entrance who were bribed with rolls of cash. The two German shepherds who kept watch were poisoned, a tortuous death of fresh ground meat laced with antifreeze. They watched the tortured animals writhe in pain before the light went out of their eyes. With a tap on a cell phone, the camera feeds stuttered and died, and the motion alarms went quiet.
Just as the sun peeked above the Pacific Ocean, a scream would be heard in Forbes Park, inside the compound of this neighborhood of tightly guarded mansions on the outskirts of Manila, juxtaposed by the poverty and squalor of the city limits.
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Updated: Jan 3
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Linked only by an 18th-century ancestor, siblings gifted with mystical foresight must find each other across time to stop a ruthless dictator determined to destroy them and erase the legacy of their gifts.
She was born with a mole near her right iris, so close it seemed to merge with the green of her eye. The Ati elders called her binukot—the chosen one. To them, she was the living embodiment of Dalikamata, the Goddess of a Thousand Eyes. Like the goddess, she could see what others could not: the past and present, near and far. Diwa Bandera was more than a symbol of their ancient heritage—she was their hope for survival. But when her family’s sanctuary in Manila is shattered by violence under a ruthless dictator, Diwa is forced into hiding among the Ati in the mountains of Panay.
Ron MacKenzie Mitchell has always been haunted by his second sight, the mystical An Da Shealladh that connects him to realms beyond the ordinary. When a vision reveals a young woman in grave danger, Ron embarks on a search for answers that upends everything he thought he knew about himself as a third-generation Scottish-American. Through his visions and ancestral research, Ron discovers his bloodline traces back to a shipwrecked Highlander and an Ati healer, whose union began a legacy that connects him to Diwa. She isn’t just a distant cousin—she is the missing link that ties their stories together.
For Diwa, the stakes couldn’t be higher. She must decide: stay to protect her people and their sacred heritage or journey to America with Ron, where her visions promise true love and the uniting of two worlds. Together, Diwa and Ron must unravel their shared destiny and wield their ancestral gifts to stop those who would destroy everything their bloodline has fought to protect.
