New Review of COLD LIGHT
Cayacosta72 Book review site gave a short but sweet review and “highly recommended” label to COLD LIGHT. Check it out here.
ANNOUNCING: EL INMORTAL, in print and eBook
I am delighted to announce the re-release of the print version of EL INMORTAL, and its first-time publication in eBook under the auspices of Parvati Press.
EL INMORTAL is the Spanish translation of my historical novel IMMORTAL, a rags-to-riches-to-burnt-at-the-stake story set in Renaissance Florence.
En el majestuoso corazón de Florencia, un apuesto muchacho de cabellos dorados es abandondado y sometido a una crueldad indescriptible. Pero Luca Bastardo está muy lejos de ser un joven común y corriente. A través de dos siglos de pasión e intriga, Luca descubrirá un don especial que lo llevará a comprender los antiguos misterios de la alquimia y del arte de la curación, para llegar a convertirse en un leal confidente de la poderosa familia Medici. Además, deberá incluso enfrentarse a una persecución por parte de una sádica conspiración cuyo objetivo es arrebatarle sus secretos.
Joy of reading, and Happy Thanksgiving!
Revelations
I love conspiracy theorists. They tell the best stories. Think about it. Here are my rules for writing novels:
1. Story is how your protagonist does NOT get what he or she wants.
2. Every story is an argument for a specific value.
3. Know the stakes.
Actually, I have a few other rules, too, but those are harder to explain.
So, conspiracy theorists. Why are they telling the best stories? Partly because “enlightened liberalism” has made people afraid to have any values at all. “Everything is ok and everyone is ok” is the hogwash they’re selling–and so many people have unabashedly drunk that kool-aid. “Enlightened liberalism,” egged on by the sanctimonious liberal media, has confused discernment with discrimination and the baby has been thrown out with the scummy bath water.
However, conspiracy theorists have values. One of them is: we have the right to know. Another value: we have the right to independent agency, to freely determine our own lives.
These are good values. These are juicy values.
So the stories conspiracy theorists tell are arguments for those values, and arguments against the secret government-within-a-government who high-handedly decide our lives for us.
We the people are the protagonists and we aren’t getting the freedom we want, to which we are entitled, because of the secret government-within-a-government, the hidden ultra-elite puppet-masters.
The stakes are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These are high stakes, indeed.
One of the most fascinating and tenacious theories has to do with UFO’s. With ET’s.
I am conflicted about this theory. In my mind, UFO’s and ET’s exist in the astral plane–which is real. It’s just a different layer of reality than ordinary physical reality.
But do UFO’s exist in the concrete physical world? I’m unsure. I was acquainted with the late, rather wonderful Budd Hopkins and I posed this very question to him.
“They’re real. They’re here,” he assured me, grimly.
Some part of me still needs a UFO to land in Central Park so I can kick a tire.
Another part of me knows they’re real and they’re here–in the astral plane, if no where else.
And here we have former Canadian Minister Paul Hellyer openly affirming extraterrestrial beings and their contact with human governments. He’s also openly discussing the government-within-a-government.
Worth thinking about.
Great new review of COLD LIGHT
BEST FANTASY STORIES did a terrific, thoughtful, thorough review of COLD LIGHT. Check out the review here.
Here are some juicy tidbits from the review:
“I read this second part of the science fiction series called The After without reading the first book, Fallen and still was sucked into this post-apocalyptic world within a few pages. Slatton’s descriptions in her science fiction series world are that clear. …
The landscape plays a big part of this science fiction series, as it should when you have characters walking hundreds of miles in sub-zero weather across hostile territory. But it is also the people she meets along the way in a science fiction series that make a very believable place even in such an unbelievable situation….
I found myself finishing the book and deciding that I don’t care that I know where it is going, this is a science fiction series where I want to read that first book to visit those characters again. There are plenty of new science fiction series coming out this year, but few have taken me in as quickly and thoroughly as Cold Light. …”
Review: MIRACLES HAPPEN by Brian L. Weiss, MD and Amy E. Weiss, MSW
Recently I met my beloved friend Gerda in Munich. Gerda is Bavarian; she and her husband Mark, a retired American army field officer, had offered to help me with research for the WW2 novel I’m working on.
Gerda is an extraordinary person: she’s present and conscious with an open heart. Always. I’ve been her friend for seventeen years and I’ve never seen her falter. Amazing. When she gives me advice, I follow it. Just before I got on the S-bahn heading to the airport, she gave me homework. She noted that it was, indeed, practicum to which she expected me to commit.
“Be soft and be happy, Traci,” she said, with her quirky smile. I engraved her words on my heart.
Her assignment goes to the core of an ache I carry with me. I’ve lived a life filled with karma both astoundingly fortunate and excruciatingly challenging. In the latter category fall attacks I’ve endured from intimates. Worse, the people who come after me, since they are close to me, know my vulnerabilities. They know how to twist everything to magnify my faults and to minimize my positive attributes. They know how to make it all my fault (whatever it is). The pattern is that they don’t take ownership of their own aggression.
This speaks to another of Gerda’s constant reminders to me: “Trust yourself, Traci. When people come after you, it’s their stuff.”
So it is with this personal liet-motif in mind that I read MIRACLES HAPPEN: The Transformational Power of Past-Life Memories. It’s a rich, beautiful book full of anecdotes about miraculous shifts in consciousness, shifts that deeply, profoundly, alter lives for the better. In concrete, practical, lasting ways.
The springboard for these shifts is past-life regression therapy. Dr. Weiss and his daughter Amy Weiss explain the process in lucid detail. They weave together the divers stories with gentle explication of spiritual learnings. Love is what matters. Our growth, our lessons, take infinite paths and forms, but the end point is the same: loving consciousness. We go through loss and humiliation and suffering, victory and grace and transformation, and we all get there, eventually. To a feeling-being-place informed by limitless love.
We are spiritual beings traveling in precious physical bodies, in companionship with our beloveds. The worldly obstacles and prizes on which we spend ourselves matter not at all, ultimately. They’re picayune when compared to the agency of the immortal soul. “Be soft and be happy,” indeed.
This book eases the ache. It helps me balance the immediacy of it all with the long view. The things that weigh on my heart wash out and leave behind the miracle of this heart, now, traveling through forever, finding beloveds along the way. This book leaves me grateful. I think it will ease the ache for anyone who reads it. We all carry our own ache.
I recommend the book softly and happily. It’s a spark of grace for anyone who opens to its light.
