A notion about the gospel of your life

“Quests are personal journeys, and every step is taken alone.” –Deepak Chopra, The Way of the Wizard

If there is a subtle message in my novel The Sun Singer it is this: the great words of the great masters about our life’s journeys are—at best—hints. The ideas from the rest of us are mere notions.

The words of the masters may suggest to us that there are other worlds and other levels of consciousness and other levels of awareness. And they may also suggest techniques that will help us find the doorways, paths, enlightenments, and awakenings we desire.

After that, the great words are lies insofar as our journeys are concerned. The great masters’ great words describe the great masters’ journeys. As such, they are the gospels of the great masters’ experience.

My journey is mine alone. Your journey is yours alone. Neither journey can be undertaken by following in the great masters’ footsteps or by concretizing the great masters’ thoughts into a recipe book. We alone know the terrain upon which we’re walking and when all is said and done, the great masters’ view from the mountaintop will never be ours. Attempting to see what they saw creates blindness.

I am continuously writing my story just as you alone will write the gospel of your life, and it will be based on your awareness of your own experience. Nothing else matters; nothing else exists. You and I are both the creators of our paths and the ones who walk upon them enjoying the scenery and surprising ourselves with the wonders we encounter.

–Malcolm

From the Archives: This post was first published in my blog in 2005.

Read it now on your Kindle

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

Stop by my Facebook page!

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

and now a word from our fantasy sponsor

My book reviews, interviews and posts on Malcolm’s Round Table, Magic Moments and Literary Aficionado are brought to you by, er, me.

Speaking of myself now in the third person, Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of magical realism, contemporary fantasy and satire published by Vanilla Heart Publishing of Washington State. While my noir satire, Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire, is set in a fictional Texas town with a really screwed up fictional newspaper, my three other novels are set in Glacier National Park, Montana and other places where I have lived or visited.

Last summer brought the release of Sarabande, a harrowing heroine’s journey and contemporary fantasy about a young woman who is haunted by the ghost of her sister. Sarabande seeks the help of a young man who has, on one previous occasion, bent time to “raise the dead.” The solution to the problem is not without its nasty down side.

Satire for your Nook

In 2004, I came out with the first edition of my novel The Sun Singer, the story of a young man whose psychic dreams ultimately lead him into a dangerous mountain world where it will take all of his skills to survive. First things first: he had to figure out who the good guys are and who the bad guys are and, as it turns out, who exactly he is. The second edition of The Sun Singer was released in 2010. College students at Lone Star College, Texas, read and discussed the novel this past Spring as part of a Wayfaring Heroes course.

Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey (also released in 2010) is magical realism about a man who grows up on a Montana ranch who loses his way when a failed love affair sends him down dangerous roads along which is is betrayed multiple times by those he cares about the most. The book is also available as an $4.99 e-book from OmniLit.

Where To Find Malcolm R. Campbell on the Internet

• The Sun Singer, Sarabande and Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire are available at multiple online booksellers, including the paperback and Kindle/Nook editions at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
• The latest news can be found on the Malcolm R. Campbell website as well as on Facebook.
• Campbell has an author’s page at Vanilla Heart Publishing, and is also on LinkedIn and Twitter.
• Latest Interview: Interviewed by Melinda Clayton.

Excerpt from Sarabande

Only $4.99 on Kindle

Gem pulled her hands away and stood up so quickly she knocked over her spinning wheel. She didn’t appear to notice. She walked to the window and leaned out as though making sure no one else would hear her words.

“I was shamed by the king.” Gem pulled up her left sleeve to reveal the letters SJ in a bold pink scar that contrasted with her walnut-colored skin.

“Your strike brand!”

“I bore Justine’s mark as well as his child. Both were conceived in pain in a dark cell covered with urine and rat droppings.” Sarabande went to her, but Gem rolled down the sleeve, covering the ugly mark that signified Sovereign Justine. “No, my friend, I cannot abide your seeing it close at hand. My daughter, though, this doting mother will speak of her at great length if allowed to do so.”

“Cinnabar has shown me her brand,” said Sarabande.

“Discretion is a lesson I was never able to teach her. But listen: on your journey to Osprey’s house, you won’t walk through the domains of kings.”

Sarabande gasped and sat down, suddenly lightheaded when she understood why Gem showed her the scar.

“If there are no kings, what dangers have you seen?”

Gem put her hands on Sarabande’s shoulders and kneaded out the growing knots. Her touch always felt like a touch of power, and she wondered if she shared Osprey’s way with healing magic.

“I have seen a dark creek beneath a bridge on a foggy night. I have heard screams and howls outside my comprehension. I don’t understand it,” said Gem, holding their eye contact as though she understood more than she would say. “Sarabande, you know without my lecturing at great length about the ways of the world. A a woman on a lonely road can be a target. Travel with a sharp knife.”

The impromptu massage felt good. The unclear warning did not. Vague predictions were worse than silence. They stirred up what did not need to be stirred up.

“Yes, I know that, Gem. I will carry a knife and take care to have it handy.”

“With due care, you can avoid your fate, but destiny is the way you’ve already written your life’s story.”

“I wanted to walk the sixteen hundred and fifty miles to Osprey’s house long before it occurred to me I would ever do so. If there is to be shame in it, then I will live or die with whatever I find on that lonely road.”

-

Thank you for stopping my Malcolm’s Round Table today!

–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

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

Another Glacier Park Novel

Mt. Gould - NPS Photo

When my next novel Sarabande is released this fall by Vanilla Heart Publishing, it will become my third novel set partially in Glacier National Park. Sarabande’s Glacier Park locations include Mt. Gould, the Angel Wing, Lake Josephine, Swiftcurrent Lake, Many Glacier Hotel, and Chief Mountain.

When the novel begins, my protagonist Sarabande has just finished spending the night on top of the Angel Wing. I’m sure the park service prohibits this practice, but then she lives in a look-alike universe that is accessed via several portals in the park. Her world is the 1970s. Our world, at the time the novel is set, is the 1980s.

99 cents on Kindle

She has much to learn about our world, from electricity, to the existence of a major hotel sitting where there’s an empty space in her world, to cars and highways, and how to travel across country. The Many Glacier area, as I mention in my e-book Bears; Where they Fought: Life In Glacier Park’s Swiftcurrent Valley, is rich in history, trails and mountains to climb.

The popular valley is not only a draw for tourists, but is my favorite place in my favorite park. I can think of no better place for an adventure novel. We have the extremes of weather, of dangerous high places and the chances of meeting grizzly bears or moose or ospreys or wolverines.

I’m looking forward to the release of Sarabande for many reasons. It’s my long-promised sequel to The Sun Singer.  It’s told from a female protagonist’s point of view—a first for me. And it gives me an excuse to write again about Glacier National Park.  I have been posting about the heroine’s journey itself in my Sarabande’s Journey weblog.  It’s been fun to explore the differences between the solar journey in The Sun Singer, which follows Joseph Campbell’s well-known series of mythic steps in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and the lunar journey which is quite different.

Lunar journeys are usually much darker and much for frightening because they focus on the lore of the night and the unconscious and, as we see in many myths, the domain of the underworld. Nevertheless, Sarabande is an adventure story with its primary scenes in a mountain world that park visitors know so well. The story also unfolds along U.S. Highway 2, the wetlands of northeast Montana’s prairie pothole region, and in Decatur, Illinois where Robert Adams, the Sun Singer lives.

As we get closer to the release date, I’ll begin posting excerpts of the book. It will appear first as an e-book on Amazon’s Kindle and in the other formats available at the smashwords.com site. A bit later, it will also be available as a paperback. If you’re a fan of Glacier National Park, I hope you will enjoy both the story and the location.

–Malcolm

NaNoWriMo: Sarabande begins to speak

I am using National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) as an incentive to get out of the planning stage and into the writing stage for Sarabande, the sequel to my novel The Sun Singer.  Every year, NaNoWriMo participants attempt to write a 50,000-word rough draft of a new novel between November 1 and November 30.

To accomplish this goal, writers must average 1,667 words per day. At 1,938 words written so far, I am 1,396 words behind schedule. I have an excuse. The opening action scene of Sarabande must synchronize perfectly with a battle scene near the end of The Sun Singer. So, I’m having to refer to The Sun Singer a lot, and that’s slowing me down.

Prior to Sarabande’s first action scene, I began the novel with a paragraph that–like an overture for a musical composition–sets the stage for the book. Since the young woman, Sarabande, is going on a “lunar journey,” the introductory paragraph is exactly the opposite of the first words of The Sun Singer. In The Sun Singer, my protagonist was going on a “solar journey.”

Sarabande, Opening Paragraph

Fiery order of day and exuberant sun, young primroses drenched in the light of a long afternoon await like phantoms seeking night, any shade. She traverses a limestone ledge, hears marmots whistle, smells ferns, close, supported into the sky by rock, feels blue bird’s chatter—sweet and dear up from the green mountain valley. Whispers scrape her aura overhead. Scoop throw: like a Judo master, dulled light flings her away. She fights for Mother Earth, would sell her heart for her, and hears, is hearing, “There are numerous ways to live, little girl.” Warm blooded, that voice is the sister of chaos.

The Sun Singer, Opening Paragraph

Cold chaos of night and strangled moon, the great old trees drenched in sap’s perfume rise up like gaunt fingers out of the valley gloom seeking stars, any light. He shoves through tangled vines, hears small creatures running away in the dark, smells bones, close, crushed beneath the weight of eyes, feels owl’s call—sharp and true down off the black mountain’s ridge—hoooo hoo-oooo, hoo hoo, tear through his veins as mocking ice. A twig snaps beneath his boot. Choke hold. Shadows drag him down. He fights for breath, would sell his soul for it, and hears, is hearing, “There are numerous ways to die, little boy.” Cold blooded, that voice is mother of snakes.

Now, Back to Work!

As you can see from these openings, these are very different books. Solar and lunar journeys, in the sense used here, refer to what’s happening within the mind and body of an individual while on an adventure of some kind.

For more information about solar journeys, take a look at Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces, where he describes the “hero’s journey” structure found in many myths as well as movies and novels.

For more information about lunar journeys, refer to Maureen Murdock’s The Heroine’s Journey, Sylvia Brinton Perera’s Descent to the Goddess: A Way of Initiation for Women, and Demetra George’s Mysteries of the Dark Moon.

Now that I’ve procrastinated for a few more minutes by writing this post, it’s time to get back to chapter one of Sarabande.

–Malcolm

E-Book Available for $4.99 until November 16th!

Novel excerpts Copyright (c) 2004 and 2010 by Malcolm R. Campbell. Moon artwork Copyright (c) 2010 by Jupiter Images.

Two novel teasers in two minutes

Just in time for Vanilla Heart Publishing’s hot holiday e-book sale, here are two short teasers from my hero’s journey novels The Sun Singer and Garden of Heaven.

Garden of Heaven

A sharp report from the crest of the hill split the road in half. Where the road met the sky, a clumsy hulk with pale, yellow headlights stood low to the ground like a stalking cat. If the monster ever had a muffler, it was gone now–that backfire sounded like a shotgun blast. Now it was moving, slowly at first, and then, with the grade, began to pick up speed.

The moment overflowed with energy. He flung himself into his work, pushing, pushing. Lightning struck a tree on the ridge below the road. He looked behind him into a large eye, jumped inside the car, pulled the door shut, and braced himself for mere seconds before the power waggon ploughed into the rear of the Opel. The impact shattered the back window and shoved the car against the row of hickory trees that guarded the dull edge of the ridge. Thunder obscured his words from the world’s ears, and his own.

The Sun Singer

Sonny heard the roar of the river, heard the men shouting, “The sorry devil is trapped,” heard Yarrow’s breathing and the crunch of leaves beneath his boots, and thought of the owl and whistled, “hoooo hoo-oooo, hoo hoo,” and the call pierced the night. The soldiers stopped briefly, and the leader said, “It’s a signal, he’s led us into a trap,” and another said, “No, it’s a mere boy,” and Yarrow looked where they looked and his mouth opened wide, but he had no time to speak, for in that brief moment when the scene was paused in the current moment before Sonny’s eyes, he swung the staff into the scene and whispered, “Save Yarrow with sunfire.”

A lightning bolt of yellow and blue flame leaped from the tip of the staff and bit into the night, sizzling over Yarrow’s head, enveloping the men in a shower of sparks. Sonny cringed at the fear on their faces. Yarrow shook his head as men and horses tumbled into the water. Then he looked behind him again to see the dying embers of the flame floating gently to the ground; they glistened on the wet rocks like diamonds before they disappeared.
-

Malcolm