Any personal vision I may have had at the beginning of this year to make regular postings on this blog site to keep it up to date with my happens appear to have fallen by the wayside. However it has not totally been due to an extended stay of the Four Horsemen of Procrastination and Distraction, but rather the opposite.
In January I took a deep breath and sent off my manuscript for Encountering the Dark Goddess to a publisher. As I nervously waited, the feedback started to be recorded:
"... intelligent/informative in it's [sic] historical/mythological aspect but with a practical and instructional element with a devotional element interwoven. It's well written and strikes a good balance... "
"... taps into an existing market [ie dark goddess titles] but the shadow work and trauma healing … offers something other books haven't …"
"... it's clear at the end that the journey is continuing, and I hope there are more titles to come."
Some 10 days later I received a contract. Since then the manuscript has gone through its final proofreading and is now in the design stage where the publishing team take the A4 typed pages and almost magically transform them into a 200+ paged book complete with illustrations generously done by Soror Basilisk.
Deciding to strike while the iron was hot, I then forwarded Contemporary Witchcraft: Foundational Practices for a Magical Life to the publisher as well. While I am rather confident this book addresses a much needed gap in the market, it did take a degree of convincing the publisher to accept a second manuscript from a basically "unknown" author. There was also reference to the fact that having already self-published, I could self publish this book. The reason why I approach a publisher as opposed to doing just this is simply because I do not have the reach myself that I believe is warranted for this book.
After a somewhat uncertain couple of weeks as to whether I would have to find another publisher, a second contract arrived with much relief.
With Encountering the Dark Goddess in the hands of the book designer, a workshop based on some of the elements contained within the book is scheduled to be held on 4 July 2020 at the Riverdell Spiritual Centre, north of Adelaide.
The next project that I have been working on, and which developed during the writing of Contemporary Witchcraft: Foundational Practices for a Magical Life, was an information guide to what some of the practices, ethics and philosophies found within Wicca. A Little Book of Wicca: A Guide for the Southern Hemisphere is a 60 paged book will benefit anyone curious as to whether Wicca is the right spiritual practice for them, is curious as to what Wicca is all about, or is interested in learning more about Wicca however is finding all the Northern Hemispheric material confusing.
A Little Book of Wicca: A Guide for the Southern Hemisphere is expected to be available from late April 2020, with copies being made available for attendees of the Gathering Around the Cauldron circles when these resume.
