About MLE:

Of course Eqatin is a pen name, nobody in the world is named Eqatin (rhymes with misbegotten). It’s a joke. Part of it is that I’ve gone by MLE all my life. I’ve also been a storyteller all my life; I love to entertain listeners with funny people-and-critter stories, intriguing factoids and unexpected connections, to make people laugh, cry and maybe even think a bit.

My novels don’t go to future worlds to re-invent the wheel; they travel back to tell the stories of how it was invented in the lands of our own world—along with a yarn about the ox who pulled it. And from peasants to pirates, the most pivotal stories are mined from the years so many societies were reborn as history became global–1450 to 1650.

Being a skeptic, I always have to check the sources of the stories I hear, including the who and why of the teller. If you are reading this, we must have that in common. So you may as well know up front that I’m over fifty. Which means I can relate to those of all the ages backwards from the big five-o, because I went through them. And I remember it well, too. Or too well. Something like that.

I’ve been married to J for nearly forever, or long enough to get two stepkids and three mutual offspring to a questionable state of maturity. The poor man has to listen to my every plot and sub-plot in at least four versions. (He suffers so innocent readers don’t have to.) J is possessed of an extremely sensitive dull-detector, delights in poking the story fabric to see if it will develop a plot hole, and screens every male character for believability. J quote: “A normal guy wouldn’t say that!”

We met in the US Coast Guard, which J joined to stay out of ‘Nam and I to pay off student loans. Also for the GI bill, but babies burped all over my academic ambitions. Alas, my hard-earned government grant only produced a professional student. I have enough completed college units to stretch from Spokane to Boise if placed end-to-end, spread over too many subjects for a degree. (I did come within 3 units of a BS in Social Sciences, pre-Coast Guard, but since then research has proved that most of what I was taught is wrong. Fortunately for my sanity, I figured that out myself and switched to more concrete subjects.)

Everybody in my family enjoys animals: dogs, cats, birds, rodents, rabbits, goats, ferrets, donkeys, you name it, we’ve had it. (OK, that’s a little broad. We’ve never had a puma or an elephant, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t wanted one!) I fell in love with horses while working at a boarding facility in college, but since equines and kids could not both fit into our pea-pod budget, we discovered llamas.

In the 80’s llamas suddenly became llucrative. And then they weren’t. Which doesn’t affect the pleasure our special livestock give us. More than anything else, my little camels have taught me to be humble. We’ve been involved with llamas for over a quarter-century now, including breeding, training, outfitting, and speaking.

What usually interests people most about us is the seven years our house served as a live-in transition home for women and children. We are still trying to figure out how this happened, but think it has something to do with too many teeny bedrooms and a high tolerance for people. Either that, or we are deranged, an equally strong possibility. In any case, it was an education far more potent than any to be had in school. Things we learned are reflected in my stories. Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

In order to balance the craziness at home during those busy years, we frequently packed up our kids and their llamas and took off to the wilderness. This was counter-productive, since a gaggle of friends and llama customers usually came along. But it did prove the maxim, ‘a change is as good as a rest.’ After a week without, a hot shower is better than either.

Eventually all things come to an end. A local women’s shelter we support finally got their own transition program launched, the boys and girls flew the nest and J got cumulative estrogen poisoning. So now the spare rooms are occupied by international scientists doing stints at the local research facility. As they are all male and fluent in geek-speak, J is recovering well.

With this new phase, we find our concerns going further afield—to the ends of the earth. Besides our current and former guests, we have many friends involved in relief work in various corners of the globe. The exposure to so many different faiths and ethnicities has made us acutely aware that although people have the same longings the world over, in many places life is little changed from what it was in the sixteenth century. And at last, I have the time to write my stories down.

Thank you for the privilege of entertaining you.