Sally Felt's Blog, page 3

New year, new book release!

When a clumsy redhead takes a walk on the wild side, expect one heck of a fall.

On January 23, my sexy romantic comedy, Going Native, hits the market. It’s an ode to long-suffering Good Girls who dream of romance and adventure. (Yes, I was one. Writing this book got me on the road to recovery.)

The blurb:

Going Native, by Sally Felt

Violet longs to break free of her good-girl persona. House sitting a Dallas penthouse loft makes a great start. From her first giddy step in her friend’s sky-high heels, she’s way out of her comfort zone, planting a tipsy kiss on a sexy neighbor. 

Eddie is in town to close a business deal—and lick his wounds after a bad breakup. But the clumsy, drawling redhead next door proves a Texas-sized distraction he can’t ignore. Violet’s demure one minute and suggesting clandestine sexcapades the next. Eddie can barely keep up. Or wait to see what Violet does next. 

But even when she learns he’s held the key to the future of her family’s business all along, Violet can’t go back to playing it safe. And what began as a champagne-fueled dare becomes a gutsy showdown her heart might not survive.

The grand finale of my 50th year (filled with 50 new things)

Given that Going Native is about a woman who tries on a risky exciting new persona, it’s only fitting this is the book I sold during my great 50-in-50 experiment.

I’m still compiling a list of all the new stuff I tried as part of my 50th birthday year, and hope to blog about it soon, but selling this book ranks high as one of the biggest new thrills. It began with a pitch in May, became a contract negotiation in July, a first peek at my cover in September, and edits, edits, edits. It culminated last week, the day after my 51st birthday, when my editor gave me a release date—January 23!

Going Native is available for preorder at Ellora’s Cave and will soon be available at your preferred book etailer.

The Lovers: Tarot energy of 2013

Keywords: Harmony, decisions, union, rite of passage, romance.

The year 2013 is a “6” year in numerology. (We get that by adding 2 + 0 + 1 + 3 = 6) The sixth card in Tarot’s Major Arcana is The Lovers, so expect the energy of this card to be widely available. If you have any dreams or plans with a Lovers-like flavor, dust ‘em off and put them into motion—there’s lots of support available this year.

Under the energy of The Lovers, an overall strategy of cooperation (or collaboration) will be more successful than competition. This is the year to release thoughts of us/them in favor of seeking win/win solutions. It’s a time to remember that our decisions impact others.

“Cream & Sugar” in The Kitchen Tarot by Susan Shie & Dennis Fairchild.

Of course, there’s a chance of getting carried away with the feel-good, romantic energy of The Lovers. The shadow side of The Lovers includes the temptation to over-sacrifice in the name of harmony. Or to get so swept off your feet that you make decisions you later regret.

That said, The Lovers can provide a welcome spirit of optimism and an interest in working together. To repair/renegotiate/release inharmonious relationships. To explore what’s possible when we embrace a more romantic view of life. Who will we meet? How will we treat the people we love? What happens when we our decisions arise from love, rather than fear?

This is the year to find out.

Check out The Kitchen Tarot at Hay House. It’s currently featured for just $1! (Not affiliated, just a fan.)

Gift certificates available

Tuck one of my new gift certificates into a lovely metallic gold envelope (included) and voila, you’ve gift-wrapped a personalized experience of insight and perspective. Your loved one can redeem anytime within a year of your purchase.

Gift outside the box

The gift of Tarot works for all the traditional gift giving occasions, such as birthdays, showers and graduation. It’s also a great way to encourage and support family or friends who feel a little lost, or are in the throes of massive personal growth.

Order them right here on the Tarot Readings page.

You have permission to be awesome

This year, I worked a Halloween party where no one had ever had a Tarot experience (or at least none of the folks who sat down at my table). What happened seemed truly miraculous.

Morgan Greer Tarot ©U.S. Games Systems, Inc.

Man with the mustache

First, there was the woman who wanted to know if her husband was hiding something from her. I threw some cards. One landed face down, with the Knight of Pentacles atop it. (I was using the Morgan Greer Tarot from U.S. Games Systems, Inc.) I knew the knight was her husband, and he was hiding the face-down card. My client exclaimed the card even looked like her husband.

Morgan Greer Tarot ©U.S. Games Systems, Inc.

The pot of gold

Then there was the man asking whether his sales lead-generation program would be successful within three months. I turned two cards and asked which one appealed to him. Without hesitation, he pounced on the 10 of Cups, also from the Morgan Greer Tarot. When we completed the reading, he pointed to that first card and explained how perfectly its artwork reflected his company’s name.

Literal translations like this are fun, but the true miracles were the shifts I saw in these people. How their Tarot experience encouraged them and validated them. How they straightened their spines, carrying their chests high.

Transformations before my very eyes

Another client arrived with a beer in either hand. I doubt he’d have sat at my table without a little buzz on. But he became more and more focused as we went through his cards. More clear-headed and thoughtful. He seemed positively inspired.

Were these clients truly looking for insight, or simply taking advantage of the night’s judgment-free atmosphere to sit for a reading as a lark? It doesn’t matter. Whatever brought them to me, I gave them my best and was awed to witness what they offered in return. I’m so grateful.

Shuck the rules and discover yourself

At Halloween, costumes give us permission to behave strangely. Like demanding candy. Or requesting a Tarot reading. The usual rules don’t apply. And when everything is just for fun, it’s amazing how easily we find our wings and fly.

Of sleep, rest and other mysteries

Through my life, I’ve noticed three distinct kinds of sleepiness.

Classic drowsiness.

The body’s gently persistent call to sleep comes with heavy eyelids and heavy limbs. It’s difficult to summon energy for facial expressions, and easy to share murmured secrets. Even when it’s inconvenient, there’s a sense that it’s healthy and natural. This is the sleepiness that eventually overtakes children at slumber parties.

Exhaustion or “over-tired.”

This is the tired of final-exams week, a long-anticipated conference or a competition. A relentlessly overstimulated body/brain eventually runs out of juice. The head may ache, there may be dizziness or trembling, digestion becomes irregular. It feels like the machinery of the body is revving in neutral. And even exhausted as the system is, it takes awhile to fall asleep.

Reboot.

The wild card of sleepiness. When reboot comes calling, there’s a sense I’ll be powering down soon, so I may as well find a comfortable place in which to lose consciousness. Unlike the other two types of sleepiness, reboot can happen regardless of what’s going on in my life or how well rested I feel.

Reboot stalked me throughout the final week of August, along with some other physically intense symptoms which have since eased.

Until now, I’ve not talked about reboot. Is it common? Do you experience it?

Time was, I suspected drops in barometric pressure were responsible for reboot. But lately, it’s seemed more random. Maybe it’s connected to the uptick in solar activity. If you have insight, please share.

Photo credit: Big D2122

New things: Growing my own

Some of our homegrown Garrison lettuce, Celebrity tomato and cucumber mint water.

Looks yummy, doesn’t it? Let me tell you about a months-in-the-making addition to my list of 50 new things I’m trying this year as part of my 50th birthday celebration. Vegetable gardening.

I eat tons of salad, year-round, so I was happy to support my housemate’s enthusiasm for putting together a small garden in the backyard. I imagined the money I’d save growing my own organic cucumber. I thought about the varieties of lettuce I’d experiment with. And I counted the days until we’d have our own homegrown tomatoes.

(Brilliant American songwriter Guy Clark said/sang it best with a tune called “Homegrown Tomatoes” on his 1983 album, Better Days: “There’s only two things that money can’t buy, and that’s true love and homegrown tomatoes.”)

Early fruits

She mixed up earthy magic using a recipe developed by Mel Bartholomew (founder of Square Foot Gardening) to get us going and pretty soon, our little patch of heaven boasted seedlings galore.

The sugar snap pea scampered up its trailing string in a mad rush to bloom and fruit. The mint, basil, sage and dill made themselves at home. When we added mums and petunias for natural insect control, our fledgling garden literally blossomed.

Thanks to the magic of Mel’s Mix (and careful watering), I even coaxed lettuce and strawberries to grow in a notoriously inauspicious strawberry pot.

Cucumber and tomatoes were slower to establish themselves. The tomato plants mostly kept getting taller and needing more support. The cuke spent its days climbing and dividing into more vines. And we had a squash plant that made showy blossoms but was stingy with the actual fruit.

The solo gardener

For all my housemate enjoyed planning and setting up the garden, and as much as she and I both loved the hide-and-seek game of looking for fledgling cucumbers, the everyday routine of gardening couldn’t hold her interest.

A single day’s harvest of plum tomatoes!

I might have given up, too, as the Texas spring got hot and we spent more time in the air-conditioned house, but dang it, I wanted my salad goodies.

So I remembered to water every day. I tapped the blooming tomato plants to help ensure pollination. I guided the greedy cucumber vine to things it could hold onto besides the tomato plants. I dead-headed the ‘mums and petunias to keep them blossoming.

And finally…

Fruitful!

The harvest of our first cucumbers and plum tomatoes began a riotous abundance of delicious summer eating. Soon, we were refreshing ourselves with cucumber-mint water from a never-empty pitcher. Snacking on plum- and cherry-tomatoes. And when at last we began getting full-sized tomatoes, we celebrated our homegrown bounty with BLT sandwiches and tomato cucumber salad.

Dog-day reflections

It’s mid-August now. Temperatures here have been in the triple digits for weeks. The vine of plum tomatoes is still producing fruit, though at a sluggish pace appropriate to these dog days of summer. Much of the garden has withered in spite of my ongoing efforts.

Knowing what I know now, will I get caught up in another gardening frenzy around here next spring? Ask me again when temperatures drop back into the 80s. Whisper words to me of love. Like bell pepper and sweet potato and other yumminess we haven’t yet tried to grow. Remind me how drinking cucumber water made me feel wealthy beyond measure.

And promise me homegrown tomatoes.

Photos: Sally Felt

Major Arcana. Major turning points

Strength card interpretations: Fortitude / Courage / Resourcefulness / Commitment / Self-confidence

“Think of important moments in your life. Choose a Tarot card to represent each experience.” This was the exercise offered by one of my Tarot mentors, Ferol Humphrey.

Three of us did as she suggested. We arranged our picks in chronological order and narrated our life’s highlights to one another.

Strength, 3 ways

All three of us included the Strength card. One, to represent her discovering a special affinity with animals in distress. Another, to represent her realization that one can choose not to fight without being weak.

For me, Strength represented my relationship with my skin. A decade ago, 40-year-old me faced yet another encore of disfiguring cystic acne. It proved a turning point in my life.

The battle I couldn’t win

Over the years, I’d tried any number of poisons to do away with this genetic condition. Nonstop antibiotics were the norm through my teen years, along with treatments involving sunlamps or dry ice, surgical lancing and occasional local steroid injections. Twice, I bombed my system with Accutane, once at age 21 and again at 30. (Sizable lawsuits have since forced the drug off the market.)

At age 40, the mirror once again reflected a familiar, hated landscape of redness, inflamed sores and distorted facial features. I could no longer kid myself there was any “conquering” cystic acne. I was going to have to befriend it.

So rather than seek a doctor crazy enough to prescribe a third round of Accutane or its equivalent, I sought a more holistic approach. With the help of a naturopath (who was also a skilled esthetician), I’ve come into a place of sustainable balance.

When Strength calls for surrender

Fighting against my condition kept me angry, resentful, fearful and occasionally mean. I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror and I took it out on everyone, including me.

Strength meant having the courage to lay down arms and try to understand my body. Strength meant having the patience to let small changes show their effects over time. Strength meant taking responsibility for my body’s nourishment rather than ask a doctor to fix me.

Being ashamed of my skin diminished me. With Strength, I can appreciate that my skin will forever show me — and everyone I meet — when I’m out of balance.

What have you done with Strength?

Think of important moments in your life. Is there a Strength moment among them? What did it teach you? How did it change you?

At some point in our lives, we experience all 22 cards of Tarot’s Major Arcana — it’s why they’re Major. Turning points. Game changers. Some fill us with gratitude, others leave us with scars. And some, like my Strength experience, do both.

Would you like clarity or insight on something in your own life? I offer personal readings and would be glad to help.