Is a writer still writing while trying to figure out Substack, Threads, Bluesky, Bookstagram, and BookTok?

My soul says no.

But my dopamine-crazed brain says, “No mo’ FOMO! LFG FTW!” And then goes looking for the emoji button.

Read The Kikiloa Chronicles for free!

A philosophical time-travel epic with a mischievous and lyrical heart, perfect for readers who love the ambition of Cloud Atlas and the mythic voice of Circe, and always wished for a grown-up, philosophical A Wrinkle in Time.

kikiloachronicles.substack.com

Paha brought me here to witness a turning point, the transformation of surfing from prone to standing, when an extra-large swell arrived at sunset.

The shore teemed with wise kupuna talking story in the shade, little keiki splashing under the loving eyes of their makuahine, and crowds of humble maka'āinana bobbing in the surf between the dark lines of their wooden boards.

I whooped as a wave crested. The entire lineup rode lying prone.

It was a landscape of transformation, of cooled lava flows, fracturing cliffs, rushing water, swirling wind, rioting plants.

Yet the vastness stilled the scene. Peaceful and quiet. Eternal.

With a tack of our canoe, movement returned to my world...

...a meditation on Hawai'i's origins and human individuation, a cat, clever teenage banter, philosophizing, thrifting as a battle with entropy, an archetypal dream, , love as physics of life, and relatively few Oxford commas.

Not much romance. Not really YA.

#literaryfiction #philosophicalfiction

Genre? Maybe: contemporary-metaphysical-literary-time-travel-epic?*

Just sent it to my dev editor this week. 😬🤞🤙

*FYI, the book includes Kiki as unreliable jester-narrator, a forever-coming-of-age arc, prehistoric trauma, cookie baking, wildfire, time surfing, tsunami surfing, a sniper, glitter...

I’m looking for people who love the ambition of Cloud Atlas and the mythic voice of Circe, and who've always wished for a grown-up A Wrinkle in Time.

I wrote The Kikiloa Chronicles for you (okay, for me, and for you). Actually, Kiki wrote it. She's Mitochondrial Eve, the mother of us all.

With another tack of our canoe, movement returned to my world. Even after a thousand visits, that place still steals my breath.

But that first time? That one most of all.

It was a landscape of transformation, of cooled lava flows, fracturing cliffs, rushing water, swirling wind, rioting plants.

Yet the vastness stilled the scene. Peaceful and quiet. Eternal.

I’m connected across more of my selves and a longer span of time than all we will ever be.

With a flicker, I can find you in any moment. And perhaps I found the girl who can save everything.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you what I’ve seen.

My life has since multiplied beyond reckoning.

I am Kikiloa.

I am the harbinger of humanity, ancient yet not atavistic. I forespoke your future, and you echo my past. We share our genes. We share our deepest dreams.

With a flicker, I can find you in any moment… perhaps I found the girl who can save everything.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you what I’ve seen.

We share our genes. We share our deepest dreams.

I’m connected across more of my selves and a longer span of time than all we will ever be.

My life has since multiplied beyond reckoning.

I am Kikiloa.

I am the harbinger of humanity, ancient yet not atavistic. I forespoke your future, and you echo my past.

With age, my freckles multiplied, darkening my skin into a mottled tapestry.

Despite time’s weathering, I can still find each daughter in those scattered marks, an alphabet of memory.

None of my daughters resembled me until my thirtieth and last. She was the child of my only lover, the forbidden lover my father killed too late…

The weight of her lifeless body broke the scales of my grief and freed me.

I remembered them by the dark freckles scattered across the backs of my hands.

I’ve since learned to count and know they were twenty-nine daughters by twenty-nine men.

<at the end of time>

I was enslaved after the fire.

I birthed only daughters, more than I could track on my fingers and toes.