![\"Mystery](\"https:\/\/sduptownnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/hon.jpg\" "\\"hon\\"")
<\/a>Hon, 55, moved to North Park 22 years ago when she married her husband, Steve, who was already in the house where they live today. Her interest in the neighborhood, her research into the history of her house and her involvement as a founding member of the North Park Historical Society all contributed to the book on which she has been working for the past six years. She even included a plug for her favorite restaurant, Urban Solace.<\/p>\n
The several plots all concern Catlin Davis, an anthropologist who writes environmental impact reports for a living and lives in an inherited cottage with her Labradoodle, Packard. She is engaged to be married, but as readers will figure out before she does, the relationship with John, her fianc\u00e9, goes way beyond abusive. Meanwhile, her street is being torn up for a sewer-replacement project, and she is becoming friends with the foreman who oversees the job.<\/p>\n
The mystery at the heart of the story concerns Catlin\u2019s fascination with research into the life of a Denver prostitute during the late 1800’s. A historical account, a book of the woman\u2019s missives, a yellowed packet of letters bequeathed to Catlin by her grandmother and a diary all make for tastefully juicy reading. The action moves from the present to the past and back as Catlin\u2019s studies and dreams evoke the Wild West and the \u201csoiled doves\u201d who played a role in the country\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
Hon says that while these chapters may be the most fun to read, the parts she hopes will be remembered are those that deal with Catlin\u2019s relationship with John.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted this book to be really fun,\u201d she said in an interview, \u201cbut if there was a theme that I hope book groups would discuss it would be abusive relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite this aspect, her book is definitely not \u201cchick lit.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope it is a book that has general appeal,\u201d she said, \u201cand a lot of men have enjoyed it. They like the bad guys and body counts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of Hon\u2019s personal philosophies, including reincarnation, also play a part in what she has written.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I believe personally is that it\u2019s very consistent with the concept of a soul,\u201d she said. \u201cOur essence goes on through time because it\u2019s hard to learn all the lessons we need to know in one lifetime. I think we get the chance to keep learning.\u201d<\/p>\n
To test the theory she once underwent hypnotic regression, during which she saw herself as a farm girl taking a train west to become a schoolteacher and a scullery maid in a castle trying to learn to read so she could become a governess.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if you\u2019re really tapping into something or just telling stories about yourself that you feel inform your personality,\u201d she said, looking back on the experience. \u201cBut I was always reaching for the light, always trying to do better. I love that theme.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hon\u2019s \u201cday job\u201d is working for her own company, Hon Consulting Inc., as an engineer. The work she typically does is much like Catlin\u2019s, and she found writing fiction a pleasant departure.<\/p>\n
\u201cI write environmental impact reports that have a structure \u2013 noise, traffic, air quality, biology \u2013 all in a specific order to satisfy the California Environmental Quality Act,\u201d she said. \u201cSo it was a lot of fun to write dialogue and action and have people get angry and be sad and fall in love.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also liked working non-linearly, writing the last chapter first and taking the manuscript with her on vacations to see what inspired her.<\/p>\n
Other parts of her life besides her job appear in the book, too. The men doing the sewer project are modeled after the ones who once worked on her street, and her dogs, Bosco and Shelby, turn up at the park where Catlin goes for a walk. She confesses that she cried while she wrote the scenes where Packard goes through a rough patch, remembering her own dog, Reebok, who had served as the model for the fictional one.<\/p>\n
Once the book was finished, she decided to produce it herself rather than spend the time it would have taken to find an agent and try for a major publisher. The novel is dedicated to \u201cMary Savage, my irrepressible mother,\u201d who now lives in an assisted-living facility, and Hon\u2019s goal was for her mother to see the finished product.<\/p>\n
She had some knowledge of self-publishing gleaned from her earlier work on \u201cNorth Park: A San Diego Urban Village\u201d with the historical society. Photographer Roni Galgano and graphic designer Ellen Goodwin, who helped with the cover, are also North Park residents.<\/p>\n
The book\u2019s title comes from a sculpture of the same name by Hon\u2019s friend and fellow North Park resident Brad Burkhart. Hon says as the story emerged, her process was very much like his.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was like I was a sculptor finding the piece within the rock and exposing it \u2013 not creating,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Along the way Hon throws in enough twists and turns to keep readers guessing about what will happen until the surprising end. But here\u2019s a clue:<\/p>\n
\u201cI think happy endings are important,\u201d she said. \u201cI like it when good guys win and good things happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cComing of Age Song\u201d is available at Vintage Religion, 3821 32nd St.; The Grove, 3010 Juniper Street; Nina\u2019s Books, 6165 El Cajon Blvd.; and online at www.amazon.com.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Book Review By Glenda Winders Katherine Hon bills her first novel, \u201cComing of Age Song,\u201d as a \u201chistory, mystery, romance,\u201d but even that description doesn\u2019t tell the whole story of this exhilarating romp of a tale. It\u2019s also a thriller, a philosophical treatise and a study of difficult relationships. Best of all for local readers, […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":243207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Mystery novel takes place in North Park","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}