Mark David Gerson's Blog, page 19

Once Upon a Time...The MoonQuest: An Excerpt

Imagine a land where stories are banned and dreams suppressed...a land where dreamers are tortured and storytellers killed...a land stripped of vision, hope and imagination.

This is the Q'ntana of The MoonQuest, a land where "once upon at time" is a forbidden phrase and fact the only legal tender...a land whose moon is so saddened by the silence that her tears have extinguished her light...a land where fear rules and storytelling spells death...

Imagine it...if you dare...

********************************
First published in 2007, Mark David Gerson's The MoonQuest has won multiple awards for both fantasy and visionary fiction and is now on its way to the big screen in a production based on his screenplay and produced by Anvil Springs Entertainment. It's the first book/movie in a trilogy, The Q'ntana Trilogy.

Dreams and storytelling are, not surprisingly, important elements in a story where both are outlawed. When Toshar, the story's reluctant hero, is sent out on his MoonQuest, for example, he's given no concrete goal or direction, other than to journey northward to the mysterious place of the moon's rising and to let his dreams and stories guide him there. They do, often mystically merging into the journey itself.

In this excerpt, Toshar has fearlessly stood up to his nemesis, Bo'Rà K'n. Immediately afterward, he collapses into a feverish coma...and has a dream...

********************************
Wetness touched my lips and dribbled down my chin. Coolness bathed my face. I tried to open my mouth to speak, my eyes to see. They wouldn't obey. "What are you saying?" I wanted to ask. But I couldn't feel my tongue in my mouth.

My mouth. I can't feel my mouth! A flash of panic and then...I feel nothing... hear nothing...know nothing...

I'm falling...sinking...floating...breathing cool, damp air. Now, no air...no sound...no light. Everything is black...dark...empty.

Nothing.

And then, something. The faintest riffle of air. A light, feather touch. It's there, then gone. There again, enfolding me, cushioning me...embracing me. Am I still falling? Everything is so dark...impenetrably dark. Everything? No, nothing.

And then, something. A distant flicker. It wavers and gutters as it draws closer, grows larger. A hand cups the flame from behind. The light is nearly upon me, dancing atop a yellow taper. No, gold. No, blue. No, red. The colors dance as the flame pirouettes. Now the taper is white, as white as the halo of hair behind it, as white as the robe emerging from shadow.

"Do you know me, Toshar?" a woman's voice issues gently from the flame. Toshar. I know that name from...from somewhere. Where? "Do you know me?" the flame repeats, now in a man's voice, equally gentle.

"You are fire," I say. "But who is Toshar?"

"Who is Toshar?" The voice is male and female, neither and both.

"I can't remember. Does it matter?"

"You are Toshar." The hand falls away and, with it, the shadow, revealing an ancient face etched with wrinkles. Candle flames dance in eyes as black as the blackness that surrounds us. It's a woman, long white hair flowing freely over her naked breasts. No, a man, his chest buried under a snowy beard. The face is male and female, neither and both. "You are Toshar MoonQuester. I am Toshar Ko'lar. We are one, you and I. One out of time."

It makes no sense, yet I understand in a way that surpasses understanding. I reach out to touch the apparition, but there is nothing to reach out with. I have no body.

"What am I?" I whisper. "Where am I?"

"You are here and not here, everywhere and nowhere. You are dream, you are reality. You are light, you are dark. This place, too, is all that...and none of it."

"I don't understand," I said.

"You will...in time. Why have you summoned me, MoonQuester?"

"I, summoned you?"

"Forgive me. I forget. It was so long ago."

"What was?"

"This encounter, this marriage of past, present and future into the eternal now."

"You confuse me."

"Do you remember nothing? Nothing of Q'ntana? Nothing of M'nor? Nothing of Bo'Rá K'n?"

Memory's door opens a crack. I pull it shut with a cry of pain.

"Was it truly that bad?" he asks, more to himself than to me, as his image begins to dissolve.

"Where are you going?" I cry.

"If you do not know yourself in me..."

"...then do you know me?" Holding the candle is a wrinkled crone, leaning on a walking stick. Behind her, beyond an archway and through a misty, fluttering light, sits a steaming teapot atop a three-legged table.

"Come," she says. She releases the candle, which hovers in the air unassisted, and extends her hand to me. I see another hand -- mine? -- take it and follow her across the threshold. "Perhaps some tea will reawaken your self-fullness."

"Grandmother?"

"Come," she says, "sit on your favorite pillow and drink from your favorite mug."

I cup my hand around the familiar piece of clay. Its green chevron shimmers luminously against my skin. I raise the mug and feel the steam bathe my eyes. As the sweet heat touches my lips and slides down my throat, I remember. I remember it all.

"Oh, Grandmother. I'm so frightened."

"I know, child." Her voice is the cool evening breeze that sweeps away a scorching summer day.

"But why? Why did I feel no fear then only to feel it now?" I start to tremble.

Eulisha refills my mug. "Drink this," she says. "It will restore the balance." Her eyes never leave me. "Do you understand yet who greeted you when you reached this world between worlds?" I shake my head. "You will be Elderbard, son of my son. What you saw was you, in the time to come."

"But she...I mean he...that is, both...I mean, which?"

Eulisha's smile fails to ease my confusion. "He and she," she explains. "A union of all the qualities, masculine and feminine, resides in the truest of bards."

"Will I...I mean, how...?"

"No," she laughs, "you will not appear that way to the world, no more than do I." Her voice grows serious. "Look at me closely. Look at me with the eyes of a bard, with the eyes of Toshar, Elderbard-to-be."

I shut my eyes and reopen them. As I stare through the violet of Eulisha's eyes, her face shifts subtly — a masculine jaw, firmer mouth, cheeks sprinkled with the salt-and-pepper stubble of a day's growth. It lasts only an instant, then the familiar features return. There is so little difference, and yet...

"And yet we are one, as will you be when your time comes." She gazes at me, her eyes boring through skin, bone and blood, then smiles. "And come it does. You ask why you fear once the fearful has passed."

"Yes, grandmother."

She lifts her mug and takes a first sip of tea. "Know first, child, that you needn't understand everything, that mystery is among life's greatest gifts." Setting her cup on the table, she takes my hands in hers. They are like velour -- soft, smooth, warm. "You fear your strength. You fear your power. You fear your fearlessness. You fear the future because you cannot see where it will lead and you fear what you cannot imagine.

"You have glimpsed what may lie ahead. But you are only now building the foundation of that future. If you continue to build, stone by heavy stone, you and that Elderbard will meet again. If you continue to follow the path that is yours alone to follow, you will be that sage, the greatest sage in the time of Q'ntana's greatest king, under the gaze of a grateful moon. If not... If not, then who can say?" She gestures to the door. "It is time for you to return to your friends. They worry and there is much traveling before you reach The Mir. Much traveling..."

As I stand, Eulisha's image fades. "Wait," I cry. I reach out but my hand passes through her as through a cloud. "What of my fear? I'm still frightened."

Only the candle and Eulisha's voice remain. "Walk with your fear. Walk through your fear. Walk on...into the promise."

The candle recedes and darkness returns. Everything is black...dark... empty...

Nothing.

And then, something. Voices. Familiar voices. "...breathing regularly again...skin cooler..." "...more water...raise his head..." "...hear me?..." "...speak...Toshar...one word...?" Slowly, black turns gray turns cloudy and the mist dissipates. Leaves. A thick curtain of leaves, framing a face that peers anxiously into mine.

"Ro'an?" A hand pressed down on my shoulder as I tried to sit up. It was another dream. It had to be.

(c) 2008 Mark David Gerson. All rights reserved.

Read the complete, award-winning novel in hard copy or ebook form.

Photos #1 + #2 by Mark David Gerson

********************************
Mark David Gerson is a screenwriter, award-winning author and creator of The Q'ntana Trilogy of fantasy novels and films.

The MoonQuest: A True Fantasy, the first book in the trilogy, has won multiple national and regional awards, as has his book on writing and creativity, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write. Both books, and his The Voice of the Muse Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers CD, are available on his website and on Amazon. Ebooks are also available on Kindle and Kobo and via Apple's iBook Store; the CD is downloadable from CDbaby.

The MoonQuest, the first feature film in The Q'ntana Trilogy, will be in theaters in 2012.

As a creativity coach and writing-workshop facilitator for nearly 20 years, Mark David has guided writers and non-writers alike to connect with their innate wisdom, open to their creative power and express themselves with ease. Mark David is also a script analyst and consultant.

Mark David is currently working on a memoir and on The StarQuest and The SunQuest, the book and screenplay sequels to The MoonQuest.

Please "like" these Facebook pages:
• The MoonQuest movie
• The MoonQuest book
• The Voice of the Muse book
• Mark David Gerson

Mark David Gerson's "The MoonQuest": An Excerpt

Imagine a land where stories are banned and dreams suppressed...a land where dreamers are tortured and storytellers killed...a land stripped of vision, hope and imagination.

This is the Q'ntana of The MoonQuest, a land where "once upon at time" is a forbidden phrase and fact the only legal tender...a land whose moon is so saddened by the silence that her tears have extinguished her light...a land where fear rules and storytelling spells death...

Imagine it...if you dare...

********************************
First published in 2007, Mark David Gerson's The MoonQuest has won multiple awards for both fantasy and visionary fiction and is now on its way to the big screen in a production based on his screenplay and produced by Anvil Springs Entertainment. It's the first book/movie in a trilogy, The Q'ntana Trilogy.

Dreams and storytelling are, not surprisingly, important elements in a story where both are outlawed. When Toshar, the story's reluctant hero, is sent out on his MoonQuest, for example, he's given no concrete goal or direction, other than to journey northward to the mysterious place of the moon's rising and to let his dreams and stories guide him there. They do, often mystically merging into the journey itself.

In this excerpt, Toshar has fearlessly stood up to his nemesis, Bo'Rà K'n. Immediately afterward, he collapses into a feverish coma...and has a dream...

********************************
Wetness touched my lips and dribbled down my chin. Coolness bathed my face. I tried to open my mouth to speak, my eyes to see. They wouldn't obey. "What are you saying?" I wanted to ask. But I couldn't feel my tongue in my mouth.

My mouth. I can't feel my mouth! A flash of panic and then...I feel nothing... hear nothing...know nothing...

I'm falling...sinking...floating...breathing cool, damp air. Now, no air...no sound...no light. Everything is black...dark...empty.

Nothing.

And then, something. The faintest riffle of air. A light, feather touch. It's there, then gone. There again, enfolding me, cushioning me...embracing me. Am I still falling? Everything is so dark...impenetrably dark. Everything? No, nothing.

And then, something. A distant flicker. It wavers and gutters as it draws closer, grows larger. A hand cups the flame from behind. The light is nearly upon me, dancing atop a yellow taper. No, gold. No, blue. No, red. The colors dance as the flame pirouettes. Now the taper is white, as white as the halo of hair behind it, as white as the robe emerging from shadow.

"Do you know me, Toshar?" a woman's voice issues gently from the flame. Toshar. I know that name from...from somewhere. Where? "Do you know me?" the flame repeats, now in a man's voice, equally gentle.

"You are fire," I say. "But who is Toshar?"

"Who is Toshar?" The voice is male and female, neither and both.

"I can't remember. Does it matter?"

"You are Toshar." The hand falls away and, with it, the shadow, revealing an ancient face etched with wrinkles. Candle flames dance in eyes as black as the blackness that surrounds us. It's a woman, long white hair flowing freely over her naked breasts. No, a man, his chest buried under a snowy beard. The face is male and female, neither and both. "You are Toshar MoonQuester. I am Toshar Ko'lar. We are one, you and I. One out of time."

It makes no sense, yet I understand in a way that surpasses understanding. I reach out to touch the apparition, but there is nothing to reach out with. I have no body.

"What am I?" I whisper. "Where am I?"

"You are here and not here, everywhere and nowhere. You are dream, you are reality. You are light, you are dark. This place, too, is all that...and none of it."

"I don't understand," I said.

"You will...in time. Why have you summoned me, MoonQuester?"

"I, summoned you?"

"Forgive me. I forget. It was so long ago."

"What was?"

"This encounter, this marriage of past, present and future into the eternal now."

"You confuse me."

"Do you remember nothing? Nothing of Q'ntana? Nothing of M'nor? Nothing of Bo'Rá K'n?"

Memory's door opens a crack. I pull it shut with a cry of pain.

"Was it truly that bad?" he asks, more to himself than to me, as his image begins to dissolve.

"Where are you going?" I cry.

"If you do not know yourself in me..."

"...then do you know me?" Holding the candle is a wrinkled crone, leaning on a walking stick. Behind her, beyond an archway and through a misty, fluttering light, sits a steaming teapot atop a three-legged table.

"Come," she says. She releases the candle, which hovers in the air unassisted, and extends her hand to me. I see another hand -- mine? -- take it and follow her across the threshold. "Perhaps some tea will reawaken your self-fullness."

"Grandmother?"

"Come," she says, "sit on your favorite pillow and drink from your favorite mug."

I cup my hand around the familiar piece of clay. Its green chevron shimmers luminously against my skin. I raise the mug and feel the steam bathe my eyes. As the sweet heat touches my lips and slides down my throat, I remember. I remember it all.

"Oh, Grandmother. I'm so frightened."

"I know, child." Her voice is the cool evening breeze that sweeps away a scorching summer day.

"But why? Why did I feel no fear then only to feel it now?" I start to tremble.

Eulisha refills my mug. "Drink this," she says. "It will restore the balance." Her eyes never leave me. "Do you understand yet who greeted you when you reached this world between worlds?" I shake my head. "You will be Elderbard, son of my son. What you saw was you, in the time to come."

"But she...I mean he...that is, both...I mean, which?"

Eulisha's smile fails to ease my confusion. "He and she," she explains. "A union of all the qualities, masculine and feminine, resides in the truest of bards."

"Will I...I mean, how...?"

"No," she laughs, "you will not appear that way to the world, no more than do I." Her voice grows serious. "Look at me closely. Look at me with the eyes of a bard, with the eyes of Toshar, Elderbard-to-be."

I shut my eyes and reopen them. As I stare through the violet of Eulisha's eyes, her face shifts subtly — a masculine jaw, firmer mouth, cheeks sprinkled with the salt-and-pepper stubble of a day's growth. It lasts only an instant, then the familiar features return. There is so little difference, and yet...

"And yet we are one, as will you be when your time comes." She gazes at me, her eyes boring through skin, bone and blood, then smiles. "And come it does. You ask why you fear once the fearful has passed."

"Yes, grandmother."

She lifts her mug and takes a first sip of tea. "Know first, child, that you needn't understand everything, that mystery is among life's greatest gifts." Setting her cup on the table, she takes my hands in hers. They are like velour -- soft, smooth, warm. "You fear your strength. You fear your power. You fear your fearlessness. You fear the future because you cannot see where it will lead and you fear what you cannot imagine.

"You have glimpsed what may lie ahead. But you are only now building the foundation of that future. If you continue to build, stone by heavy stone, you and that Elderbard will meet again. If you continue to follow the path that is yours alone to follow, you will be that sage, the greatest sage in the time of Q'ntana's greatest king, under the gaze of a grateful moon. If not... If not, then who can say?" She gestures to the door. "It is time for you to return to your friends. They worry and there is much traveling before you reach The Mir. Much traveling..."

As I stand, Eulisha's image fades. "Wait," I cry. I reach out but my hand passes through her as through a cloud. "What of my fear? I'm still frightened."

Only the candle and Eulisha's voice remain. "Walk with your fear. Walk through your fear. Walk on...into the promise."

The candle recedes and darkness returns. Everything is black...dark... empty...

Nothing.

And then, something. Voices. Familiar voices. "...breathing regularly again...skin cooler..." "...more water...raise his head..." "...hear me?..." "...speak...Toshar...one word...?" Slowly, black turns gray turns cloudy and the mist dissipates. Leaves. A thick curtain of leaves, framing a face that peers anxiously into mine.

"Ro'an?" A hand pressed down on my shoulder as I tried to sit up. It was another dream. It had to be.

(c) 2008 Mark David Gerson. All rights reserved.

Read the complete, award-winning novel in hard copy or ebook form.

Photos #1 + #2 by Mark David Gerson

********************************
Mark David Gerson is a screenwriter, award-winning author and creator of The Q'ntana Trilogy of fantasy novels and films.

The MoonQuest: A True Fantasy, the first book in the trilogy, has won multiple national and regional awards, as has his book on writing and creativity, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write. Both books, and his The Voice of the Muse Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers CD, are available on his website and on Amazon. Ebooks are also available on Kindle and Kobo and via Apple's iBook Store; the CD is downloadable from CDbaby.

The MoonQuest, the first feature film in The Q'ntana Trilogy, will be in theaters in 2012.

As a creativity coach and writing-workshop facilitator for nearly 20 years, Mark David has guided writers and non-writers alike to connect with their innate wisdom, open to their creative power and express themselves with ease. Mark David is also a script analyst and consultant.

Mark David is currently working on a memoir and on The StarQuest and The SunQuest, the book and screenplay sequels to The MoonQuest.

Please "like" these Facebook pages:
• The MoonQuest movie
• The MoonQuest book
• The Voice of the Muse book
• Mark David Gerson

Acts of Surrender 21: Stranger in a Strange Land

Fourteen years ago today, I (sort of accidentally) crossed into the U.S. at Baudette, Minnesota, unaware that this unexceptional act would launch me into a new life in a new country.

Although I've written before (in this blog and its predecessor) about other aspects of that 90-day road odyssey, I haven't shared this story. Today is the perfect time to do so.

So here it is, as another excerpt from my memoir-in-progress, Acts of Surrender: A Journey Beyond Faith.


I didn't know where I was going or why when I drove out of Toronto on the morning of June 19, 1997. All I knew was that I would spent my first night in Washago with Trish Patterson, a teacher and musician I'd met while living in Penetanguishene. Beyond that, the road was wide open.

I felt that open-endedness even more fully when I pulled out of Trish's driveway the next morning and headed north on Route 11, the two-lane road that would take me to the Trans-Canada Highway, around the Great Lakes and west to....whatever.

I didn't get very far that first day. Some 70 miles up the road, I saw an exit for the town of Burk's Falls. Without thinking, I turned off. Actually, I'm not sure I was at all involved in the decision to drive into town. It was as though the car made the turn by itself and I was just along for the ride. It soon became clear that my Dodge Caravan knew more about this journey than I did, and I quickly gave it the freedom to navigate on my behalf.

Even when I saw the Circling Hawks sign above a storefront on Ontario Street, I didn't know that that's what had brought me here. But my explorations of native spirituality had me intrigued enough that I parked and went in. I'm not always the most outgoing person, a legacy of my childhood shyness and insecurity. So I browsed silently at first, admiring the books, crystals, totems and other metaphysical artifacts. Eventually, I warmed to the welcoming energy of the woman behind the counter and began chatting, sharing the store of my just-launched road odyssey.

"If you need a place to stay tonight," Lynette Brooker said, "stay with us. You can camp out in the restored barn we use for gatherings. In fact, we're having a summer solstice gathering there tomorrow night. Stay for that, too, if you want."

Awed by the magic that had brought me to Lynette's store, I readily agreed. Still, I wasn't sure about spending a second night. "Surely," I thought, "I need to keep moving"...though it's hard to say why I would have thought that when I had no particular place to be.

In the end, I did attend the solstice gathering, which offered up even more magical connections. I would spend the next night up the highway in Powassan with a couple I met at the gathering, Reiki Master John Lueck and his wife Ellen. The exquisite Indian feather fan that Ellen would gift me in exchange for the Reiki treatment John and I gave her would travel nearly two thousand miles with me until I reached Medicine Wheel National Historic Landmark high in Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains the following month.

Considered integral to Native American spiritual practice, a medicine wheel is generally a rock circle laid flush to the ground. Stone spokes connect this outer ring with a centerpoint, also of stone. Generally, four thicker spokes mark the four cardinal directions. According to archeologists, the Bighorn wheel, with its 28 spokes and 80-foot width, is the largest ancient medicine wheel still intact.

As I climbed from the parking lot to the medicine-wheel site, deep snowbanks still rising from the road in mid-July at this 10,000-foot elevation, I could feel the magnetic pull of this ancient place. And when I reached the summit, waves of emotion pulsed through me. I sat at each of the four directions and wanted to cry, without knowing why.

Back at the car, the engine already running, I saw Ellen's feather fan lodged in the passenger-side sun visor. Somehow, I knew it belonged here. I climbed back up, circled the wheel three more times and wedged the fan in the chain-link fence that protected the site, one of scores of offerings left by visitors.

The other gift of that solstice celebration at Lynette's was Claire Gibb, another Reiki Master who gave the two dozen of us gathered in Lynette's barn a group Reiki attunement as part of the gathering. The moment she walked into the room, I knew I had to speak to her. And once I did, I knew we were family.

"Make sure you look me up if you pass through Sudbury," she said as she was leaving. Six days later, I did.

In the William Rand School, there are four levels of Reiki not three. The third level, which he calls Advanced Reiki Training, or ART, is a prerequisite for Reiki mastery. Claire had been trained in the William Rand School. In exchange for an afternoon's private writing workshop, Claire offered me the ART attunement. (I had received my first- and second-degree attunements previously in Toronto). It was that head start that would make my Reiki mastery so easy to attain, a month later in Missoula, Montana.
*********
Sioux Narrows Provincial Park sits on one of the thousands of picturesque inlets that comprise Lake of the Woods, a vast lake system that straddles the Ontario-Minnesota border west of Thunder Bay. In the summer its shores are lushly green, and haunting loon calls from mid-lake usher in its otherwise-silent dewy mornings.

That's what I woke to on the morning of July 9, 1997 -- unknowingly, my last as a Canadian resident.

As I had been doing most nights on the road when someone hadn't offered to put me up, I had been camping. I don't remember what drew me to this tiny park off the main road. It was about 40 miles south of Route 17, the Trans-Canada Highway route that had carried me west over Lake Huron and Lake Superior, the same route I expected to travel into Manitoba. But here I was.

After I scribbled a few postcards to friends, I broke camp and drove five minutes south to the town of Sioux Narrows to mail the cards. My plan was to return to westbound Route 17 and the Winnipeg Folk Festival.

Once again, though, my car had its own plans. Without thinking, I turned right instead of left, heading for Minnesota, the United States and, unbeknownst to me, my new country.

"Where are you going?" the border guard asked me at the crossing into Baudette, Minnesota. His demeanor was all business, but his eyes were kind.

"Camping trip," I replied nervously. It doesn't matter how innocent I am, I don't do well with authority figures.

He looked me over, taking in my East Indian cottons and longish hair. He looked into the back of the minivan, packed with all I owned. He looked at my blonde cocker spaniel, Roxy, perched attentively in the passenger seat.

"Canadian citizen?"

I nodded.

He peered into the van again, then pointed to a parking lot alongside the customs building.

"Pull in over there," he said, almost apologetically. His name, I'd learn later, was David.

Shit, I thought. He sees all my stuff and thinks I'm trying to move illegally into the country.

A stocky, Marine-like customs official met me in the parking lot. Unsmilingly, he asked me to take Roxy and get out of the car. His eyes weren't kind.

An hour and a thorough search later, which included a call to the Sudbury Travelodge to confirm that I'd really stayed there, I realized it wasn't about why I was entering the country. It was about drugs.

One of my ever-present travel tools in those pre-9/11 days was a Swiss Army knife that I kept in a small, black leather pouch. When my Marine found it in the glove compartment, he pulled out the knife, and peered into the pouch. He wiggled his finger inside. Then he tipped it over and tapped it from the top. No drugs.

Of course not. I'd never done drugs. Even when friends had passed a joint around, I'd declined. Not from any prudishness. Whatever else drugs were about, they were about loss of control. And until my conscious spiritual path and the first draft of The MoonQuest forced me away from there, "control" had been my watchword.

When the Marine first started poking through the car, I was anxious. What if they send me back? Ironically, the longer he took, the calmer I got. Then I'll go back. That's all.

I clipped Roxy's leash to her collar and walked as far from the "search site" as I could. Baudette isn't a busy crossing, and after a while, David and I began chatting. We had a great conversation -- about metaphysics and spirituality, which he was opening to, and about his job, which he hated. And when the Marine clumsily replaced the wooden wine crate filled with crystals that was my makeshift traveling altar, David reproached him.

"That's fragile stuff," he exclaimed.

Even after I crossed the border, I still considered this a temporary detour. I studied my road atlas and found a series of back roads that would loop me back into Canada within a few hours. America was a great place to visit, but why would I want to stay? Even if I did, it wasn't legally possible. Better to keep to my folk-festival plans and find my way back up to Winnipeg.

One of my issues with the movie The Secret and many metaphysical manifestation techniques is that, in suggesting we "call in" what we want, they ignore the fact that we're often unaware of our most deeply held desires. Writing, for example, is among my most profound passions. Yet, for so many years, I was so frightened of my creative potential that I could never have done anything to consciously act on it...let alone call in relevant opportunities.

Clearly, living in the U.S. fell into a similar category, as I would discover even more eloquently in the months to come.

On that July morning, though, I simply pointed the car vaguely west out of Baudette. Soon, I found myself under a canopy of trees and on a right-angled maze of Forest Service dirt roads. Ninety minutes later, I wasn't 90 minutes west. I was back in Baudette.

I don't know how I got there, but once I did, something told me to forget the folk festival. Instead of retracing my steps, I headed -- or, rather, the car pulled me -- toward southbound I-71.

Whether at home or in the car, the radio service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation had long been my favorite audio companion. And with Baudette so close to the border, the CBC signal was still powerful in the car.

That morning, as most mornings, I was tuned to Peter Gzowski's Morningside program, a three-hour, magazine-style celebration of things Canadian.

The signal started strong. But as I continued southwest toward Bemidji, Morningside grew weaker and weaker. Finally, Gzowski's voice stuttered into solid static.

Canada was gone.

In that emotional moment, I knew that I was, too -- for good.

Photos of Medicine Wheel National Historic Landmark, Bighorn Mountains, Wyoming; and CN Tower, Toronto by Mark David Gerson .

Adapted from Acts of Surrender: A Journey Beyond Faith, my memoir-in-progress. Please share as you feel called to. But please, also, include a link back to this post.

Recent Acts of Surrender excerpts:
• October 23
• October 29
• November 15
• March 7
• May 22
• June 12

Please "like" my Facebook pages:
• The MoonQuest movie
• The MoonQuest book
• The Voice of the Muse book
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Snap a Pic for Me and Promote Yourself / Part 5

Welcome to the latest installment of my online readers' gallery, featuring photos of people from all over the U.S. (and beyond) reading my books -- in hard copy or ebook form. (You'll find previous posts and pics here, here, here and here.)

If you'd like to join the online fun (and get your book, business, event, blog, website or other success promoted here and on Facebook), read on...

Do you have a copy of either of my books? If so, I'd love to include a pic of you reading either The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, The MoonQuest or both in my Readers' Gallery Photo Album on Facebook.

I'm also happy to include you if you're listening to The Voice of the Muse Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers. Just make sure the CD cover is visible.

And to help you promote your book, event, business, success, blog and/or website, I'll include in the photo caption not only your name but your promotional info/link. I'll also post the next batch of reader pics here in a future blog item.

If you have my email address, simply email me your pic and caption information. If you don't have my email address, contact me via Facebook, Twitter or my website once you have the photo, and I'll tell you where to send it.

Feel free to send one pic or several and to include one book, both books, the CD or any combination. Just send separate photos for each item (unless you really are reading both books at the same time!).

Thanks for their reader pics to 
• Gabriel Sinatra (top pic, above), 
• Greg Halpen
• David Hamilton
• Eric Montoya
• Mark Hopper
• Douglas Beliakoff

Please click on their names to learn more about them and about what they're up to.

And please send me your pics. I'd love to add you to my gallery and let the world know something about you and your work and successes..










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The Story Knows Best

Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
~ E.L. Doctorow

So often, the story we're writing is wiser than we are. So often, our creativity begins when we abandon control and just let the story direct us.

As we move forward, writing the word or sentence we know, the next will always appear...if we're open to it. If we have our eyes on the road and our headlights on, if we're prepared to trust in the unknown that lies just beyond the reach of our vision, that unknown will become illuminated...and known.

There's a scene in my novel, The MoonQuest, that reminds me of that Doctorow quote. In it, the main character is walking a fantastical celestial road that only forms as he steps forward. As stressful as the journey is, the road takes him where he needs to go.

Ironically, that's the same journey I have travelled in writing each installment in my Q'ntana Trilogy of novels and films (The MoonQuest, The StarQuest, The SunQuest). Some days Doctorow's headlights showed me the next scene. Some days, they showed me only the next sentence. Some days, only the next word.

But as I surrendered to the journey -- and to the voice of my Muse -- the stories unfolded, magnificently, and in ways I could never have predicted, plotted or imagined.

As I write in The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write: "All I can do -- all we can ever do, in writing as in life -- is trust in the story. It has never let me down before. Truly, the story knows best."

• How much control do you cling to in your stories? In your life?

• Where you can let go some of that control and trust that the story -- the one you're writing and the one you're living -- knows best?

• Where in your creative journey can you more fully trust that the headlights illuminating your way will carry you to your destination?

Headlight photo by Lakewentworth

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Inspired Quotes: Living Your Dream

"You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try."

~ Beverly Sills

Dreams and Desires: A Guest Post

This is the second time author/poet Dan Stone has appeared on my blog. The first was back in November 2009, when he was a guest on my Muse & You radio show. Then, we talked about his first novel, The Rest of Our Lives, later nominated for a prestigious Lambda Award.

This time, it's to help celebrate the publication of his new poetry collection, Tricky Serum. In the following guest post, Dan tells about the power for him of dreams and of the moon and shares three poems from the new book. Not surprisingly, I'm partial to both themes, given their connection with my novel and soon-to-be-movie, The MoonQuest: A True Fantasy.

In fact, this is an exchange of sorts. Today, as Dan's post appears here, a guest post of mine appears on his blog: a dream-excerpt from The MoonQuest.

Enough from me. It's time to turn it over to Dan...and his elixir of poems...
********************************
Moon as Metaphor...
and the Tricky Serum of Our Dreams

A guest post by Dan Stone

Most of what has come into my life so far, or what I hope is on the way, started with a dream. I love dreams and I believe in them, and in one way or another nearly everything I do is connected to them. Maybe it's a Pisces thing.

I believe the Moon is a perfect metaphor for the guidance that is our emotions. It reflects the light it's receiving -- relative to its position in the sky, to the way it is turning and to what it is facing. The Moon is always making its journey and is always reflecting a focus relative to where it is and where it is going. It is always telling us something about the distance between what is and what can be.

The Moon's phases are pictures of that emotional journey -- pictures of desire, pictures of resistance to desire. We can see new desires being born, desires waxing and evolving, desires manifesting fully, resistance to desire releasing, waning.

As the Moon makes its journey through the constellations, we can observe and feel the desires and resistance relative to that focus, that topic. We have endless opportunities to observe our progress along the emotional journey toward any and every desire that is active in us. Or we have the choice to sleep through it all -- to never look outside our window to see how we're doing.

The Moon continues its journey regardless of whether we are conscious of it or not. The Moon does its job whether we observe or acknowledge or respect it or not.

If our feelings feel like they're feeling us, all we really have to do is wake up, look through the window that is our focus and notice where the Moon is and how it's doing. We can know then, and any other time we choose, what our feelings are about and where they are taking us. Our mood is only a mystery as long as we are choosing not to notice or pay attention to its position in the sky that is our own cosmos of dreams and desires.

The poems that I've included here, from my newly released collection, Tricky Serum: An Elixir of Poems (Lethe Press, 2011), are a sort of tracing of dreams and desires and the illusions that sometimes confuse or impede or delay them.

Whether present or merely implied in these poems, the metaphor of the Moon as our own emotional guiding light leads us on our journey through and to our dreams, to whatever extent we are able to pay attention, to listen and to learn.

As suggested by the title, these poems address the tricky prospect of elixirs ...the quest for the substance of our dreams, the magic potion for fulfilling what we hold to be our fondest and often most elusive desires. The poems are intended to be read as a progression, a journey through the process of seeking, finding and relinquishing our convictions about what we need or want...from an "other...and from ourselves...about waking up, or not...from some of the dreams we dream about the only life we can save..."


Luna Leading

She walks in beauty, yes,
but not just like the night.
She moves through the day as well,
a knowing goddess not a guess,
divinely sure of what she tells.
Time and tide and blood
are at her beck and call,
measuring her journey
through the stars, responding
to her signs and phases
even as she points the way
to any heaven that is held
close to the heart,
any distant hell that needs release.
She gently shows us where we are,
whether in or out of sight.
We push back the curtain
or pull the covers to our head.
Either way her lady finger gestures,
lures us to the dreams, desires
reflected in her light.


Awake

On the lake the winds are calm
enough to tell one breeze from the other
and the water lies as still as two lovers' eyes
holding one another in the space before a kiss,
like sea desiring sky in a privacy before the dawn.

The earth stops turning
long enough to feel that we've arrived,
that a wish has just come true
and the only prayer remaining
is a thank you whispered to the trees,
attention to the hummingbirds and cranes.

There are times a lover's arm around your waist,
his breathing in the night,
will take you home
and other times the memory
of his calling out your name
is all the joy you get to keep.

In the morning
dreams will drop you at your door
and drive away, leaving you to wonder
where they go, and what they came to say,
leaving you alone, awake,
and aching to go back to sleep.


Nondisclosure

I keep some things to myself,
knowing that disclosure
is a sound that sometimes
only dogs and critics hear.
I know the damage dreams
can suffer in some hands.
So I hold them close—
my dreams—
like newborns needing suckle,
like secrets that are magic
only when they are not shared.
Because they're mine alone
they are untouched . . .
undefiled . . .
unattached to any word or deed,
to any face or form,
to any foreign need.
These dreams they are the force
that moves across the surfaces
and through the depths
and to the heights
of what I most believe . . .
like the stars that speak
the language I am learning,
like a god who only
answers prayers from me.
In my silence I can keep
the faith I feel,
leave it burning and becoming
what I want, without explaining.
I can choose it anytime
and it will always call me
to a place that's clearer,
sweeter, more than
where or who I've been,
more than any company I've kept
or kingdoms that I've seen.
These dreams, they know the way
and in the not revealing,
in the nondisclosure,
I am getting where I'm going,
I am letting myself go.
I am just not telling.

********************************
Dan Stone is the author of Tricky Serum: An Elixir of Poems, and the gay romantic fantasy, The Rest Of Our Lives: A Novel (Lethe Press, 2009). He's also an essayist, photographer, intuitive coach/consultant and college instructor.

Dan's fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in Focus on the Fabulous: Colorado GLBT Voices, Charmed Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling, White Crane Journal, A&U Magazine, Astropoetica, Mostly Maine, Bay Windows, Gents, Badboys, and Barbarians, New Gay Male Poetry, and Rebel Yell: Stories by Contemporary Southern Gay Authors.

He is the co-creator with artist Cher Odum of a line of original poetry-art and author of the spiritual blog, The Shower Channel. More information about Dan, his books, fine art photography and consulting services are available through his website.

• From now until July 4, get the ebook version of Tricky Serum: An Elixir of Poems for only $5 when you purchase the book at Smashwords using this coupon code: JG44A. The paperback version is currently available at Amazon.com, as is Dan's novel, The Rest of Our Lives (Lethe Press, 2009)

Risky Writing

"If 20 percent of the people aren't against you, then you're not going anyplace interesting, whether you're name is Martin Luther King Jr. or whether you're a dorky management guru [named Tom Peters]."
~ Dorky Management Guru Tom Peters

Creative expression is about risk-taking. It's about boarding the Starship Enterprise, taking off for parts unknown and going where no one has dared to go before.

When you do that, chances are that not everyone is going to like what you've written. Chances are someone is going to hate what you've written.

It's all right to offend people, to push people's buttons, to take them up to that ledge on which we, as artists, live...and then to give them a gentle nudge.

Art is about pushing boundaries. It's about forcing people (including the artist) out of their comfort zone and inciting them to reexamine their beliefs and rediscover who they think they are. Sometimes, it's about getting people mad at you.

"You've got to go out on a limb," American humorist Will Rogers is reputed to have said, "because that's where the fruit is."

• Where are you going out on a limb and taking risks with your writing? With your life?

• Where are you clinging to the tree trunk and playing it safe?

• Where are you willing to get people riled up? Where are you holding yourself back for fear of being judged or attacked?

Commit today to taking more risks, to going out on a limb. Commit today to letting yourself be judged...and letting it be okay.


Photo Credits: Tom Peters by Allison Shirreffs; Will Rogers from www.willrogers.org

Acts of Surrender 20: Back to the Future

An excerpt from Acts of Surrender: A Journey Beyond Faith, my memoir-in-progress.

When I returned to New Mexico from L.A. in October 2010, barely two months after I'd shed most of my belongings to move from Albuquerque to the West Coast, I didn't know why I was leaving California. I knew only that I needed to return to three of the key cities in my U.S. life: Sedona, Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Beyond that, I knew nothing, other than that writing was to once again be paramount in my life.

What I didn't realize at the time was that, in another of the bizarre ironies that rule my life, I would be leaving the quintessential movie town (L.A.) in order to accelerate The MoonQuest film project -- in Albuquerque, of all places.

New Mexico may not have birthed the notion of a MoonQuest movie (I'd envisioned the story as a motion picture even as I was writing the first draft of the novel, back in 1994). But it did help birth the unexpected idea that I would write the screenplay.

For months in early 2006, a Sedona friend with her own filmmaking aspirations kept urging me to try my hand at screenwriting. Finally, some unknown imperative impelled me to start, even though I knew nothing about writing a movie script. I picked up a copy of Viki King's How to Write a Movie in 21 Days: The Inner Movie Method and, in Santa Fe, put my first tentative Courier-font words to the page.

I was on the road in those days, on an inner-guided full-time odyssey that had me crossing the country multiple times over 30 months. One of the advantages of having the open road as your home is that it doesn't much matter where you are. So when, a few weeks later, then in Albuquerque, I saw that the Screenwriting Conference in Santa Fe was happening in a few days, I signed up on the spot.

By the time the conference was done, I was on fire. I booked a week at Sunrise Ranch, a Colorado retreat center I'd first experienced the previous year. When I checked out, my first draft was well underway.

A year and another screenplay draft later, my focus and energy had shifted back to The MoonQuest book. My road odyssey had just come to an end, dropping me full-time in Albuquerque, and I was at one of my first book-signings for the novel, at a local Borders.

When you're an unknown author, book-signings can be lonely affairs. You sit alone at your table with a stack of books and you try to engage the store's customers, who do their best to avoid you.

On this particular Sunday, a woman walked up to my table, intrigued by the colored horses on the giant book-cover blow-up I had on an easel next to me. She picked up a book, glanced at the cover to make sure it matched the poster, flipped it over and began to read.

"Oh," she said suddenly, glancing from the author's photo to me and back again. "You're the author!" I nodded, and she returned to the blurb.

"You know," she said, as she passed me her card so I could sign a copy of the book for her, "this could make a good movie."

Her card said: "Kathleen Messmer, Script Supervisor." I didn't know then what a script supervisor did. I knew only that it had something to do with filmmaking. I perked up.

"Funny you should say that," I said. "I've written a screenplay adaption."

"Funny you should say that," she retorted. "I've just started an independent production company and I'm looking for projects."

My eyebrows shot up.

"Keep my card," she added. "If I like the book, I'll want to see your screenplay."

She loved the book and, to my amazement, loved my script as well. And thus began the journey that now has me living in her Albuquerque house and has both of us preparing for a MoonQuest feature film.

********************************
My first stop after leaving Southern California in October 2010 was Sedona. And one of my Sedona priorities was figuring out where I would stay when I got back to New Mexico. Unlike my years on the road, I no longer had the cash or credit to stay in a hotel. I would need a billet. But where? As I was driving up Hwy. 179 toward Oak Creek and the heart of town, an inner voice replied: "Ask Kathleen."

Kathleen? We'd been meeting for coffee semi-regularly but she was hardly a close friend, hardly the kind of person I'd feel comfortable asking for that kind of hospitality.

"Ask Kathleen," I heard again. "Think MoonQuest movie. Think synergy."

Reluctantly, I pulled into the parking lot in front of Garland's Navajo Rugs and called.

"It's so strange you're calling," she said. "I had a dream last night that I was angry at you because you hadn't turned in the MoonQuest film-trailer script I'd asked you for."

Kathleen had, in fact, asked me to write a trailer script. But things seemed to have been moving so lethargically on the film front that I'd felt no urgency.

"Then," she added, "you turned up at my front door, in the dream. I think you'd better come."

I did. And apart from a ten-day period in November, split between Santa Fe and a former client's in Albuquerque, I've been at Kathleen's ever since. Neither of us ever imagined I'd be here this long. Neither of us ever imagined what kind of synergy my presence would spark. With two of us living, eating and sleeping MoonQuest movie in the same house 24/7, things began to happen. Quickly.

Suddenly, it was no longer just about The MoonQuest movie. Suddenly, it was about the full trilogy of movies, which, also suddenly, had a name: The Q'ntana Trilogy.

Suddenly, I found myself writing not a new draft of The StarQuest novel, as I'd planned, but a first draft of The StarQuest screenplay.

And just as suddenly, the trailer project (designed to be part of a presentation to potential film investors) was no longer just about The MoonQuest. Now, it would encompass scenes from The MoonQuest, The StarQuest and the as-yet-unwritten SunQuest: the full trilogy.

With the trailer scripts written, I was launched into an intensive fast-track course in filmmaking. I was no longer just the screenwriter. I was an associate producer involved in every aspect of production. I was in on the casting calls and decisions. I helped interview directors and crew members. I was in on design decisions. And, of course, I was present when the first scene was shot and all through our two March weekends of filming.

Now, even as I finish a feature script for The SunQuest and launch into research on another screenplay project, I'm involved in the editing decisions for The Q'ntana Trilogy trailer, now on the final leg of its journey to the screening rooms, where it will help woo investors. On top of that, I'm working closely with Kathleen and my fellow associate producers on making the choices and decisions that will, at last, move us into preproduction on The MoonQuest movie.

I knew none of this when, like the Tarot Fool I have so often been, I stepped off the cliff of apparent certainty (my Orange County billet) and headed west on I-10, back toward Sedona and New Mexico.

I knew nothing.

Yet, I knew everything...which was that nothing beyond the present moment mattered, that if I stayed true to that infinite mind within me, I would always find myself on a true path and I would always be taken care of.

The months since have once again proven the incontrovertible truth of that philosophy. Somehow, with almost no income and, now, no car of my own, I have been held in the arms of the God (the God within), as I have been propelled forward along a path of deeply held passions I didn't even know I possessed.

If I hadn't felt an inexorable pull to L.A., I wouldn't have left Albuquerque. And if I hadn't left, I couldn't have come back into a situation that was required to both midwife The MoonQuest movie and launch me more fully and forcefully into screenwriting.

And if I hadn't come back to Albuquerque, I couldn't have had the experiences that would prime me for an eventual return to L.A.

Even as I left Southern California on October 10, I knew I'd be back -- to my future. I didn't know when, how or under what circumstances. But I knew, with that deep inner knowingness that has never steered me wrong, that my future lay in L.A. and that my presence in Albuquerque was but a minor detour on that journey.

That day is getting closer, and it's a return that I welcome...even as I carry a bit of apprehension: As accurate as my sensings tend to be at a big-picture level, I can easily misinterpret them when it comes to the micro-details. My last L.A. round, for example, wasn't remotely what I'd expected, though it was no less powerful and miraculous for that.

********************************
When I left Albuquerque in August, I parked much of my book and CD inventory, along with two dozen boxes of worldly goods, in a former student's garage. Last week, in an act that felt profoundly significant, I consolidated it all in Kathleen's garage. I even went through my paltry collection of belongings and got rid of a handful of them.

The next day, just for fun, I picked a card from Doreen Virtue's Magical Mermaid and Dolphin Deck. The card was "Time to Move On," the card out of the deck's 44 that carries the most significance for me: Hours before my ex-wife told me, on election night 2004, that our marriage was over, I'd come home to the mermaid deck on my desk, where my then five-year-old daughter had been using it to practice her writing. In clear view on a yellow notepad, scratched out in her preschool scrawl, were the words "Time to Move On," as copied directly from the mermaid card of the same name.

This week's card-draw wasn't as dramatic. But I'm certain that it was no less prescient. Somehow, soon, L.A. will pull me back. Somehow, soon, I will return to the future that was necessarily interrupted to prepare me for it.

And although I have even fewer conventional resources at my disposal than I did last year, I know that whatever's required will show up, conventionally or otherwise -- both to get me there and support me there.

I know it because it's always been the case. I know it because that inner voice has never let me down. I know it because it's true.

• To help move the energy around my return to L.A., I've launched The Best Sale of My Books You'll Ever Experience. Save up to 37% on my books and up to 52% on my CD, for one week only!

Photos by Mark David Gerson: #1, #3 + #4 Hollywood Boulevard; #2 Sunrise Ranch, Loveland, Colorado. MoonQuest book cover by Angela Farley. Q'ntana Trilogy poster by Richard Crookes. Tarot Fool card from the Osho deck. "Time to Move On" card from Magical Mermaid and Dolphin Deck

Adapted from Acts of Surrender: A Journey Beyond Faith, my memoir-in-progress. Please share as you feel called to. But please, also, include a link back to this post.

Recent Acts of Surrender excerpts:
• October 20
• October 23
• October 29
• November 15
• March 7
• May 22

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Moving Back to L.A. Sale: One Week Only!

Even though the "Back to L.A." headline may be a bit premature (see "Acts of Surrender 20: Back to the Future"), a return to Los Angeles is high on my agenda.

To move some energy in that direction and, frankly, to help lighten the ultimate move, I've launched The Best Sale of My Books You'll Ever Experience.

Between now and June 19, get either The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write or The MoonQuest: A True Fantasy for US$9.99 apiece -- a savings of more than 35%.

Add The Voice of the Muse Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers CD to your order for US$11.99 -- a savings of over 50%.

Order today! This sale will definitely end no later than June 19 and will not be repeated!

Fine Print:
• Prices are exclusive of shipping and handling
• All sales are final
• Retail orders only
• Seller reserves to the right to limit quantities
• Seller reserves the right to end sale before June 19