Across The Pond

Less than 4 weeks to go until I board the Virgin Atlantic flight for Heathrow Airport.  Less than 4 weeks to go before I have to figure out what and how to pack for a nearly 3 week stay in the United Kingdom.  Truth be told, I am highly excited by the prospect of this trip, as it has been more than 14 years since my last visit, and I am much in need of the sights and sounds of the place and of walking old streets and pathways as I research the next novels.

Besides research, which will take me from Stratford Upon Avon to London and probably Glastonbury once again, I will be attending the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton and doing readings from my books on Thursday, 31 October from 4:00 to 4:30 PM.  Looking forward to meeting other authors in my genre and readers thereof, going to the awards banquet, and all such a wonderful convention entails.

And then there is Stratford!  I have long wanted to see the home of William Shakespeare, and this will be the perfect time, for friends of mine managed to get seats for us to see David Tennant in Richard II, a play rich on texture and in plot, filled with history (albeit weighted politically by the Bard) and the splendour of the times.  What an inspiration to see it in that setting.  My Muse will be working overtime collecting notes from which to prod me later.

WonderCon

I am so excited about this coming weekend  I will be signing my novels, all 9 of them, at WonderCon on Saturday  March 30 from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM at the Greater Los Angeles Writers' Society booth, 1022 at the Anaheim Convention Center.  Such a great opportunity to meet and greet people and to make new friend.  Last year's WonderCon was a fabulous experience and I know this year's will be even better.

Right now I am working on the guided meditations for the Tarot of the Sword and the Rose, which I hope to have not only as a part of the book that will go with the Tarot deck, but also as an audio CD set.  The cards are in the very capable and talented hands of Holly DeFount, a marvelous artist, who is illustrating them from my written descriptions.  It takes time and a lot of work to illustrate 78 cards and the back of them, but we hope to have the deck finished by late 2014 or early 2015.

Meanwhile I am preparing for my journey to Brighton, England for the World Fantasy Convention this coming October.  I will have the chance to do a lot of research while I am over there, and I foresee Dubhghall having several more adventure throughout history, at least one in the Elizabethan Age and one in the Victorian Age, and probably a whole lot more.  Remember, he has said that he has lived so long he may not remember all his adventures in the order of them happening, just as you or I do not necessarily recall our lives in linear sequence.

As for The Lads, as I am wont to call the King and his Knight and the other members of the Companions, will they be back?  Perhaps.  They have been chattering in the background recently, though not loudly enough for me to hear more than murmurs.  There are stories yet to tell of lives lived between the books in the Glastonbury Chronicles, stories only partially recounted in flashback or recounted in part by Dubhghall.  And  then there are the Glastonbury Archives, peripheral accounts and such.  The Tarot of the Sword and the Rose is one such work, as the Tarot was mentioned in some of the books and will be recreated in full.  There is at least one journal, a page of which was included in an earlier work, and more, stories by others, including Dames of the Order, all of which round out the true history of he Order of the Sword and the Rose and those who have created it and kept it alive for all these millennia.  

What else?  Well, that is for them to know and me to find out!

78 Card Pick-Up

OK, I have been absent from the blogosphere.

Sorry.

I have been beset by 2 things since the end of November: the flu, which despite  vaccinations for both it and pneumonia (the latter which I seem to barely have avoided by the sweet intervention of Kaiser Permanente, which in its good graces did not let me put off coming in to see a doctor) has laid me low off and on since the first day of Loscon, and the blessed persistence of my Muse.

After more than two decades, my part in producing a new Tarot deck has gone to the next step: the artist.

I was fortunate enough to meet my counterpart, the wonderful Holly DeFount, at Pantheacon over Presidents' Day Weekend in San Jose, California.  My publisher, Peter Paddon of Pendraig Publishing had decided we were a match and within days of my sending the written versions of the cards to him, he had transmitted the same to her.  She is presently soaking up all nine of the so-far published novels of The Glastonbury Chronicles and  Tales of the Dearg-Sidhe in preparation for the harrowing task of actually illustrating them.  The Tarot of the Sword and Rose will take a couple of years to illustrate, but I am so very excited at the prospect of actually sitting down with them in my hands to do a reading, I am willing to wait as long as it takes.

A little background:

I started the deck before I started the books, but not long before, based upon the experiences I have had as a Tarot  reader since 1967 and the tradition my spiritual path has followed.  When the books began to manifest in the early 1990s, it became plain that the two dovetailed and that as the unconscious backgrounds of the tradition fed the novels, so did the novels bring forth the symbolism necessary for the cards.  They are based upon a pan-Celtic mythology, folklore of the British Isles, history, and characters and situations in the novels.  I had put even the notion of doing the deck for years until in Volume IV of The Glastonbury Chronicles, "The Rose Above The Sword", the tarot cards manifested and became an important plot device, a manner in which forbidden history, lore and religion could be kept alive in symbols which only a few could read and pass down through the generations until it was possible for them to resurface to the public.

For several weeks between my appearance at Loscon and Pantheacon I was awakened in the middle of the night with symbols, pictures and instructions from that same Dark Muse who regularly rouses me from sleep to write the novels, only this time it was in a frenzy with some deadline I did not understand...the deadline which turned out to be getting them to Peter in tome for him to get them to Holly so we could meet at Panntheacon.

Now that the actual descriptive writing is done, I have a bit of leisure during which I plan to do a series of pathworkings or guided meditations to go with the major arcana, hopefully to  be released as a set of CDs to go with the cards and their book.  I have a lot of time, so the rush is not going to be nearly as intense.  The first one is already finished...only 77 to go.

Meanwhile, Mercury is retrograde, I am still recovering from the flu that the flu shot did not seem to cover, and I need to get some sleep.

Be well, all.

LOSCON 39

It's that time of year once again...not just the Holidays, but LOSCON, one of my favourite ways to spend a weekend recovering from the publication of a new novel.  Nine novels in three years.  Probably not a world record, but as good excuse as any for not keeping up this blog.

LOSCON 39 will find me this Thanksgiving weekend once more happily avoiding Turkey leftovers and rubbing shoulders with fellow Science Fiction, Science Fact and Fantasy authors and enthusiasts.  This time I have been scheduled for three panels, the first at 2:30 PM on Friday on Alternate History, a subject dear to my plot lines.  Saturday at 10 AM will find me with author Maggie Secara and story teller Robert Seutter and others on the panel being run by Krypton Radio to launch their new show, "The Event Horizon".  Sunday's panel is at 11:30 AM and is on the intriguing subject of Shakespeare's influence on Fantasy and Science Fiction.

There will be an autograph session at 4 PM on Saturday, and hopefully I will be throwing a Champagne book-launch party Friday evening for my latest, Volume VI of The Glastonbury Chronicles: "The Barley and the Rose".  The Champagne is already on ice.

All in all I hope to see many of you there.  It will be a lot of fun, and for that and so many other things, I am truly thankful.

The Transit of Bradbury

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to be among the throng of enthusiasts who had braved traffic and lack of sufficient parking to view the Transit of Venus across the Sun at the Griffith Park Observatory.  My husband and I spent the afternoon watching through a telescope fellow author Karen Anderson had brought with her, and helped her entertain the lines of folks who were eager to catch a glimpse of this rare phenomenon from the far reaches of the parking lot, even before they made it to the lawn and the viewing areas at the Observatory proper. 

Venus, on its way from being the Evening Star to the Morning Star, usually the brightest object in the sky after the Sun and the Moon, was a tiny black dot against the white disc of the Sun, larger than the freckle-like sunspots which also showed up through the  filter, but very tiny, indeed...a marvelous light eclipsing the sun, yet its own light, merely a reflection of the Sun, being eclipsed by it...only a tiny shadow, yet a piece of rock not much smaller than the size of Earth.  It was enough to put many things into perspective. 

It was an event we would not see again, as it occurs so rarely.

This morning I was awakened to the blare of the clock-radio blasting the news that author Ray Bradbury had died, and that too, put things into perspective.

Ray Bradbury was one of my heroes.  My high school and college years were made more precious by the reading of his tales, from the cautionary "Fahrenheit 451" (through which I learned the combustion point of paper and must have saved myself from countless kitchen fires by remembering to set the oven at a point well below that if I were baking cupcakes) to the dark and well-loved "Something Wicked This Way Comes", to the much-touted "Martian Chronicles".  I grew up with Bradbury, reaffirmed my own imagination by reading the products of his.  It was he, as much as Robert Heinlein, who made me believe I had a story to tell and that writing was what I really wanted to do, writing in that field of speculative fiction which often transverses science fiction and fantasy and yet which leaves the reader with a feeling that there is more to the story than has been told and challenges him or her to seek out that truth.

I was not fortunate enough to have met Robert Heinlein, but Ray Bradbury spoke a few years back at a local library and I would not have missed that for the world.  Speaking for a few moments with him at the end of the lecture were magical...the tangible, physical evidence for all the words on all the pages which I had consumed so avidly in my teen years and beyond.

And somehow it feels fitting he should leave us during the transit of Venus, the same way Mark Twain left this world during the return of Halley's Comet...both bright fixtures of the literary world, lights whose like  we will not see again in the near future.

Once More Into The Breach...

Last night, or rather early this morning (guess it depends on the time zone, and when I am zoning, I lose all track of time) I wrote the last line of The Glastonbury Chronicles Volume VI "The Barley And The Rose".  It was satisfying, yet I found myself crying through the final pages of the book as memories of all the books which had gone before came suddenly tumbling into my consciousness.

The book will be out this October.

Will this be the end of The Lads?

I won't know until they tell me, but I am certain they will at least  pop in every now and then in Dubhghall's adventures, the Tales of the Dearg-Sidhe series.  Volume III "The Pale Mare's Fosterling" is in final edit and will be released this June.

In the mean time, I will miss them tremendously and concentrate  on some new adventures for Dubhghall, who has centuries to go to catch up with them.  I will also be finishing up the Tarot of the Sword and the Rose, which is seen first in last October's release "The Rose Above The Sword".

There is also another companion series, The Glastonbury Archives in the works., which deals with back stories relating to The Glastonbury Chronicles.  Volume I, "The Sword Beneath The Rose" is completed and will probably be released some time next year.

And then there is the mystery novel...well...that is another story entirely and one I will get to later..

LOSCON 38

For may years I was an avid attendee of Science Fiction and Fantasy conventions, from Anaheim to Pasadena...even to driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas for one which had been advertised in a magazine and turned out to have been cancelled,  I marvelled at the creativity of not just the fans, but the guests of the conventions... authors, special effects designers, directors, prop makers, budding filmmakers...all of them amazed me with their talents and their insights.

There was one year I recall when a Creation Con had called for a costume contest, and I responded by making garb for myself, my husband Jay and our friend Jim to go as three Klingons in rehearsal for Macbeth.  Under the watchful eye of the judges, including Star Trek: Deep Space Nine actor Rene Aubergenois, we found ourselves the winners and shared the myriad prizes between ourselves and a talented young woman named Kelly who had made the Klingon heads for us.

Little could I have expected that after all the Equicons, Loscons and Creation Cons I would one day be asked to be a speaker at one myself.

Tomorrow, Friday, November 25, I will be doing two panels at Loscon 38, the first, at noon, on the subject of the influence of Celtic mythology on modern fantasy and science fiction, and the second, around 8:30PM, on the transformation of the Vampire from Bram Stoker's "Dracula" to the creatures envisioned by today's authors.  I will also be signing all 6 of my novels during the balance of the day and most of Saturday and Sunday.

I am absolutely thrilled with this opportunity and hope to see some of my good friends there.