Autumn Greetings from Home (+ books!)

 

2020. This year has been so strange hasn't it? For the last seven months I have pondered and questioned this world we live in. How an invisible microbe could shut down countries, halt travel, and keep families apart. This year is a mess. There is turmoil and division in the world and close to home in our own towns. There is fear in the air. There is anger and strong opinions that do not stop to listen.

Even though I have not traveled at all this year, and it feels so strange, I have been taking advantage of the time at home for organizing and focusing on writing by book. Aside from working at the office, I spend the vast majority of time at home. This has many wonderful benefits. I finished writing my book, edited it, had my dear friend proof it (shout out to Jen!), and it is now available on Amazon. I worked on some home projects buying some new pieces of furniture and decor that I have wanted to do for a long time. I have embraced the home body lifestyle, and I am not mad about it. 

My 95-98% introverted self has been okay with being home a lot more than a "normal" year. I have been reading a lot, already beating my 2019 number of books read at this point with 64 books read so far, and we still have two months left in 2020. In my reading, I have been supporting a favourite independent bookshop of mine and buying more new releases than I ever have, to support authors and these tough times when they cannot travel to promote books. This has helped me discover new writers (to me) and enjoy authors' new releases. It has diversified my reading. Some favourite new release (or almost new) books this year have been:

- Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell   

- The Door on Half-Bald Hill by Helena Sorensen

- Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

- The Wood, The Glorious Life of the Oak, and The Secret Life of the Owl all by John Lewis-Stempel

- Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard by Clare Carlisle

- Tolkien's Lost Chaucer by John M. Bowers

- The Library of Ice: Readings from a Cold Climate by Nancy Campbell

- Burning The Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack by Richard Ovenden

- Taliesin by Rowan Williams and Gwyneth Lewis (translators) 

- The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History by Kassia St. Clair

- Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Have you read any of these? I am so grateful for the books I have read and the ability to have them mailed to me - they have kept me sane in these very odd months! 

Book Release - Selador: The Secret Paths

 

It's available!

You can now buy my new book!

The release of Selador: The Secret Paths is now live.

Here's a tiny glimpse of the new book (I don't even have a final copy yet, this is my draft) - looking a little different from the first book. It is a little bigger in size (5 x 8), has more pages (225), and is sporting a matte black cover.

It is now available on Amazon - CLICK HERE

This book is available for international delivery as well!

I cannot wait for readers to experience this story I have been working on for more than a year! I hope you enjoy it. More to come - I just wanted to share that it is available! Your weekend reading is now sorted.

Mysterious Reads

 

Somehow I finished reading two books on the same day. Two excellent and mysterious books that I could not put down. Books that keep me thinking for a long time afterward. One published in 1934 and one just released last month.

The Nine Tailors 
by Dorothy L. Sayers

Another Lord Peter mystery brings us into the English countryside for a change of scenery. Lord Peter's car ditches him just before New Year's off the side of the road somewhere in the country and he and Bunter are stranded in a nearby town Fenchurch St. Paul with a majestic cathedral known for its ancient bells. Lord Peter stays with the kindly rector and gets to know many of the town's inhabitants. He is called back months later to help solve a mystery when a body is found in the wrong grave. 

This book is praised for Sayers' knowledge and research she did on church bells and the art of ringing. The intricate notes and details about ancient cast bells is remarkable and to me it feels like a different book apart from the other mystery books with Lord Peter. The characters are more developed in this story. This mystery keeps Lord Peter baffled until the very end as each of his theories is dashed when truth is revealed. The conclusion is dramatic and not what anyone in the story expected. 

Piranesi
by Susanna Clarke

This book was published last month and I kept seeing people comment on how wonderful it is. Without knowing anything about it other than reading the synopsis, I ordered it to read myself. The mysterious concept intrigued me from the start. If you decide to read it do not read reviews or spoilers of it first. Enjoy the discovery of it.

Picture a dreamlike environment with a man living in a grand house composed of many endless halls and a sea below the main level of the rooms resulting in tides that flood halls sometimes. He seems to be alone in the house other than one other man who he meets with twice per week. The narrator writes meticulous notes in his journals the details of the halls, the tides, and the statues that adorn every space he has explored. I cannot say much more without giving things away and part of the joy in this book is discovering truths that are revealed so I would never want to steal that from anyone. But this book reminded me a little bit of the movie Inception mixed with books written by Charles Williams (an Inkling and friend of C.S. Lewis). If you like mysterious, dreamlike, fantasy type books, this fits perfectly and I enjoyed it very much. 

Enchanted Britain

 

There is someone who knows - 

Which sorrow it is

That is better than joy.

Adjacent to my weekend treat of a lavender latte from my neighborhood Concord Coffee, I dipped my toes into the new translation (and ended up reading the whole thing) of The Book of Taliesin, translated by the Welsh poets Gwyneth Lewis and Rowan Williams (former Archbishop of Canterbury). This book is a collection of the ancient poems, passed down for generations and centuries mostly written in the 13th century from the 6th century. It is story and Celtic history from Wales and inspiration for a lot of literary and creative history up to our current century. 

I really enjoyed reading this book of ancient Welch poetry that I haven't experienced before:

Do librarians know

Whence night and floods flow?

How they are laid low?

Where does night flee from dawn

So it can't be seen?

Taliesin is a poet, seer, shape-shifter, bard, holding the memory of battles in Britain. This stanza could have been inserted into my new book Selador: The Secret Paths. It is amazing to me as I read words recounted from the 6th century in the 13th century how they somehow resonate with my little tale being told today in my creative imagination. How is it that these ancient words can describe elements that I explore in my own creative story? It says to me that the ancient tales are within us, as humans before us also explored creatively the big questions of life and philosophized. My own words build upon the bones of those who came before me. They pondered the questions of the unknown, just like we do. I am a tiny piece of that here in the 21st century. Here I am to ask questions, maybe not answerable, but that can be explored through story.

So what I do in my small way is what the writers did in these texts over the course of 700 years, as writers put these myths together from oral traditions. Before there was writing there was memory and oral story telling. Writing and the codex became a way to pass down the stories, and our memories shifted away from holding the whole of a story in intangible ways. None of us today is a bard - one assigned to remember the tales and history of a people. It is all in books. So, we have to seek it out and see through the eyes and stories in written format of the ancient Celtic people.

What joy it is to discover this collection of poems. It is new to me, but like the other myths of countries (for example, the Icelandic Prose Edda and Poetic Edda or the Finnish Kalevala) this collection tells the myths of the Welsh - northern England, and Scottish lowlands in stories and myths of their place. I will let these words swim around in my imagination.

The Lord who will make us - drunk with delight.

I'm a cell, I'm a splinter - I'm a shape-shifter,

A library of song, - a sanctuary for the reader.

I love wooded slopes, - I love warm shelters,

I love real poets - who don't buy reputations.

I don't love those - who live by argument,

And mockers of poetry - will merit no wealth.

Sneak Peak! Reading from Selador: The Secret Paths

 

I have a treat to share with you on this Friday! 

I am reading a small snippet from my new book (still in final editing and proofing) Selador: The Secret Paths

Click below to hear a short passage from Chapter 6 (shown above in the photo)

This reading will share with you the seasonal shift of what Selador is experiencing, and how Nella feels about it. Just a little introduction to get you back into the realm of Selador. Soon you will be able to read these pages, and I cannot wait to share this book - which open up so much more of the story of Selador - with the world. 

Stay tuned for more info on the book release date! 

Muddy Musings · Reading from Selador, The Secret Paths

Waking Up to Rain

 

A new day. Waking up to rain. Coffee brewing. Goodness is present. Thank you God.

I am sitting at my desk with a candle lit and a mug of coffee as I journal. The rain is coming down in thick sheets. It could not be a more pleasant atmosphere, unless it were chilly. It brings me so much contentment and joy to sit here with such an atmospheric mood. Water is falling from the sky, splashing on the roof, rolling off the leaves, cascading into puddles, flowing down the alley. If I could add a cosy sweater that would be icing on this delicious cake. But the temperature is in the low 70s, which does not warrant a thick sweater, though the a/c makes it a little bit chilly inside. 

Perhaps it is selfish of me to love such dreich (Scottish word for gloomy or rainy) weather so much, as most people are likely grumbling at the moment, but I do not regret my enjoyment of weather.

Very lately, I discovered the videos of St. Martin in the Fields, London, a church I have been to many times, perched there on the corner of Trafalgar Square. The Rev. Carter hosts some contemplative prayer walks around London, and they are wonderful as I get to see London and I join in the contemplative prayer practice. This one I watched yesterday took place in St. James' Park. In it, he admired the grey sky, pointing out how most people only remark on the beauty of a blue sky, but miss the grey clouds and their many layers and ability to play with light. I was thankful and smiled at his comments, for I find great beauty in the grey sky, and my journal entry yesterday actually expanded upon that!

The tree limbs reach out before me, catching the falling droplets on their multi-faceted clusters of green and limbs. Big leaves catch more water, but it rolls off quickly. The little leaves catch the sole droplet and it hangs there in mutual nourishment. Leaves bounce as heavier drops splash down, and rain falls to nourish the ground.

I could write about rain all day. There is a wonder and beauty in it - a gift of water falling from the sky. We do not pay for the rain. Weather is a free gift of nature, yet the city charges me to use my faucet. I notice the leaves do not have the summery, bright green shade of green, as the season of Autumn comes slowly, the growth of the tree will slow and move into a sort of hibernation.

The rain is slowing down now as I write. I am just one tiny person in this city sitting at the window admiring the rain on a Sunday morning. I watch rain as entertainment. I study the long, narrow leaves and watch the drips of rain. My eyes trail the branches as they curve and stretch up and outwards. And I write words to try to capture such moments, when words do not seem to suffice. We do not seem to have enough words in our language to describe a beauty of nature given by God in His creative imagination. But I shall try anyway, lest the words be insufficient.