Thursday 16 April 2015

Urbane Authors

Urbane Authors

1. David John Griffin is a writer, graphic designer and app designer, and lives in a small town by the Thames in Kent, UK with his wife Susan and two dogs called Bullseye and Jimbo. He is currently working on the first draft of a third novel as well as writing short stories for a novel-length collection.


The Unusual Possession of Alastair Stubb is a gothic terror of the highest order, delivering a dream-like and hallucinatory reading experience that promises to reveal secrets both disturbing and astonishing. Do you dare meet the Stubbs?

2. Sara Bain. An imaginative thinker with a career as diverse as the number of genres her fiction crosses, Sara Bain is one of those people who has the ability to write to any formula but chooses to adhere to none.
Her debut novel, The Sleeping Warrior, has been described as “talented”, “imaginative”, “remarkable” and “simply brilliant.”

The Ghost Tree will publish autumn 2015.


Five years after the death of his wife, MacAoidh Armstrong moves into a smallholding in southern Scotland with the intention of living a self-sufficient existence. Although he’s heard the steading has a reputation for being haunted, the pragmatic Highlander does not believe in ghosts.

In 1695, a farmhouse on the steading, then called The Ringcroft of Stocking, was reportedly haunted by a violent poltergeist which took two weeks and a good few clergy to exorcise. The minister leading the exorcism published his experiences of the haunting that year. The account was witnessed by fifteen members of the clergy and community and is widely known as the Mackie or Rerrick Parish Poltergeist.

On a hill by the steading stands The Ghost Tree: all that remains of the former Ringcroft of Stocking. There were three of them in living memory but only one still stands. Local legend says, when the last of the Ghost Trees dies, the Rerrick Parish Poltergeist will return. The Ghost Tree is dying and, just days after MacAoidh moves in, he is forced to contend with a number of strange occurrences, beginning with an unexplained fire in a bedroom.

There follows a series of bizarre and terrifying occurrences at The Ring which defy all logical and scientific explanation and which compel MacAoidh to find the reasons for this bizarre phenomena….and why a 17th century poltergeist is trying to kill him.

3. Tess Rosa hails from a small town in Western Montana. She left for Seattle with two bags and a lot of passion at the age of 19. An established photographer, she met a group of writers from New York and through them, found her voice. Freefall into Us is her first published collection of prose and poetry. She currently resides in Seattle, and has been known to quote Kerouac and sling the finest of wine.

“Boooooom! Reading Tess Rosa’s words sends you hurtling headlong into her world of raw emotion and pinpoint human detail. The reader resides in the same room as the characters and events, experiencing every nuance of the unfolding dramas. Rosa’s style is stripped down to the emotive essentials and delivers the real deal – it’s happening now! Fast! Urgent! Cutting! And then the bombshell hits, and the reader is greater, richer and rewarded with deep insight into the pain, anguish and joy of the very real characters.
This is a rollercoaster of a read from a no-nonsense writer who is unafraid to use words to strip her characters naked and bare before the reader, adeptly identifying the emotions that drive us. Tess Rosa is clearly a writer to watch – follow the shine and be dazzled. ”

Martin Skate, bestselling author of The Spike Collection

4. Steven Berkoff was born in Stepney, London. After studying drama and mime in London and Paris, he entered a series of repertory companies and in 1968 formed the London Theatre Group. His plays and adaptations have been performed in many countries and in many languages. Among the many adaptations Berkoff has created for the stage, directed and toured, are Kafka’s Metamorphosis and The Trial, Agamemnon after Aeschylus, and Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. He has directed and toured productions of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus also playing the title role, Richard II, Hamlet and Macbeth, as well as Oscar Wilde’s Salome.

Films Steven has acted in include A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, Octopussy, Beverly Hills Cop, Rambo, Under the Cherry Moon, Absolute Beginners and The Krays.

John is an actor. He is a man. A man who wants. A man who needs. A man who takes. And he takes from those who always expect him to give. To give them love, loyalty, affection – to give them his soul, his loyalty, his life. Why can’t they just let him thrive? Why can’t they understand the desires and passions that drive him? Why is he a man alone? John has crossed the line from performance to reality, from stage to street, from imagination to visceral breath – and he needs to wrest control before all is lost.

Challenging themes that haunt the Berkoff canon are ever-present in this startling novel: his luxurious verbosity; his counterpoint of crude street patter and elegiac proclamation; sex wars; class wars; dislocation and abandonment of love in a thankless and unyielding world. This is a powerful, divisive and brutally honest novel that will inspire, enrage and provoke – and live on long after the final word.

5. James Silvester is an HR professional and former Mod DJ for internet radio, with a neglected talent for the harmonica. He first began writing during his University days, re-discovering his passion for storytelling after delving into the rich history of Eastern Europe.


Sometimes the only choice is an escape to perdition…..
Prague 2015. Herbert Biely, aged hero of the Prague Spring, stands on the brink of an historic victory, poised to reunite the Czech and Slovak Republics twenty-six years after the Velvet Revolution. The imminent Czech elections are the final stage in realising his dream of reunification, but other parties have their own agendas and plans for the fate of the region. A shadowy collective, masked as an innocuous European Union Institute, will do anything to preserve the status quo.
Institute operative Peter Lowe’s mission is to prevent reunification by the most drastic of measures. Yet Peter is not all that he seems – a deeply troubled man, desperate to escape the past, his resentment towards himself, his assignment and his superiors deepens as he questions not just the cause, but his growing feelings for the mission target.
As alliances shift and the election countdown begins, Prague becomes the focal point for intrigue on an international scale. The body count rises, options fade, and Peter’s path to redemption is clouded in a maelstrom of love, deception and murder – can he confront his past to save the future?

6. PJ Whiteley, who writes non-fiction as Philip Whiteley, is an experienced author, principally about management. He has written extensively about how low wages are bad for business, as part of a bid to try to convince economists that society consists of people. Taking a break from this Quixotic task, he has turned his hand to romantic comedy, seizing on the potential of men preferring to play or watch sport than talk about their feelings and stuff.
Close of Play is the first novel, centring on perennial themes of the human condition: love, loss, hope, life choices and that nagging feeling in the back of the mind that you may not fully be up to date with how your team is doing.

“I stood, entranced, holding the card as I re-read it and gently traced my forefinger over the signature, enchanted at receiving such a rare gift. For a brief, beautiful moment I imagined being there with her, walking on the bleak sandy beach, shaking the sand out of our walking boots and tidying our tousled hair. The sensation disappeared rapidly and all I had was the card, which I placed on the mantelpiece.”
Brian Clarke has an ordered life, a life of village cricket, solid principles, and careful interaction with those around him. He is resolutely fending off advancing middle-age with a straight bat, determined to defend his wicket against life’s occasional fast balls. Then he meets Elizabeth – a gentle, caring, genuinely selfless soul who is a glowing bloom amongst the ordered hedgerows of his existence. As Elizabeth demands Brian’s interest…and breathes hope into his heart…he must reassess his self-defined role as the lone batsmen and fight to find the courage to fall in love. Or risk losing her forever.
Close of Play is a thoughtful, funny, beautifully honest story of love and manners. It’s a tale of missed opportunities and a chance at redemption – and the fear of opening our hearts to another when we think we’ve forgotten how to love.

7. Alcina Faraday is a scientist, businesswoman and stepmother who writes literary fiction about the redeeming power of love and the disturbing possibilities of modern scientific reality.
Her Spiral Wound Trilogy “Beauty, Love and Justice”, “These Modern Girls” and “The Commodity Fetish” follows a cultured rabble of unhinged, uncool, reality-averse GenX/Y outliers as they seek success and heroism, survive squalor and indignity, have a few laughs, and – mostly – emerge relatively unscathed from the moshpit of modern life in Paris, London and Lisbon.
Alcina lives in London and Devon with her engineer husband and a small colony of palmate newts.


Beauty, Love and Justice is Alcina Faraday’s compelling debut tale of love, ambition, honesty and deceit and will be available in Spring 2015

8. Arpan Panicker is a serial dabbler. He has tried his hand at everything from event management to street theater with an intermittent corporate career that led to him setting up his own learning design consultancy. The one thing he stuck with was writing, and Wordscapist is his first full-length novel. While not drowning in books and gadgets, he’s spending time with his wife or motorbike, and on some rare occasions, both. He loves to travel and most of his trips start out as location research for his next Wordscapist book and end up as culinary binges.


Wordscapist (n): A legendary wordsmith, usually assumed to be male, who is rumoured to be able to shape reality to his words. Limitless in his powers, and not aligned with the Guild or the Free Word. No proof or evidence of his existence has ever been found. First known usage circa 16th century.

Everything you say is true… somewhere. But for Slick the notion of what is true is becoming very blurred indeed. He always knew the world was one of constant change. He just didn’t expect that change to include witnessing a demon tearing off the head of a stranger. That’s the kind of change that could lead to hearing voices in your head. Which is also happening rather too frequently for Slick’s liking.

But that’s what happens when you’re thrown headlong into the world of wordsmiths, where simple words can shape and reshape reality, and the legend of the Wordscapist becomes more than just an urban myth. Slick must discover the Way of the Word if he is to shape a new reality and discover his true destiny……Buckle up. Hang on. And yes, careful what you say. Everything you say is true…becomes true…somewhere.

Wordscapist: The Myth is the first groundbreaking volume in the Way of the Word series, and Urbane’s launch title for a thrilling new digital only frontlist – open your mind and your e-reading device to a new voice in fantasy fiction.

9. Kevin Murray began his writing career 40 years ago, working on The Star, Johannesburg’s biggest daily newspaper. He soon became Chief Crime Reporter in what was considered to be the crime capital of the world. He once achieved a record of more than 30 consecutive days of front page crime stories, including an aircraft hijacking, several murders, numerous armed robberies and even drug-related gang wars. Since then, his successful career has spanned magazine publishing, public relations and strategic communications. Being a storyteller is his craft. He has written two bestselling business books on leadership and has a cupboard full of ideas for the next novel.


London, 1986. A newspaper editor is horrifically murdered, his death quickly followed by a series of more brutal, and often bizarre, slayings. The police are baffled, the only clear link between the murders being a single blood red rose left at the scene of every killing. Why? What does the rose mean? What connects the killer to each bloody corpse?
Scotland Yard detective Alan Winters leads a hunt for the elusive prey. As the body count rises, Jennifer Chapman, renowned investigative journalist and daughter of the murdered newspaper editor, sets out on a personal quest for revenge.
Drawn together in their pursuit of a deadly quarry, Winters and Jennifer unwittingly face a fatal surprise, for the killer is closer than they think. As they close in on the truth of the blood red rose, their unseen foe plots a shattering end to his reign of terror, and death awaits them all…

10. Adrian Harvey. Since escaping the East Midlands to find his fortune in the big city, Adrian Harvey has combined a career in and around government with trying to see as much of the world as he can. He lives in North London, which he believes to be the finest corner of the world’s greatest city. Being Someone is his first novel.


Being Someone is a life story, a love story, a human story.

James has fallen through life, plotting a course of least resistance, taking each day as it comes and waiting for that indefinable ‘something’ to turn up, to give his story meaning. His journey lacks one vital element – a fellow traveller.
Then he meets Lainey. Confident. Beautiful. Captivating. And James rewrites himself to win her heart. Lainey gives James a reason to grow, paints a bright future, promises the happy ending he has sought so keenly. But when we discover we can live the greatest story of all, are we able to share the pages with someone else?
Being Someone is an emotive tale of love, of self-discovery and adventure – a story of the eternal search for happiness in another, without ultimately losing ourselves.

11. Chris Parker is a specialist in Communication and Influence. His fascination with the power of words and how they can be used to create intrapersonal and interpersonal change began in 1976. It became a lifelong study that has underpinned almost four decades of work in a variety of professional roles and contexts. A Licensed Master Practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), Chris is a highly experienced management trainer, business consultant, lecturer and writer. He has more lines on his face than most and is afraid to read them.


Set in contemporary Nottingham, Influence introduces readers to Marcus Kline, confident, and arrogant, communications consultant and expert who is about to discover that not every situation can be analysed and controlled.

12. Albrecht Behmel is an award winning-playwright and novelist. He studied history, arts and philosophy at Heidelberg University and at Humboldt-University, Berlin before his career as a writer for German tv, radio and film in Berlin. He has written over 20 novels and non fiction books, games and plays. Almost a renaissance man, Albrecht is also a painter and designer He enjoys the nature of the German Black Forest where he lives with his family.


Altdorf, November 1307 and Gessler would have obedience. He hung his hat on the pole at the centre of the square, the newly constructed fortifications looming over the populace. Every citizen was ordered to pass the pole and bow as they did so, proving their allegiance, their serfdom. But one man would not bow, would not scrape, would not bend – William Thell. In that moment a legend was born, and a nation found its courage and its honour.

Albrecht Behmel’s authoritative reinvention of the William Tell legend is a masterful historical novel, blending myth and fact to craft a compelling page turner of love, honour, adventure and revenge.


love and light,
Trace
xoxo

Wednesday 15 April 2015

Books I've read.

Books and Authors

My reading tends to cover more factual/mythical areas, but listed below are some of the fictional books I more recently read. It's going to take me a while to get through the 'Outlander' series as I'm also writing, but wow, completely enjoyed so far. :o) 



This is a compendium of layers behind the books. The mind working behind the scenes. Some may say, a type of story bible and food for the more inquisitive soul.

 Diana Gabaldon:



The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is just back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an “outlander”—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of Our Lord...1743.

Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life, and shatter her heart. For here James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, shows her a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire—and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.
Vogager


Voyager #3


Veronica Roth:
I watched the movie and wanted to find out more. Not a favourite of mine, as not in the vein of what I would normally read, but still enjoyed. I found Four catching my interest more than Beatrice.



In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue--Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is--she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.



George R.R. Martin:

I loved all of his books. Would read again, too!
George R.R. Martin is the author of six titles in the A Song of Ice and Fire series: 



Summers span decades. Winter can last a lifetime. And the struggle for the Iron Throne has begun.

As Warden of the north, Lord Eddard Stark counts it a curse when King Robert bestows on him the office of the Hand. His honour weighs him down at court where a true man does what he will, not what he must … and a dead enemy is a thing of beauty.

The old gods have no power in the south, Stark’s family is split and there is treachery at court. Worse, the vengeance-mad heir of the deposed Dragon King has grown to maturity in exile in the Free Cities. He claims the Iron Throne.


A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire #4) Part Two: Blood and Gold



Old Favourites:

The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart (Merlin Trilogy)


Who was Merlin? Was the famed magician of Camelot & King Arthur's court really a sinister, all-powerful being from another world? Was he truly a Prince of Darkness? Or was he a man with the passions of other mortals? A man with unique intelligence & unusual gifts? Why was he so feared? How did he come by his occult powers? Why was the crystal cave so important to him?
5th century Britain is a country of chaos & division after the Roman withdrawal. Born the bastard son of a Welsh princess who will not reveal to her son his father's true identity, Myridden Emrys--or as he would later be known, Merlin--leads a perilous childhood, haunted by portents & visions. But destiny has great plans for this no-man's-son, taking him from prophesying before the High King Vortigern to the crowning of Uther Pendragon & the conception of Arthur--king for once & always. 

Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley


Here is the magical legend of King Arthur, vividly retold through the eyes and lives of the women who wielded power from behind the throne. A spellbinding novel, an extraordinary literary achievement, THE MISTS OF AVALON will stay with you for a long time to come...

Others in the series:



SCOTLAND, 1272. Connor MacKiernan, a descendant of the Fae Prince, is a warrior who lives only for honor and duty. Though he's vowed never to marry, that's exactly what he must do to save his sister. Enter a little Faerie magic, and the search for a bride is on. DENVER, 2007. Caitlyn Coryell is having a really bad day -- she just discovered her fiance with another woman! Imagine her surprise when she puts on some sexy lingerie and an antique pendant and Connor appears in her bedroom, begging for her help. He offers a simple yet outrageous adventure: travel to his time, marry him, and return home.

But nothing's simple when Cate is trapped in the thirteenth century. The wedding's delayed, someone's trying to kill her, and in the middle of all this, she realizes she's falling in love with a man who can only be her husband for thirty nights.



My Fav' so far - 
Following her enchanting debut "Thirty Nights with a Highland Husband," Mayhue returns to her beloved Scottish Highlands for this tale of love between a romance novelist and a descendant of the Faeries. Original.

SARAH DOUGLAS is a successful thirty-eight year old romance novelist with big problems. She's come to Scotland on a three month working vacation hoping to recapture her muse - who's deserted her - and resolve the issue of her strange 'feelings' - the ones which allow her to sense the emotions of everyone she touches.

From the moment she arrives, however, her problems only intensify. She's being stalked, but by whom? Is he real or only a figment of her imagination? What about the darkly handsome owner of the cottage she's leasing? How is she ever going to deal with her growing attraction to a man ten years her junior? She knows from bitter experience men - particularly men who look like Ian - aren't interested in women like her.


love and light,
Trace
xoxo

Celtic Fairytale - Interesting reads

Books and Authors
Sharing some books that I wish to read. 
  • Gareth Knight


Springing from the heart of medieval France, The Romance of the Faery Melusine tells the story of Raymondin of Poitiers who accidentally kills his uncle while out hunting, and fleeing deep into the forest, encounters a faery by a fountain. Falling deeply into a mutual soul-love, the faery Melusine agrees to help Raymondin and to become his wife, on condition that he makes no attempt to see her between dusk and dawn each Saturday. On this basis the house of Lusignan thrives and prospers, until a series of treacherous events tempt Raymondin to violate his promise and shatter the magic which holds his faery wife to the human world. First rendered into written form in a text by Jean d'Arras in 1393, the legend of the Faery Melusine is well established in France, where she is credited with having founded the family, town and castle of Lusignan. However, it is very little known in the English-speaking world, despite the fact that Melusine originally hailed from Scotland. This new retelling by Gareth Knight translated from Andre Lebey's 1920s novel Le Roman de la Melusine captures the freshness of Lebey's telling of the legend and brings the benefit of Knight's expertise both in French literature and in the esoteric faery tradition.



The knights of King Arthur's Round Table - Erec, Lancelot, Yvain, Perceval and Gawain - first appeared in the works of Chretien de Troyes, who cast into Old French stories told by Welsh and Breton story tellers which had their origin in Celtic myth and legend. Chretien wrote at a time when faery lore was still taken seriously - some leading families even claimed descent from faery ancestors! So we do well to look again at these early stories, for they were written not so much in terms of mystical quests or examples of military chivalry but records of initiation into Otherworld dynamics. Gareth Knight, an acknowledged expert on spiritual and magical traditions and a student of medieval French, goes to the well spring of Arthurian tradition to unveil these original principles. What is more, he shows how they can be regenerated today. "Opening the faery gates" can have its reward not only in terms of personal satisfaction and spiritual growth but as part of a much needed realignment of our spiritual responsibilities as human beings on planet Earth.



The Breton lai is a narrative poem, usually accompanied by music, that appeared in France about the middle of the 12th century, carried by travelling musicians and storytellers called jongleurs. What is important about them is that they contain a great deal of faery and supernatural lore deriving from Celtic myth, legend and folktale. This collection of twelve tales focuses on faery lore in the lai tradition. Nine are taken from anonymous medieval jongleur sources; the other three are from the more courtly tales collected by Marie de France in the late 12th century. Gareth Knight, a scholar of medieval French as well as an established author on esoteric faery lore, provides a vivid and lively translation of each lai along with a commentary which takes a perspective both historic and esoteric.




The Mystery of the Seven Directions cuts through complicated forms, rituals and temple constructs to reveal the ever-living sacred space around us. In practice it is simple-to-learn, easily accessible, and profoundly effective. It gives us the means to integrate our spiritual outlook with daily activity so that we enhance our lives and walk in sacred ways. This book is geared to the current needs and issues of a global outlook. It draws on enduring, universal models and themes, and is an essential text for contemporary spiritual practice. "A succinct, well-written, and indeed brilliant discussion of the fundamental grid of our reality. This book enables readers to plumb the depths of the seven directions for themselves." --Richard Smoley, author of The Dice Game of Shiva: How Consciousness Creates the Universe.
  • Fiona Mac Leod aka William Sharp
Fiona Macleod was clearly a gentlelady of breeding and intellect. She was almost 'one of us' - but not quite. It was this slight difference that allowed her to deal with dark and frightening characters and subjects in a way that gave them the glamour of the Celtic Otherworld in an intriguing and believable manner. She opened up a whole new world of language, ancient songs, poems and proverbs that had never before been presented to the English-speaking peoples south of the Scottish Highlands. She was a darling of late Victorian literature and earnestly courted by the fin-de-siècle 'Celtic Twilight' movement. Only after her 'death' in 1905 was it revealed that all the works attributed to her were penned by the art and literary critic William Sharp. 



This collection, edited and selected by Sharp's biographer Steve Blamires, contains some of her more important, curious and obscure pieces, annotated and explained where necessary, including provocative dark tales, mystical parables, reveries of nature, political polemics, delightful vignettes and some previously unpublished fragments from William Sharp's notebooks.





Paperback: 340 pages
Publisher: Skylight Press; annotated edition edition (30 April 2014)



Written in 1899 The Immortal Hour is moody, dreamy meditation on life, death, love and immortality. Based loosely on the Irish myth "The Wooing of Etain," the story follows the love of a mortal king, Eochaidh for an immortal fairy woman Etain who at the end of a year with him is reclaimed by her immortal lover, Midir. Woven though out is the enigmatic and dark fairy fool, Dalua, who stands on the threshold between the worlds. This critical edition of The Immortal Hour contains an introductory essay with a biography of the author, analysis of the play and the history of its success as an opera. The text of the play itself is fully annotated with the references to Celtic mythology and a comparison to an earlier publication of it.




Hardcover: 449 pages
Publisher: William Heinemann (1910)



THE SUNSET OF OLD TALES - CHILDREN OF WATER - FOR THE BEAUTY OF AN IDEA - ANIMA CELTICA - THE WINGED DESTINY

CHAPTER 1 EXCERPT 

I do not know if in anything I have a keener pleasure than in the hearing . . . by the hearthside, or looking down into green water, or on the upland road that strings glen upon glen along its white swaying neck . . . of the old tales and poems of beauty and wonder, retold sometimes in an untarnished excellence, sometimes crudely, sometimes so disguised in the savour of the place and hour that not then and perhaps not for long, are they recognized in accent or discerned in feature. Perhaps this pleasure is the greater because it is the pleasure of the tale-lover, for the tale’s sake, rather than of the tale-collector, for the quest’s sake. I do not know how many tales and fragments of tales and broken legends I have heard, now here, now there; or what proportion of these was old, or what proportion of them was of the fantasy or dreaming mind of to-day, or how many retained the phrase and accent of the past in taking on the phrase of to-day and the accent of the narrator’s mind. It is the light, the lift, the charm, the sigh, the cadence I want. I care less for the hill-tale in a book than told by the firelight, and a song is better in the wash of the running wave than in crowded rooms. Every sad tale and every beautiful tale should have a fit background for its setting; and I have perhaps grown so used to the shaken leaf, or the lifted water, or the peat-glow in small rooms filled with warm shadow and the suspense of dreams, as the background of sgeul and ran and oran, that I am become unwisely impatient of the common conditions. Yet even in these much lies with ourselves. I have a friend who says he can be happy with a gas-jet in a room in a street-house. He opens a window by the edge of an inch, if there is no wind crying in the chimney, so that a thin air may be heard rising and falling: and turns his back to the gas-jet: and keeps his eyes on the... 

Paperback: 408 pages
Publisher: Windham Press (12 Aug. 2013)
  •  Jhenah Telyndru




Paperback: 299 pages
Publisher: BookSurge Publishing (7 Mar. 2005)

  • Elen Sentier
Elen Sentier comes from a long family lineage in the British native tradition. She writes novels full of magic, mystery and romance as well as books about the British shamanic ways she learned from her folk.



Following on from the author's successful book Shaman Pathways - Elen of the Ways, this is a practical handbook filled with tried-and-tested exercises, journeys and experiential work for the reader to engage in. Essential reading for anyone wanting to begin the old British paths.



A crossroads — two realities, two ways of power — the everyday and the pagan world of magic. Time for Sarah to choose. At stake: her heart, mind and soul.

Karen Clark is the founder of the Path of She, a journey of transformation with the sacred feminine. In her mid-twenties, a series of synchronistic events conspired to wake Karen up in the midst of a corporate, achievement-driven life and set her on a spiritual journey of reclaiming the lost pieces of her feminine soul and true self. Karen's writing draws upon twenty-five years of spiritual and feminist studies, gender-based consulting, and dreaming and healing with the Goddess. She reaches out to the magic and profound capabilities that lie dormant within our everyday existence, lost jewels just waiting for the touch of our conscious awareness to reawaken and blossom.

I will share more, very soon.

love and light,
Trace
xoxo

Sunday 12 April 2015

Magnolia Tree in Bloom!

Springtime in the garden

 April - First blooms

I love to sit in this half of the garden in the summer. The flowers disappear, and the tree fills with lush green leaves until ready to bloom a second time. At the end of the month, I'll be visiting the Trossachs. Once I return, I'll be writing away under this beauty! Not long now. 

love and light,
Trace
xoxo

The lotus

The lotus

Seeking you...Seeking me...


Inspired by Rumi - 
What you seek is seeking you.




love and light,
Trace
xoxo

Tír-na-n-Og

T'YEER-NA-N-OGE

There is a country called Tír-na-n-Og, which means the Country of the Young, for age and death have not found it; neither tears nor loud laughter have gone near it. The shadiest boskage covers it perpetually. One man has gone there and returned. The bard, Oisin, who wandered away on a white horse, moving on the surface of the foam with his fairy Niamh, lived there three hundred years, and then returned looking for his comrades. The moment his foot touched the earth his three hundred years fell on him, and he was bowed double, and his beard swept the ground. He described his sojourn in the Land of Youth to Patrick before he died. Since then many have seen it in many places; some in the depths of lakes, and have heard rising therefrom a vague sound of bells; more have seen it far off on the horizon, as they peered out from the western cliffs. Not three years ago a fisherman imagined that he saw it. It never appears unless to announce some national trouble.

There are many kindred beliefs. A Dutch pilot, settled in Dublin, told M. De La Boullage Le Cong, who travelled in Ireland in 1614, that round the poles were many islands; some hard to be approached because of the witches who inhabit them and destroy by storms those who seek to land. He had once, off the coast of Greenland, in sixty-one degrees of latitude, seen and approached such an island only to see it vanish. Sailing in an opposite direction, they met with the same island, and sailing near, were almost destroyed by a furious tempest.

According to many stories, Tír-na-n-Og: is the favourite dwelling of the fairies. Some say it is triple-the island of the living, the island of victories, and an underwater land.


HY-BRASAIL--THE ISLE OF THE BLEST

Gerald Griffin

On the ocean that hollows the rocks where ye dwell,
A shadowy land has appeared, as they tell;
Men thought it a region of sunshine and rest,
And they called it Hy-Brasail, the isle of the blest.
From year unto year on the ocean's blue rim,
The beautiful spectre showed lovely and dim;
The golden clouds curtained the deep where it lay,
And it looked like an Eden, away, far away!

A peasant who heard of the wonderful tale,
In the breeze of the Orient loosened his sail;
From Ara, the holy, he turned to the west,
For though Ara was holy, Hy-Brasail was blest.
He heard not the voices that called from the shore--
He heard not the rising wind's menacing roar;
Home, kindred, and safety, he left on that day,
And he sped to Hy-Brasail, away, far away!

Morn rose on the deep, and that shadowy isle,
O'er the faint rim of distance, reflected its smile;
Noon burned on the wave, and that shadowy shore
Seemed lovelily distant, and faint as before;
Lone evening came down on the wanderer's track,
And to Ara again he looked timidly back;
Oh! far on the verge of the ocean it lay,
Yet the isle of the blest was away, far away!

Rash dreamer, return! O, ye winds of the main,
Bear him back to his own peaceful Ara again.
Rash fool! for a vision of fanciful bliss,
To barter thy calm life of labour and peace.
The warning of reason was spoken in vain;
He never revisited Ara again!
Night fell on the deep, amidst tempest and spray,
And he died on the waters, away, far away!


love and light,
Trace
xoxo