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Hollow Bones

"In our life there is a time of wonder. Walking with the ancient ones as they share their world. And the dancing voices are carried by the wind. As I walk this sacred ground, I know I'm not alone, and I thank Mother Earth."  ~Alex Davis, Seneca Cayuga

Celebrate Mabon

9/20/2018

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Autumn.

Two sounds are unmistakable.
The hurrying rustle of crisp leaves blown along the street by a gust of wind. And the honking of a flock of migrating geese overhead. Both of these are harbingers of chill days ahead.
​
The Fall Equinox, also known as Mabon, or Harvest Home, fall on or around September 21, and draws an end to the harvest season. It’s the time to honor the changing seasons, and give thanks for what we have, whether it is abundant crops or other blessings. 
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At the Fall Equinox, the sun enters the astronomical sign of Libra. Libra’s sign is the scales, depicting a state of perfect balance. 

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​The earth is in perfect balance as well. Day and night, light and dark are in a state of equilibrium at the start of autumn.

That can affect people in different ways. For some, it’s a season to honor the darker aspects of the goddess, calling upon that which is devoid of light. For others, it’s a time of high energy. There may be a feeling of restlessness in the air, a sense that something is just a bit “off”.

If you’re feeling a bit spiritually lopsided, activities that keep you close to the land, or those that help others, can bring you balance and harmony.

Here are some ways you and your family can gear your fall festivities toward traditional, or more earth-based celebrations:

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Image by Maria Sapotnitska

Place some fruits, such as squash and apples in a wooden bowl on your altar. You’ll want to add a pomegranate, in honor of Persephone.

The full Moon closest to the Autumn Equinox (September 24 this year) is the traditional time of the ancient Greek Eleusian Mysteries, in with Persephone was abducted by Hades, lord of the Underworld, to reign as his queen for the next six months, until her return to the surface at the Spring Equinox.

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​A cornucopia (horn of plenty) is the perfect item to serve as a centerpiece on your family dining table for these months.

Decorate your home or a rented space like an old barn and host a barn dance! 
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A European custom that grew out of the pagan celebrations of the completion of the harvest, this tradition continued in the Colonies.
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If you like wine, you can host a wine-tasting party in honor of the year’s grape harvest Serve wines the traditional way, with bland crackers, yeast breads, and cheese. You can even have a company host in your home, in exchange for a minimum guest purchase. (With my friends, I have never had a problem making the modest minimum.)
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Quilting Bees were also fall events. With the cold nights of winter on the way, people crafted new blankets and quilts to keep their family warm. Of course, this activity is much more fun as a group! Many of the quilt patterns hold pagan symbolism, and may have, in fact, grown out of long-forgotten pagan signs of protection. 

Many pagans and Wiccans count Mabon as their Thanksgiving, the perfect time to give to those less fortunate than ourselves. Consider holding a canned food drive. Invite your friends over for a feast, but ask each of them to bring a canned food, dry goods, or baby supplies. Donate the collected bounty to a local food bank or homeless shelter.

Give your energy and time. For one hour this month, put your full energies into a task that doesn’t benefit you personally. Perhaps you can help prepare food for strangers at a food bank. Perhaps you can complete someone else’s dreaded tasks. Maybe you read to children in foster care, or donate your time to AIDS awareness.  As you prepare to engage in the activity, and while carrying it out, note any resistance or internal commentary. Note again how you feel at the end of the activity. Do you notice any change?

Natural giving. Choose an hour when you will listen deeply to someone else without commenting about your own life or interests. Simply listen with full attention to the details of the speaker’s words. Repeat back in your own words the information you have heard to demonstrate to the speaker that you have heard what he or she had to say.

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Pick some apples. Apples are the perfect symbol of the Mabon season. Long connected to wisdom and magic, there are many wonderful things you can do with an apple. As you pick the apples, give thanks to Pomona, goddess of fruit trees.

Honor the darkness. Without darkness, there is no light. Without night, there can be no day. Despite a basic human inclination to overlook the dark and sleep through it, there are many positive aspects to embracing the dark side of life, if it’s just for a short time. After all, it was Demeter’s love for her daughter Persephone that led her to wander the world, mourning for six months at a time, and bringing us the death of the soil each fall.

Honor someone older than you. In some paths, Mabon is the time of year that celebrates the Crone aspect of the goddess. We often tend to ignore the elderly people in our population. This month, spend time with an older acquaintance, and acknowledge the ways they’ve succeeded in aging gracefully.

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It's time for Second Harvest
Of colors red and gold.
A time to gather and reap
The fruit from the seeds we sowed.
 
We honor the spirit of all living things.
We give them our blessings for gifts we've received.

Bless the trees felled for shelter,
Bless the food which once breathed.
 
Remind us, Oh Spirit, lest we forget,
To take no life lightly,
We all have a debt.
In this eternal circling of life into death.
 
Each beginning has an ending.
Then it circles full round.
The Oak King dies,
Thus the Holly King is crowned.
 
Light and dark balanced on an ear of wheat.
As the last grain signals the harvest complete.
Spirit, bring your perfect love to our rite,
That we may always keep balance firmly in sight.
 
Happy Mabon.


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Probing Into My Character's Wounds

9/15/2018

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Just like the rest of us, novel characters have wounds in their past, hidden scars they carry with them wherever they go.

Our pasts are filled with experiences, both good and bad, which taught us who to trust, what to believe in, and what to avoid. The painful experiences—the wounds—influence us so deeply that we will do almost anything to avoid feeling such pain again. That past trauma is likely to affect our future behavior as well.

A writers, how do we create characters who feel realistic? By mirroring real life as much as possible. That means developing a backstory for each character that lets us understand him/her on the deepest level. Knowing who and what influences a character gives us insight to what they fear, desire and need most of all. Sometimes even if the character doesn’t know himself.

Emotional wounds are more than just painful memories. Inside each wound is a seed of doubt. Was it my fault?  Could I have stopped it? Was there something else I could have done? It’s human nature to second-guess decisions that result in a bad outcome, to rationalize tragedies, and to make sense of them. Many times we blame ourselves for what happened, even when events were out of our control.

Because of this internalization, a lie is born.

When a person is wounded, he wraps himself in emotional armor to keep his feelings safe. Flaws develop, working under the rationalization of protecting himself from getting hurt. Oftentimes, instead of keeping the person safe, these flaws limit him, preventing him from building healthy relationships, or putting a filter of distrust on all he sees.

For the last several months, I’ve had my novel characters, especially my antagonist, under the microscope, refining his “wounds,” focusing all his hurt and pain into a single backstory moment that explains his motivation (and rationalization) to kill. Now I’ll be able to make this killer relatable and tragic, and I think he will also have a redeemable moment at the end of the book.

Interestingly, while delving deeper into my bad guy, I’ve also been able to bring the backstory wounds of other characters into sharper focus.

Sheriff Cooper Jones was easy for me to figure out from the beginning. He was working late (in his last job), and while he was away, his wife was killed in a home invasion. He’s been drowning in self-remorse and guilt ever since. He has locked his emotions away, unable to allow himself to feel affection for a woman he is clearly attracted to.  Instead, he has put all of his passion into finding the person who shot a woman in his county, hoping that bringing her killer to justice will appease the guilt he feels about his wife’s unsolved murder.

My female protagonist, Rumor Vargas’s wound has been harder to quantify.  But, while working on my killer, I figured her out as well.

Wounds are often kept secret from others because of the little dirty lie embedded within them—the untruth that the character feels about herself. Self-blame (Coop) and/or feelings of shame (Rumor and killer) are deeply embedded within the lie. Fear of discovery compels them to change their behavior to avoid being hurt again.

Rumor is estranged from her father’s side of the family. She is vehemently against her brother Alberto’s involvement with the Mexican cartel. Her father isn’t happy about it either, but he is supporting Alberto’s efforts to get out from under his employer’s hold, and has cut ties with Rumor for fear that will turn her brother over to USA authorities if he visits in the States.

Alberto is involved in the Cartel drug trade. Since Coop’s wife was killed by a junkie, he will also have wound-related reasons to be suspicious of Rumor’s brother. 

This sets up some up some interesting extra conflict for Coop. Can he be unbiased in his murder investigation with Alberto, a drug trafficker, as one of his suspects?

After more than a month deepening all of my character’s backstories, and revising my entire outline based on the insights I’ve learned about them, I’m back to writing new pages.

The novel now opens with the killer in the cemetery, rationalizing how he’s going to get even for the death of his wife and unborn daughter. I think it flows well into the introduction of main character Rumor and her friend and victim, Abby, in the following chapter.

Looking forward to sharing the entire book with you in January!
Until then, good reading—and writing!

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Book recommendation: Poison Girls

9/8/2018

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At the beginning of the summer, I agreed to write a column for our community newspaper, The Pinewood News.  Every other week I submit columns and book reviews for the residents in Munds Park, our little cabin community.

This obligation has gotten me reading a lot more this summer. I’d been avoiding reading for the last year because I thought it would take away from my novel writing time. Actually, the opposite has been true. I read mostly during lunch and before going to bed at night.

Instead of being a “time suck,” reading seems to rev up my imagination and get me thinking constantly about word choice and phrasing, not to mention how much new information there is to learn from other author’s books.​
I also joined Netgalley, an online service that connects publishers and authors to a community of early influencers who will help their book succeed: librarians and booksellers, who order an recommend books to their patrons; media professionals who interview authors and publish book reviews; and reviewers and bloggers like me who write about books online and leave reviews on retail sites and more. I have already requested a dozen newly-published or not-yet-published books that I’m excited to read. 

On this blog, I’ll give you the “best of the best” as I come across them, starting with Poison Girls, by Cheryl Reed.

I actually discovered Cheryl’s book during a workshop at Left Coast Crime. She was on a panel of authors who have moved from newspaper crime reporting to writing novels. I thought the panel was interesting because, as a past journalist myself, I rarely feel that novelist get the atmosphere of a newsroom exactly right, and even fewer accurately describe the pressures on a crime reporter.

But Poison Girls nails it all—the  political maneuvering of publishers and editors, the back-stabbing competition between co-workers, and especially the daily ethical decisions the reporters are forced to make, with no safety net from prosecution.

The novel ls is set in South Side Chicago in 2008 where teenage girls of prominent and wealthy families are dying from fentanyl-laced heroin called “poison.”

Natalie Delaney, a crime reporter for the struggling Chicago Times, is determined to get to the bottom of the deaths. She navigates the world where thrill-seeking teens and hardened drug dealers coexist, by developing a friendship with Libby and Anna, two cousins who are dabbling in the drug world. 

Natalie senses that these are not ordinary OD’s, but her new friend, Anna, leads her in confusing circles around the truth. Eventually she traces some unlikely links between the South Side drug dealers and the city’s power brokers, but she still doesn’t know why these young, affluent girls are willing to try a drug that will likely kill them.

As the death toll rises, Natalie finds herself chasing one of the biggest stories of her career. We get a sharp sense of the false leads, half-truths and frustrations that are part of reporting a story that no one else seems eager to break open. The paper is happy to run her page one articles when the focus is on the tawdry deaths and gang involvement. But when the reporting leads to politicians and some of Chicago’s most well-connected families, Delaney is hung out to dry.

Although the drug culture is realistically portrayed, it is the reporter’s life that rings true throughout. Delaney is a flawed and sometimes unsympathetic character, struggling with the ethical dilemma she is thrown into.  How does she separate getting the story and becoming personally involved with the people in it? Is it ethical to observe a crime being committed, and not stop it, for the sake of the article? The exploration of her inner life adds layers of depth to the story, and several times I stopped and asked myself what I would do if faced with the same situation.

Cheryl Reed’s Poison Girls is a gripping tale that often reads like creative nonfiction. And for good reason. Reed, a long-time crime reporter, drew the story from her own experiences covering a group of young girls using crack cocaine in Dayton in the 1990s. A former editor and reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times, Cheryl has won many awards for her investigative reporting.

This is Reed’s first fiction novel. Her non-fiction book. Unveiled: the Hidden Lives of Nuns, chronicles her four years living off and on with nuns across the country.

At the time of this writing, Poison Girls has 29 Amazon reviews, all of them 5-Star.
  • Paperback: 374 pages. Also available in ebook format.
  • Publisher: Diversion Books (September 12, 2017)
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    Writer, witch, mother and wife. Order of importance is a continual shuffle.

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