My name is Delta Charles, or at least that’s the name I go by as a writer for privacy and security reasons both for me and those who, in one way or another, are part of the stories I write. Even though A Time in Awakening is my first novel, I can affirm without a doubt that I’ve been a storyteller my whole life. From campfires with a bunch of summer camp kids to bonfires and a couple of beers in remote deserts, jungles, and villages downrange with fellow operators—and, most recently, the challenging and most times spine-chilling white space of a blank page, I had loved and still love every aspect of the craft.

I started writing these first pages in a rather small but cozy apartment with a view of the nearby ocean—so near, some would say, that a guy with a strong enough arm could throw a baseball in the summer and hit the lifeguard in the head—in a seaside town at the eastern shore of South America. That is the place I’ve chosen to settle in after decades of endless relocations and deployments all over the world.

It would be accurate to say that my life, especially after I turned thirty-three, has been quite a journey in many ways. I have tried, lived through, learned, adapted to, and overcame many things since then, and while my interests, beliefs, and intentions have changed back and forth, transformed and evolved in a diverse and seemingly erratic way, I’m convinced that there was an invisible line there, charting a specific course, connecting everything together from the very beginning.

I know this line is still active and spreading out right under my feet at this very moment, leading me towards a destination of which sometimes I am aware, some other times I’m even an involved accomplice, and at some points, I am neither one nor the other. And although I have often felt dragged and swept away by it, that line is mine; I created it—who knows when or where—and I am still creating it; perhaps for some high purpose and from some even higher state of consciousness, whatever that might be.