A simple-minded woman, totally dominated by her husband, Hattie Raines emerges in Relentless as a central, albeit flawed character. She is pivotal to the plot. Were she not exactly who she is the story could not have proceeded as it did. Although she appears to be a rather dull, unimportant character she is exactly the opposite. Because of her conflict-avoidant nature she fails to protect her child which is central to our heroine’s decisions; and because of her naiveté, Hattie is manipulated into the dangerous role of killer’s secret-keeper. Hattie is first and foremost Earl’s wife and he rules his family with an iron fist. Accommodating to him is her life-long pattern and to maintain that pattern she is determinedly narrow in her focus. Uneducated and removed from the world around her, Hattie persists in maintaining fixed, rigid ideas about herself and the people in her life only questioning her perceptions at the very end.

In some ways, Hattie Raines represents ‘every-woman.’ She embodies the plight facing many women in the world today, those who are bound by culture, religion, economics or tradition, who are dominated and controlled by their husbands or fathers, who are rigidly role-bound and unable to see beyond the constraints of everyday life. As I wrote about her, I saw a woman caught up in moral dilemmas she didn’t even notice. And I think had she but seen one of these issues, had she but recognized one place where she could change, she could have turned the whole situation around. Earl knew that, most dominators/abusers do. They keep their women hidden away from other people, away from institutions of learning, away from books, newspapers, TV. Anything other than ‘their way’ is regarded as a threat to the status quo and the status quo is what preserves their power so it must be maintained at all cost.

If we look at Relentless from this angle, Hattie and Earl Raines represent flaws inherent in the human condition but they also highlight the importance continuing growth, learning and expanding beyond the boundaries of yesterday.

I am often struck by what appear to be coincidences between what I’m writing and what is actual and real. For example in Razor’s Edge I was writing about a place where a certain object was manufactured without knowing a) if such an object even existed and b) where in the US it might be manufactured. As I was writing fiction, I described the object and randomly selected a city where that object was manufactured. Several days later I was ‘Googling’ and decided to see if this object indeed existed and lo and behold it does exist and it is indeed manufactured in the exact city I had selected!  In writing Seeing Double, I had a similar instance where in I randomly described a doomsday scenario, its location and specific locations in different countries that were involved. About a week later I ran across a CNN piece paralleling what I had described in my novel, including international responses that paralleled the novel. Scary?
While it can be thrilling when these coincidences occur it is also a bit weird. It feels a bit ‘para-psychological,’ a bit ‘whooo-whoo,’ but those feelings don’t make the fact of these experiences any less real. Sure there could be other explanations like ‘I read something about it somewhere’ but that’s not the reality. The best I can come up with is coincidence, luck or fluke but none of these words quite capture the experience.  It’s more like ‘a gypsy fortune teller’ saying ‘you will meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger,’ and you run into Ian Somerhalder at Starbucks and you’re the fortune teller!  Perhaps it’s telepathy though I don’t consider myself to be telepathic  and yet those who are might say that we all have the inherent capacity to be telepathic but are socialized to spurn those ideas/abilities. We are trained as children to be more reality and fact-oriented, to develop practical skills. Children are naturally more fantasy-oriented, their unformed minds are imaginative and creative. Perhaps the coincidences that I’m describing occur when my mind is in that free flowing state. When I’m typing without regard for hard core facts;  I’m just ‘in the moment’ with my fingers on the keyboard. It occurs at those times when the words just flow and ideas accumulate forming and reforming like so many clouds moving with the wind.