Sabin Howard Interview about His Drawing Book
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Sabin Howard Interview about His Drawing Book

My husband Sabin Howard is a master sculptor. He’s currently working on a book called Drawing: The Foundation of Art. The drawing book is a kind of follow-up to our book The Art of Life, which was a photo-rich survey of figurative sculpture through the ages, from the very earliest times through the Renaissance and the Neo-classical periods until his work now.

Sabin is an exceptional draughtsman. With awe–because I know I could never do what he does–I watch him draw. He sits at our dining room table and focuses so fiercely that he doesn’t hear the rowdy dogs and rambunctious kid, the cell phone ringing and the front door banging open. He pours himself into his vision and his skilled hands with such intensity that it all fades away from him.

He knows what he’s doing, too. One of the things I find so fascinating about my husband is that he’s extraordinarily articulate about his work. Also about art in general. He tends to be quiet and soft-spoken until he launches into a discourse about art, both its history and its theory.

We talk about art all the time, and I think that’s one of the best things about being married to Sabin: our conversations about art. It’s these very conversations that led to our book The Art of Life, because he was speaking one day about his approach to sculpture and I said, “Sabin, people need know what you’re up to. It’s important.”

So now Sabin Howard is up to a book on drawing. The book is about how drawing is the basis of visual art. He has a lot of cool stuff to say about that, and I cajoled him into doing an interview with me for my iTunes podcast channel. He talks about the perceptual and the conceptual parts of doing art, and about the three great masters whom art students should study: Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael.

Listen here to the Sabin Howard interview or on my podcast channel.
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OR watch on Youtube

Dr. Jane Ely Guest Post: Coming into Balance book
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Dr. Jane Ely Guest Post: Coming into Balance book

This is a guest post by healer and author DR. JANE ELY on the publication of her book COMING INTO BALANCE by Parvati Press.

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In my first book, Remembering the Ancestral Soul: Soul Loss and Recovery, I addressed the global epidemic of soul loss, defining it and interviewing elders who shared wisdom and insights. My new book, Coming into Balance: A Guide for Activating Your True Potential picks up the theme of soul loss bringing tangible skills for soul retrieval through recovering our true self by activating transformational change from the inside out. I wrote this book to provide a tool kit for personal transformation that is accessible for everyone. I am passionate about the subject because I practice the skills in the book everyday and I know they work.

One of the basic premises of Coming into Balance is that we are all responsible to change that which is out of alignment within us. The first act of self-responsibility arrives when we become aware of being uncomfortable or in pain, then move internally toward it exploring the deeper meaning of what is arising. External discomfort always relates to what is being activated internally and is a catalyst that opens opportunity for deep shifts and realignment within. Another principle of the book equally important is that when one person cleans up their debris it affects the whole—the entire collective consciousness of the planet moves forward with more light and clarity.  I introduce the concept of ecopsychology in the form of a universally recognized mandala known as the Medicine Wheel. The Medicine Wheel is a spiritual mandala found in many cultures most notably Native American Indian, Tibetan, Mayan, Celtic, Hindu to name only a few. The Wheel of Life reconnects us with the inherent, powerful intuitive sensate experiences of our body, mind, heart and spirit. We learn to activate the ‘insightful healer within’ which leads to self-discovery and a keener sense of awakened consciousness. The ancient wheel of spiritual evolution has four principles: Trust, Truth, Discernment and Faith, each direction of the Medicine Wheel reconnects us with a healing medicine. Using the Medicine Wheel as a template, we learn how to access our empowered higher self, connected to the soul agreements we made in our Life Between Lives. We get free from old “story” that keeps us stuck in the past to go beyond it into a state of awakened freedom. We find and activate the spiritual birthright or blueprint we have come here to live. We do this by practicing what I call ‘skillful means’ which are tools that change how we think, feel and act on a daily basis.

Ecopsychology is the practice of soul healing and of growing the soul to your next level of consciousness. Eco means the environment in which we are living, our internal and external ecology. Psycho means the soul in Greek. Ology means the study of and practice of learning. All together, ecopsychology is the daily practice of conscious soul evolution. Within the book skills, insight questions, exercises and graphics support you as you take the journey of self-awareness and transformation.

–Dr. Jane Ely

jane ely guest post
Interview of Dr. Jane Ely
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The Business of Independent Publishing
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The Business of Independent Publishing

Regarding the business of independent publishing: A few months ago, I received a polite email from Professor John Maxwell of Simon Fraser University. Some of his students had come to him. Between the covers of the text he had ordered for his graduate class on publishing, The Content Machine by Michael Bhaskar, was the novel Broken by Traci L. Slatton, in its entirety. He attached a picture to show me, see below.

Here was an opportunity to spread the word about Parvati Press in general and about my novels in particular, I thought. “Are your students interested in the novel? Would you like more copies?” I asked. I am always looking for opportunities to promote the Press.

He accepted with alacrity. Ten copies shipped out to him at SFU.

Sometime later, during an email exchange, he invited me to guest lecture to his class via Skype. I accepted. It was a good experience; his students were bright, polite, inquisitive, and thoughtful. I enjoyed talking to them but finished with a feeling of frustration: there was so much else to say about independent publishing.

Much of it I’ve learned the hard way, too.

It has been an intense journey since the day I decided to expand the Press and take on other authors. I’ve learned some tough lessons. My first time out of the box, I took on a writer who turned out to be certifiably insane. Not, like, a little kookie, but off-her-rockers lunatic demented. I’ve blogged about that elsewhere, including a Huffington Post article about How to Handle eMail Harassment.

The next three writers weren’t crazy, but I still made a big mistake in trusting one of them.

After the debacle with the first writer, I realized I needed a solid contract for dealing with potential Parvati Press authors. I hired an attorney who had helped me on other matters. She wasn’t a publishing attorney, and the contract put off the other writers.

That was my responsibility, I knew. So I went out and found a real publishing attorney, I mean, the guy in publishing law, to create a contract that was clear, simple, fair, and had precedents in publishing. He did a great job.

He also yelled at me about the deal I was giving the writers. He explained that I could not sustain the Press with that deal. He was right, but I felt that I had given my word to the writers, so those first few would still receive the deal I had originally offered them. He called me crazy. But I was going to keep my word.

One writer refused to do a revision that his manuscript urgently required. Line for line, his prose was polished and perfect. Unfortunately, it was a good story badly told. His novel was boring. He had to revise it to bring it to life. He didn’t want to do the work required because he’s had a storied career as an author. But production values matter to me, so I declined to send him a contract.

A second writer saw immediately that I was being scrupulously honorable. She signed the contract and sent it back immediately.

Ah, but the third guy. He had been hemming and hawing, wringing his hands, and dragging his feet about signing a contract from the day I sent him one. Days and weeks would go by. He was always about to talk to his attorney, who was so busy…. When I sent him the second contract, he said, “I’ll sign it right away, I’ll tell my lawyer that I want to get this done unless there’s something major wrong with it.”

As the months went by, with all the foot-dragging and hand-wringing and excuses, I was working on this writer’s manuscript. I stupidly invested a great deal of my own time, thought, and energy into his manuscript. Now, it had a germ of a good idea, and the writer showed flashes of serious, big talent throughout. But it was no where near publishable. It was going to require sustained heavy lifting to get it to the point where the manuscript was professional and polished.

Also, it was tricky to deal with the writer because of the arrogance involved. Taking editorial criticism is a skill that requires learning for most of us.

I paid for the Parvati Press editor to do a thorough manuscript critique. It was still going to be at least three more revisions before the manuscript was ready to be published, two that I could do and one more from the professional editor. Note that this editorial critique is the work product of Parvati Press.

Despite my honorable behavior, there was only continued hand-wringing and hawing and excuses about the second contract.

I woke up.

I realized–finally!–that this writer had no intention of signing a contract with me. One tip-off was when he asked why there was now no “out” in the new contract so he could go to a bigger publisher if one made an offer.

It broke over me that this writer was out to get free editing for his manuscript so he could shop it around to other publishers.

I conferred with several experienced business people close to me. One woman with her own PR company told me that it happens all the time. Clients come to her, get her ideas, and then don’t sign a contract and pay her. They go off and use her ideas either by themselves or with another PR firm.

Essentially, they rip her off, the same way that this writer planned to rip off Parvati Press.

Another businessman said to me, dryly, “Welcome to the business world.”

Another friend said, “These are the early business mistakes.”

My publishing attorney said, “Never work on a project without a signed contract.”

I emailed back to him, “I’m learning.”

This is just writer relations, a tiny slice of the whole juicy pie. There is so much else to independent publishing, especially the way I do it: with integrity. The book has to be high quality in terms of content, and it has to look good, too. It has to be copyedited, proofread, professionally laid out with an appealing, professionally designed book cover, and given an ISBN and accurate categories…And all that is BEFORE the hard work of marketing a book so it stands out from the crowd: so that readers will know about the book and buy it.

Marketing is a big challenge. It deserves its own post, so I’ll pause here. Meantime, here’s Professor Maxwell’s post about finding BROKEN in his textbook, called, cleverly, “My Content Machine is Broken.”

Maxwell is a good writer himself. His post is worth reading, though his characterization of my novel BROKEN is condescending and pejorative. I emailed him to let him know this:

I would like to put out there (please indulge me) that BROKEN is more than a paranormal romance. It is based on a serious philosophical question with which I wrestle every day: How could a good God allow such pain and suffering?
In this vein, FOREWORD REVIEWS, which is the Library Journal for independent publishing, is reviewing BROKEN for its forthcoming Sci Fi issue, and wrote, “This is a gorgeous philosophical treaty on right and wrong….”

To his credit, Maxwell agreed with me.  He has yet to correct his post to reflect the respect my novel deserves. And this is part of independent publishing, too: Making sure that independently published books are valued and respected.

independent publishing

FOREWORD REVIEWS book review of BROKEN
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FOREWORD REVIEWS book review of BROKEN

I am so excited about this forthcoming book review by FOREWORD REVIEWS.

FOREWORD REVIEWS is the Library Journal of Independent Publishing. It’s an excellent periodical that’s available in both print and digital format; it was founded by three women writers and magazine professionals who got together to found a trade review journal for the burgeoning independent publishing industry. They have a great story about it here.

FOREWORD REVIEWS chose to review BROKEN in the forthcoming Sci Fi/Fantasy issue, which will ship at the end of February to B&N newsstands. The review is absolutely beautiful and I’ve been given permission to quote from it. They’ve also chosen to feature Robert Ferri’s gorgeous LIBERACI DAL MALE, the painting from which the cover of BROKEN is taken. I’ve seen the spread and it’s gorgeous.

Here is the review:

Broken

Traci L. Slatton

Parvati Press

Softcover $16.99 (225pp)

978-0-9860611-5-8

Slatton has created a beautiful, heart wrenching tale of humanity during the Second World War. When her beloved Ariel is lost, the angel Alia chooses to fall, taking on a human body in Paris on the eve of war. She befriends the city’s artists, from Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí to Edith Piaf and Sacha Guitry, and experiences all of Paris’s human pleasures: drinking, partying, and having sex with wild abandon. Two men, in particular, catch her affection: bullfighter Pedro and openly Jewish musician Josef. As the war takes over, Alia also finds herself drawn protectively to Josef’s widowed sister, Suzanne, and her young daughter, Cécile. But as the Nazi’s march in, Alia begins to fear she cannot save them all.

Slatton writes poignantly, with lyrical prose: “I have been shattered, the shattering is still with me. I am only shards now. There is no core.” This is a gorgeous philosophical treaty on right and wrong, the “why” behind impossible decisions, and what remains when everything is gone. Slatton guides the reader gently through to the end, all the more heartbreaking for its inevitability, imparting powerful, resonant themes as she goes. Among them, “neutrality is an excuse to give free rein to a bully.”

I love this review! MANY THANKS to Foreword Reviews!

book reviews

Author interview: Rory Pinto interviews me on New Perspectives Radio
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Author interview: Rory Pinto interviews me on New Perspectives Radio

This is an old author interview of me on NEW PERSPECTIVES RADIO from August, 2011, right after I had independently published FALLEN. Rory Pinto is a wonderful healer and charming radio host who asked thoughtful questions; counselor Anton Bluman, his co-host, was also a pleasure to work with.

Rory attended the same healing school I did, so we knew each other from there. He had read FALLEN with extraordinary care and intelligence. He asked open-ended questions and listened with respect. It’s always gratifying for an author to receive that kind of attention; it makes the work of promoting a book so much more enjoyable. Sometimes, when I can’t make a connection with a host or perhaps if neither the host nor I is feeling particularly inspired, a radio interview can feel like a great deal of work. It can take effort to enliven things. I am always mindful of listeners. This was a radio show that felt like fun, like old friends hanging out, chatting, and chewing things over in a spirit of conversational inclusiveness and exploration.

Rory himself is a talented and interesting writer. Over the years, he’s emailed me articles on a variety of spiritual topics. He writes about meditation and the soul, the human experience and the work we need do on ourselves to become whole and actualized.

I remember some of his holiday messages, in particular a Thanksgiving missive in which he quote Meister Eckhart and ruminated on “The Heart of Gratitude.” It was a beautiful inquiry into what it means to be grateful. Here is an old essay called “Seeking the truth about love” he wrote for the Association for Spirituality & Psychotherapy in 2010. It’s worth reading and very much worth contemplating.

Rory kindly gave permission for me to upload this archived show for my podcast channel on iTunes. You can find my podcast channel on iTunes here. Meantime, enjoy the show.

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author interview

Great Beast
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Great Beast

It’s that fanged, clawed thing, back to taunt me and play with me and befuddle me. Creativity, of course. The way in and the way out, both at once, and neither; a thing unto itself.

So here am I, staring into its liquid eyes that are one moment golden and another indigo. It leaves stripes of blood on my arms and torso but I don’t dare gaze away. We are in a contest, me and it, me and me.

Its tail flicks back and forth. It is stalking me. I pursue it. It changes shape in my arms, then it vanishes.

Moments like these I take to Rumi, who is a kind of solace for those who are word-drunk, like me. I think Rumi would sneer at me and I hate myself for it, for the insecurity and the terror, as much as for the inadequacy.

I know better than to take too much wine, though the temptation is there. That way lies a folie a deux, a sharing of madness.

There are more constructive ways to offer up.

I stand outside with my arms lifted toward the sun and pretend that I am a crocus. The hard earth has asked for the freeze to release it, and purple blossoms are the first hint of hope. I am still saturated.

I am evanescent. The moment will pass. The welts will reveal themselves as mirages. There are paw prints in the loam, and I am left with longing, the old longing, the one that never goes away.

creativity within Traci Slatton