Window in My Head

Escaped from New York

Fri, 09 May 2008 01:45:48 GMT

I'm home. Pretty tired, and definitely tired of New York City prices. 20 oz bottles of soft drinks should not cost $3. I swear, I set foot in that city and my wallet develops an arterial bleed ...

But, I imagine that everyone is curious about the experiment. I'm hesitant to give all of the details here, largely because the *last* time I did an experiment with the History Channel, we got an unexpected set of results, but the show spun things very differently by using results from a previous experiment. What we'd actually gotten didn't fit with what they wanted to present, so some creative fudging went on ...

Even though I really don't think anything similar will go on here, that experience left me wary. So many people are involved in a production, and sometimes the editor has a very specific idea of how they want things to look. Sometimes there are too many fingers in the pot, so to speak, and wires get crossed or concepts get changed in the process that takes a production from start to finish ... there are so many variables, including that specter that haunts so many of the edgier shows, sensationalism.

Anyhow, that slight bout of cynicism aside, I can say that we got results. I don't know how much of those results people will see on the show (which is supposed to air some time in June). But I suspect you'll see some decent portions of what we did. The FLIR camera was really nifty to play around with, and we caught a distinct temperature change on my hands before and after feeding. Then Raxx (my donor for this show) and I got to play around a bit, and we made energy balls between our hands. These showed up as well, quite brightly. One of the observers said of what he saw on the FLIR: "It looks as if Michelle has flashlights in her hands." Basically, there were these beams of heat coming down off my palms into Raxx's upturned hands. I really hope they use that footage.

Other footage I am almost certain they will use involves a meter designed to pick up variances in geo-magnetic energy. Raxx and I lay the meter on the floor and did energy work over it, trying to get it to register something. The needle started jumping while we did this, and it kept jumping so long as we kept the energy work up. Then, just to be sure it wasn't something else, we left the meter right where it was, let the paranormal investigator try tripping the meter by waving his hand near it (nothing), and then we left it there to see if there was something in the ambient energy of the room tripping it -- also nothing. It never moved past 2, but it was still visible motion on a meter that's meant to register geo-magnetic storms. That was pretty satisfying.

I'm tired, and the hustle-bustle of NYC really got on my nerves this visit. This probably had something to do with the fact that my hotel was only a few blocks from Times Square, that bastion of excessive marketing. The constantly running ads on the video monitors installed in every single taxi I rode did not help.

If anybody needs me, I think I'll be in a lawn chair, staring at the trees behind my house and enjoying the far-less nerve-wracking sounds of birdsong and the wind moving through the leaves of all those old hickories.

--M

Travels, Kinko de Mayo

Mon, 05 May 2008 19:40:31 GMT

Off to New York tomorrow for a few days. If all goes according to plan, I'm going to get a chance to play with energy in front of a FLIR camera -- one of those heat-sensitive cameras that they use all the time on Ghost Hunters to pick up coldspots and other anomalies.

I had a great weekend at SMARTfest (aka Kinko de Mayo). Did a bunch of powerful BDSM shamanic work with some people -- everything from classic soul retrieval to trancing folks out with ritual drumming -- only their flesh was the drum. :)

Got a chance to hook up with an old friend Lee Harrington in his new and improved persona. I was kind of jealous of his transformation, but I've made my peace with my own gender status -- as this weekend really re-affirmed.

You see, I ran a workshop on gender disphoria. It got a little off-topic, but delved into some really intense places. It was a little emotionally draining (far more so than my average BDSM workshops -- teaching people how to safely bite one another or play with knives is just fun) but I was really happy with where everything went in the end. I was a lot more self-revelatory than I typically am about this particular topic, but I think this class will have to become a permanent part of my roster. It covered territory that people really need to talk about.

The mid-week mini-trip to NYC will be nice, but of course, I caught a touch of that spring flu that everyone seems to be passing around. I spent the last 12 hours or so trying to beat it out of my system, and, given that I'm feeling worlds better than I did at this time last night, I think I might be fine by the time we're running experiments on Wednesday. There's nothing more distracting to me than a stuffy head, and I *really* want to be on the ball for this energy work. If we can record something unusual, then that might just open the doors for future experiments.

I think that's about it for the moment. In case I'm not back online till I'm home and rested again, have a great week!

--M

Ruminations on the Nature of Myth

Fri, 02 May 2008 16:00:16 GMT

There is a grain of truth in every myth. This statement may sound trite and over-used, but it is nevertheless a concept that is very important to my personal theology. And, trite as it may sound, the concept becomes obvious in any serious study of the Bible (which, being raised Catholic, was the first mythic system I was ever exposed to).

The Bible is filled with stories about historical people and events. I have no doubt in my mind that there was a Solomon and a David, but I believe that their stories, as they appear in the Bible, are larger than life. There is truth the concept of their role in history, but from the time in which they really existed to the time in which their tales were written down, facts became blurry. Their stories were enlarged upon. If there was a blank in peoples' knowledge about their lives, it was filled in with a pastiche of events culled from the lives of other rulers, or borrowed from stories that were similar to their own.

In this way, history became myth. I think such a process is inevitable, especially when you're working with a system that began as oral tradition. But even in our modern age, where we are so very certain of our ability to record naked facts, consider how factual all the stories of our new gods can be: Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Princess Diana ... and a hundred other celebrities who live larger than life and whose media image is approached by many as if they were god-like avatars upon the earth.

I remember, when I was very little, visiting some of my older relatives. They had these images on their walls, pictures emblazoned on velvet or these vaguely three-dimensional, shimmering things. The images depicted Jesus, or Jesus and Elvis, or Jesus standing next to JFK. They were tacky, to be sure, but they were also iconic. In the execution of these images, both Kennedy and Elvis looked as beatific as Christ the Lord. To a child's eyes, there was no difference between them. And I think, even to an adults' eyes, it had to be obvious, that Elvis and JFK were being portrayed as gods on earth.

So we've seen this process, even in our lifetimes. The stories of real men and women, whose lives are significant and seem somehow bigger than our own -- these stories get told and retold until the grain of truth that was the living person is wrapped all around with the glistening, shimmering substance of myth. And that myth, like a pearl, seems to be so much better and grander and more worthy than the humble piece of sand that give it birth.

I think back to the Egyptian stories of Set and Horus. In the older myths, Set and Horus are twins, and they have the love-hate relationship of siblings. Set, who later becomes the prototype for our modern Satan, is actually a helpful deity. Recognized with the title "Great of Strength," he is the one who protects Ra's bark during its journey through the Underworld, spearing the great serpent Apophis. Ironic, then, that Set himself is later associated by the Greeks with evil serpents, in the form of Set-Typhon.

But Set, as much as myth wants to make him iconic, has a lingering sense of humanity. He is a complex being. All of the Egyptian deities are -- as are the gods and goddesses of the Greeks and so many ancient cultures. These beings, supposedly divine and therefore better than us, loved and hated, warred, and reproduced. They fought over rights of ascension. They struggled to gain recognition and fame for their favored sons.

Isn't it obvious that a grain of truth must lie behind their godly facades as well?

I remember, also as a child, reading about the discoveries of Schliemann. For those who didn't read as widely as I, he was the man who discovered Troy. Or rediscovered it, really. At the time that he was alive, Troy was not thought to be a real city. It appeared in Homer's Illiad and Odyssey, and because these tales involved both men and gods, historians had long looked upon them as nothing more than myth. But Schliemann had his suspicions, and, eventually following cues from myth and from Homer's texts, he located the site of the original city.

Did Achilles weep for Patroclus at this city's besieged gates? Did brave Hector stride out to meet his death at the hands of the grief-stricken demi-god? It's hard to say. But given what I've learned about myth over the years, I suspect that men with these names did exist, and that they were heroes, and eventually their stories were told so many times that the man was superseded by the myth.

But somewhere, underneath the onomatopoetic words of the ancient Greek bard, there is a piece of history, and it is based upon real facts.

Where we stand now, we only see the pearl, shimmering and unreal. But somewhere at its core, there is still that grain of very real sand.

--M

Hair of the Dog

Thu, 01 May 2008 18:23:53 GMT

Dear Head:

Why yes, we drank entirely too much caffeine yesterday. And, yes, the pain we're experiencing now would go away were we to revisit those same levels of caffeine-intake. However, the heart has lodged a complaint over the quantity of stimulants in the bloodstream. The complaint is legitimate, so there will be less caffeine today. Please get over it.

--The Management

EDIT: Stabbity stabbity stabbity!!! Be gone, already, head pain!

Newsbits

Thu, 01 May 2008 00:01:16 GMT

Well, damn:

Regrowing Body Parts?

Looks like it's right in my own backyard, too.

--M

Lap-top, Cat-top

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 19:38:38 GMT

I am currently typing this with my laptop perched on top of my cat.

He keeps doing this to me -- crawling up into my lap whilst I work and refusing to budge. Don't know why he's feeling so clingy, but, damn, is it a bitch to type like this!

Caved & submitted This Heart of Flame to Samhain Publishing, after hearing nothing back from either Cleis or Stonegarden, after several follow-up queries. I think the book deserves better than to be an ebook, but at this point, I just want the fucking thing published so I can move on!

Still plugging away at Haunting Experiences (May 2009 release date). I got the preliminary version of my cover -- can't share it just yet, but I think it's my favorite cover for one of my books thus far.

--M

Intriguing Discovery

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:21:01 GMT

So, every now and again, I'll write something and totally forget about it. This doesn't happen too frequently, but every once in a while a complete short story will turn up on my hard drive, and I only have the vaguest recollection of writing it down. I blame those moments when I wake up suddenly, with the words pouring from my mind, and I drift over to the computer in a haze, pound it all out onto the keyboard, then collapsed back into bed.

Here's one I discovered on my hard drive this morning. I (apparently) wrote it several months ago. I remember having the idea for it, but I don't clearly recall writing more than notes (it belongs to a collection of political fables and post-modern fairytales that may or may not ever see the light of day).

I think it's obvious what was on my mind at the time, though.

Here it is:

The Saviour from Over the Sea

Long ago in a far distant land nestled on the coast of the great ocean lived a race of simple people. They were artists and crafters, writers and dreamers, and they lived together in a city made beautiful by their art. Much like the folk of our own land, the people in this distant city were not perfect. They had good days and they had bad days, but on the whole they were content.

And then one day a stranger came from over the sea. She was a tall and pale woman who wore a long coat of sparkling white. She carried herself proudly, her clear gray eyes shining with a keen intellect. The people of the beautiful city immediately took her for a magician or sorceress for not only did she seem to possess great wisdom, but she also brought with her trunk after trunk of curious potions.

The stranger called a meeting of all the wisest folk of the beautiful city. She pulled out bottle after bottle, each shining a different color under the noonday sun. She told the people that she had come from a faraway land that was greatly advanced compared to their own. She had been sent by her own people to help the people of the beautiful city. The city leaders were naturally puzzled. Their lives were comfortable. Their city was attractive and well-maintained. By their reckoning, they didn't think that they needed any help.

“Oh, but you are wrong,” said the stranger. “My people have developed powerful magic that can drive away all of your suffering, sadness, and pain. Just one drink a day from one of these little potions and you can be free from all of your problems. No one will ever be unhappy again. ”

The people were eager to accept her offer, for who wouldn't want all of their cares and complaints erased so easily? So the stranger met with each of them, and if they said that they were sad, she gave them one sort of potion. And if they said they were anxious she gave them another. And for those who said that they didn't have any problems at all, she gave another potion still.

“But I don't really have a problem,” one lady protested. “I’m unhappy, but only because my husband died recently. That’s natural. Why should I take something like this when nothing is really wrong?”

“Just take it and see if it doesn't make you feel better,” said the stranger. “If you feel better after taking it, then you really did have a problem. You just didn't know.”

She told them to take just one sip a day, but if that didn't seem to be working, they were to return to her, and she would give them something stronger. They trusted her because she assured them that the potions always worked to take care of every problem. It was just a matter of finding the right potion for each complaint.

Weeks passed and the citizens of the beautiful city dutifully took their daily potions. And when something terrible happened in their lives that would ordinarily make them sad, they didn't cry because the potion was working. And when something happened that would ordinarily make them anxious, they didn't worry because the potion was doing its job. All of their cares and concerns were erased just as promised. While the potions didn't solve any of the problems themselves, the people found that they simply didn't care enough anymore to get upset.

As the weeks became months, things began to change in the beautiful city. The great structures of marble looked gray and dull because no one worried about cleaning them anymore. The painters and the artists and the sculptors stopped creating any new works because they no longer felt inspired. Once, the lush parks of the beautiful city were filled with young couples engaged in amorous pursuits. Now, husband and wife didn't even share the same bed because no one was interested in having sex anymore. No one was really happy, but not a single one of them was unhappy, just as the stranger had promised.

And then one day, something snapped. Some shred of the former glory of the once-beautiful city rose up in the minds of its citizens. They dragged themselves out of their dull, shuffling complacency long enough to realize that they had become fat and flaccid, and all the joy had been drained from their lives. On that day, every citizen of the once-beautiful city took up his or her vial of potion and cast it into the sea.

The stranger railed and screamed at this, telling them what a mistake they were making. They were trading contentment for all of their old worries and cares. When people still refused to restart her regimen of potions, she began to threaten them. She was responsible for their well-being! If they wouldn’t listen to her good advice, then she would summon her own countrymen from across the sea, and they would descend upon the backward and ungrateful city, making certain that everyone took the potions for their own good.

The citizens refused to listen to her threats. Instead, moving as one, they seized her and tossed her into the sea after her precious potions. Then they walked back to their once-beautiful city. There, they picked up the pieces of lives that had never been perfect, but at least had possessed some measure of joy for every counted sorrow.

So, yeah. Random writing that I apparently accomplished without completely waking up. At least I don't sleep-eat. That would really piss me off. I hear they make pills for that, though. ;)

--M

Thoughts from the Twilight Path

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:05:52 GMT

If you knew that your life was likely to end in the next five years, how would you live it?

Would you live it in fear? Or would you live it in joy, savoring every possible moment?

Would you live as if you heard the ticking of a clock winding down to that final alarm, or would you blithely ignore that fatal rhythm and simply get on with things in much the same way you had been doing?

What things would you have to change about yourself and your world so you could leave with no regrets? And would you tell the loved ones in your life, knowing that it might only make them worry? Would you carry it like a secret burden, content to allow everyone you cherish to cherish you without huddling in that shadow of looming loss?

If you told someone, who would you tell? Why would you tell it?

At night, alone, when you looked back on your life up to this point, would you feel that you had been fair to yourself in your living? Have you done enough, lived enough, loved enough to make the shorter time span worth the inevitable struggles?

Every life is a full life, no matter how short. You get what you get, and you cannot count on more or less. Even if you have no news about some fatal illness that might take you untimely away, you have no guarantees.

Do you think you could be ok with that? What is peace, except contentment with what must be?

--M

Verse's Melancholy Shore

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 16:18:48 GMT

Mmmm ... Matthew Arnold ...

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

A good poet, to me, is a prophet who distills a complex mingling of emotions into lyrical words that capture the ineffable truths of human experience.

In simpler terms: my heart, it hears the truth.

--M

Bitter? Cynical? Me?

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:42:37 GMT

Between the writer's block and getting motivated again, I went out and purchased seasons one and two of an old favorite of mine: Beauty and the Beast.

I'd been putting off the urge to buy this, as I knew that it was only inspired by some masochistic impulse to subject myself to that much weepy romance. As I've been working on the rewrites for Haunting Experiences (the *first* book whose title actually survived intact through the editing process!), I've been filling my breaks with the show.

I watched this twenty years ago. I knew some time had passed, but damn!

A few observations: Ron Perlman does not, in fact, look all that different from his character Vincent. You'd think that was all monster make-up, but no. He just sort of naturally looks beastie. And his portrayal of Vincent subtly foreshadows much of Hellboy.

Somehow, done up like a golden-haired lion-man, Perlman manages to be damned sexy. Or maybe that's just me. You'd think the big, strong, hairy, romantic hero would so not be my type, but there it is. Hawt.

And ... the show is reminding me that, at an early point in my life, I used to be a hopeless romantic. I loved this show, and it really helped to shape my ideal of love.

A few relationships later, however, and I firmly do not believe in romantic love. I think it's an ideal only, and in the cold light of reality, such a beast (much like Vincent) does not and cannot truly exist. We're told this lie about it in our childhoods. We learn to yearn for it when we're teenagers. But when we get to the nitty-gritty of life, we have a come-uppance. Real love isn't that gushy tingly sensation that makes your heart go all melty and pitter-pat. That kind of love is a delusion a best. It's obsession. It's fascination. It might be a sign of being in love with the idea of being in love. But it is not love itself. That love is a lie.

Real love is this quiet, enduring loyalty that often doesn't even go hand in hand with attraction or lust. It just is, and it binds some part of you to this other person whether you want it to or not.

Don't get me wrong -- there are a couple of people I can think of in my life right now whom I can say that I truly love. But I could never imagine having romantic relationships with them, especially because of that love. I take these people far too seriously to get all gushy around them, and I believe in at least one case, that feeling is mutual. So we stoically bear this enduring feeling that really conflicts with both of our views of ourselves.

Here's the essence of the lie: Real love is not as neat as the happily-ever-after story between one man and one woman. Real love cannot choose to be focused on just one person, nor does it always choose to focus on someone you have any sexual compatibility with whatsoever. Real love is certainly as fickle as they say, and as incomprehensibly enduring. But, at least in my experience, it chooses its foci without any kind of practical regard for one's real life.

So, romance is this thing that can be amusing to watch so long as I can manage to suspend my disbelief. But in the real world, I probably would have smacked Catherine for carrying on like such a weepy girl about three weeks into things, and I think I would have given up talking to brooding Vincent when he got into one of his impossible moods. I'd have gone off and gotten an entire book written by the time either of them had finished proselytizing on the virtues of love and the pain of aloneness ...

That being said, it is so obvious to me the impact this show had on formative portions of my personality. Especially when it comes to authors and poets whose work it really brought alive for me. I would never have found Rilke without this show.

Too bad my life has taught me that the heart-rending love affair between these two is nothing but a ridiculous delusion about a pretty but impossible lie.

Oh, and writing is coming along wonderfully again. Just in time for my travel schedule to start getting crazy once more ...

--M

April is the Cruelest Month ...

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:33:53 GMT

I'm still alive. Just tired, and fighting to stick to a bunch of writing deadlines against a sudden wave of feeling deeply unmotivated.

Not much else to report.

--M

News

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 09:00:48 GMT

The cover for Walking the Twilight Path has been posted. I really love the font they used, but I'm a big font junkie.

And, in other news, I'm on the cover of the Spring 2008 issue of Mysteries Magazine. There's a pretty extensive interview in there, as well. Oh yeah. And a centerfold. Not the Playboy sort, but a centerfold nevertheless.

--M

Library ... Update

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:50:44 GMT

Thanks to everyone who came out this past weekend to help out with the library project. All the enthusiasm was greatly appreciated. I couldn't have gotten this much done without all the team work.

We got somewhere around 2500 books entered. Glancing over the list, there are a few double entries, but I'll sort all that out over the next few weeks. There are still a number of manual entries to go, but for the moment I am taking a break. Ultimately, I want to get all the periodicals and PDF books entered as well, just to keep track of things, but I plan on tackling that a little bit at a time as my schedule allows.

We'd been estimating the library at 3500 books, but it looks like it's only 3k, maybe a little less. I did purge a bunch of fluff a while back, though it certainly wasn't in the neighborhood of 1k books. We also did not enter the gaming books, and I left out a chunk of fiction as well. But even so, we've been over-estimating. The Library Thing system makes it so much easier to be accurate. The library still contains an inordinate number of books, as my muscles are reminding me, since I did a lot of the lifting and shelving.

That being said, I'm taking a break for a couple of days. I feel both accomplished and exhausted. I think the new Jim Butcher is calling my name.

EDIT: I said I was taking a break, but if that were true, I wouldn't have stayed up until noon editing tags and other entries. April Fool's on me, courtesy of OCD.

--M

Library Project

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 11:26:36 GMT

I think we all officially love Library Thing. And the Cue Cats scanners are amazing as well. The whole system is so easy that a four-year-old can use it -- literally, as a friend's daughter was happily scanning books along with us for a portion of the night. She was really cooking, too. She made a game of it for herself, and she must have scanned a hundred books all by herself.

All told, we got nearly 1300 books into the database. If we were only scanning, we probably would have gotten a lot more, since we had three laptops set up with the scanners. But we're also rearranging the library, and that's taking a little more time. I'm trying to think ahead with stocking some of the shelves, allowing for future growth. That's taking more time than anything else, but the whole project is breezing by, compared to other attempts we've made in the past to hand enter all of the books.

Our ID on Library Thing is "kheperu." If you look us up, you can already see the database in progress. For some of the books, we're still matching up the correct covers and such, so some portions of what you see may change over the next little while. But all in all, I'm pleased as punch with this entire venture!

--M

Down-time!

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 02:40:33 GMT

Home and chilling on Warcraft. Cleaned the house and re-organized the living room in preparation for this weekend's booking festivities.

If all goes well with the database project we're tackling with the library this weekend, I'll have some linkage that will let people virtually browse the library.

Otherwise, I'm happily losing myself in the worlds of Azeroth & Outland. Yay for brain candy.

--M

Home

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 01:43:02 GMT

Back home from the 2-week run.

Many cool things to talk about, but I'm very tired at the moment. I'm going to rest up a bit and see if I can remember everything important to blog Monday or so.

Thanks for the webhost suggestions. I'm going to talk with the folks who will most likely be helping me with the tech end of things and come to some kind of decision soon.

For the moment, Happy Irish Heritage & Drinking Holiday ... I'm gonna crash.

--M

Email Notice

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 23:40:22 GMT

Have you been getting Mailer Daemon notices when you try to contact me at michelle@michellebelanger.com? You are not alone. The simplest explanation is that iPowerweb SUCKS and has been supremely unhelpful in correcting the suckage.

If you go to the contacts page of my website, you'll find different methods of getting in contact with me.

My private email is glenarvon @ gmail -dot- com. Use this if you really need to get in contact with me. Please do not abuse it. I won't even say how many emails I just had to wade through since I've been on the road for th past week and unable to catch an Internet connection until now.

Consider michelle@michellebelanger.com defunct until further notice. Also, if you have recommendations for webhosts that do not suck and are reasonably priced, please let me know. Change is in the wind....

--M

The American Dumb-ocracy

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:46:01 GMT

I was over on Amazon.com checking out my sales ranks when I saw that Psychic Dreamwalking had gotten a new review. I also noticed that it's 4 1/2 star rating had gone down to 4 stars, which told me that it wasn't going to be a good review. I went and read it anyway.

Now, I have to say -- there are people who have, as far as I can tell, signed up for an Amazon account expressly to give some of my books a bad review. These reviews tend to exist simply because the reviewers disagree with the subject matter or personally dislike me. This most often happens with the vampire books, and I'm used to it by now. Those reviews usually speak for themselves, since they usually amount to a three-line rant of "OMG Vampirz are dumb how dare u write abut them!!!" or some super-mysterious-sounding asshat saying things like, "De vampirz, Michelle noes not about our true secretz!"

But the guy who gave Psychic Dreamwalking one star was articulate ... and more than that, he had a point. He was disappointed that the book that could have broken new territory was essentially a 101 book. He saw intimations of deeper stuff, but things never dove down as far as he would have liked. He mentioned being surprised at not seeing more of Dion Fortune's work referenced, and he felt the parts that touched on Jung and Freud did only just that -- touched on their theories in regards to dreams and dreaming.

He's right. But in almost all cases, that's not because those sections weren't a part of the original manuscript. It's because they got cut from the original manuscript because the publisher was concerned that I would loose my readers by being too brainy. In the first draft of the book, I'd spent about four chapters exploring the psychological significance of dreams, as well as delving into theoretical territory about out of body experience, astral projection, and dreamwalking -- and where these three things intersected. I even went so far as to try to draft up a working model of inner space/outer space and where the realm of dreams intersects with the realm of spirits and where both intersect with the astral realms.

The publisher amputated all of it. Instead, they wanted me to tell the story of my introduction to these techniques and then to launch right into some introductory exercises so readers had something to do in the first three chapters other than read dry metaphysical theories. I agreed in the end, because they made a good argument: Psychic Dreamwalking *was* the first book to tackle that technique specifically and exclusively outside of the context of shamanic practice. And they felt the market needed a 101 book before I launched into a 201 or 301 book on the subject. So the dense chapters of metaphysical theory got the axe.

But the disappointed reviewer still has a point: a lot of readers in the occult/metaphysical market are really smart. They've been studying this stuff for years, and they're itching for books that delve deeper than 101 introductory material. But again and again, publishers put pressure on writers to make each book stand alone, which means filling up pages of introductory material to catch the newbies up to speed. In part, I think this comes about because publishers tend to assume that their demographic is not as mature or as well-educated as it really is, and they are afraid of losing readers. Advanced readers will usually still buy a 101 book, provided that it manages to cover some territory in a unique and innovative fashion or if, like The Psychic Energy Codex it manages to present some new research that appeals to advanced students while still providing good groundwork for beginners. Beginners, on the other hand, are less likely to buy a book that talks over their heads.

In the publishing industry, in television, in movies -- in all aspects of the media, really, I see the same concerns and issues at work. The corporate powers that be approach America as a Dumb-ocracy, and they design their products to appeal to the least common denominator. They are so afraid of talking over peoples' heads and losing the rather massive audience constituted by the masses that I think they ultimately perpetuate the problem, ratcheting down the level or learning people are exposed to with each subsequent work. Even the occult publishers, who are highly specialized and theoretically speak to a more educated audience, fall prey to the dumbocracy. It's just easier to sell to the hundreds of teen witches out there than to write a book that only about twenty-five hard-core maguses are going to become excited about. The number of times I've been told to decrease the amount of footnotes I've got in a manuscript really speaks to this.

I don't have a solution, at least not where books I'm writing for a publisher are concerned. Someone suggested that we release "author's editions" kind of like "director's cuts" for movies, but that gets into rights issues. But I wanted to record my thoughts here so the discerning readers understand that we authors know that sometimes our books could be more challenging, more profound, could explore more theoretical territory. But until something changes radically in the industry of publishing, you're likely to see mostly 101 books, even from writers who could easily speak to graduate-level magick.

--M

New Shadowdance

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 16:39:21 GMT

Somehow, we skipped February entirely. This was leap year, so we can't even use the "it's a very short month" excuse too credibly. But, Chris & I finally have a new episode up.

This one's a ramble on reincarnation, its problems and pitfalls and what past life memories mean (and don't mean) for one's present life.

Take a listen over here.

The SD site also has a new look. You'll see more links, since Chris & I both have a couple of new side projects, and one of those links under "Chasing Infinity" will take you to a version of the Rite of Seven Gates. Anyone familiar with the seven Arit of the ancient Egyptian underworld will instantly recognize this as a journey into the land of the dead. It was recorded live in Chicago with one edit -- I removed the sound of someone's cell phone about midway through the journey.

Remember, boys and girls, turn off your cell phones before going into ritual or guided journeys. Otherwise you make baby Anubis cry. ;)

--M

Sharing the Wonder

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 20:23:17 GMT

My friend's four-year-old has moved from princesses to ballerinas.

Introducing her to Swan Lake and watching some of the ballet with her on YouTube ... priceless.

--M

An Offer and a Request

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:32:01 GMT

This September, I am releasing a book entitled Walking the Twilight Path. Here's a short blurb about the book so you can get a feel for the work:

Walking the Twilight Path not only introduces the reader to Death in all its many and varied aspects, but the book also provides the necessary tools for gaining power over the process of death, so it can be harnessed as a positive and potent force of change. Through meditations, exercises, and lyrically profound rituals, Walking the Twilight Path gives you the power to cross over to the Otherside – and return with all the wisdom that waits there for you.

Well, one of the challenges of writing a book on deathwork that is very ritual heavy lay in the use of incense and other scents for the rituals. I started out saying "find some appropriately death-attuned scent" and then realized that your average witchcraft store was not likely to carry anything of that nature -- or, if they did, there wouldn't be much room for choice. (One lonely blend of stick incense labeled "Samhain" is not a choice!) So I set about to fix this problem.

One thing most of my readers don't know about me is that between the years of 1992 and 1996, I was the co-owner of a little traveling witchcraft shoppe that would vend at conventions. We sold herbs and oils and incenses and bath salts, and I hand made everything from my own recipes. Some of the scents were darker, but a lot were your standard witchy stuff. I really enjoyed the work of crafting these things, but the whole process was messy and time consuming and kind of a bitch to store in a tiny apartment. So I eventually quit. But I still had some of those recipes, and of course I had the knowledge that had gone into designing those recipes.

So, for Walking the Twilight Path, I pulled out all my old incense & herb books, along with my first printing of Cunningham's herbal, and I set out to make a variety of incenses, oils, and bath blends that would work for the energy of the Twilight Path.

The resulting collection of recipes appears in the back of the book as an appendix. Folks who try their hand at the Twilight Path are encouraged to blend their own supplies -- but -- once again, I remember how messy, cumbersome, and time-consuming this can be.

So, finally, we get to the real point of this post.

The Contest
I know many of you out there run little shoppes much like the one I was a part of. And I know at least some of you would be interested in selling blends appropriate to darker ritual work. So I am looking to essentially license the use of my blends and their names to half a dozen stores out there who can then sell them ready-made to the people who take up the work set forth in the new book. I suspect that a lot of folks who follow dark pagan paths will like the blends as well, so they'll hardly be limited to practitioners who are essaying the rituals in my book. Right now, I just want to make sure that these options are out there under the pretty names I've devised so they are recognizably connected with the Twilight Path.

If you are interested in producing this special line of blends, drop me an email at glenarvon -@- gmail -dot- com. Tell me a little about who you are, what type of shop you run, and why you would be a good choice for producing these blends. I also want to know a little about your clientèle -- I'm looking for shops that appeal to a wide variety of people, as the Twilight Path is a very eclectic system with those dark-yet-empowering overtones that most of you are probably familiar with from me.

I'll select six stores around the US and Canada -- real-time stores or web-based, it matters not to me. These winners of the contest will be licensed to produce and sell my recipes with their proper names and with a Twilight Path logo identifying them with the book. For these first six stores, the licensing is free of charge. I'll pass the recipes and a logo along to those selected, and we'll launch the blends in August, just before the book's release.

I'll announce the winners of the contest in June, right after the Kheprian Open House.

--M

Home. Sleepy.

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:53:15 GMT

Back from Convo

(Actually, I've been back since Tuesday morning, but there was sleep between then and now)

Wonderful time. Made lots of great connections. If I saw you there, it was great being able to share space and energy and knowledge with you! Thanks to all the wonderful people at MEC who made the con possible.

I'm still quite tired and am looking at a very demanding week next week in terms of travel as well, so I'll be taking it easy for a few days. Mostly just trying to catch up on email and stuff.

I am reasonably certain that I'll make a post that is both more elaborate and more coherent once I'm caught up on sleep. :)

--M

See you in June?

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:44:26 GMT

HK Open House - everything's set:

Listing on Witchvox

--M

Random Bitching

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 04:01:21 GMT

The hardest thing in the world (at least for me) is to take a concept and boil it down into a short, concise, and still fascinating paragraph to appear among perhaps four paragraphs on the one-sheet of a treatment. Want me to write twenty pages in a night? No problem at all. Want me to write four or five sentences that contain the distilled essence of an idea in the most captivating language possible ... urgh.

In other news, I've now had two classic migraines in the span of four weeks. Very unusual for me -- I thought migraines were a thing of the past. It's probably got a lot to do with the stress. It's been good stress, but wow did reality ratchet it up for 2008.

Still rarin' to go for Convo this weekend. I was hoping to drive out Wednesday to hook up with people early, but with the projects I've got to complete between now and then, I don't think I'll be able to head out till sometimes Thursday. Which means I'll go directly to the hotel.

Still debating if I'll do anything for the masquerade ball. I've got most of the costume to do the Goblin King, but I'd need to pick up grey stretch pants to complete the look...

EDIT: Oh, and it looks like Walking the Twilight Path is already up for pre-order. The price alone tells you it's another tome (to revisit the theme of my inability to be succinct). I can't wait till the cover's live as well.

--M

Call to Adventure

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:42:36 GMT

If you could pick any place in the world to explore a spiritual belief or practice, what would it be?

Would you want to hang out with the Tibetans and see them practice Tumo? Would you want to see a Hindu Swami do his thing? How about psychic surgeons in Thailand?

Any practice, anywhere -- no limits on travel or accessibility ... And you would get to study the ability and put it to the test.

Where would you go? What would you want to see?

--M