F.T. McKinstry's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"
To me, the most mysterious and beautiful thing about writing is the process itself. This is an exploration into the otherworld; like a hapless warrior in a medieval tale, I venture in with my sword and cloak not knowing what will appear from the shadows. I like to be startled.
The otherworld loves a good laugh. It's full of tricksters, beautiful beings and demons, a virtual parade of mirrors in which I see myself in the form of fantastic places, characters and events. While this is easy to romanticize, it's not for the faint of heart. I've often regretted getting what I asked for, or been bewildered by the obvious to the extent that it spins my life around—suddenly, it's not about the story anymore. I've written things that took me years to understand and synthesize. But that's where the mystery comes in.
I love supernatural archetypes...but then again, I'm friends with most of them. Here are some of my favorites in action.
Odin
In Norse mythology, Odin is the one-eyed, all-seeing god of war, magic and wisdom. He is a complex figure, associated with poetry and inspiration, madness and battle fury. He is also a shapeshifter and considered fickle, not to be trusted. He brings to mind the old Celtic stories of poets and magicians who, in their search for truth and pattern, end up going mad and wandering bewildered through the wilds. A patron of writers, if ever there was one.
"The Eye of Odin" is a science fiction story woven into the myth of Odin. It's about the daughter of a warrior clan who made her fortune as a fighter for a military contractor who harnessed the powers of the higher mind. When she is targeted for discovering a secret beneath their dominion, she must learn the nature of a much greater power: love.
Master of magic, god of war, Odin wanders alone.
-From "The Eye of Odin," Aoife's Kiss, Issue 35.
Shapeshifter
The otherworld itself has the nature of a shapeshifter. You think you are looking at one thing, but it's something else; the psyche wears garments that mimic the forces of nature in symbolic ways. The shapeshifter reveals things through deception. What better thing to leap out while writing a story of a wizard-assassin about to fall to his own machinations? She appears from the otherworld with a message he won't understand until he knows what she is.
He drew one more arrow from the shadows of wind and snow and leveled the black, shiny tip through the trees, drifting along in a track as the lord rode down. Then the small man called out—in a woman's voice. She stopped and turned, slowly pushed back her hood to reveal the face of a wolf, gray with a white muzzle, her eyes flashing moon pale as they leapt over the surroundings.
- From The Hunter's Rede, Book One in The Chronicles of Ealiron.
Loerfalos
The unconscious mind has often been compared to the sea. An awesome force, vast, mysterious and mostly unseen, the sea is a metaphor par excellence for the forces of the Feminine, the primeval void from which all things come. The loerfalos, which in the wizards' tongue means "serpent of green darkness," is an enormous immortal sea serpent. A creature of the otherworld, she moves between dimensions, making her elusive and difficult to believe in. Her appearance heralds transformation on a large scale...usually unpleasant. When I began writing The Gray Isles, she was waiting for me. And she had quite a lot to say.
Voices rippled the surface above like the wings of a mayfly, an irritating vibration caught in the rays of the rising sun filtering into the surrounding darkness. One voice she knew; the other, she knew as the blood of an offering cast into the infinite flow of her creatures. Untold shades, hunter and hunted, the souls of drowned sailors, thousands of pearly eggs for every one that breathed, they whispered of chaos in balance.
- From The Gray Isles, Book Two in The Chronicles of Ealiron.
Sioros
This beastie showed up in my consciousness with a roundhouse kick. He is the driving force in my novel Crowharrow, which is the folk name for him. In the wizard's tongue, sioros means "destroyer in the air." A rare creature with the body of a man and the wings of a raven, he is immortal, as are all properly integrated archetypes. Predatory and tricky, he is a powerful seducer of women. Like the loerfalos, the sioros is of the otherworld, and moves between. While not inherently evil, he can seem so. A supernatural force, he burns with the fire of gods and confronting him—or worse, falling in love—is exceedingly foolish.
She leaned down and plucked a crimson columbine and some meadowsweet. She paused, and then straightened her back as the forest eaves stirred on the edge of the field. Something pale moved there, with a darker shadow surrounding it. A chill rippled over her heart as it came into focus, a magnificent man with the wings of a raven twice his height. Clad in the forest, he moved with the grace of dreams, his feathers settling in whispers as he turned and gazed at her from eyes the color of stars.
- From Crowharrow, Book Three in The Chronicles of Ealiron. Coming in 2012 from Double Dragon Publishing.
Wizards, Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration is a collection of stories with a fairytale flavor featuring gods, shamans, shapeshifters and otherworld beings interacting with mortals in characteristic ways. To find out more, see the following posts:
Wizards, Woods and Gods
The Spooky Forest, Part One
The Spooky Forest, Part Two
The Spooky Forest, Part Three
The Spooky Forest, Part Four
On Goodreads: Wizards Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration
The otherworld loves a good laugh. It's full of tricksters, beautiful beings and demons, a virtual parade of mirrors in which I see myself in the form of fantastic places, characters and events. While this is easy to romanticize, it's not for the faint of heart. I've often regretted getting what I asked for, or been bewildered by the obvious to the extent that it spins my life around—suddenly, it's not about the story anymore. I've written things that took me years to understand and synthesize. But that's where the mystery comes in.
I love supernatural archetypes...but then again, I'm friends with most of them. Here are some of my favorites in action.
Odin
In Norse mythology, Odin is the one-eyed, all-seeing god of war, magic and wisdom. He is a complex figure, associated with poetry and inspiration, madness and battle fury. He is also a shapeshifter and considered fickle, not to be trusted. He brings to mind the old Celtic stories of poets and magicians who, in their search for truth and pattern, end up going mad and wandering bewildered through the wilds. A patron of writers, if ever there was one."The Eye of Odin" is a science fiction story woven into the myth of Odin. It's about the daughter of a warrior clan who made her fortune as a fighter for a military contractor who harnessed the powers of the higher mind. When she is targeted for discovering a secret beneath their dominion, she must learn the nature of a much greater power: love.
Master of magic, god of war, Odin wanders alone.
-From "The Eye of Odin," Aoife's Kiss, Issue 35.
Shapeshifter
The otherworld itself has the nature of a shapeshifter. You think you are looking at one thing, but it's something else; the psyche wears garments that mimic the forces of nature in symbolic ways. The shapeshifter reveals things through deception. What better thing to leap out while writing a story of a wizard-assassin about to fall to his own machinations? She appears from the otherworld with a message he won't understand until he knows what she is.He drew one more arrow from the shadows of wind and snow and leveled the black, shiny tip through the trees, drifting along in a track as the lord rode down. Then the small man called out—in a woman's voice. She stopped and turned, slowly pushed back her hood to reveal the face of a wolf, gray with a white muzzle, her eyes flashing moon pale as they leapt over the surroundings.
- From The Hunter's Rede, Book One in The Chronicles of Ealiron.
Loerfalos
The unconscious mind has often been compared to the sea. An awesome force, vast, mysterious and mostly unseen, the sea is a metaphor par excellence for the forces of the Feminine, the primeval void from which all things come. The loerfalos, which in the wizards' tongue means "serpent of green darkness," is an enormous immortal sea serpent. A creature of the otherworld, she moves between dimensions, making her elusive and difficult to believe in. Her appearance heralds transformation on a large scale...usually unpleasant. When I began writing The Gray Isles, she was waiting for me. And she had quite a lot to say.Voices rippled the surface above like the wings of a mayfly, an irritating vibration caught in the rays of the rising sun filtering into the surrounding darkness. One voice she knew; the other, she knew as the blood of an offering cast into the infinite flow of her creatures. Untold shades, hunter and hunted, the souls of drowned sailors, thousands of pearly eggs for every one that breathed, they whispered of chaos in balance.
- From The Gray Isles, Book Two in The Chronicles of Ealiron.
Sioros
This beastie showed up in my consciousness with a roundhouse kick. He is the driving force in my novel Crowharrow, which is the folk name for him. In the wizard's tongue, sioros means "destroyer in the air." A rare creature with the body of a man and the wings of a raven, he is immortal, as are all properly integrated archetypes. Predatory and tricky, he is a powerful seducer of women. Like the loerfalos, the sioros is of the otherworld, and moves between. While not inherently evil, he can seem so. A supernatural force, he burns with the fire of gods and confronting him—or worse, falling in love—is exceedingly foolish.She leaned down and plucked a crimson columbine and some meadowsweet. She paused, and then straightened her back as the forest eaves stirred on the edge of the field. Something pale moved there, with a darker shadow surrounding it. A chill rippled over her heart as it came into focus, a magnificent man with the wings of a raven twice his height. Clad in the forest, he moved with the grace of dreams, his feathers settling in whispers as he turned and gazed at her from eyes the color of stars.
- From Crowharrow, Book Three in The Chronicles of Ealiron. Coming in 2012 from Double Dragon Publishing.
Wizards, Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration is a collection of stories with a fairytale flavor featuring gods, shamans, shapeshifters and otherworld beings interacting with mortals in characteristic ways. To find out more, see the following posts:
Wizards, Woods and Gods
The Spooky Forest, Part One
The Spooky Forest, Part Two
The Spooky Forest, Part Three
The Spooky Forest, Part Four
On Goodreads: Wizards Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration
There's a venerable piece of advice to writers that says, "Write what you know." If you know what you're talking about, it's easier to bring the reader there. But how does it go when it's not familiar to anyone because you made it up out of thin air and broke the rules of known earthly experience in the process?
Enter the fairy tale. A good one drops in enough familiar things to lure the reader in. We all know what a forest is. A constellation. A frog, or a cat. But then things get weird, the familiar becomes suspect and you can go anywhere. When I started writing these stories years ago, I had all kinds of dark and fanciful ideas. I wrote them down and wasn't thinking about writing what I know. But I was.
Fairy tales create landscapes from metaphors, patterns and emotional impressions. This process isn't conscious or linear. It rises from the inner realms of the mind—not when the writer wants it to, or thinks it should, but when it's time—and what looks like a story about, say, some nefarious creature lurking in an enchanted forest is, beneath the surface, a story about something else entirely. Something we all know and are familiar with.
Wizards, Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration is a collection of eight tales that journey through the darker side of the psyche in the guise of imaginary beings, tree and animal lore, romance, dreams, visions and verse.
The Trouble with Tansy - An orphaned girl on the threshold of womanhood inherits a splendid, mysterious garden from three generations of wisewomen. When a roguish wizard attempts to impress her by disrupting the seasons, she must turn to the old powers for help.
The War God Sleeps - When a lush, fertile land is seized by drought, a lonely hermit's son ventures deep into the hills in search of water and there awakes a beautiful, yet terrible god whom the world has learned to live without.
The Bridge - A visionary who spent her life preparing for a planetary alignment that will materialize a beautiful nature spirit only she can perceive, descends into her blackest fears when she is abandoned to a war for which she is indirectly responsible.
The Fifth Verse - An ancient immortal entity defies the rules of her kind by falling in love with a mortal warrior, an indiscretion that leaves her grieving, pregnant and dependent on the help of a wizard whose army was responsible for the death of her beloved.
Deathseer - Under the influence of a mysterious observatory, the commander of a fearsome army is trapped in a conflict that eventually costs him his honor and the life of his brother, and drives him to accept an inborn magical ability that changes his destiny.
Eating Crow - A masterful, wayward shapeshiftress angers a wizard who curses her by summoning a diabolical immortal hunter that puts her near death and forces her to seek the wizard's cat, a gentle, mystical creature that alone can heal her wounds.
Marked - The mother of a fey child learns the pitfalls of mingling with immortals when her boy is taken by a ferocious winged monster at the request of the god who fathered him.
The Origin - A woodsman discovers that he is a god who created everything around him to know the love of a woman whose mortality drives him to the brink of annihilation.
Wizards, Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration is available as an ebook from Wild Child Publishing (PDF, HTML, ePub, Mobi, Lit and PRC), Amazon (Kindle) and Barnes and Noble (Nook).
See Story Illustrations
Read an Excerpt
Watch the Trailer
Customer review of Wizards, Woods and Gods:
"If you enjoy a book for sake of an interesting story, this book is for you. If you enjoy a story for sake of how well it's written, this book is even more so for you. F.T. McKinstry writes in a way that involves all the senses. It's not something I read line by line, but sensation by sensation. Highly recommended."
Enter the fairy tale. A good one drops in enough familiar things to lure the reader in. We all know what a forest is. A constellation. A frog, or a cat. But then things get weird, the familiar becomes suspect and you can go anywhere. When I started writing these stories years ago, I had all kinds of dark and fanciful ideas. I wrote them down and wasn't thinking about writing what I know. But I was.
Fairy tales create landscapes from metaphors, patterns and emotional impressions. This process isn't conscious or linear. It rises from the inner realms of the mind—not when the writer wants it to, or thinks it should, but when it's time—and what looks like a story about, say, some nefarious creature lurking in an enchanted forest is, beneath the surface, a story about something else entirely. Something we all know and are familiar with.
Wizards, Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration is a collection of eight tales that journey through the darker side of the psyche in the guise of imaginary beings, tree and animal lore, romance, dreams, visions and verse.
The Trouble with Tansy - An orphaned girl on the threshold of womanhood inherits a splendid, mysterious garden from three generations of wisewomen. When a roguish wizard attempts to impress her by disrupting the seasons, she must turn to the old powers for help.
The War God Sleeps - When a lush, fertile land is seized by drought, a lonely hermit's son ventures deep into the hills in search of water and there awakes a beautiful, yet terrible god whom the world has learned to live without.
The Bridge - A visionary who spent her life preparing for a planetary alignment that will materialize a beautiful nature spirit only she can perceive, descends into her blackest fears when she is abandoned to a war for which she is indirectly responsible.
The Fifth Verse - An ancient immortal entity defies the rules of her kind by falling in love with a mortal warrior, an indiscretion that leaves her grieving, pregnant and dependent on the help of a wizard whose army was responsible for the death of her beloved.
Deathseer - Under the influence of a mysterious observatory, the commander of a fearsome army is trapped in a conflict that eventually costs him his honor and the life of his brother, and drives him to accept an inborn magical ability that changes his destiny.
Eating Crow - A masterful, wayward shapeshiftress angers a wizard who curses her by summoning a diabolical immortal hunter that puts her near death and forces her to seek the wizard's cat, a gentle, mystical creature that alone can heal her wounds.
Marked - The mother of a fey child learns the pitfalls of mingling with immortals when her boy is taken by a ferocious winged monster at the request of the god who fathered him.
The Origin - A woodsman discovers that he is a god who created everything around him to know the love of a woman whose mortality drives him to the brink of annihilation.
Wizards, Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration is available as an ebook from Wild Child Publishing (PDF, HTML, ePub, Mobi, Lit and PRC), Amazon (Kindle) and Barnes and Noble (Nook).See Story Illustrations
Read an Excerpt
Watch the Trailer
Customer review of Wizards, Woods and Gods:
"If you enjoy a book for sake of an interesting story, this book is for you. If you enjoy a story for sake of how well it's written, this book is even more so for you. F.T. McKinstry writes in a way that involves all the senses. It's not something I read line by line, but sensation by sensation. Highly recommended."
Welcome to Part Three of The Spooky Forest, a series dedicated to the stories in Wizards Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration.
Part Three: War and Transformation
War destroys the fortresses of ignorance with the awesome indifference of a natural force such as an earthquake or a hurricane. Whatever its causes or intentions, it changes things. Permanently. But while it can drive us to the depths of human depravity, sometimes, as with any traumatic event, it can also awaken us to our potential. In "The Bridge" and "DeathSeer," a priestess and a warrior find themselves caught in wars that strip the veils from their eyes to reveal their true natures.
The Bridge
Gods appear to wizards as one thing; to warriors, another. A priestess in search of love in the otherworld is led by her god to the truth of her birthright...but only war can show it to her.
The autumn sun cast long beams across the mauve, green and gold tapestry of the brushy field. A woman emerged from the shadows, breathing deeply as a cool breeze drew her cloak around her bare thighs and stirred the rose-violet oil on her skin. She spoke an ancient word from the pit of her womb and passed through the towering gate of Sol Keep, poised like a forbidding hand on the edge of the plain.
The High Master would know she had gone. But he would not know where. Or why.
A chill swept over her flesh as the naidrin's voice caressed her mind in a whisper of branches, leaves and flowing water. Efae, he said in his gentle way. Where do you fly?
"You should know that," Efae said aloud, addressing the tree line in the distance. "You told me in a dream last night. Now is the time. Tonight I will cross the Bridge, and we shall be together."
The naidrin said nothing.
Deathseer
Keeping a personal secret in the darkness of war is perilous, as secrets know the path to the light. A high commander with the ability to see the hand of Death keeps this secret under the cloak of dreams and visions until he realizes, at great cost, that Death doesn't take sides.
Liros awoke in the clutches of a recurring nightmare. As a white wolf, he saw through the eyes of a child. Drop the candle and run, run on bare feet, so quietly. The dream hovered in his body, his visceral identity and sense of self, an experience as vivid as waking life. Not quietly enough.
Surrounded. Warm tears fall into the open arms of the eternal Void.
As his consciousness returned, the feeling in his heart stood in anguished contrast to the well-built outpost where he lay, in the pre-dawn, surrounded by the watchful eyes of warriors. They called it Fentalon, named after a war god of the North with the head of a wolf. To Liros it felt like a prison.
A candle flickers out against the cold, damp earth.
He closed his eyes and exhaled as the miasma of his circumstance gathered around him. His fading dream darkened it like a bright light casting the long shadow of a crag.
The roar of the river hides the cries, the truth, even as it weeps.
He made a decision.
Wizards, Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration is available as an ebook from Wild Child Publishing (PDF, HTML, ePub, Mobi, Lit and PRC), Amazon (Kindle) and Barnes and Noble (Nook).
In Part Four, "The Immortal Hunter," we'll come face to face with a beautiful yet terrible otherworld creature some believe is just a legend. It isn't.
Part Three: War and Transformation
War destroys the fortresses of ignorance with the awesome indifference of a natural force such as an earthquake or a hurricane. Whatever its causes or intentions, it changes things. Permanently. But while it can drive us to the depths of human depravity, sometimes, as with any traumatic event, it can also awaken us to our potential. In "The Bridge" and "DeathSeer," a priestess and a warrior find themselves caught in wars that strip the veils from their eyes to reveal their true natures.
The Bridge
Gods appear to wizards as one thing; to warriors, another. A priestess in search of love in the otherworld is led by her god to the truth of her birthright...but only war can show it to her.
The autumn sun cast long beams across the mauve, green and gold tapestry of the brushy field. A woman emerged from the shadows, breathing deeply as a cool breeze drew her cloak around her bare thighs and stirred the rose-violet oil on her skin. She spoke an ancient word from the pit of her womb and passed through the towering gate of Sol Keep, poised like a forbidding hand on the edge of the plain.The High Master would know she had gone. But he would not know where. Or why.
A chill swept over her flesh as the naidrin's voice caressed her mind in a whisper of branches, leaves and flowing water. Efae, he said in his gentle way. Where do you fly?
"You should know that," Efae said aloud, addressing the tree line in the distance. "You told me in a dream last night. Now is the time. Tonight I will cross the Bridge, and we shall be together."
The naidrin said nothing.
Deathseer
Keeping a personal secret in the darkness of war is perilous, as secrets know the path to the light. A high commander with the ability to see the hand of Death keeps this secret under the cloak of dreams and visions until he realizes, at great cost, that Death doesn't take sides.
Liros awoke in the clutches of a recurring nightmare. As a white wolf, he saw through the eyes of a child. Drop the candle and run, run on bare feet, so quietly. The dream hovered in his body, his visceral identity and sense of self, an experience as vivid as waking life. Not quietly enough.Surrounded. Warm tears fall into the open arms of the eternal Void.
As his consciousness returned, the feeling in his heart stood in anguished contrast to the well-built outpost where he lay, in the pre-dawn, surrounded by the watchful eyes of warriors. They called it Fentalon, named after a war god of the North with the head of a wolf. To Liros it felt like a prison.
A candle flickers out against the cold, damp earth.
He closed his eyes and exhaled as the miasma of his circumstance gathered around him. His fading dream darkened it like a bright light casting the long shadow of a crag.
The roar of the river hides the cries, the truth, even as it weeps.
He made a decision.
Wizards, Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration is available as an ebook from Wild Child Publishing (PDF, HTML, ePub, Mobi, Lit and PRC), Amazon (Kindle) and Barnes and Noble (Nook).In Part Four, "The Immortal Hunter," we'll come face to face with a beautiful yet terrible otherworld creature some believe is just a legend. It isn't.
The Gray Isles, Book Two in the Chronicles of EalironHemlock is a fisherman's son with mysterious origins. Orphaned by the sea, he is sent to a conservatory in the far reaches of the Gray Isles to serve wizards, a fate that both fascinates and grieves him. Romantic, full of stories and adept with all things of the earth, Hemlock reaches adulthood bearing a deep-rooted conflict between earth and sea. When he begins to see visions of an enormous mythological sea serpent, he gets on the bad side of an inexplicably aggressive wizard named Eadred, a recluse with a black reputation. In reckless defiance, Hemlock sets sail unseen, determined to validate his tale and escape the wizard's shadow haunting his every step.
Lorth of Ostarin is a formidable wizard with a turbulent past. An elite assassin and servant of the old powers, he is given a mission by his masters to question Eadred, a high-ranking wizard banished for breaking the codes of his order. Lorth arrives in a fog of eerie impressions to find Eadred missing and presumed to have sailed after a servant named Hemlock, who angered him. When Lorth delves deeper, he finds secrets, legends and the hearsay of island politics. He follows the two men under a pall of unease, hoping to bring a potentially disastrous situation under control. But on the water under a dark moon, he makes a monstrous discovery.
Some secrets are best kept hidden, and madness often hides wisdom. After a harrowing encounter at sea, Hemlock washes up on the shore a different man than he left it. Doubting his sanity, his very existence, he seeks his childhood home for answers; but what he finds leaves him sprawled before his destiny, an inexorable force that cares nothing for his personal anguish.
Lorth, a consummate hunter, is hard on Hemlock's heels—until he gets wind of Eadred's whereabouts. In his quest to lift a curse responsible for his fall and subsequent exile, Eadred has gathered great knowledge of Hemlock's origins. Through him, Lorth reaches the sobering conclusion that Hemlock is not what he seems, but something powerful enough to destroy the realm with a thought.
Unfortunately, Lorth is not the only wizard who has discovered Hemlock's secret. The ancestral ruler of the isles, in an attempt to save his realm from annihilation, captures Hemlock and imprisons him. In his wrath and confusion, Hemlock unwittingly initiates a cataclysm. Racing time, Lorth must bare his sword against an army, violate discretion and risk his own stature in order to free Hemlock from the maelstrom of daimonic transformation before he unleashes the forces of earth and sea on the mortal world.
Excerpt
Video Trailer
Map of Sourcesee and East
Map of The Gray Isles
The Gray Isles is available in print and ebook from the following sites:
Lulu (Paperback)
Amazon Kindle
Barnes and Noble Nook
Reader Store
Double Dragon Publishing
Fictionwise
iTunes (coming soon)
The process of writing a story has a way of revealing one's knowledge or fascination in terms that extend beyond conscious understanding. A powerful lens into the nature of experience, metaphor conveys information that literal explanations can only attempt. Somewhere inside, our hearts make the connections.
Generally speaking, the ancient practice of shamanism involves learning to perceive those connections via a journey into the otherworld, the realm of essence and the source of exteriorized reality. This typically happens during some years-long cataclysmic life event such as illness or loss whereby the shaman endures the dissolution of personal boundaries, limitations, and false perceptions, and thereby emerges from the otherworld not only expanded but also connected to the source. It is essentially a mystical experience.
When I began writing The Gray Isles, I didn't sit down and think, "How about a story about shamanic initiation?" It started as a story about a young fisherman's son named Hemlock who has big dreams that contrast miserably with his lot in life. Through him, I embarked upon a sailing trip over the shining waters of an attractive cliché and was promptly accosted by a sea monster with its own ideas. My story grew into a novel complete with tempests, swords, and teeth.
The shamanic initiation often heralds a crushing landslide of doubts and questions about the nature of reality. It's hard to ignore the forces of the otherworld when one's life falls apart at the hands of one's deepest dreams and desires. At the same time, everything one once imagined possible becomes an illusion in the face of actual experience. It's a paradox. Transformation inherently implies death: one can't change unless something is released. For the shaman, this is everything that blocks connection to the otherworld and understanding of his or her place in the overall scheme of things.
Hemlock's journey begins with a classic refusal of the call. His perception of reality is shaky as it is, even by the estimation of the wizards he serves, ironically. But he has a deep, visceral connection to the sea. When it shows itself, he naturally assumes it's just another fantasy. When he gets the idea of trying to prove otherwise—to defend his sanity, of course—he crashes headlong into the implacable clutches of initiation.
This takes Hemlock down, rends him asunder and spits him out on the other side. Now a lost soul, his roots to the earth begin to disintegrate beyond his control. But, cruel as they are, the forces of the cosmos are on his side in the guise of wizards and assassins—and the sea itself, a literal metaphor in this case. A bridge between earth and water, Hemlock is transformed quite nearly to the destruction of everything around him. So it goes. Who would possibly sign up for such a thing if they knew what it would mean?
The Gray Isles is now available from Double Dragon Publishing. I'll be posting more information soon. Until then, happy sailing—and don't trust every seagull that flies o'erhead.
Website
Excerpt
Video Trailer
Available in print and ebook from the following sites:
Lulu (Paperback)
Amazon Kindle
Barnes and Noble Nook
Reader Store
Double Dragon Publishing
Fictionwise
iTunes (coming soon)
Generally speaking, the ancient practice of shamanism involves learning to perceive those connections via a journey into the otherworld, the realm of essence and the source of exteriorized reality. This typically happens during some years-long cataclysmic life event such as illness or loss whereby the shaman endures the dissolution of personal boundaries, limitations, and false perceptions, and thereby emerges from the otherworld not only expanded but also connected to the source. It is essentially a mystical experience.
When I began writing The Gray Isles, I didn't sit down and think, "How about a story about shamanic initiation?" It started as a story about a young fisherman's son named Hemlock who has big dreams that contrast miserably with his lot in life. Through him, I embarked upon a sailing trip over the shining waters of an attractive cliché and was promptly accosted by a sea monster with its own ideas. My story grew into a novel complete with tempests, swords, and teeth.The shamanic initiation often heralds a crushing landslide of doubts and questions about the nature of reality. It's hard to ignore the forces of the otherworld when one's life falls apart at the hands of one's deepest dreams and desires. At the same time, everything one once imagined possible becomes an illusion in the face of actual experience. It's a paradox. Transformation inherently implies death: one can't change unless something is released. For the shaman, this is everything that blocks connection to the otherworld and understanding of his or her place in the overall scheme of things.
Hemlock's journey begins with a classic refusal of the call. His perception of reality is shaky as it is, even by the estimation of the wizards he serves, ironically. But he has a deep, visceral connection to the sea. When it shows itself, he naturally assumes it's just another fantasy. When he gets the idea of trying to prove otherwise—to defend his sanity, of course—he crashes headlong into the implacable clutches of initiation.This takes Hemlock down, rends him asunder and spits him out on the other side. Now a lost soul, his roots to the earth begin to disintegrate beyond his control. But, cruel as they are, the forces of the cosmos are on his side in the guise of wizards and assassins—and the sea itself, a literal metaphor in this case. A bridge between earth and water, Hemlock is transformed quite nearly to the destruction of everything around him. So it goes. Who would possibly sign up for such a thing if they knew what it would mean?
The Gray Isles is now available from Double Dragon Publishing. I'll be posting more information soon. Until then, happy sailing—and don't trust every seagull that flies o'erhead.
WebsiteExcerpt
Video Trailer
Available in print and ebook from the following sites:
Lulu (Paperback)
Amazon Kindle
Barnes and Noble Nook
Reader Store
Double Dragon Publishing
Fictionwise
iTunes (coming soon)
My woman has a wandering eye;Yarrow, thyme and thorn.
She eyes the ocean and the sky
While stitching sails, forlorn.
I got a kiss, and then a tear
As she bade me go;
But on the waves, my heart's in fear:
My woman's in the know.
- From The Gray Isles, Book Two in The Chronicles of Ealiron.
