Evolution, Adaptation, and Wonder

It is a curious world. There is a belief among those who practice mysticism that as we evolve to become more and more enlightened (I am one of those who is not sure that we ever truly get there; not until we're ready to die, in any case), the world makes its corrections around us. I have been a witness to this personally, and 2014 has been both such a hard and extraordinary year.

Early in 2014, I thought my book would "soon" be out. The original plan had been to release it in 2013, the 50th anniversary year of Plath's death. Fall of 2013 had been discussed. Then the winter. Then the farther off winter of 2014. I continued with my speaking engagements and travel, touring universities and publishing excerpts on the book. I passed out my Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath bookmarks, and promised, "Soon, soon."

But it was not soon. Not by my definition. Today, I am thankful about that. There were a lot of Plath books released last year, and I would have been lost in the mix. As I brought in a new editor on my own dime, as I continued to make my discoveries of supporting evidence in the Plath archives at IU-Bloomington, as I continued to receive my little epiphanies that helped me connect the dots in even more new ways, I knew I had needed this extra time. Today, I have a superior manuscript to the one that I thought was finished last year. My seven years of work had not been enough! Our Sylvia was a perfectionist, after all. Maybe most special to me is that I have befriended a friend of Plath and Hughes' from their days in the London poetry scene, and he has become a very important, almost daily part of my personal and professional life. How can I be so fortunate?

Otto Plath's hero, Charles Darwin, once said in an 1857 letter to Asa Gray, ‘I am quite conscious that my speculations run quite beyond the bounds of true science.’ Darwin, a self-proclaimed Atheist, might also fit the definition of a mystic, as it was through his existentialism and loss of faith that he was able to see what he called "the higher feelings of wonder, astonishment, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind." Darwin opened his mind beyond the status quo, and even beyond persecution and the loss of his professional reputation, to entertain what seemed at the time to be the ridiculous.

Still, despite my own feelings of wonder, things around this book of mine that were fully there, and yet somehow not happening, continued to frustrate me. It was not going according to my plan for its evolution. There had been talk about my book being the star at the National Publisher's Conference in New York City (did my press even go? I was told nothing). There had been talk about them giving me a great web page devoted to my book (To this day, I am not sure my book is even mentioned as forthcoming on the site; it was not the last time I looked). Refusing to wait, I paid a developer to give me this nice page (Please join my email list if you're not already on it). There had been talk about me coming down to the press' university for a reading. There had been talk about advanced copies being printed and sent out to reviewers. There had been talk, and talk, and talk... but rarely to me, and none of it was ever nailed down. To this day, while I know that there are pre-orders of my book patiently waiting out there, I have no idea how many. Ten? A hundred? A thousand? I'm not sure that the press knows either, but I kept working hard to market my work. I have spent thousands on travel and speaking engagements, presenting twice in England, and in DC, New York, Milwaukee, Cleveland, St. Louis, and more. I have an email list of more than 30,000 names. Every day I get hits from all over the world on Academia.edu, and requests for more information. I am always between the top 2- and 4% of pages viewed. The world loves Sylvia Plath, and the world wants this information. I feel like the most blessed person to have been the one to find it, to have learned what I have learned, and yet, for metaphysical reasons beyond me, it all seems to be held up in the retrograde of retrogrades. Meanwhile, a breakthrough article I am publishing in Plath Profiles 7 is also held up! [12/10/14--It's there now] Who can understand any of it?

I felt embarrassed (ego stuff!) as the June and September release dates for my book came and went. I wrote back to the people querying about their pre-orders, apologizing and saying, "I can't give a definitive date, but I promise it's coming." It is. And soon. Really, this time! I have seen the layout progress with my own eyes. Finally, I have a very good contact person at the press, a capable and mature person who is working hard and communicating well. We are close to there. I'd hoped that it might get out on Sylvia Plath's birthday, October 27th. She would have liked that. Perhaps it will get out by my birthday, November 26th. She would like that too.

I have learned a great deal about publishing through all of this. Mainly, that today the entire industry is in a free-fall. Everyone with experience tells me my story is not unique. Large publishing house or small, writers are suffering today from what the music industry went through in the 1990s. It does not matter if one publishes with a large or small press. One prolific writer I know (15 books with HarperCollins and Random House) had a book held up for three years while the press went through a reorganization. Ultimately, they dropped it and she is going to self-publish. My Plath-Hughes friend has 25 books with publishers all over the world, some with major international awards, and still finds the industry impossible and in a complete down-slide. Self-publishing is no longer a dirty word, by the way, and like those in the music world, more and more authors with followings are not willing to play the bureaucratic games, to pay editors, agents, publicists and distributors to do nothing, and to have their books held up for years in the system. Today, Miley Cyrus could more easily put out a book of blank pages with a large house than a past Pulitzer Prize winner, because that's what the masses want. Today, I wonder if Sylvia Plath or Ted Hughes would even have a chance.

Printed books, like CDs and tapes, are falling away from the norm as people want digital downloads of everything, easy to search, to listen to, and to get right to the parts in which one is most interested. It is not all bad, and as a scholar and researcher myself, I know how valuable searchable digital editions can be. In music, the concept of the full album experience is gone, in favor of singles. Publishing has known for a long time that readers are reading less, especially with regard to literary fiction and poetry. Books of criticism on those subjects have an even smaller audience. One could complain about the injustice of it all, or one can get on with the changing world and adapt. In the 1990s, musicians either lost their careers, or learned to parlay their energy into giving away the music free and/or independently (think Wilco, Radiohead, Garbage, and others), making their money instead on performances and fan merchandise. I am certain the carbon paper industry lost its mind (and everything else) when the copy machine became an office standard. Likewise, typewriter manufacturers were probably not too happy when the personal computer came around. When Charles Darwin realized his theories on evolution, he declared that those species able to adapt were the ones to survive. Smart companies, like IBM, adapted.

I am adapting too. I count my blessings that this first book has the name of a university behind it. I am blessed for the hold-ups that have made it better, and for the new treasured friends, and maybe most of all, for the spiritual growth. I have learned an incredible amount, and it has all made me a better person. It has all created a better book. There are no accidents. We just can't allow ourselves to become too attached to how we think it is going to go. If it had all gone as I had originally planned, I would have had a book quietly released last year to probably quickly dissolve into obscurity. I wouldn't have received half of my gifts of knowledge and friendship. I simply hadn't dreamed big enough, and this world continues to amaze me, personally, professionally, and spiritually.

I wonder how it will all turn out.

Buttoning and Unbuttoning: an Update

Lord Byron once said, "When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation), - sleep, eating and swilling, - buttoning and unbuttoning - how much remains of downright existence?" [Journal, December 7, 1813. Vol. 3, p. 235]

I have been doing a lot of buttoning and unbuttoning. There is so much to putting out a book. I had been reading a great deal about book launches and marketing. Presenting at conferences, publishing papers, and speaking to the media whenever possible. I made a marketing plan. I took some seminars, teleconferences, and webinars and grilled my fellow authors for their advice. I thought I had prepared for everything. One learns that this is never the case.

As a tarot card reader, it really is a damned shame that I (like most) am not able to read for myself. Oh, the trouble I might have avoided!

I have not posted too often here because I have been so busy with my tarot reading appointments and events, and the book projects. The tarot life has never been better, and if you are interested in scheduling a party or getting a reading; or if you'd like to stop by an event for a free reading, please see the calendar page here.

About six months ago, a book trailer was being filmed to promote my forthcoming Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath. The concept of it alone, "Digitizing the Occult," got the attention of the Long Beach Indie Film Festival this year. Exciting! It was my dream to release the trailer a month or two before the book's release. Things happened in that filming where I could really see the director's genius; he had a vision (several, actually) that I hadn't thought of. He pushed me out of my comfort zone of speaking to academia, and into new places, teaching me how the world sees what I am doing, and how to speak to them. During the filming, it seemed like all the stars had lined up and Sylvia and Ted were right there with us. There were some beautiful shots, some amazing moments. And yet there were technical hitches I do not fully understand, and file transfer problems from the filmmaker/director to the editor, and I am in a place of despair at the moment where I am not sure the book trailer will even happen. If it does, it will probably not be a "trailer." Perhaps just a marketing piece after the fact. I still hope for it.

And then there is the question of the day: When will the book be released (followed by, Is there a release party)? I was told it would have a spring release at the end of May/early June months ago. Here we are, teetering on the very edge of June, ready to tumble into summer. Last week I received the manuscript's first layout, and I am going over final final edits. But of course, until I am finished with these the changes cannot be made. I have been given no release date, probably because of this (although someone in the Powers That Be put "July 15" up on Amazon). This will of course make it hard to read and do book-signings at my June and July conference presentations. Sigh.

Beyond the unknown release date, I am asked: Will there be advance copies for press reviews? How many will be printed? How many of the first printing will there be? Will there be a second printing if the first run sells out? Will you be at the NEXT BookExpo? Is your publisher buying advertising? What is your budget for a release party? How long until FSGL Volume Two comes out? All of these are questions to which I do not know the answer. I am still hoping to have a book release party. I just want to be sure that I have a book to put on the tables on that date, so hang tight.

Meanwhile, in the marketing world, I have hired and fired two different email companies, picked the brains of another, and have a proposal from another still to consider. Email marketing is not what it used to be five years ago. The CAN-SPAM Act, like most regulations, ties the hands of the law-abiding people while the criminals ignore it and keep doing what they're doing. Services like Constant Contact, Mail-Chimp, AWeber and the like will not even send press releases out to the media anymore because of this act. Opt-In widgets are the only verifiable tools, and so mass-mailings don't really exist any longer. It is boggling to a person like me, with a background in marketing and public relations from 15 years ago. So much has changed and doing business today through any sort of direct mailing is virtually impossible without a huge budget to override all the rules. I have found a new someone--a new service--and will probably give it yet another try. Fingers crossed. In the meantime, if you are not on my email list, please write me and I'll save your email as documented permission, should the Feds try to lock me up for sending to you.

This is a time to remind myself it all happens exactly as it must.

To further complicate matters, I have the (delightful) problem of never being more busy as a tarot card reader, and trying to finish two other books, The Magician's Girl, and Sylvia Plath: The Early Poems, for which there is already strong interest and one publisher looking to get The Early Poems on their calendar.

Alas! Like Lord Byron, I am more interested in "downright existence" than in all this vegetation, buttoning, and unbuttoning (although I dare say Lord Byron's existence was a tad wilder than my own). A few years ago, I decided that instead of sending out my poems for publication, and trying to get my own collection of work bound and in print, I would concentrate instead at the writing itself---and only that. I would let go of all ego, of all world affirmations and validation, upon which I was putting too much attention. I was making the idea of publication more important than the art, which is a critical mistake that I think most writers are guilty of, at least for a time. I decided instead to make writing the spiritual act that it is, and let it guide me, as tarot does. I would let it take me wherever it chooses to go and not become too attached to how I think success should look. So far, so good.

Like with my own poetry and prose, my focus then for Fixed Stars Govern a Life, and all the rest of my Plath work, is not about the publication, but rather the joy of the work and the secrets opening up and revealing themselves to me, and eventually sharing them with you. However this looks, and whenever it decides to happen. Occasionally this marketing and publishing nonsense derails me and pulls at my attention, steering me off-course into the far more depressing, miserable, temporal world of business. That is a place I really do not enjoy. I encourage my clients and readers to look at what pulls your own attention away from what you most want to accomplish. Whether it is writing or some other dream, ask yourself: What is the most important thing? What do you live for? For what reasons are we really doing the work? Abandon the ego and stay on course for this thing you most want, whatever it is. For me, it is to witness miracles and to demonstrate a higher order to the universe. I have found out how to do this, amazingly, through the work of Sylvia Plath.

When I turn my focus away from the spiritual, away from the art and onto the publishing and marketing, there is nothing but stress, which does none of us any good. As I tell my clients in their tarot readings when they pull that reversed Two of Swords: "You will never look back on your life and say, 'I wish I worried more!" And, as Lord Byron once said, "The busy have no time for tears."

2014 Calendar

My apologies for not updating more often. Over these last few months, I have been finalizing my book, Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath, volume one; getting my marketing plans together; working on my follow-up volume two, as well as The Magician's Girl, and another book I hadn't planned to do on Plath's early poems. I've also been busy preparing and doing presentations, planning trips, taking trips, and of course, reading tarot cards.

Here's what's on the calendar:

April 26th: a private tarot event at Western Illinois University, and a public campus visit to speak on Plath and FSGL. Write for details.

Weekends in May 17 - June 8: the St. Louis Renaissance Faire. I am the official tarot card reader: $10 readings, $5 for kids and dogs(!). Let me surprise you.

May/June: Release of my book, Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath, volume one (Stephen F. Austin State University Press)

June: presentation at the Association for Studies in Esotericism, to take place during the Summer Solstice weekend! Lucky me, I am also invited to participate in the Colgate Writers Conference happening simultaneously. My presentation is called "Sylvia Plath: Madness... or Mysticism?"

June is also the month (I believe) that the next Plath Profiles, volume seven, will be out with my article: "History and a Case for Prescience: Sylvia Plath's 1956 Poems"

July 11-13: Case Western Reserve's "Evil Incarnate: Manifestations of Villains and Villainy" conference. I will be presenting "Self-Villainy in Sylvia Plath's poem, 'The Jailor'"

August: perhaps a trip to the Lilly Library, Indiana University-Bloomington for some more Plath studies. Meet me there?

Fixed Stars Govern a Life's book trailer by Typewriter Tim Jordan was accepted in the Long Beach Indie Digital Edutainment Conference. The segment is called "Digitizing the Occult."

September: Fixed Stars Govern a Life visits the Hawaiian Islands! I am looking to schedule one or more events while I am there. Write for details.

October: in Chicago Illinois cheering on the Chicago Marathon runners, including my son Sam, and that means I'll be available for tarot appointments and possibly a book store appearance in the Windy City. Write for details.

My online class, Sylvia Plath and the Tarot, will begin at Lindenwood University's graduate writing program. The book will use Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath, volume one, as the text. Want to take it? Apply here.

The Conjuring, and What We Conjure

My sister recently suggested that I watch the popular movie, The Conjuring, which is supposedly a true story about a property possessed by all sorts of demonic forces. I was game.

I liked the movie, but it didn't scare me in the way that my sister had prepared me for. I told her my feelings, that as Marianne Williamson says, "The Devil is all in your head, and that's the worst place he can be." I told her that this paranormal ghost-busting stuff has largely been a disappoint to me; I have visited and even slept in supposedly haunted buildings and seen nothing (and I was looking!). I get no response from the Ouija board. What has happened to me is information in dreams, premonitions, and flashes of loved ones gone. Blessings with my tarot career and a keen insight that my clients rave over. Good things. I have come to the conclusion that this is because I choose to live in the light.

I told my sister that I thought the Ed Warren demonologist character in The Conjuring was able to do the exorcism because he knew simply that he was a positive force, acting out of love and truth, in the best interest of the people in the home. The Warrens had their moments of being scared, sure. They are human, and occasionally they looked at the darkness. It happens. Occasionally, the floor between the walls did fall out beneath them. But overall they stayed in a place of truth and love and that rode them through it. The Warrens never really felt terror, did they?

I was on Facebook last night. One of my animal rescue friends posted a photo of a dog that had died in the cold weather, frozen and neglected. It was horrible to see, and as can be expected, there was a rash of comments spewing hatred to the neglectful owners, and crying out in helplessness about our terrible world. It is so very easy to go there. To feed the darkness and let it swallow you up.

I want to encourage you not to. If we slip into that dark place of despair, we ARE building that dark force. Call it the Devil or whatever you want to. Last night on Facebook, I chose in that moment to concentrate on what good things I have done personally to make this world a better place. In my lifetime, I have saved a bunch of cats. I have four now, after having just lost a beloved one to cancer. I have given these cats a good life in my little corner of the world. I donate to charities that help animals and people. I help people in need, and I share my blessings as I can. I do my part. That is something, and while it is not healing the world on a grand scale, you can bet it matters to the lives I touch. There is still some goodness and some beauty in the world, if we want to look for it. Every day, it is our decision if we want to turn our head to the news, perhaps, and watch the wars and horror, watch the economy slip down the drain, and mire ourselves in the negative as we feel so utterly powerless and helpless. Or, we can say, "What positive thing can I do today? How can I make my little corner of the world better?"

My sister is facing some hard times, and she said that when she went to bed last night, she heard my voice telling her that I know nothing evil can beat me, because I'm aligned with goodness. And she knew right then and there that this was true for her as well. That any bad-ass problem or person that comes her way is just a thing, and she can focus on that and let it make her miserable, or she can put her energy into correcting what she can. In conjuring love and truth and positivity in the way that she can change the lives of those around her.

I told her that I would put a tarot card down for her, to guide her day today. It was the Nine of Cups, reversed. This card was a gift to me too. It is a card that says not everything is perfect, but there are still some good things to remember. It is a card of gratitude and attitude. It is a card that knows that our outcomes are direct results of what we conjure.

Keep looking to the light, even if we can't always live there in every second.

On the Calendar and Across the Internet

In tarot news, please catch me at Venus Envy this coming weekend (Friday, August 16th and Saturday, August 17th), where I'll be giving tarot readings for just $10 each. We have changed locations, so don't look for us at the Mad Art Gallery any longer: now Venus Envy can be found at 2720 Cherokee, South City. I hope you'll stop by. These events are always breath-taking fire-breathing belly-dancing burlesque-bending fun!

After a great presentation on Plath's "The Courage of Shutting-Up" in Washington DC this past January, two Popular Culture Conferences have asked me to speak again this Fall: October 3-5th I will be in Savannah, Georgia presenting on "Sylvia Plath's Poem, 'The Jailor': an Empathic Journey to the Tower of London" and November 7-9th I will be in Atlantic City, New Jersey re-presenting my work on Plath's "The Detective" (this presentation first given at the University of London, June 2013). I am especially honored after learning that there was a huge number of submissions to present in Atlantic City.

I have had some very interesting comments to my essay, a guest blog on The Plath Diaries website. It is hard to know who is with me and who is against me over there! The academic world remains a largely humorless place. Ha ha.

The book continues to be finalized for its spring publication, and life gets more exciting each day! Thank you for your interest in my work. I sincerely appreciate it.

The Trayvon Martin Case, as seen through Hermeticism

Hermeticism teaches "As above, so below; as inside, so outside." Hermeticism empowers the self. It says that the world is a reflection of what is inside of us.

Whatever your stance on the outcome of the Trayvon Martin case, one thing is clear: world peace is impossible if we can't even get along with ourselves in our own country. National peace is impossible if we can't get along within our own families. And family peace is impossible if we dislike ourselves, finding lack, fear, hatred, and whatever other ugliness we believe is there (and we are probably wrong about that, by the way).

All we have is ourselves to work with, friends. As long as we blame outside ourselves, whether you blame a race, or a jury, or whatever, it's never going to work. Take responsibility for your little corner of the world. I have said this before and I'll say it again: When Gandhi said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world," he did not mean, "Be a model citizen." He meant that if we see war out there in the world, fix the war within. Collectively, we all might actually be able to do something that way.

Publishing Update

The release for Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath [Stephen F. Austin State University Press] is now Spring 2014. I am quite excited about this because the book will have more time to be promoted, it will be a star for my publisher at the annual publisher's conference in New York, and it gives me time to get everything as close to perfect as possible. Hang tight and I will share book cover art, websites, and more as it is designed and goes live.