BAYHAND

Authors note

When I began writing Bayhand, I did not know it would take me into the deepest waters of my imagination and into the quietest corners of my heart. I did not know that a single word — one that came to me on a sleepless night, half-remembered and half-dreamed — would become a world of its own. Bayhand began as a whisper, a feeling, a question that would not let me go: What happens to the places and people that time forgets, but memory refuses to release?

For a long time, I carried that question silently. It grew inside me like a tide, pulling at my thoughts. I have always been fascinated by the unseen — by the stories that linger just beyond what we can name. The sea, to me, has always been the greatest metaphor for the human spirit: vast, uncharted, beautiful, and cruel. When I thought of Bayhand, I imagined a city swallowed by mist, untouched by history, hidden away not by accident but by choice. I saw a place where memory and truth are no longer separate, where those who seek answers must confront not only the unknown but themselves.

In every story I’ve ever written, there is a quiet yearning — a search for something that feels lost. Bayhand became that search made visible. Through Liora, my protagonist, I found a mirror for my own restlessness. She is a historian, a seeker, a believer in the power of knowledge and discovery. Yet what she finds in Bayhand is not what she expected — it is something older, sadder, and infinitely more human. Writing her journey forced me to reflect on the ways we chase the past, not always to understand it, but to heal from it.

I wrote Bayhand during a period of my life when I felt adrift. The world outside seemed loud and uncertain; everything I thought I understood about purpose and belonging was shifting beneath my feet. I would often sit by the window at night, listening to the hum of distant rain, imagining the ocean’s voice calling from somewhere unseen. Those nights became my refuge. I wrote not to escape reality, but to reshape it — to build a world where loss had meaning and silence spoke.

The name Bayhand itself carries a strange rhythm — something both soft and heavy. To me, it felt like a hand reaching out from the bay, offering both comfort and warning. It is a place that holds, that remembers, that refuses to let go. In the story, it became a city suspended between life and legend, where time folds over itself and the sea writes history in waves. But on a more personal level, Bayhand became a symbol of the inner landscapes we all carry — the hidden shores of memory that define who we are.

Every writer knows that their characters are born from pieces of their own soul. Liora, the historian; the old fisherman who warns her; the whispering sea that lures her deeper — they are all parts of me, fragments of thought and emotion I did not know how to name. Through them, I learned to listen. I learned that sometimes, what we call imagination is simply the memory of something deeper than experience — the echo of truths we have not yet lived.

The process of writing Bayhand was not easy. There were days I doubted every word, nights I stared at the page for hours, feeling as though the story was slipping away from me. But then there were moments of pure clarity, when everything fell into place, when the city of Bayhand rose vividly in my mind — its mist, its towers, its silent streets glowing like they had been waiting for centuries to be seen. In those moments, I understood what every writer longs to know: that creation is both discovery and surrender.

Many readers have asked me whether Bayhand is real — whether such a place could exist. My answer is simple: it does. It exists in the space between memory and imagination, in every heart that has ever longed for something lost. We all have our own Bayhands — places within us where forgotten things live, waiting to be remembered. Writing this novel was my way of returning to mine.

I wrote Bayhand to honor silence. To remind myself — and anyone who reads it — that what is forgotten is never truly gone. History is not only written in books and records; it is carved into the very essence of who we are. Our stories, our pain, our love — they ripple outward like waves, touching everything even when unseen. I wanted to give form to that invisible continuity, to the way the past haunts the present not out of malice, but because it longs to be understood.

There is a sadness in Bayhand, but also a strange beauty. The city’s mystery is not only about loss; it is about endurance. It endures in the way human memory endures — fragile, flawed, but persistent. It survives through retelling, through belief, through those who are willing to seek it even when reason warns them not to. That, I think, is the essence of faith — not in religion, but in meaning.

When I finally wrote the last line of Bayhand, I cried. Not because the story ended, but because I felt I had said something I’d been trying to say all my life. The act of writing had changed me. It had taught me patience, vulnerability, and humility before mystery. I learned that we do not write to explain the world; we write to feel its weight more deeply.

If you are reading this, I want to thank you — not only for entering Liora’s world, but for carrying a piece of Bayhand with you. Every reader completes the story in their own way. Perhaps, as you turn the pages, you will see reflections of your own life — your own search, your own questions. Perhaps you, too, will hear the call of the sea, soft and insistent, reminding you that nothing truly disappears.

Bayhand is, at its heart, a letter to the forgotten. It is a story about listening — to silence, to memory, to the parts of ourselves that the world teaches us to ignore. It is about courage, not the loud kind that wins battles, but the quiet one that dares to remember.

I hope this story finds you when you need it most — perhaps in a moment of stillness, or in a storm. I hope it reminds you that mystery is not something to be feared, but to be embraced. And I hope, above all, that it teaches you what it taught me: that sometimes the places we think we are searching for are not out there, across the horizon, but within us — waiting, like Bayhand, to be found.