The Next Big Thing: a novel in progress

“The Aeon is the symbol for the Rise of Phoenix, it stands for a time of insight, the true understanding of the circle of life, of growing and fading.” – Raven’s Tarot Site

When author T. K. Thorne (“Noah’s Wife”) invited me to participate in a “blog chain” that focuses on the working title of our next book, I faced the same problem she did when she sat down to write her post. Which book do I want to talk about? Should I talk about the collection of short stories or my next Glacier Park Fantasy novel in the series that includes “The Sun Singer” and “Sarabande”?

I’ve decided to talk about the novel.

1. What is your working title of your book?  “Aeon”
2. 

   Glacier Park’s Chief Mountain – M. R. Campbell photo

   Where did the idea come from for the book? When I wrote “The Sun Singer,” I knew the book’s Grandfather Elliott character would eventually return to a mirror-image universe (set in another time period) hidden within the mountains of Glacier Park Montana. “The Sun Singer” was his grandson Robert Adams’ story. Now it’s time to tell Tom Elliott’s story.

3. What genre does your book fall under? Contemporary fantasy.
4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? I’ve been waiting for Clint Eastwood to call and say he wants to play Billy, an Indian medicine man, in a movie version of “Sarabande.” So far, nothing. Maybe he’s been waiting for the Tom Elliott role to be ready.  There’s a role for Mila Kunis and another for Angelica Huston.
5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? An aging avatar returns to the land of Pyrrha to fulfill the ancient prophecy, overthrow the evil king and neutralize the traitorous sorcerer, and prepare the land for the arrival of the goddess.
6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? Neither. I will submit the novel to the publisher directly.
7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? I am still working on it.
8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? Although I write contemporary fantasy and Stephen R. Donaldson writes epic fantasy, Tom Elliott’s quest has some similarities to that of Thomas Covenant in Donaldson’s “Chronicles” cycle. Needless to say, “Aeon” can best be compared to “The Sun Singer” and “Sarabande.”
9. Who or what inspired you to write this book? I wrote “The Sun Singer” based, in part, on my own psychic experiences and my love of magic and Glacier National Park. “Aeon” is the logical next step in the cycle. As the title suggests, I also like the meaning behind the trump #20 in the Tarot deck.
10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? The story is going to be a wild ride that begins on a Harley Davidson FXE Superglide Shovelhead. After that, what’s the worst that could possibly happen? Among other things, that means the production company for a movie version will have to spend a truck load of money on special effects.

I’ll keep you posted. By that I mean, don’t call me (unless you’re Clint, Mila, or Angelica), I’ll call you.

Now, for the next installment of THE NEXT BIG THING blog chain during the week of November 26th, check out the blogs of authors Melinda Clayton, L. E. Harvey and Pat Bertram.

–Malcolm

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In darkness is where the bright secrets await you

Click here to learn more about her story.

My 2011 contemporary fantasy Sarabande is a dark story because darkness and growth are essential components of a heroine’s journey.

The hero’s journey has gotten a lot of traction in novels and films. That motif had an excellent leap out of the starting gate when Joseph Campbell published The Hero with a Thousand Faces in 1949. Almost everything out there about mythic heroes stems from that book.

For years, the heroine’s journey was either said not to exist at all (because women were supposed to stay home) or that it was simply a woman following a solar journey like one of King Arthur’s knights on a quest.

While a male protagonist on a traditional hero’s journey faces well-established perils (dragons, Orcs, wizards) and, in the process, undergoes a great many gut-wrenching psychological changes and challenges, the female protagonist’s lunar journey is less widely known. One of the few mainstream feature films brave enough to seriously look at a heroine’s journey was the 2010 production of The Black Swan with Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, and Mila Kunis.

The Black Swan

Unfortunately, many viewers thought it was a horror film on drugs rather than a dramatization of a woman’s inner journey. In a post called Me and My Shadow, I explored the symbolism behind the apparent weirdness: “Black Swan film director Darren Aronofsky blurs reality in the movie by tangling up Nina’s inner battle with her repressed shadow qualities with her literal confrontations with the sensual Lily. By portraying Nina’s battle as literal, the film has many opportunities for dazzling and chilling special effects as well as an exploration of the old folktales about people being tormented by their doubles–or doppelgangers.”

I appreciated the film’s approach because I often approach my own fiction in a way that blurs what’s happening within a character’s mind with what’s happening in the so-called “real world.” My greatest challenge with Sarabande was that of understanding my own title character well enough to not only know how she would think about the darker aspects of a heroine’s journey, but to present those thoughts in a believable fashion to both male and female readers.

Making a Woman’s Story Believable

Before the novel completed its final edits, I asked two female readers if they though my character’s thoughts truly sounded like a woman’s thoughts. I was happy that they thought so. In her Smoking Poet review of Sarabande, editor Zinta Aistars said that while reading the novel, she had to keep reminding herself that it had, in fact, been written by a male author:

“Campbell describes a rape scene that is difficult to read, yet at the same time, earns my respect with his skill in describing this scene, and its aftermath on the woman. Indeed, I had to keep reminding myself I was reading the writing of a male author. It is rare to find this ability in an author to cross genders even in everyday basics such as conversation, mannerisms. To do so in describing the effect of rape on a woman’s body and psyche is nothing short of amazing. Campbell nails it: her anger, her pain, her humiliation, her ferocity that eventually takes her from victim to survivor to avenger.”

As an author, I will never go into those dark places again. For one thing, men do not really belong there. For a fire-sign Leo who almost always writes about and attunes to the light, the darker world of the moon is a rather cruel and unforgiving realm even though everyone who enters that world as survives it, returns with insights that are truly awe inspiring. Nonetheless, my next fantasy novel will be another hero’s journey!

Great Resource!

Frankly, I was much more comfortable writing about Sarabande’s “real world” fight than writing about her thoughts. Goodness knows, I threw everything but the kitchen sink at this character: a mother who wants her to stay at home, a ghost who taunts her every waking moment, an attack on a lonely road, a male friend who doesn’t want to help her, a sister who humiliates her and then tries to kill her, a flock of murderous crows, and an evil wizard who appears to be impossible to defeat. On the other hand, there are plenty of lighter moments:

Throwing Mother in the Lake

“Control yourself, Standing Cat,” said Gem.
In the gathering celestial light, Sarabande saw that Gem had drawn her knife.
“Is this where you wish to die?” asked Sarabande. While her question was well measured, her tone was not.
Standing Cat looked over her shoulder, saw Gem’s raised knife, and screamed.
“Seth, help me. Seth, my daughter has gone mad.” It was scream that could easily curdle milk.
“I’m no daughter of yours,” whispered Sarabande. She grabbed Standing Cat from behind in a fierce hug, one hand firmly over her mouth, the other around her midsection. “Pick up her feet, Gem, will you?”
Standing Cat had more strength hidden away in her seldom-used muscles than Sarabande expected. But it was not enough. The two women lifted her off the ground and wrestled her toward the lake. She was like a fractious house cat resisting a bath. Her teeth tore into Sarabande’s fingers and her finely sharpened finger nails easily slit the damp fabric of Sarabande’s linen dress and drew blood.
Sarabande pulled her hand out of the old woman’s mouth. While she feared she might crack Standing Cat’s ribs, she didn’t care. She squeezed her all the more.
“Seth, help me, it’s murder. Help.”
Her banshee’s scream remained unfinished. She became airborne over Lake Gordon. For a small woman, she created a large splash, unsettling the pristine reflection of the reds and greens of the northern lights that filled the valley from the plains of Pyrrha past the leading edge of the Angel Wing into whatever worlds existed on the far side of the arêtes that formed the Boundary Wall.
Standing Cat sat, mercifully without words, and stared at Sarabande with an expression that was difficult to decipher. Later, she would wonder about it. But for the moment, her mother seemed a bit surprised, somewhat in awe, and wholly ashamed of the tall young lady in the torn white dress.
“On this night, I have blundered,” Sarabande told her. “Look at me here, torn and bleeding. You have told me a thousand times not to fight in my good clothes.”

–Malcolm

“Sarabande” is available in trade paperback, on Kindle and Nook, and in multiple e-book formats on SmashWords

The Dance of Sun and Moon – Stages on the Journey

When the Sun and the Moon are viewed within the arena of Western esoteric traditions, including alchemy and the Tarot, they represent opposites that approach and retreat from each other even though they are destined to be merged into one. In these traditions, the Sun represents fire, masculine, positive (polarity), rational, visible world, and the consciousness mind. The Moon represents water, feminine, negative (polarity), intuition, hidden world, and the unconscious mind.

It is said that the enlightened being, often called The Wonder Child or viewed as the Philosopher’s Stone, is born from the merging of these apparent father/mother, king/queen opposites as depicted in the old art work shown here.

One of the many ways of illustrating the steps on the path to enlightenment, the goal of the hero’s and heroine’s journeys, is through the sequence of Major Arcana (trumps) cards in a Tarot deck. The Major Arcana  cards begin with “0 The Fool,” who is considered the innocent initiate at the beginning of the journey/quest and end with “21 The Universe,” which represents ascension. En route, the seeker finds “18 The Moon” and “19 The Sun.”

I like the description of the Moon and Sun  cards in the ancient quests of  knights for the Holy Grail. The Moon, then, is the Grail in the lake (beautiful water symbolism here) and the Sun represents the Grail lifted up into the pure light prior to completing the quest. Afterwards, the initiate/seeker reaches “20 Aeon” which is viewed as the rising of the Phoenix from the ashes prior to ascension.

Many Paths = One Destination

There are multiple layers of symbols here when we overlay the hero’s/heroine’s journey paths with all their traditional associations, including the Lesser Mysteries and Greater Mysteries, the cycles of the seasons around “the wheel of the year,” the Tree of Life, Tarot, alchemy and astrology. One need not study all of this, or even any of this, to understand seeker’s journey. The journey is who we are and what we are about. All of the paths to enlightenment are pointed toward the same end: transformation. Each of us focuses on the symbols we’re most comfortable with and attuned to.

Some experts say that we’re impacted by these symbols even if we are not consciously aware of them or understand the little we may have heard about them. I am a novice in using Tarot and understanding the cards’ many connections to the Tree of Life, spiritual alchemy and the cycles of the seasons. Generally, though, I like the symbolism of the Thoth Deck of Cards. The Moon and Sun cards shown here are from that deck and have a fair amount of symbolism.

• Moon: The overall tone here is night. In the Book of Thoth, the Moon is called the “Gateway of Resurrection.” During night and Winter, the waiting Sun is diminished or absent. The landscape here is severe and the stream is mixed with blood. The sacred scarab holds the sun in its darkness while the moon occupies the mind and cosmos.
• Sun: The overall tone here is light, with the twelve major rays standing for the signs of the zodiac. The light emanates from a rose-like sun, standing for the flowering of the solar influence. The children above the green and fertile earth are forever young and innocent. They represent the seeker’s and/or humankind’s next stage.

The Writer’s Raw Materials

Moon

As a writer, I love the relationship of symbols and story ideas. They can strongly impact plots, themes and characters. There are many ways to characterize a journey. For example, readers of my hero’s journey novel The Sun Singer  will find numerous references to light and the other aspects of the so-called solar journey. For more information, see the Journey Page on my website and explore the information on the Joseph Campbell Foundation site. The book’s Glacier Park setting reminds park visitors and fans of “Going to the Sun Road” and the expanse of light one sees from high mountain trails.

Likewise, readers of my heroine’s journey novel Sarabande will find numerous references to water and the other aspects of the so-called lunar journey. The Heroine’s Page and the Sarabande Page on my website have more details. While the book’s story begins in the mountain high country, the plot (which is oriented around the moon’s phases) becomes more focused on rivers, dreams and the so-called “Underworld.”

Sun

For more information about Tarot cards in general, you might enjoy exploring one of my favorite sites: Raven’s Tarot Site. Here you’ll learn more about the Major Arcana (trumps), Minor Arcana (suits), and their correspondences with the Tree of Life, the classic elements, and astrology.

My first intention in both of these books is telling an exciting story. Both stories have many associations with myths and symbols. Those who know the myths and symbols will, perhaps, smile when they see the references. Those who do not consciously know the myths and symbols will still be subject to their spells.

As Rumi said, “What you seek, seeks you.” So, perhaps when you’ve finished reading the stories, you’ll be drawn into the “inner stories” behind the actions of Robert Adams (The Sun Singer) and Sarabande (Sarabande). When that happens, you’ll find that what you are looking for will begin to appear more often in your life in the form of books, websites and links, things you see on the way to work or on a hike, people who are interested in these subjects, and your dreams.

Meanwhile, as you read the novels, I hope you’ll enjoy the action while you are dancing with the Sun and the Moon—as they dance with each other.

–Malcolm

Inanna’s Heroine’s Journey – a drama for authors and seekers

“The world’s first love story, two thousand years older than the Bible—tender, erotic, shocking, and compassionate—is more than a momentary entertainment. It is a sacred story that has the intention of bringing its audience to a new spiritual place. With Inanna, we enter the place of exploration: the place where not all energies have been tamed or ordered.” – Diane Volkstein in “Inanna, the Queen of Heaven and Earth: her Stories and Hymns from Sumer”

Inanna, as envisioned by nikkirtw123 on Photobucket is strikingly close to my vision of Sarabande

As an author, I view my characters through a high-powered microscope and present the results of what I see as part of my stories. I will put you into the characters’ shoes if I can because—as Diana Volkstein writes—this is where the energies haven’t been tamed or ordered.

In my hero’s journey adventure Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey, I describe that place like this: “He knew him at the binary level where the line between matter and energy is barely discernible and often non-existent: Where urges pull at their chains, where drives push dumbly and drip sweat, where instincts race unchecked, where a horrifying sadness lies buried, where a raw pulse drums a cadence for the primitive rites of changing seasons, where white-hot impulses leap synapses in a shower of elemental fire.”

I wanted a similar, up-close focus in my heroine’s journey novel Sarabande. So, for the story of a woman seeking wisdom and wholeness, I could think of no better model than the myth of Inanna, a graphic dramatization of a woman’s inner journey to find herself outside the traps and trappings of a masculine world that has–as Sylvia Brinton Perera (“Descent to the Goddess”) wrote–forced the binary level of feminine power into dormancy for 5,000 years.

Or, as the late Adrienne Rich said, “The woman I needed to call my mother was silenced before I was born.”

Sarabande’s Heroine’s Journey

The journey in “real life”

In today’s terms, Sarabande was a tomboy. She was an expert with a knife, bow and arrow, a fishing pole, and everything she needed to know to survive in the wilderness. She learned all this from her father because her her mother believed women should only learn to keep a good home and not question society’s norms for women. However, Sarabande will never truly become herself as long as she is a disciple of either her late warrior father or her misguided, preachy mother. She is being taunted by a ghost that she must approach face to face in the ghost’s world.

Early on in her quest to rid herself of the ghost of her dead sister Dryad, Sarabande learns to see the world at a binary level: The lake, surrounding mountains and the cloud-draped sky broke apart into millions of colored specks. Sarabande leaned against Sikimí, even though he was no longer solid, and saw that her own light-pink hand was not solid either. In spite of her sudden dizziness, she did not fall. In fact, when her fingertips touched Sikimí’s side, a swarm of pink specks flew, like bees, into the permeable yellow gold of the horse, and when they did, their color changed to match the specks in their new environment.

But she doesn’t know what it means. So it is, that her quest to find and confront her sister follows the pattern of Inanna’s Heroine’s journey to confront her sister Eriskigal, Goddess of the Underworld. The underworld, in this case, is not the world of mobs and crime or “hell” in the Christian view, but the more dangerous world of the unconscious. Like Inanna, Sarabande will be broken, shamed and close to death before she learns who she is.

This is the heroine’s journey, to be buried in mother earth like a seed where she will be reborn with the spring into a new creation that finally has the freedom to follow the original injunctions of her destiny and her gender.

–Malcolm

Briefly Noted: ‘Buffy and the Heroine’s Journey’ by Valerie Estelle Frankel

In February 20121, McFarland released a new book for authors and readers interested in the heroine’s journey in fiction and myth and for fans of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie (1992) and the subsequent television series (1997 – 2003).  A well-researched book, Buffy and the Heroine’s Journey is a natural extension of Valerie Frankel’s work in From Girl to Goddess: The Heroine’s Journey through Myth (McFarland, 2010).

On her website, Frankel writes that “Though scholars often place heroine tales on Campbell’s hero’s journey point by point, the girl has always had a notably different journey than the boy. She quests to rescue her loved ones, not destroy the tyrant as Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker does. The heroine’s friends augment her natural feminine insight with masculine rationality and order, while her lover is a shapeshifting monster of the magical world—a frog prince or beast-husband (or two-faced vampire!). The epic heroine wields a magic charm or prophetic mirror, not a sword. And she destroys murderers and their undead servants as the champion of life. As she struggles against the Patriarchy—the distant or unloving father—she grows into someone who creates her own destiny.”

A new era in film and fiction for three-dimensional female action characters?

Frankel’s new book appears at a time when readers, authors and reviewers are discussing whether or not Lisbeth Salander (in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series) and Katniss (in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games series) represent a positive trend in the development of female protagonists that are more than male-gaze eye candy. That is, can authors and film makers step away from the patriarchal idea that women—whether they kick ass or not—are little more than sex objects?

Unfortunately, Frankel—along with author Maureen Murdock (The Heroine’s Journey)—appear to represent a minority view. Most film makers are still trotting out female characters in mini-skirts and bikinis fighting alongside male counterparts who are dressed in normal uniforms or SWAT team gear, while many authors and screenwriters are arguing that the heroine’s journey is no more than a female character following Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey sequence.

As the author of a contemporary fantasy novel featuring the hero’s journey (The Sun Singer) and another that features the heroine’s journey (Sarabande), I find it refreshing to find another author/researcher who sees a difference between solar and lunar journeys. While I think my heroine’s journey story would make a great film, I don’t want Hollywood to turn my title character into a male-gaze Lara Croft-style protagonist transported to the mountains and plains of Montana in a tight and/or skimpy outfit.

Publisher’s Description: The worlds of Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, and other modern epics feature the Chosen One–an adolescent boy who defeats the Dark Lord and battles the sorrows of the world. Television’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer represents a different kind of epic–the heroine’s journey, not the hero’s. This provocative study explores how Buffy blends 1990s girl power and the path of the warrior woman with the oldest of mythic traditions. It chronicles her descent into death and subsequent return like the great goddesses of antiquity. As she sacrifices her life for the helpless, Buffy experiences the classic heroine’s quest, ascending to protector and queen in this timeless metaphor for growing into adulthood.

The paperback edition, for reasons that are not readily apparent, is priced considerably higher ($35.00) than other paperbacks of a similar length (226 pages ). However, at $9.99, the Kindle edition is more in line with today’s prices.

I bought the Kindle edition even though I didn’t see the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series or feature film. I liked From Girl to Goddess: The Heroine’s Journey through Myth and am finding Buffy and the Heroine’s Journey to be another very readable and credible look at the heroine’s journey.

–Malcolm

contemporary fantasy on Kindle at $4.99

Free e-Book: Celebrate Glacier National Park

During Glacier National Park’s 2010 centennial, I wrote quite a few posts about the history, personalities, facilities and environment of Montana’s shining mountains for this weblog. Now, Vanilla Heart Publishing has compiled a selection of those posts into a free PDF e-book that you can download from PayLoadz.

Highlights of the 49-page e-book

• Fast Facts and Photographs
• All Aboard for Glacier National Park
• Glacier by the Grace of God and the Great Northern
• Mountains and Rock
• Remembering James Willard Schultz
• Glacier’s Long-Ago Mining Town
• Remembering George Bird Grinnell
• Those Historic Red Tour Buses
• Kinnikinnick
• Glacier’s First Ranger
• Heavens Peak Fire Lookout
• Mary Roberts Rinehart

The Scenery Behind My Stories

While working as a bellman at a Glacier Park hotel, I fell in love with the park. I’ve been back several times, but it’s too far from northeast Georgia for easy commuting. I returned in my imagination, though, while setting three novels in the park: The Sun Singer (contemporary fantasy, 2004), Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey (magical realism, 2010) and Sarabande (contemporary fantasy, 2011). If you’ve visited Many Glacier Hotel on the east side of the park, you’ll recognize many of the settings in all three books from Swiftcurrent Lake to Grinnell Glacier

I hope you will enjoy Celebrate Glacier National Park and the scenery behind my stories with a bit of the history of how Glacier came to be and who took part in developing it as both a park and a playground. Of course, you need to do more than read about “backbone of the world” in northwestern Montana.

How about a trip? You’ll need to stay for a couple of days so you have time to see both sides of the park, experience Going-to-the-Sun Road, hike to Sperry or Grinnell Glacier, take a launch trip on Lake McDonald, Swiftcurrent Lake or Lake Josephine, and ride in one of those ancient red buses with the top down so you can enjoy the mountain air.

–Malcolm

Kindle edition

Heroine’s Journey Links and Resources

While I was working on my recent contemporary fantasy Sarabande, I found a lot of helpful references about the heroine’s journey. The heroine’s journey has fewer Internet links, so perhaps you’ll find some of mine helpful if you are experiencing, reading about or writing about the journey.

There seem to be two schools of thought about the journey. One is that the heroine’s journey is the same as the hero’s journey, potentially with a few modifications.

While that concept approach works for many people, I don’t agree with it because the hero’s journey is a solar journey and the heroine’s journey is a lunar journey. My novel’s research materials tend to reflect the lunar approach.

Dark Moon

1. Goddess Meditations by Barbara Ardinger
2. Dragontime Magic and Mystery of Menstruation by Luisa Francia
3. Moon Phases Calendar
4. Planting by the Moon
5. The Moon Watcher’s Companion by Donna Henes.
6. Moon Watching by Dana Gerhardt
7. Moon Tides, Soul Passages by Maria Kay Simms
8. Moon Mother, Moon Daughter by Janet Lucy

Death and Rebirth

1. Descent to the Goddess by Sylvia Brinton Perea
2. The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image by Anne Baring and Jules Cashford
3. The Pattern of Initiation in the Evolution of Human Consciousness by Peter Dawkins & Sir George Trevelyan
4. Inanna, queen of heaven and earth: Her stories and hymns from Sumer by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer – This book, first published in 1983, presented a long-awaited translation of the original Inanna material from the 2000 BCE cuneiform clay tablets.

Fantasy

• The Mythopoeic Society - The Mythopoeic Society is a national/international organization promoting the study, discussion, and enjoyment of fantastic and mythopoeic literature through books and periodicals, annual conferences, discussion groups, awards, and more.

Horses

1. She Flies Without Wings-How Horses Touch a Woman’s Soul by Mary D. Widkiff
2. Horses and the Mystical Path-The Celtic Way of Expanding the Human Soul by Thomas McCormick
3. The Tao of Equus by Linda Kohanov
4. Torden, Hear the Tunder by by C. Kirkham. (This is a well-written young adult novel about a young girl and a Friesian horse.)
5. Horses, Somatics, and Spirit: An Equine-Guided Program in Conscious Living, a workshop presented by Beverley Kane, MD, Ariana Strozzi, MSC. (This is an example of some of the programs available today.)

Heroine’s Journey

1. The Heroine’s Journey by Maureen Murdock
2. From Girl to Goddess: The Heroine’s Journey through Myth and Legend by Valerie Estelle Frankel (See the July 2011 “Mythprint” review of this book here.) Frankel’s website includes a lengthy heroine’s journey reading list.
3. Sarabande contemporary fantasy by Malcolm R. Campbell released by Vanilla Heart Publishing, August 2011.
4. “The Way of Woman: Awakening the Perennial Feminine” by Helen M. Luke
5. Apple Farm Community – The Writings of Helen M. Luke
6. Real Women, Real Wisdom: A Journey into the Feminine Soul by Maureen Hovenkotter  (See a review here.)
7. The Heroine’s Coach, the website for Susanna Liller’s journey-oriented coaching services. The site includes an e-mail newsletter for women following their own paths called “Journey News.”
8. The Heroine’s Journey appears on author Leslie Zehr’s Universal Dancer website and includes a discussion of Sylvia Brinton Perera’s Descent to the Goddess, a book I found essential for my understanding of the journey. Zehr is the author of The Alchemy of Dance: Sacred Dance as a Path to the Universal Dancer.

Light of Nature

1. Light of Nature Website, exploring the science and the philosophy of the concept.
2. “The Female Brain” by Louann Brizendine
3. “The Spell of the Sensuous” by David Abram

Literature

1. The Heroine’s Bookshelf: Life Lessons, from Jane Austen to Laura Ingalls Wilder by Erin Blakemore
2. Fearless Girls, Wise Women & Beloved Sisters: Heroines in Folktales from Around the World by Kathleen Ragan
3. The Heroine in Western Literature: The Archetype and Her Reemergence in Modern Prose by Meredith A. Powers
4. The Art of Fiction: Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts by David Lodge

Patriarchy

1. The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd
2. Unplugging the Patriarchy – A Mystical Journey into the Heart of a New Age by Lucia René
3. Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher
4. Ophelia Speaks: Adolescent Girls Write about Their Search for Self by Sara Shandler
5. Surviving Ophelia: Mothers Share Their Wisdom in Navigating the Tumultuous Teenage Years by Cheryl Dellasega

Story Within

1. And Now The Story Lives Inside You, poems by Elizabeth Reninger
2. The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram
3. Alchemical Studies by C. G. Jung
4. Harry Potter – A New World Mythology? By Lynne Milum
5. “Dark Wood to White Rose: Journey and Transformation in Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’” by Helen M. Luke
6. “The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling” by James Hillman

War

1. Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America by Jonathan Shay.
2. Rape: Weapon of Terror by Sharon Frederick
3. Against our Will: Men, Women and Rape by Susan Brownmiller

Weaving, Storytelling, Linen

1. American Textile History Museum
2. All Fiber Arts (weaving in stories and fairytale)
3. Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber
4. Linen from flax seed to woven cloth by Linda Heinrich
5. The Joy of Handspinning - many details, photographs and demonstration videos
6. The Weaver’s Book: A practical, authoritative step-by-step guide for beginners by an expert weaver by Harriet Tidball
7. Grading, Spinning, Dyeing: an introduction to the traditional wool and flax crafts by Elizabeth Hoppe and Ragnar Edberg
8. Fibers of Being – Judy’s detailed weaving blog
9. Eva Stossel’s weaving blog – In addition to information about weaving, both Judy and Eva include lengthy blogrolls.
10. A History of Irish Linen
11. Flaxland – Growers and Processors in the U. K.

Wolves

1. Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
2. The Company of Wolves by Peter Steinhart
3. The Wolf’s Tooth by Christina Eisenberg

Writer’s Muse

1. The Sister from Below: When the Muse Gets Her Way by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky
2. Marry Your Muse: Making a Lasting Commitment to Your Creativity by Jan Phillips
3. The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write by Mark David Gerson.
4. 20 Master Plots: an How to Build Them, by Ronald Tobias
5. The Hero’s Journey: A Guide to Literature and Life by Reg Harris and Susan Thompson (This is a series of lesson plans for teaching the hero’s journey in a classroom setting.)

Classic TA Resources for the Journey

1. Born to Win: Transactional Analysis with Gestalt Experiments by Muriel James and Dorothy Jongeward
2. Your Inner Child of the Past by Hugh Missildine
3. What Do You Say After You Say Hello: The Psychology of Human Destiny by Eric Berne
4. I’m Ok, You’re Ok by Thomas Harris

Writers, You May Also Like: Shhh, I write hero’s journey and heroine’s journey novels

A Series of Posts About the Heroine’s Journey: Sarabande’s Journey

–Malcolm

Contest Winners – SARABANDE Book Give-Away Challenge

I am happy to announce the winners of Malcolm’s Genuine Sub Rosa SARABANDE Book Give-Away Challenge that ended at December 31, 2011 at 11:59 p.m.

The object of the contest was to be the first person to correctly guess what item was lying on the table next to the rose in the magic cabin that appears in Sarabande, Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey, and The Sun Singer.

Only one person guessed correctly, though the other suggestions (including a cross, flower petal, miniature tree, and a decanter of liquor) were great. The second and third place winners were determined by drawing names out of a hat.

1. First Place: Smoky Zeidel who guessed correctly. There is an osprey feather next to the rose in the vase. In fact, it’s an osprey feather quill pen. Smoky wins a signed, paperback copy of Sarabande.
2. Second Place: Judith Mercado wins an e-book copy of Sarabande.
3. Third Place: Ramey Channell wins a colorful bookmark.

Thank you to everyone who entered the give-away challenge and for coming up with so many great ideas for what just might have been lying on the table. As it is, the osprey feather pen is, figuratively speaking, the writing instrument used to tell the stories featuring that magical cabin in the Montana mountains.

Happy New Year.

–Malcolm

Malcolm’s Genuine Sub Rosa SARABANDE Book Give-Away Challenge

Welcome to my Hot Yule, Sub Rosa Give-Away Extravaganza

FIRST PRIZE: A signed paperback copy of my contemporary fantasy Sarabande. Or, if you own Sarabande, I’ll send you a signed copy of The Sun Singer (contemporary fantasy) or Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey (magical realism).

SECOND PRIZE: An e-book copy of Sarabande in the format of your choice from the book’s listing on Smashwords.

THIRD PRIZE: A signed bookmark showing the cover of The Sun Singer.

How to Play

1. Go to the Magic and Fantasy page on my Sarabande Website where you will find a variety of drawings linked to information about horses, ospreys, coyotes, and roses. Click on any or all of them, but focus your attention on the page reached when you click on the drawing that seems to be the most appropriate for a secret, i.e., something considered sub rosa (beneath the rose).
2. As you learn about the symbolism of the drawing you click on, you’ll discover that I left something on the table in David Ward’s cabin that is NOT mentioned in any of the novels. Your challenge is to figure out what it is.
3. Within the spirit of the rules, you can use psychic powers, magic, shamanic journeying, your imagination, or your best guest. When you have an answer, click on the e-mail icon at the bottom of the screen and tell me what you’ve discovered.
4. Any objects on that table top mentioned in The Sun Singer, Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey, and Sarabande are not the secret answer. So, guessing “soporific tea” will put your entry at the bottom of the stack.
5. The e-mail deadline is December 31, 2011 at 11:59 p.m. You can enter only once.

Determining a Winner

The first person to tell me specifically what the object is will win. By “specifically,” I mean that if you  think I’ve left a brass skeleton key (I didn’t) on the table, say “brass sketeton key” rather than “key” or “something shiny.” The second and third place winners will be those with the first-emailed answers closest to the corrrect answer.

If nobody figures out what the object is, the first, second and third place winners will be chosen by my drawing the names (from all entries) out of a hat.

Good luck and have fun.

–Malcolm

Blurring Reality and Fiction

Many Glacier Hotel

As the author of two contemporary fantasies and one magical realism novel, I enjoy blurring the line between the real settings in my novels and the stuff I make up.

Real settings provide a foundation for the magic of my imagination whether they’re well-known locations such as Glacier National Park or personal locations such as the house my parents owned in Eugene, Oregon when I was in kindergarten.

However, the trickster in me wants the reader to always be in doubt where reality begins and ends. When people tell ghost stories around a camp fire, the stories often begin with: “Many years ago in these very woods on a summer night just like this one, a monster watched a patrol of Boy Scouts cooking their evening meal.”

Suddenly, everyone around the camp fire starts hearing strange noises in woods—perhaps it’s just the wind, or perhaps it isn’t. When I set my contemporary fantasy novels Sarabande (2011) and The Sun Singer (2004) in Glacier Park, I not only had a lot of photographs and reference materials helping me make my descriptions accurate, but also the benefit of knowing that many of my readers will have been there or seen pictures or TV programs about the area. (I also had my memories of hiking a good many trails in the park.)

So, is there magic at Many Glacier Hotel in Swiftcurrent Valley? Maybe yes, maybe no.

Garden of Heaven

In Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey (2010), I used well known locations in Glacier National Park such as Chief Mountain and Many Glacier Hotel. For my own personal amusement, I also used the starter-house my parents owned on Alder Street in Eugene. While I barely remember the house, I do have pictures of it. My readers, of course, don’t know anything about an obscure street in Eugene, but they have heard of the town. That’s why I used the name in this stream-of-consciousness, vision quest sequence in the novel:

My mother at the house in Eugene

He woke up in the centre of the prairie where the land lay like a calm sea and the black mountains were small in the west. On his mind there was a predominant thought, ‘I am east of the sun and west of the moon,’ and though that was true, for it was sometime past noon, the thought was on his mind in a strange déjà vu way, pulling him he knew not where.  His memory danced like a frail aspen leaf in the north wind until he was carried southwest by south on more or less a straight course past the grey ice of Api-natósi, the north fork of the Flathead, the Kootenai National Forest, the Bitterroots, south of Couer d’Alene Lake, the boiling confluence of the Columbia and Snake, the Cascades, to Eugene and Alder Street, to the little buff-coloured house with the blue roof and white picket fence and a snowman to the left of the driveway, and then inside to a room bluer than the roof where an inviolate circle of light from the lone lamp encompassed mother and child, she in a chair reading aloud from an old tan book of stories, he sleepy-eyed beneath covers hearing about trolls, witches, winds that talked, a castle, and a prince, the stuff that dreams and futures are made of before seasons matter and life hardens the soul.

In a vision quest, the real and the unreal are often tangled up. I always want the reader to wonder which is which. In this passage, most readers will recognize the real places such as the Snake River and the Cascades even if they’ve never been to the area. I added “Alder Street” just for me because I’m a spinner of tall tales that are occasionally true.

–Malcolm