Susan Rowland's Blog
April 21, 2024
First draft done!
Not sure whether to modernize spelling of Aery to Airy. Older spelling points to Shakespearean echo in the story.
I wonder if anyone out there has advice?
March 9, 2024
Because Families can be murder!
Susan Rowland’s fictional detective Mary Wandwalker is back. Murder on Family Grounds: A
Mary Wandwalker Mystery, goes back to the origin story of the triple goddess detective. ‘She’
arises in a mystery that examines the element of earth, which C. G. believed means family
ground in the deep psyche. Indeed the novel not only digs into the traumatized earth of Mary,
Caroline and Anna, it also mines the complex architecture of their families. Families are the
ground from which our psyches grow. But what if the family of birth tries to strangle that growth
in the name of social status or patriarchal inheritance?
Also, family as institution exists in the underworld as the crime family. In some cases,
crime families produce children as more indentured labor. Mary Wandwalker’s quest for her own
long lost son will take her to the deepest shadow of his paternal family, the Falconers. If the
depth psychology shadow of patriarchal aristocracy reaches into chattel slavery, might the
twentyfirst century witness the return of that repressed heritage? The sins of the past result in
murder, a literal and symbolic blood letting.
Only the triple goddess, it seems, has sufficient diffused feminine powers to re-make the
family. Will Mary, Caroline and Anna be able to constellate the goddess? Can power be
transformed into love? Can marriage equality serve psychological and familial renewal?
Set in the United Kingdom, Susan regards this story as her tribute to marriage equality in
the US and the UK. What arose from the writing methodology of Jungian Arts-Based Research
are tiny, incomplete strategies acknowledging the legacy of slavery on our family ground.
THE STORY
Who is killing off members of the Falconer family and why? Such is the challenge confronting
highly skilled, extraordinarily intuitive Mary Wandwalker when she finds herself single, sixty
and jobless. Long ago as an Oxford student with an unplanned pregnancy, Mary knew the
Falconers as the family who refused to help when her fiancé, David Falconer died in a car crash.
Now the baby boy she gave up for adoption is a policeman, George Jones, and he wants to meet
her. Can Mary bring herself to confront her past? She must, for lost in her memory is a clue that
could save her son’s life.
January 10, 2024
New Release Alert: Mary Wandwalker 3 - Murder on Family Grounds Available March 1st, 2024
Who is killing off members of the Falconer family and why? Such is the challenge confronting highly skilled, extraordinarily intuitive Mary Wandwalker when she finds herself single, sixty and jobless. Long ago as an Oxford student with an unplanned pregnancy, Mary knew the Falconers as the family who refused to help when her fiancé, David Falconer died in a car crash. Now the baby boy she gave up for adoption is a policeman, George Jones, and he wants to meet her. Can Mary bring herself to confront her past? She must, for lost in her memory is a clue that could save her son’s life.
Back in 1979, Mary wrote to the Falconers and was rejected. Now forty years later, key phrases from her letter appear in the faked suicide note of Perdita Falconer. Neither Perdita nor her killer had access to Mary’s document. Too exact for coincidence, the link is the pseudonym of the drug dealer who supplied her fatal dose. He or she is known as “the Kestrel.”
When Mary was romanced by David Falconer in the 1970s, “the Kestrel” was codename for a Russian spy entertained at Falconer House. Could the resurrection of the nom de plume be connected to Viktor Solokov, the Russian oligarch renting the Falconer estate with his beautiful wife, Anna? For the Falconers have dark secrets, some centuries old.
When George Jones’s wife Caroline begs Mary to save her husband from treacherous Anna, and the murderous talons of the Kestrel, Mary must act.
November 1, 2023
Best Reads of 2023!
https://shepherd.com/bboy/2023/f/susan-rowland
When Covid came for Christmas 2022, there is no better comfort and joy than Georgette Heyer’s Regency Romances.
The Talisman Ring kept me going when confined to bed because of the humor that never dates. With two love stories, a murder mystery and a treasure hunt, the reader has as much fun as the characters. Even the villain twirls his moustache charmingly. Ingenue and romantic novel reader Eustacie is determined to find a suitor to ride ventre a terre to her deathbed and so runs away from staid Sir Tristram. Eustacie encounters a smuggler who is heir to the talisman ring and wrongfully accused of murder. Fortunately, the adventurous pair are sheltered by redoubtable Sarah Thane who fully sympathizes with Eustacie’s plans to die for love.
Dandy Gilver and the Reek of Red Herrings by Catriona McPherson
Seeking engaging sleuths whose dogged determination never fails and whose brilliance does not make me stupid, I adore McPherson’s Dandy Gilver. Wife to a Scottish gentry farmer between World War I and II, Dandy escapes domesticity to investigate (with often unintentional humor) the odd and the terrible in close knit communities. Like all the best detectives she resists dissecting the love in her life – especially for sidekick, Alec. Find Dandy in a department store, a convent, among circus folk or a pre-Christian festival, or here in the fishing village where the ships, sailors and womenfolk migrate with the herring.
Unfortunately, what turns up in barrels is more than the corpses of fish. It takes guts for a gently bred lady to pursue murder through families and onto the high seas.
Dark Fire by C. J. Sansom
Some books are time travel capsules. Dark Fire I chose to re-read at a stressful time because like all of Sansom’s Tudor mysteries, it sides with the bullied, the vulnerable and the honorable in a culture of greed, religious obsession and cruel power. Lawyer Matthew Shardlake is despised everywhere as a hunchback except when the powerful need a shrewd investigator they can trust. Once a religious enforcer for Thomas Cromwell, Shardlake is now horrified by how greed has consumed genuine faith. However omnipotent Cromwell’s star is falling. Only if Matthew can get him the alchemical secret of dark fire – a weapon of mass destruction used by the Byzantine Greeks, might Cromwell be saved. And if Cromwell falls, he might take Shardlake with him.
August 12, 2023
UpDate on my mysteries
Susan Rowland is author of the Mary Wandwalker mysteries, THE SACRED WELL MURDERS (Chiron 2022) and THE ALCHEMY FIRE MURDER (2023) and MURDER ON FAMILY GROUNDS coming in 2024.
These stories show the heroism of women on the margins, either by age and mistakes, chronic illness or by being a victim of a crime that inflicts lifelong damage. Yet together, Mary, Caroline and Anna discover their flaws and wounds are also tremendous possibilities for courage, heroic action and renewal. In the end there are many kinds of love.
https://www.amazon.com/Alchemy-Fire-M...
UpDate on my mysteries
Susan Rowland is author of the Mary Wandwalker mysteries, THE SACRED WELL MURDERS (Chiron 2022) and THE ALCHEMY FIRE MURDER (2023) and MURDER ON FAMILY GROUNDS coming in 2024.
These stories show the heroism of women on the margins, either by age and mistakes, chronic illness or by being a victim of a crime that inflicts lifelong damage. Yet together, Mary, Caroline and Anna discover their flaws and wounds are also tremendous possibilities for courage, heroic action and renewal. In the end there are many kinds of love.
https://www.amazon.com/Alchemy-Fire-M...
June 9, 2023
Best ever talk on deep creativity and releasing the spontaneity of the psyche!
Don't be put off by title or not having read the book. This is for everyone interested in the psychological, spiritual, cosmological dimensions of being creative in any media or genre! I promise you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMP1W2l4QHwMay 23, 2023
The Firey Feminine: writing to inspire, in-spirit!
Join us for this Pacifica Online Author Spotlight with Dr. Susan Rowland as we talk about her newest JABR detective novel, The Alchemy Fire Murder (Chiron, 15th Feb 2023). In this novel, her newest addition in a series, Susan situates the psychological impact of the climate emergency within the framework of a murder mystery featuring a feminine hero.
Jungian arts-based research places creativity at the heart of knowing and being. In so doing it promotes a social-justice oriented, Transdisciplinary paradigm while bringing back the almost forgotten, but never wholly abandoned, practice of alchemy. The Alchemy Fire Murder, uses the mystery genre to explore what was lost when colonial alchemy got swallowed up. With some surprising twists that delve into feminist waters and integrate Susan’s incredible literary and psychoanalytic scholarship, this mystery novel asks some big questions:
How far do climate exacerbated wildfires speak to firey emotions? Might the challenge to find new narratives offer something to the origin story of America itself? Are we witnessing a new emergence of archetypal feminine heroism that offers a more generative integration of power? How will this influence contemporary understanding of the meta-narratives that have historically shaped the origin stories of America?
Buy the book and join us for what is sure to be a thought provoking and interesting conversation with this world recognized, post-Jungian scholar, professor and author.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4THES2bCc0
March 26, 2023
Alchemy, America, Climate Emergency... through Jungian Arts-Based Research
See how JABR becomes alchemy for the 21st century climate emergency and revisioning America through the cozy mystery, The Alchemy Fire Murder (2023).
https://youtu.be/Q-jj9Qa2H2QFebruary 1, 2023
Pre-Order Today: The Alchemy Fire Murder
Pre-order Today!
The Alchemy Fire Murder:
A Mary Wandwalker Mystery
The second book in Susan Rowland’s
Mary Wandwalker Mystery Series!
Former Archivist Mary Wandwalker hates bringing bad news. Nevertheless, she confirms to her alma mater that their prized medieval alchemy scroll, is, in fact, a seventeenth century copy. She learns that the original vanished to colonial Connecticut with alchemist, Robert Le More. Later the genuine scroll surfaces in Los Angeles. Given that the authentic artifact is needed for her Oxford college to survive, retrieving it is essential.
Mary agrees to get the real scroll back as part of a commission for her three-person Enquiry Agency. However, tragedy strikes in Los Angeles. Before Mary can legally obtain the scroll, a young man is murdered, and the treasure stolen.Murder and theft are complicated by the disappearance in the UK of a witch mysteriously connected to the scroll. While Mary’s colleague, Caroline, risks her sanity to go undercover in a dodgy mental hospital, her lover, Anna resorts to desperate measures. These, and Anna’s silence over blackmail, threaten the survival of the Agency.
Mary teams up with the victim’s brother to track the killer, and the real alchemy scroll. Solving crimes on two continents will involve a rogue pharmaceutical corporation, Janet the witch, the Holywell Retreat Center near Oxford, plus the trafficked women they support, a graduate school in California, and a life-threatening mountain-consuming wildfire.
Can these inexperienced detectives triumph over corrupt professors and racist attempts to rewrite history? Can they remake their fragile family? Will the extraordinary story of Robert Le More prove a source of hope for today?
Releasing February 15 from Chiron Publications
Pre-order The Alchemy Fire Murder
The Sacred Well Murders...
A simple job turns deadly when Mary Wandwalker, novice detective, is hired to chaperone a young American, Rhiannon, to the Oxford University Summer School on the ancient Celts. Worried by a rhetoric of blood sacrifice, Mary and her operatives, Caroline, and Anna, attend a sacrifice at a sacred well. They discover that those who fail to individuate their gods become possessed by them.
For the so-called Reborn Celts, who run the summer school, have been infiltrated by white supremacists. Could their immersion in myth be less a symbol for psychic wholeness and more a clue of their intent to engage in terrorist violence? Who better to penetrate their secret rites than an apparently harmless woman of a certain age?
Mary agrees to spy on the Reborn Celts, then learns, to her horror, of Anna’s passionate affair with the chief suspect, Joe Griffith. With Griffith also the object of Rhiannon’s obsession, Mary realizes too late that that these 21st century Celts mean murder.
The Reborn Celts draw Mary and her friends into three rites to summon their gods: at an Oxford sacred well, by the Thames on the way to London, and in Celtic London, where bloodshed will restore one of the Thames’ "lost rivers."
Before the fatal night of the summer solstice, Caroline and Anna race to London seeking Mary, who has been kidnapped. Will she end as the crone sacrifice? Or will the three women re-make their detecting family, so re-constituting a pattern of archetypal feminine compassion?
Purchase The Sacred Well Murders
About the Author...
Susan Rowland (PhD) teaches at Pacifica Graduate Institute and is the author of ten books on Jung, the feminine, literature and the arts. Her last (with Joel Weishaus) is Jungian Arts-Based Research and the Nuclear Enchantment of New Mexico (2021).
For a decade Susan has been working on a project to examine feminine heroism as a way to cultural renewal. Her first novel, The Sacred Well Murders, was published by Chiron in 2022. The book explores marginalized women becoming involved in epoch-defining events that entail literal and symbolic violence. The Alchemy Fire Murder: A Mary Wandwalker Mystery, is the second in the series.
Susan lives in southern California with poet, Joel Weishaus. Her website is: susanrowland-books.com
