I've been hit by lightning!

What happened? One minute I am sitting at my computer writing about diversity and discrimination in education; the next minute I am sketching an image from my head, a book title and scrawling a summary for seven chapters.

If ever I felt like a lightning bolt had just hit me, then this was it! And the experience is as close as I want to come to the real thing. It was fast, furious and full of energy. Thankfully I have no burn marks on my body to record the exit point of the energy; however, I am left to hold a folded piece of A4 paper that is marked by a brown coloured sketch and two pages of my distinct scrawl. A time estimate you ask? Mmmmm, I would say no more than a minute. Wow! Were it not for that piece of folded paper, I would not have believed it.

The question I am asking myself now though, several hours later, is ... do I have the outline for my first book?

Dare I believe it has finally hit me? I have been dreaming about writing a book for so long now; I think I have been close, but not this close! The image of the front cover came to me two days ago, but I didn't know what it meant AND I didn't sketch it. This time, however, I followed my instinct; I picked up the nearest pen (a brown texta), folded a piece of paper in half and began to draw. There was no time to process anything! It simply flowed onto the paper seemingly without my guidance or a conscious thought.

As I sit here now, I still feel a sense of disbelief. Yet here it is in front of me. Abandoned. A soldier stands with his back to us, he is in silhouette, his head hangs down slightly and you sense his feeling of disbelief at being left behind. The sun is setting on the horizon of the desert, a desert of sand dunes in the North of Africa ... Why is he there? Why is he alone? Who abandoned him? What happens to him?

Luckily, I know the answers to these questions. They came like a lightning bolt from somewhere unknown, yet I now realise this story has been simmering quietly in the back on my mind over the last four years. My deeply personal journey is now bearing fruit, unexpected fruit.

Of course, I will dedicate the book to my Father. ❤❤❤