Heidi's Enchanted Readers

Do you believe in magic? Fairy Tales? Happily Ever Afters?

Are you a blogger, an avid reader, or someone who just likes to make new discoveries?

Did you answer "Yes" to at least two of the above questions?!?

You might have fun joining Heidi's Enchanted Readers. It's a Facebook group that the lovely Tanya Johnson of Tanya's Book Nook is putting together. THANK YOU, TANYA!!!! <3

The point of this all? To have fun and spread the word about my 2014 releases!

There's going to be quite a few:

The Girl Who Believed in Fairy Tales: A collection of Three Short Stories—wait til you see the cover!
Half Faerie: The Daughter of Light, Book One—it's at the proof readers right now!
The Tree Hugger: A Dystopian Fairy Tale (awesome!) and retelling of Han's Christian Andersen's The Dryad. This is going to be one you'll want to talk about!
Cupcakes & Kisses: A yummy paranormal romance I'm collaborating on with Billie Limpin. We're having a blast writing this, and  it's going to be a fun, fun read. I guarantee it.
Half Mortal: Daughter of Light, Book Two. Very excited for this one!!!! More Melia! More Ryder! More Flora! Plus Pressina and Plantine return...
And possibly, another Fairy Tale retelling...

What do you have to do to join?

Just fill out this form: The Magical Enchanted Form

Then you'll have to read my books... and write reviews... ! I know, there's always a catch;) But you'll get review copies!!!! And have the chance to win swag!!!!

Where else can you get a groovy Half Faerie bracelet that doubles as a terrific cat toy?!??!

Or what about a cool pink and blue Happily Ever After bracelet? You know you want one!

 
 Plus there will be print editions to be won and who knows what else?!?!?

The only thing I know for sure is I'd love to have you join!
xo Heidi xo

The Treasures of Depth Psychology

I'm reading Persephone Returns by Tanya Wilkinson Ph.d. It's so wonderful. It's like eating all the candy and cake and ice cream that I want without ever getting fat or full. So really, it's not junk, it's completely nourishing, soul-filling, and oh, so delicious.

It's been a long time since I've indulged in any Jungian inspired/depth psychology books. I used to read them all the time, even though some of the concepts were hard for me to grasp. Archetypal defense systems. The negatively constellated numinosum. The omnipotent apocalyptic God subpersonality. Yep. As a lay person, with zero psychological training, some of it was just beyond my ability to truly comprehend. Also—often—I'd love the first few chapters and then the books would devolve into  an analysis of an analysis of an analysis. Although very Jungian, very abstract stuff and, for me,  not very fulfilling.

I like my depth psychology connected to the body. Affect. When it becomes too much of the mind—logos—it just loses me. Wilkinson has not only kept everything connected to the body in Persephone Returns, she's made it about being connected to the body. Her main theme is the Victim Psyche. By contrasting the Hero Mythology with that of the Goddess Persophone, she illustrates the stranglehold the Hero has on the modern-day psyche—to our detriment.

Descent is necessary for us all. Jung would say that, more eloquently, with an entire book. Well, probably about twenty-nine entire books. A lot to slog through.

Wilkinson makes her case in a single nice neat one, about eight chapters. Why we must descend and claim our crowns in the Underworld. (If you've read any of the books in the Daughter of Light trilogy, you're probably starting to click to Melia's journey, it's very much a journey of trying to be the hero and failing miserably because she's not connected to the power of her chthonic—love that word—: archetypal  underworld energy.) After discussing the Hero and Persephone, Wilkinson continues on to illustrate her points with fairytales, (oh, be still my beating heart!) "The Beauty and the Beast" and other lesser known ones.

Persephone Returns is an accessible window into the treasures of depth psychology and I highly recommend it if you're ready to make your own descent… and discover the liminal within you.

Fairy Tales Crossing Over...

I said I was going to read something extra-super-duper-extremely lite and fluffy next. I pick up UnEnchanted (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale) by Chanda Hahn. It has a really cool cover--a cropped shot of a girl in a hooded red cape--and it's FREE on my kindle. I am immediately taken with Mina. She is clumsy, avoids the spotlight, and doesn't have a cell phone.

I am about half-way through the book. Hahn's writing style is easy to read. She tells the story with fun details. Charlie's cereal mash-up ritual being one of them. He's Mina's little brother. And when Mina confides in her best friend, tech-savvy Nan, she has to make sure she covers all the bases--texting, twitter, websites, etc. Mina's secret is not to show up on any of these media.

The premise is a good one. Fairy tales crossing over into the real one is a favorite of mine. I am enjoying this book. It's not busting my brain, and it's making me smile.

A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

I love the story A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings. So far, it is my favorite in Leaf Storm. It is the reason I bought the book, years ago, in the first place. Its seven pages drench us with:

Lyrcial prose-

...a poor woman who since childhood had been counting her heartbeats and had run out of numbers; a Portugese man who couldn't sleep because the noise of the stars disturbed him; a sleepwalker who got up at night to undo the things he had done while wide awake...

Clever humor-

He seemed to be so many places at the same time that they grew to think he'd been duplicated, that he was reproducing himself all through the house, and the exasperated and unhinged Elisenda shouted that it was awful living in that hell full of angels.

And blistering indictment-

The only time they succeeded in arousing him was when they burned his side with an iron for branding steers, for he had been motionless for so many hours that they thought he was dead.

We pray, ask, beg, and plead for the divine to reveal itself in our lives.

We bemoan, fret, and sigh that the divine eludes us. Yet if a very old man with enormous wings made a clumsy landing in our yard on a wet afternoon, what would we see?

Not even with an axe...

I finish the story Leaf Storm and think:

These are the memories of how we treat one another. 
Death, the final arbiter arrives for us all.
And then we smell...

Immediately, I begin reading the Gabriel Garcia Marquez biography by Gerald Martin.

I am shocked--why?--to learn just how autobiographical the story Leaf Storm is. I feel disappointed and satisfied. Disappointed because it wasn't imagined from ground zero. Satisfied because perhaps I did get the story, more than I thought.

Then something the biographer observes about Gabo's voice gives me pause.

Many years later, when Garcia Marquez managed to reconstruct those two ways of interpreting and narrating reality, both of them involving a tone of absolute certainty--the worldly, rationalizing sententiousness of his grandfather and the other-worldy oracular declamations of his grandmother--leavened by his own inimitable sense of humor, he would be able to develop a world-view and a corresponding narrative technique which would be instantly recognizable to the readers of each new book.

And I begin absorbing in a new way how there is no becoming who we are. It is always an undoing. An unveiling. A stripping away of flawed pretense. Useless affectation, that fools no one but ourselves, must go. Because we cannot cut ourselves off from our roots.

Not even with an axe.

Good and Bad Have Long Tails...

Of the three books I'm reading, Oscar Wilde's The Complete Fairy Tales feels the most prosaic. Qualification: I am not done yet. The allusion to christ in The Selfish Giant feels maudlin, while the inviolate boundaries drawn between good and bad in The Devoted Friend feel tedious.

Good and Bad have long tails. Tales that grab the middle, and attest only to the pendulum's extreme swings deny deeper truths. It's not so much that everything is relative....

It's much more that this leads to that and that leads to this, and addressing a partial continuum in moral absolutes feels hollow.

But Wilde wrote his fairy tales ages ago. Perhaps, I can forgive him for being a man, somewhat of his times.

When I was a child...

We had a Hans Christian Anderson Fairy Tale collection (printed) and an LP of The Brothers Grimm. I wore that LP out. The book of fairy tales was more dangerous, and lingering. Things we were not allowed to discuss in my home--anger, envy, betrayal--laced those stories.

I kept quiet about those things. And held my breath.

Because those enchanted tales held out hope for a future where the truth might be set free, and I might be able to breathe.

......grocery lists, doodles, short story, novel.....

i will read anything marquez writes......grocery list, doodles, short story, novel..... A review of Leaf Storm by Kerilynn Pederson on Goodreads.

Half-way through Leaf Story, I'm nodding my head.

I'm lying if I say I "get" every word, line, sentence. I don't.

At least not on the rational level. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's story slips and slides through every "how it should be/written" censor within me.

When I read Adelaide's point of view, being raised in a bilingual household, I know her. This outrage of things she has never been told by the inhabitants of her own home. Marquez captures the affront to her dignity better than any reel of film.

Then there is the rhythm--that bassline--steady in the background. Syncopation is as much an art in writing as it is in music. 

And the light plummets through the trees like a bird. And the maliciously premeditated gossip.

He rolls the leaves tights then ignites them. The haze from the smoke alters our sense of perception.

I am starving ...

I open Leaf Storm, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and my heart kind of flutters.

I am starving.

After decades of denying myself the power of story, I am reading more and more these days. The stories are waking up something essential. But this essential thing has been asleep for a very long time--maybe since the day I was born—so its sound is faint, easier to feel than hear. I vow not to read anything that can’t spark the “I have to read that” sensation within. There are too many books, and not enough time. Leaf Storm has been sitting on my coffee table, forever. Patient.

When I write, what I read influences me tremendously. I am aware of this, so I try to be careful about what I read when I am writing. It will inevitably seep through, the good and the bad.

But as I said, I am starving, so I open Leaf Storm and read:

Suddenly, as if a whirlwind had set down roots in the center of town, the banana company arrived, pursued by the leaf storm. A whirling leaf storm had been stirred up, formed out of the human and material dregs of other towns …

In the midst of that blizzard, the tempest of unknown faces ... we were the outsiders, the newcomers … we knew that the leaf storm was sure to come someday, but we did not count on its drive. So when we felt the avalanche arrive, the only thing we could do was set a plate with a knife and fork behind the door and sit patiently waiting for the newcomers to get to know us …