The First Day of Spring 2018: War & Grace Release

Over the next few months, I'll be continuing my posts on the Daughter of Light trilogy and its prequel Isolt's Enchantment, but this week I want to post some content about the 10-year (plus) journey I took in arriving at this date of the release of the final installment.

Today, I'll keep things very simple and simply post the Acknowledgments for War & Grace:

The Daughter of Light trilogy is inspired by my beloved grandmother and the transformative effect she had on my life. It is equally inspired by my husband. He has been with me every step of the way since its inception. My grandmother was a gardener, connected to the earth. I didn’t realize until she passed the door she’d opened for me to the natural world. My husband is my heart. These works are from him as much as they are from me because they wouldn’t have existed without his contributions, whether it was finessing a plot point, the technicalities of publishing software, or creating the gorgeous covers.

Rachmi Febrianty, Sheila of Frostbite Publishing, and Brenda Ayala were early readers who stuck with the series through its various incarnations through the end. THANK YOU! Each of your contributions were SIGNIFICANT. In particular, Rachmi insisted on the maps early on and always pressed on details, Sheila pushed for the Black Magic Island dragons to not disappear from the story (as they did in early drafts), and Brenda demanded in the most gracious way that Melia be and grow into a worthy heroine.

Like many (most?) (all?) contemporary fantasy authors, I read Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia as a child and the major Tolkien works (The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings) as a young teen. It’s common knowledge that Tolkien and Lewis were friends, professional colleagues and that they both professed a personal faith in Christianity which influenced their respective works.

The Lord of the Rings was a huge and direct inspiration for Daughter of Light, but—of course!—changes had to be made. Who wants to retell The Lord of the Rings when it’s already been told so well?

What were the designed changes (made over a decade ago) in Daughter of Light?

1. The protagonist along with a multitude of other major characters are female.
2. While Tolkien’s cosmology pre-dates contemporary history, the Realm of Faerie and the rest of the enchanted world in Daughter of Light exist parallel to the mortal world. There's a (quantum) exchange of energy between the two.
3. The Primal Essence, the Parallel of Shadows, and the Void in Daughter of Light are quantum realms.
4. Language, style of dress, the attitudes and experiences of the characters in Daughter of Light travel much closer to modernity.

Thus, Daughter of Light explores and relies on the newer ideas of quantum mechanics and how reality forms. QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT is at the heart of the story … “quantum entanglement … predicts that changing one particle instantaneously changes the other — even if they are on opposite sides of the galaxy, 100,000 light-years apart.”

While developing the arc of Melia's journey I documented my research on spirituality in the Sunburned blog series on my website. The three most DIRECT contributions came from: Julian of Norwich (I'd never even heard of her before I began this project!) and her theology of love; Kiran Trace and her shared of experience for her own personal spiritual awakening; and John Mark Stroud's vision of a regenerated Planet Earth.

Finally, thank you to the readers. May we all seek and find expressions of mundane, mystical and transformational love in our everyday lives.

Sincerely,
Heidi Garrett

Amazon E-book | Amazon Paperback | Barnes & Noble (coming soon!) | Apple | Google Play | kobo

In a time when the Realm of Faerie and Planet Earth exist in symbiotic union, the epic journey of a young half-faerie woman will transform the future of both worlds ...

My name is Melia Albiana and I stand on the edge of the abyss.

Before I leap, I exhale a breath out of time.

The beauty of the Whole unfurls before me—its intricacy, its complexity, its endurance, its mystery, its majesty.

I am filled with awe.

The universal awareness passes and I am left with the poverty of my personal legacy.

I will die young.

I will die broken.

I will die grief-stricken.

I will die lonely.

And I will die a monster.

I will also die consumed by love.

Whimsical and edgy, Daughter of Light is an epic fantasy with an intriguing cosmology and well-developed characters for readers of all ages.

Daughter of Light and Quantum Engtanglement

War & Grace, the final installment in the Daughter of Light trilogy will FINALLY be available on March 20 (the first day of Spring)! Beginning tomorrow, and for the following 90 days, we’ll be traveling through the series with excerpts from the different books, quantum musings and inspirational songs.

Like many (most?) (all?) contemporary fantasy authors, I read Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia as a child and the major Tolkien works (The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings) as a young teen. It’s common knowledge that Tolkien and Lewis were friends, professional colleagues and that they both professed a personal faith in Christianity which inluenced their respective works.

The Lord of the Rings was a huge and direct inspiration for Daughter of Light, but—of course!— changes had to be made. Who wants to retell The Lord of the Rings when it’s already been told so well?

What were the designed changes (made over a decade ago) in Daughter of Light?


1. The protagonist along with a multitude of other major characters are female. 
   
2. While Tolkien’s cosmology pre-dates contemporary history, the Realm of Faerie and the rest of the enchanted world in Daughter of Light exist parallel to the mortal world. There's a (quantum) exchange of energy between the two. 
   
3. The Primal Essence, the Parallel of Shadows, and the Void in Daughter of Light are quantum realms. 
   
4. Language, style of dress, the attitudes and experiences of the characters in Daughter of Light travel much closer to modernity. 
   

Thus, Daughter of Light explores and relies on the newer ideas of quantum mechanics and how reality forms. QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT is at the heart of the story … “quantum entanglement … predicts that changing one particle instantaneously changes the other — even if they are on opposite sides of the galaxy, 100,000 light-years apart.”

In Daughter of Light, Isolt’s enchantment is the seed of that quantum entanglement, crossing the boundaries of time and space, planes and multiple hearts and lives …

Isolt of the Waters is an ancient water elemental whose betrayal and enchantment has forever changed the Whole. When a young scholar in Idonne discovers her story, along with tales of dwarf magic and the birth of Umbra—a malevolent entity dwelling in the Void—he dreams of a life filled with adventure and heroism.

Ebook

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Apple | Barnes & Noble | Google Play | kobo

Paperback

Amazon | Amazon UK 

Delicious Golden Apples

I'm re-reading Prince Caspian. It's the second book in The Chronicles of Narnia if you're reading the books in the order they were published.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)
Prince Caspian (1951)
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)
The Silver Chair  (1953)
The Horse and His Boy (1954)
The Magicians Nephew (1955)
The Last Battle (1956)

However, some people prefer to read them chronologically—Narnian time.

The Magicians Nephew
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Horse and His Boy
Prince Caspian
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Silver Chair
The Last Battle

I just can't, although I give it some consideration. I feel compelled to re-discover Narnia in the exact same way I discovered it many years ago.

I finish The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe a few weeks ago and am surprised by how much I enjoy it. I'm a couple of chapters into Prince Caspian and my heart is glowing. Must be those golden apples.

It's so cool the way that Lewis brings the Pevensies back to Cair Paravel hundreds of years after their first departure. And although they don't immediatley realize they're back in Narnia, their re-discovery of it is magical. There is something so tangible about Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy munching on those delicious golden apples in an orchard they helped plant so long ago, in another time. I am right there with them. Crunch. Crunch.

And then I wonder about the Cathedral Palace orchard in the Realm of Faerie and Melia munching on her golden apple in Half Faerie … the influence wasn't conscious… and yet re-reading the scene in Prince Caspian,  I love the image of the wild and overgrown apple trees so much… certainly it must have been an offering from some deep trove of subterranean memory.

The other thing that's so fantastic about their return is the time play. The children find themselves in a place where they once matured into adulthood—became kings and queens—at a point in time that is well beyond their reign, and yet, they are once again children.

I mean how fantastic would it be to recapture your youth and retain the wisdom of age? To find the world you once lived in reclaimed by Nature? To live again, another life within a single one?

That is the magic of great fantasy, to send your mind soaring and fire your imagination like rocket fuel.

Re-reading The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe

I'm re-reading The Lion, The Witch & the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. It's an interesting experience because I read the book for the first time so many years ago—before my spiritual journey had truly begun. And though I was exposed to my family's religious beliefs as a young child, a book on world religions also sat on my bookshelf. I remember rifling through its pages, enthralled by images of worshippers from all over the world devoted to entities with exotic names.

So for me, The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe is a great story. Edmund is beastly, Aslan is noble, and more than anything, I still long to meet animals who speak. But I've never had a wardrobe in any of my homes so I suspect my chances are slim.

Re-reading the book, I'm impressed by its pacing, simplicity, and fun. How could I have forgotten Mrs. Beaver?

Older now, and farther down the road on my spiritual journey, I realize that for all my seeking, my core beliefs haven't changed much. I still believe there is something numinous on this planet, it's essence unalterable, a mystery to be discovered and explored. And I'm still hesitant to adopt any of the names it has been given.

That is why Melia, the main character in Daughter of Light series, doesn't place her faith in things written. She possesses a point of view that by naming we might also be limiting.

That numinous thing on the planet.

And it would never serve to make it less than it is.