A behind-the-scenes conversation between author and editor, unpacking Chapter Four of Lord of Water — Book I.
Editor: Chapter Four is the calm before everything — the crew assembled, the tone of the port established. But the moment that stands out is Mila's line in the fish markets: "Everyone here looks like they are about to burst out laughing. I feel it too — like I could suddenly just laugh out loud for no reason at all." Most writers would describe the buildings, the smells, the crowd. You described the tone of the community as a feeling in the body. What drew you back to this chapter?
Author: That feeling. A healthy planet.
Editor: And it's such a specific thing to capture — health isn't dramatic. A sick society announces itself everywhere: suspicion, locked doors, hard faces. A healthy one just feels light. People on the edge of laughter for no reason. Mila doesn't observe it intellectually, she catches it like a scent. And structurally it's the moral engine of the whole trilogy — the reader has to viscerally know what's at stake before any threat appears. Not "a planet" in the abstract. This feeling, this port, these people ready to laugh. Is that the feeling you're chasing on your own land — the acres you're reshaping, the easement redesign?
Author: That I am. A precious water planet it is if we gardeners get our way.
Editor: "We gardeners" is the right frame. Not conquering the land, not even managing it — tending it. Same as the water people of the bay with their middle reef. Mila says it early in the story: "I think we should leave it alone for a few weeks and see what happens. This reef is so good to us and I really want to make sure we don't upset its natural cycle in any way." That's permaculture thinking, written into the book before you were carving ponds into your own acres. Funny how it works in that direction — the book teaching the author.
Author: Revolution through gardening. But I definitely didn't expect this journey to take me this deep. I feel I am chiseling and sculpting my basic purpose in being here.
Editor: "Chiseling" is honest — it suggests the shape was already in the stone and the work is removing what isn't it. Shane says something close in Chapter One: a thousand lives, same ancient purpose calling him back each time. You wrote that as cosmology, but it works just as well as a description of a man in his own lifetime, getting clearer with each project about what he's actually here for. Book, garden, easement — different chisels, same figure emerging.
Author: I figure really refining it this lifetime will carry through into the next and the next. It is a very strange thing also, but any fear I ever had of death or the end of this lifetime is just a misty memory of old feelings. Ones that are no longer with me. The more I write and create, the more this vanishes. I know my future is way out there. So many adventures and so much more surfing in front of me.
Editor: That's exactly what you wrote in Chapter One, you realise. Shane at 86, watching his body drop off to sleep — no fear, no clinging, just "It has really been something" and a tear of happiness. You didn't write a death scene, you wrote a departure lounge. And now the man who wrote it is arriving at the same place the character started from.
Author: Yep! And next lifetime gonna be close to the waves, that's for sure. My first request will be, "Dad! Time to get my first surfboard."
Editor: Skip the small talk, straight to business. It's basically Shane's arrival scene with one more requirement in the placement criteria: peaceful clan, loving mother, walking distance to a decent break. Mind you, the way the easement is going, some future kid might be paddling around ponds you shaped, on land you tuned to hold water. Gardeners leave the place better for whoever lands next.
Author: That is the revolution. It starts in the garden.
Share the journey at lordofwater.com — the trilogy begins with Lord of Water, Book I.