Getting there!

Well, at last! The three books of the Triad of Albion are now live, in paperback and for Kindle… and illustrated in black and white, which finally takes the printing costs, and therefore the sales price, down to a sensible level. It has been bugging us for years… but we have been so busy writing books, that re-writing, redesigning and re-issuing seemed to slip a bit far down the line.

But there is nothing like a deadline to get you moving. Especially when it appears to be a pretty literal one…

In these first three books, Don and Wen stumble across mysteries in the landscape, following the flight of birds along prehistoric pathways to find strange stories hidden in plain sight upon the walls of mediaeval churches. Doors open through time and vision as the two friends find themselves walking the Living Land with people from the far-distant past.

These books do not fit neatly into any genre. The stories they hold are true, although they are told in a fictional manner, by fictional characters… who just happen to resemble the writers.

Work is underway on preparing the next series, Doomsday, for relaunch… The series explores the Living Lore of our land, inner and outer, as we learn to work with and understand the clues that have been scattered before our feet.

After that, comes the Lands of Exile series…  a more fictional departure, this triad, as there are things that we wanted to explore that few would accept as a reality we have lived. To be accepted into the Living Light is the greatest of gifts. It took us years to work out what was actually happening…. and yet bizarrely, overlaying the gloss of possibility that is brought by fiction seemed the only way to share it and have it believed…

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. For now, I am willing to sit back and bask in the glow of a task completed…

The Triad of Albion is now Live on Amazon.

THE INITIATE  ~  HEART OF ALBION  ~  GIANTS DANCE

Don and Wen, two founding members of a new Esoteric School, meet to explore an ancient sacred site, as a prelude to the School’s opening event.
The new School is based upon a psychological, nine-fold, system and operates under the aegis of the Hawk of Horus.
The trip does not unfold as planned.
Instead, Don and Wen, apparently guided by a plethora of birds, embark upon a journey that will lead them through a maze of spiritual symbolism, to magical mysteries and the elusive figure of the ‘Ninth Knight’.
The Initiate is the story of a journey beyond the realms of our accustomed normality.
It is a true story told in a fictional manner.
In just such a way did the Bards of old hide in the legends and deeds of folk heroes, the deeper truths of existence for those ‘with eyes to see and ears to hear’.

“From heart to head a lay, from head to heart the way…”

Now imagine that the lens of the camera captures a magical light in soft blues and misty greens and gold. A light that seems to have no cause in physical reality. What would you do? If you were open to the possibility of deeper realities, perhaps you would wish to explore this strange phenomenon…something two people came to know as sacred chromatography.

As the veils thin and waver, time shifts, and the present is peopled with the shadowy figures of the past, weaving their tales through a quest for understanding and opening wide the doors of perception for those who seek to see beyond the surface of reality.

Available via Amazon UK, Amazon.com, and worldwide

Posted in albion, Books, Photography, Spirituality | Tagged , , , | 88 Comments

Vision

Dying embers wane;
Pictures form and fade,
A brief existence,
Echoing memory.
Eyes and starlight
Flicker gleams of recognition.
Long ago and tomorrow
Lose their meaning
Riding smoke as dreams.
Old ones whisper
The tales that remain.
Time stands still
As the fire dies.

For the dVerse Quadrille

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Willow Willers reviews “Laughter Lines: Life From The Tail End” by Sue Vincent

Yet another five-star review for the small dog…

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The Small Dog Considers …

He’s bringing tea and coffee through,

With toast and honey, biscuits too,

To pick her up when she feels drained…

And I thought I had got him trained!

*

I’m sort of glad, though, to be fair,

‘Cause, what with all the missing hair

She’s not the way she used to be…

And prob’bly needs more help than me.

*

Continue reading at The Small Dog’s Blog

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You sure you want to be a writer? Now? #humor #covid #writing

barbtaub's avatarBarb Taub

And the best way to know you’re a real writer? You get this gorgeous geek-writer QUERTY painting from the amazing, incredible, real painter-type ArtistAlex Zonis [originally posted on Marcia Meara’s The Write Stuff and only slightly updated.]

Okay, we get it. Writers are screwed.

Over the past year, it’s everywhere. People keep emailing/texting/posting links about surveys showing writers only earning 1/3 of pre-pandemic amounts (although since they weren’t even approaching minimum wage to start, it’s a low bar anyway…). Seriously, guys. Writing doesn’t pay? You’re depressed? This is news?

Once in New York we accidentally ate dinner at Ellen’s Stardust Diner, where the (maskless) waiters enchanted the tourists as they delivered Broadway show tunes along with their milkshakes and burgers. The staff were young, attractive, and talented. Each had probably been their high school’s most special snowflake. Even more probably, this was as close as any of them would…

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Feeding the ducks…

It was cold, but it was a beautiful day. Signs of spring in the air… catkins and pussy willow dancing in the breeze, swathes of daffodils about to open beneath the trees… and the first of the early blossom open on dark boughs.

Two small, smiling faces greeted Grandma at the door and we were whisked off to the local lake with the intention of feeding the ducks.  It has to be said that the ducks were rather outnumbered by the swans and the seagulls but the mallard couples had been personally named by my granddaughters, so they were definitely the most important.

Our quiet corner by the flooded stepping stones was soon overrun by hopeful diners. I doubt if any bird went hungry, given the number of children feeding them by the main square, but it was all ‘up close and personal’ where we were, with Hollie telling the birds how to behave and share…

It is wonderful to be out with the children, teaching them as they question,  pointing out the scales on a bird’s foot and opening conversations on where we all ‘came from’.  And it matters little how old the children get… even in his thirties, my son is asking about the relative strength of bird bones…

…and I am coming home to look up the answers too.  It really is about life-long learning. And not always about the facts.

Learning to understand facts is only part of the journey… learning to understand each other, the ‘whys and wherefores’ of how we act as we do, the choices we make, the boundaries we impose… they are perhaps the more important issue, for too often it seems as if we close ourselves off from life for no reason.

It was curious being pushed around the lake by the girls today. Most people simply chose to ignore the person in the wheelchair. Others acknowledged another human being with a smile… yet others, and these seemed the majority sadly, made it clear they felt I should not be on ‘their’ path, breathing their air and putting them at risk (presumably with my ‘cancer microbes…’).

The girls, though, don’t care… any more than Hollie and her friends cared when I turned up in full ‘princess dress’ for one of her birthdays. It is who you really are that matters to a child. The little one has her own ideas on that. Her name, which means, appropriately enough, ‘daughter of light’, chimed in from nowhere as we were talking. “Imogen is memory.”

And, as I waved them goodbye from my doorstep after sharing homemade cookies, retro lollipops and a wonderfully ‘grandma’ly afternoon with them… I hope she is right.

Posted in Life | Tagged , , , , , , | 78 Comments

Balroop Singh reviews “Life Lines” #BookReview

I have no idea how I missed this wonderful review from Balroop Singh at Emotional Shadows… Thank you, Balroop!

I often say that poetry is my first love; we soar and swing on the wings of words together. I share my secrets with her and her caresses sooth me like the lullabies of a mother. Poetry books immediately allure me and if the recommendation is made by authors like D. Wallace Peach, I don’t even give a second thought to dive in. Thank you Diana, for the inspiration to read this beautiful book. Here is my review.

My Review:

‘Life Lines’ by Sue Vincent highlights the paths of life we traverse – from innocent laughter to the snowy lanes of life, from the depths of sorrow to the light that beckons us, from the abyss of tears to the memories that pull us out; whether it is past or present, life is woven with delicate threads that bind us into a “purpose” and inspire us to “fall in love with life at every passing day.”

Continue reading at Emotional Shadows

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Awkward questions

williamson fin cop monsal dale churches 013
I was asked a question the other day with which I am intimately acquainted but for which I had no answer. “What does it mean to lead a spiritual life?” It is not strictly true to say I have no answer. I have my own answers, but those I recognise to be subjective, not definitive. It is, I think, one of those questions to which there are as many answers as there are querents and all will hold at least part of the truth.

To begin with it begs the question of what we mean by ‘spirituality’ itself. In this day and age it is often a term held to be quite distinct from religious belief and many will say they are ‘spiritual, not religious’, yet I am not so sure you can really make that distinction. Religion is generally defined as a formalised and organised set of beliefs, where spirituality is usually seen as a personal relationship with the non-physical life. Yet a religious belief that seeks a personal relationship with God, whatever Name is used, surely, by that definition, is spiritual? For me the choice of path matters little, it is how we choose to walk it that makes the difference between whether we embrace a particular path or merely pay lip-service to an outer form; a spiritual life should be a personal journey towards understanding regardless of the route taken.

Continue reading at The Silent Eye

Posted in soul, Spirituality, transformation | Tagged , , , | 12 Comments

Moondance…

Bars
In place
Imagined
Invisible
Freedom’s flight constrained
Bitter necessity
Becoming the prison cell
Lives lost, grief overlooked, tears fall,
The infection of fear continued
By the continued infection of fear
I sit behind a frozen window pane
Glass holding me apart from the world
Its sounds and smells too sanitised
Immersive experience
Subtracted from being
Starlight is calling
I remember
Hearts can dance
Not dead
Yet

Posted in Poetry | Tagged , , | 39 Comments

Looking both ways

It is a very strange situation to be in, really. Over a week ago, I was given ‘days to weeks’ to live, with no one knowing upon which side of that particular marker the Reaper would come calling. It isn’t as if we have it scheduled in our diaries… or, if he has, he hasn’t let me know. On the one hand, this is good. I am not sitting here like Pratchett’s Windle Poons, watching the clock and waiting for a no-show. On the other hand, I am both vaguely surprised and inordinately grateful every morning when I open my eyes on a new day,

It means that having much still to do and probably too little time left, I am working like a steam strain… albeit one whose pressure is running sadly low… to complete the tasks I think that really need to, or would like to complete before it is too late. To do so, I am working harder than perhaps I should… but even if I live more ‘days to weeks’ than expected, as the cancer is behind my eyes now and has already taken one of them, there is no guarantee I will be able to see to work for much longer.

So, I’m getting on with things. And all the while I know that, in the greater scheme, what matters to me personally right now may well not matter to anyone else at all. But that’s okay. You do what you feel is right.

One of the things I am getting on with is sorting the books. The earliest ones were written with Stuart in the throes of our excitement at having a genuine, esoteric adventure laid at our feet.  Because we wanted to share the excitement, the books went out in colour, making them so uncomfortably expensive it felt like daylight robbery to sell them at that price at all… even while we had no space for royalties built-in. So that is being rectified. Sorting things in the home… the business end of the dying process… that is all underway. I still need to live and pay the bills. I need to sell the car… and while I have reached a point where I could now eat anything I want and say to hell with the calories… I can no longer eat much at all and yet the shopping still has to be done. And every morning, a batch of texts and emails go out to simply say, ‘I’m still here…’

It is a very strange place in which to find yourself. But, like most strange things, it has two sides…

One of the real beauties of still being here is getting to glimpse my own eulogy, so to speak. From the thousands of messages that have made their way to my desktop… from the Carrot Ranch’s Rodeo, to the comments and emails through the blog as well as the personal friends and family… It has astonished me to see and feel the love out there. The sheer volume of communication is something I would never in a million years have expected and for which I am grateful beyond words.   It is undoubtedly a healing experience for a heart that has been through the mill more than once in its time. And, as I have said before, it offers its healing to more than me alone, as my sons and those I love see that I touched lives beyond my own too.

For every beauty, though, there is another side… and it is not always obvious which is which. Every friend who reaches out to say goodbye at this moment is reaching out to one person… one farewell. Those of us who know we are about to leave are reaching out too… but for us, the goodbyes are magnified, numbered in their hundreds… and each one carries both its own joy and grief… the griefs of parting are inevitable, but the joys of having shared time together, in the realms of imagination, virtual reality or the wonderful human world of the heart, they are worth any number of tears.

Love wears many faces, from the life-sharing depths of parenthood and partnership, to the life-affirming gifts of kindness and friendship… there are so many ways to express and share it that we could never exhaust its abundance.

How do you judge which side of the coin is ‘better’? To have not loved and laughed together, not felt the joy that must always hold a kernel of potential grief at its heart? Or to pass quietly and serenely without the searing heartaches of love to accompany each farewell?

If each tear is an echo of joy, each touch recalls tenderness, and each sigh remembers laughter. I know which I would choose.

Posted in adventure | Tagged , , , , , | 129 Comments