Behind the scenes during the past several months, a skilled crew of technicians, designers, and advisors (names to be revealed with due applause later) have been hard at work upgrading the Visionary Fiction Alliance Website to a whole new and more sophisticated format. On December 10, the content of the old site was moved as-is to the new location although those logging into the site will still land on the old site and see the old format. No new posts will appear on the old site (after this one) and any comments made on the old site after December 10 will not be transferred over.

We estimate that it will take no more than a week to complete the transfer. Once that is done. you will be automatically redirected, using the same URL, visionaryfictionalliance.com. We certainly hope the switch will be obvious and awe-inspiring. The look and navigation will be different but not difficult to figure out. An Introductory Post will welcome you to the new site and acquaint you with the changes. Please use the CONTACT US feature to advise of any difficulties you may have or discrepancies you may notice.

Change, especially with familiar computer screens, can be a challenge. But this change required by the VFA’s phenomenal growth–our readership has more than tripled in the last two years–is all good news. We are making room for more viewers, subscribers, features and posts in the coming years. We thank everyone of you, who have contributed to this expansion and look forward to hearing your opinions and reading your posts in the future.

THE VFA STEERING COMMITTEE 12/11/15

The story behind The Anesthesia Game is very close to my heart. The fifteen-year-old protagonist, Sydney, suffers a life-threatening illness that requires frequent spinal procedures for which she undergoes regular anesthesia. Having spent years accompanying my own child through such procedures, I understood from page one the spectrum of courage (or cowardice) my characters would likely exhibit, patient and family members alike. Having said that, this story is far from a memoir. The personalities of my characters vary greatly from those of my own family. I constructed the characters from scratch, asking myself—what if not one, but all of them suffered some kind of affliction, real or imagined? What if, in order to manage their afflictions, each one of them was also under the influence of her own version of anesthesia? How would they manage to help each other? How would they progress? Or would they? Who would lose a life and who would find one? After the first 100 pages or so, the characters showed me the way.

As a writer of Visionary Fiction, I imagined the child’s disease and the resulting anesthesia, not as a means of sedating her life, so much as awakening it. After all, what value do negative experiences contain if not to hone us and/or those around us? The problem is, at what price the experience? The risks in this story are as high as they can be. Lives hang in the balance.

Circumstances surrounding childhood cancers are tragic from anyone’s perspective, but much is to be gained if we have the courage to tread consciously through such toxic waters. The patient is of course the central concern, but the peripheral damage to family and friends can also be acute and widespread. If they’re paying attention, almost everyone involved ends up learning something powerful about him or herself in the process. Coincidentally, the essential component of Visionary Fiction is the awakening of the deep self to greater purpose.

I first learned about Visionary Fiction (VF) when my previous novel, Mystic Tea, was awarded several literary prizes in that genre. Exploring it on Google, I discovered the VFA (Visionary Fiction Alliance) with a mention of my name as one of its contemporary authors. VF, as it turns out, is the oldest new genre there is. Myth is VF; fairy tales are VF; even ancient sacred texts contain all the consciousness awakening components of this powerful genre. I wrote Visionary Fiction decades before I knew what it was, as has been the case with most of my peers in that sector. It was simply the truth as we knew it. VF authors tend to be highly intuitive and imaginative believers in infinite possibility. Unlike other genres, its literary DNA emerges not from the demands of plot or even the growth of its characters, although those are important, but from the authenticity of the writing as an expression of the soul.

In writing The Anesthesia Game, I did my best to honor that tradition.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bio:

Rea Nolan Martin has been writing Literary and Visionary Fiction for over twenty years. She is the author of two novels, The Sublime Transformation of Vera Wright (2009) and Mystic Tea (2014), as well as short stories and poetry published in national literary magazines and anthologies. She was a founding editor of Inkwell literary magazine, as well as an adjunct professor in the Master of Arts in Writing (MAW) program at Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY. Her inspirational blogs are published regularly in The Huffington Post and The Charter For Compassion. Her second novel, Mystic Tea, is the recipient of the 2014 IPPY gold medallion and US Best Book award for Visionary Fiction, as well as the 2014 Pinnacle gold medallion in the category of Literary Fiction. Her third novel, The Anesthesia Game, was just released September, 2015.

Visionary fiction’s theme is the evolution of human consciousness. But what does that mean? What is consciousness? Psychologist, William James, coined the phrase stream of consciousness. He identified consciousness as something that is shaped by experience and how the experience is processed in our minds. So it’s our life experience that defines who we are, and we play out that definition in reality. If we have many dark experiences, then it might lead us to passing similar experiences on to others. Why are some people able to overcome darkness?

The great sages of history paved the way to free us from our dark nature. Socrates taught us the limitations of knowledge by asking us to question our assumptions. The Buddha taught us that our attachments lead to suffering. Attachment to possessions, to people, to social status, and destructive personal and outer beliefs can overcome our sense of self, and we instead become products of culture. In other words, without taking the time to reflect upon our experience, we’re instead  shaped and molded by culture. When that happens, we lose a sense of who we truly are. We go through life performing a role that we believe we’re expected to play.

The Jungian term of enlightenment is moving beyond the archetypal roles that we’ve perpetuated since the dawn of civilization. Once we can look from the outside in, we become what Jung described as modern man. He explained that modern humans (noun adjusted for modern usage) are lonely because they have detached from their historically assigned roles. They also may be viewed as crazy as a result of their unwillingness to continue being fellow cast members. Jungian psychology offers us plenty of fodder to write some great characters!

Modern Human in Visionary Fiction

As an author of visionary fiction, it’s the journey toward becoming a modern human that I find the most alluring. The journey feels more intense when characters have flaws so great, the challenge to overcome them may not seem possible. They might be close to seeing through the archetypal fantasy, and the truth frightens them to the point where they will take drastic action to avoid seeing reality.

When considering Jung’s definition of what it means to be a modern human, the fear of being lonely and isolated from the collective can touch upon many primal instincts needed for survival. Surviving might be translated into maintaining the status quo. If that is the case, how far would the protagonist go to keep from seeing the truth? This, for me, is the crux of the inner struggle for the evolution of consciousness. The deeper the conditionings, the more extreme the reactions can play out. And that translates into the action that drives the story.

To develop the best characters, I have to give them the freedom to struggle—as much as they need to, even if it means them taking actions that are nefarious. This might sound antagonistic to the spiritual aspect of visionary fiction, but the journey toward a higher state of consciousness doesn’t always translate into  a pretty postcard to send home. Abhinav Kumar, author of Once Upon A Time In Singhpur, says, “the whole idea that a plot, story or character should simply move from a state of spiritual penury to spiritual enrichment is extremely fanciful. Real movement in the real world, does not happen in such a chartered direction. I don’t think the purpose of visionary fiction should be to simply create this kind of enlightening entertainment. If a writer is adequately rooted in the spirituality he or she speaks of, they should be able to paint dark or (more appropriately) grey characters in the same light as their heroes.”

What about if the hero is dark? In steps the antihero.

The Antihero

There’s something alluring about writing an antihero, which may be why most of my protagonists fall under the characterization. The “antihero is a protagonist who has the opposite of most of the traditional attributes of a hero. They may be bewildered, ineffectual, deluded, or merely apathetic. More often an antihero is just an amoral misfit (tvtropes).”

The darkness of humankind can be displayed through the actions of the antihero. As a writer, sometimes her actions reveal aspects of myself that I have yet to deal with. Writing can also be used to vent dark emotions.  Bob Edward Fahey, says, When I first decided to try writing novels, I was writing three books at once. When I felt romantic, I went with The Mourning After. When I felt rage I worked on The Soul of Hatred. When writing passionate characters in dire situations, it has a way of taking you over.”

Affective antiheroes are difficult to write because they dare to take us down paths most of us would not travel in reality. For me, this is what makes the antihero more 3-dimensional, thus realistic and authentic. Jenna Newell Hiott, author of The Todor Trilogy, says, “I believe in authenticity and self-love, which usually means embracing one’s own dark side. Characters are born out of this philosophy and tend to have a whole lot of dark side to embrace!”

Traveling A Dark Path…

I’ve had to put all of my books aside at one time or another, because the characters  took me to dark places I wasn’t ready to visit, dark places that I knew were lurking in my subconscious, waiting for me to bring them into the spotlight. That was especially the case in my first book, Unison. Damon, a true to form antihero, is very flawed. Getting into his head scared me at times. Some of the actions he takes are so diabolical, I didn’t think he could ever redeem himself. I was tempted to tone him down, to make him more likable. Nevertheless, I understood to get the best and most honest story, I had to let Damon lead the journey, no matter how treacherous it would be.

I hold a similar view for the villains in my story.  It’s easy to create a bad guy who challenges the antagonist. It’s harder to craft a bad guy with whom readers might sympathize with. Jenna Newlett Hyott also touches upon a similar point when she says, “I love dark characters, and I love showing that even the darkness is part of All-That-Is.” Without darkness, light cannot be known, and vice versa.”  In essence, the journey toward the light would not be an end goal if there wasn’t darkness.

In closing, Stephen Weinstock, author of the 1001, the Reincarnation Chronicles, offers some great advice for visionary fiction authors who are afraid to face the dark side of a story. “We are probably our own worst puritans, so we probably couldn’t be offensive or immoral or monstrous in our writing even if we tried. So get down and dark! Have fun with it! With visionary fiction, there’s a higher context that will contain the evil in a positive or uplifting way.”

Intention is demonstrated in the meaning of the journey…

Eleni Papanou is an award-winning author and perpetual student of life. Visit her website  for news and updates.

Less than a year ago, my reaction to the above wishes would have been, “Yeah, right. I don’t have the time or patience to learn new techie tricks.”

Well, I have some good news for you. The following Kindle tips for writers are not only helpful, but also fun—and easy.

Tip 1. How to send a Word document to your Kindle

• To find your Send-to-Kindle e-mail address, log into your Kindle account. On the Manage Your Content and Devices page click “Your Devices.” There you will find your Kindle type, its serial number, and your Kindle email.
• Before you can send documents to your Kindle, you need to register the personal e-mail address you intend to use. From the Manage your Content and Devices page, click “Settings.” Scroll down to Personal Document Settings, which looks like the example below.

Personal Document Settings

Kindle Personal Documents service makes it easy to take your personal documents with you, eliminating the need to print. You and your approved contacts can send documents to your device by e-mailing the documents to your Send-to-Kindle e-mail address. 

Send-to-Kindle E-Mail Settings

You can e-mail personal documents to the following Kindle(s) using the e-mail addresses shown.

• Now, scroll down to Approved Personal Document E-Mail List. Click on “Add a new approved e-mail address” and enter the email you want to send your documents from (your personal email).

Approved Personal Document E-mail List

To prevent spam, your device will only receive files from the following e-mail addresses you have authorized.

Add a new approved e-mail address

• To send your Word Doc to your Kindle, attach it to an email addressed to your Send-to-Kindle email. It should look something like this: yourname@kindle.com
• Write the word “Convert” in the subject line, hit send, and next thing you know, you’ll find the document on your Kindle. How easy was that?

To learn more about sending supported file types to your Kindle, go to: Send to Kindle by E-mail.

Tip 2. How to send your Word doc via Kindle to your beta readers

To send your draft to your reviewers’ Kindles, they will need to add your personal e-mail address to their Approved Personal Document E-mail List. Then send an e-mail with your document attached to their Kindle e-mail addresses (which, of course, they will need to share with you) as outlined above.

Tip 3. How your beta readers can share their Kindle notes and highlights with you

The highlights and notes are stored in the Clippings file on your beta readers’ Kindles.

Here’s how they can share them with you.

• Plug the kindle device into their computer
• Find and click on the Kindle device on their computer’s hard drive.
• Click on the Documents folder.
• Click on the My Clippings.txt file.
• Copy and paste their notes into a .docx or .txt file and email them to you.

Easy and Fun!

When women authors finally cracked the Paper Ceiling of Publishing in the early 1970’s, they began to draw on their visionary heritage as they struggled for cultural recognition and spiritual identity.

The best of Women’s Visionary Fiction is not preachy or didactic. Mystical, flowing, beautifully crafted, it draws on folk traditions and esoteric sources as it creates new worlds, explores the after-life, and evokes other states of consciousness and other realities. Yet many of the early examples, fine they are, still remain unknown except to a small audience of readers.

For example, in 1940, Native American author Ella Deloria wrote Waterlilly, a visionary novel that takes as its subject Lakota (Sioux) culture before the Lakota had contact with Europeans. This fascinating recreation of Lakota rituals, culture, and spiritual life, was not published until 1988, nearly twenty years after Deloria’s death.

In the past half century, women have written visionary fiction about witches, midwives, herbal healers, priestesses, goddesses, fairies, oracles, and angels. In fact, sometimes the authors themselves have been witches, midwives, herbal healers, and priestesses. Take for example Starhawk, San Francisco’s most famous witch. Her novel The Fifth Sacred Thing (Bantam, 1993), is a post-apocalyptic vision of the San Francisco Bay Area as a newly created ecological paradise governed by a council of elderly women who are guided by their dreams.                                                                                                           

Usually, as in The Fifth Sacred Thing, Women’s Visionary Fiction takes as its subject the path of peace rather than the path of war. But this is not universally true. Maxine Hong Kingston’s visionary autobiography The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (Knopf, 1976), not only redefines what it means to be a Chinese American woman; it blends folk-tales, legends, and visions to create a fierce woman warrior with magical powers.

Since the 1990’s the growth of the Women’s Spirituality Movement has inspired women to write visionary fiction about the Earth as a living Goddess. Sometimes known as the Gaia Hypothesis, this idea that the Earth is not real estate to be developed, but a living being to be cared for is slowly making its way into popular culture.

Three of my own novels, The Year The Horses Came, The Horses at the Gate, and The Fires of Spring, take the living Earth as their subject. Written for a popular audience, they recreate the religious rituals, visions, poetry, and mystical bonds between the Earth and the Goddess-worshiping cultures of Neolithic Europe. My new novel The Village of Bones, which will be published some time in 2016, continues my visionary exploration of the Gaia Hypothesis as it explores the possibility that small bands of human-like survivors (hominids) were the original inspiration for the stories of fairies, gnomes, elves, and other magical creatures, which appear so often in European folk tales.

In Part II of this series, I will discuss some of the major works of Women’s Visionary Fiction in more detail and answer the question: Can Men Write Women’s Visionary Fiction?

Resources:

• Syllabi for courses in Women’s Visionary Fiction, Women’s Visionary Poetry, and Women’s Visionary Film can be found on my Educators Page at marymackey.com
• To get the latest news about Women’s Visionary Fiction and my forthcoming novel The Village of Bones, click here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bio:

Mary Mackey, Ph.D. writes visionary novels, poems, and film scripts. A Professor Emeritus of English at California State University, Sacramento, she is the author of thirteen novels and seven collections of poetry including Sugar Zone, winner of the 2012 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award. Garrison Keillor has featured her poetry four times on The Writer’s Almanac. Her novels have made The New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller Lists and been translated into twelve languages. She is presently working a visionary novel entitled The Village of Bones: Sabalah’s Tale, a prequel to her best-selling novel The Year The Horses Came. Mary welcomes your questions and comments at http://marymacky.com where, you can sample her work, read her interview series People Who Make Books Happen, and sign up to get the latest news about her visionary fiction and poetry. You can also Like her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter @MMackeyAuthor. Mary’s literary papers are archived at the Sophia Smith Special Collections Library at Smith College in Northampton, MA.

The second idea relates to locales around the globe that mystics and sensitives claim to be energy centers or “power points” via which inflowing energy animates our reality, and may even influence thought, belief and emotion. Some have speculated that the world’s most enduring belief systems and religions arose in the most powerful of such places (e.g., Jerusalem) and retain their influence due to this origin.

The third idea involves the remote viewing program that both the U.S. and Soviet Union operated during the Cold War years, recruiting and training mystics and sensitives to serve as “psychic spies.” A whole body of literature exists today detailing this now declassified program which claimed startling successes in the projection of consciousness to distant locales.

The Ah-ha Moment

When I came across The Celestine Prophecy and saw how James Redfield had woven together several metaphysical theories within a fictional adventure story, I recognized how I would tell my tale. Like Redfield, I structured the plot along the lines of the Hero’s Journey, so well described by the mythologist Joseph Campbell as a life-changing quest into the supernatural and back. I seeded my protagonist, an aimless college graduate, with my own experience of alienation growing up in suburbia and a desire for adventure. I created mystery around her father, a man whom she’d never met, who served as one of the remote viewers who had stumbled into Jung’s collective unconscious in an altered state, glimpsing unknown truths. The hero’s journey begins when his daughter finds an artifact he’d left behind and sets off on a quest to discover what had happened to him.

When I began work on the first draft, I had a feeling for where the story was going—kind of. My polestar, far off but in view, was that she would eventually connect with the legacy of her father, or perhaps with the man himself. As the story unfolded, it marched more or less in that direction. I didn’t know many details, nor what would happen when she arrived at the climax. The excitement was in the discoveries. Staying true to the hero’s quest, I knew she’d be called upon to summon her inner strength and surmount long odds, but other than that the details remained unknown.

I completed the novel and put it up on Amazon in 2014 and reader comments have been illuminating. It seems those who are spiritually “awake” or spiritually inclined are its audience, whereas those not particularly drawn to spirituality are uninterested. I had wanted the book to appeal to the mainstream but perhaps that possibility was lost right out of the starting gate due to the nature of the material itself. Or maybe it was my execution, which seems to appeal solely to “the initiated.” Along the way, I came to admire how the authors of visionary fiction works such as The Alchemist and Way of the Peaceful Warrior managed to make esoteric subjects accessible and enjoyable to mainstream readers.

The Quest for a Publisher

Early in the life of the manuscript, I found literary agents to represent it and the book made its way to a number of publishing houses. The very editor at Warner Books who discovered The Celestine Prophecy offered positive feedback but ultimately declined to take it on. Another publisher gave a verbal okay and I celebrated my success. Then that publisher changed its mind, citing the difficulty of selling metaphysical or visionary fiction, a genre for which no established marketing category yet exists within traditional publishing nor in traditional channels.

At one point the book found its way to the offices of a well-known Hollywood agent who read it over a period of several weeks, as I waited in anxious expectation. He then told me, unsurprisingly, that its appeal was for too small and specialized an audience. One editor said the reader who couldn’t “take on and accept the belief system” wouldn’t be able to enjoy it. That seemed to be a confirmation of what I had been hearing all along. Eventually, I took the self-publishing route, which has largely been a positive experience. In self-publishing, the writer retains the rights and control over the book and can keep it available online indefinitely.

What I had tried to accomplish in this novel was to breathe life into a world in which many of our dearly held beliefs (e.g., we are all one, there is a greater order at work, energy passes between people, the universe is benevolent, etc.) are alive and treated as real. It’s a world that many writers and readers of visionary fiction hope for, sense intuitively, and believe may exist beneath the noise of society and our lives. As in other works of visionary fiction, the hope is that the reader will inhabit that world for a time, exploring and being entertained, learning and adventuring, all within the bounds of a spiritually compelling belief system that may indeed reflect the ways things truly are.

Warren Goldie was born in Brooklyn, New York. He earned a BS degree in biology at Towson University and has been a full-time writer for 25 years. Drawn to existential and metaphysical inquiry from a young age, Goldie pursued these interests through creative writing and a daily meditation practice. He has worked in Hollywood as an editor for Steven Spielberg and as a screenplay analyst. His essays have appeared in the Baltimore Sun, City Paper and Iowa Source. He was a featured playwright in Playwrights Showcase of the Western States and the Baltimore Playwrights Festival.

Waking Maya, visionary fiction by Warren Goldie

When Maya Burke digs up an old journal in her backyard, what she finds is a plan for a spiritual journey that leads her on a fascinating cross-country adventure of awakening.

WAKINGMAYA.COM

STEPHEN WEINSTOCK’S THE QARAQ and the MAYA FACTOR, BOOK TWO OF 1001:
THE REINCARNATION CHRONICLES 

FREE on Kindle from OCT 18-22, 2015.

After the events of The Qaraq, Sahara Fleming has accepted that she can recall past lives, along with her qaraq, a group of intertwined souls who come together lifetime after lifetime. Now the distressing Maya Factor splinters their community—stemming from the Hindu “Maya,” the worldly illusion that shields us from visionary awareness, and blocks the qaraq from recalling reincarnation stories.

As the group shatters, Sahara must handle her aggressive husband’s advances to get her back. She enjoys their romance, but sees their reincarnations as visionary terrors.

As memories return, the qaraq discovers shocking links between ancient tombs, the sinister Red Isle, and a seventeenth century coven. Is there a grand vision to their lives? Or is it another layer of Maya that will tear them apart?

Structured as a modern Arabian Nights, Stephen Weinstock’s wildly imaginative 1001 conjures up magical, dark, humorous, and visionary reincarnation stories.

PRAISE FOR 1001: THE QARAQ, Book One of The Reincarnation Chronicles

“A love spat between two atomic particles, that tickled me—it could get dangerous!”—Eric Van Lustbader, bestselling author, Jason Bourne, Nicholas Linnear series

 “Stephen Weinstock’s imagination is fevered, surreal, fantastical. It will take you places you never dreamed you would go.” —Barry Jay Kaplan, author, Black Orchid

 “The kind of book that keeps you up later than you intended at night!”

 “Whether you believe in reincarnation or not, this is a book which will expand your universe.”

ABOUT STEPHEN WEINSTOCK

In my past life before 1001, I created music for theater companies (Magic Theater, Eureka Theater), choreographers, and dance studios (Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham).  I have worked as a musician/teacher on the dance faculties of UC Berkeley, Princeton, Juilliard, and the ‘Fame’ school in New York City.

For years I had the idea of a novel puzzling out an intricate past life history between a group of souls, but only with the epiphany of using the ancient frame tale structures of The Thousand and One Nights did I receive the courage to jump fields.  By day I still bring dancers to ecstasy with my improvisations, but at night I enter the world of metempsychosis, time-honored storytelling, and worlds ranging from historical fiction to romantic fantasy.

We know this aspect of myth, of fairy tale, of fable, that they exist as pure story, often innocent on the surface, broad-stroke actions without inner character development or thematic commentary. But scratch a bit of that surface, do the least bit of interpretation, and worlds of meaning emerge, often the kinds of transcendental truth that Visionary Fiction embraces. How then do we include or approach these folkloric narratives, which have no original authors or first editions? They are at once the most visionary of fictions, and not technically fiction at all.

What of fable? On the one hand, this form may be the closest in definition to VF. A fable is a story intended” “to reveal moral or ethical consequences to life’s many choices.” This lesson component to the fable aligns with the higher truths that VF desires to bring to light, more literally than a myth or fairy tale. On the other hand, fables tend to have talking animals (human beings qualify), and the life lessons are often practical and homespun, not cosmic. And VF is not necessarily didactic, tied up with a ‘moral.’ Like other fictional forms, are there fables that are visionary and fables that are not?

In my own work, 1001, The Reincarnation Chronicles, a character remembers and recounts a past life tale every chapter. Modeled after The Thousand and One Nights, the stories include myths and fables, and since the incarnations range from Persian royalty to wombats to supercontinents, they stretch the ‘talking animal’ aspect. Every memory raises the spiritual question of the veracity of reincarnation, but few contain literal morals.

So let us consider a classic fable with a moral. One glance at this image and we know the story, we remember the lesson, and perhaps we extrapolate it to a larger, personal meaning. “If I’m struggling in my field’s competitive frenzy, I just need to persevere calmly and persistently;” or, “My search for a calmer, humbler way will bring me greater reward than fast-paced hype.” Isn’t this balm to us Visionary Fiction authors? Shouldn’t the Tortoise be our mascot? Or at least his fable allowed as Visionary Fiction. Then again, we tell our children this tale and remind them that “Slow and Steady Wins the Race,” if only referring to dinner table manners, not achieving satori. Reality is more complex; we all have both slow-and-steady and rush-to-judgment sides to our personality. The simplicity of the fable betrays its seeming depth.

In creating stories for The Qaraq, the first book of The Reincarnation Chronicles, I strived to write with a ‘Medieval’ approach, just presenting the action and avoiding much inner character development. It was an impossible task for a modern author, and I discovered that when the present day circle of characters, the qaraq, recall their incarnations, the stories function as their character development; we see their inner nature via the external actions they took in other worlds.

The qaraq’s discussion of their memories also reveal their consciousness of the nature of reincarnation. Late in the book they remember a series of stories about a Carboniferous Era dragonfly, six-foot wings and all. Their connection to this talking animal is so unusual that it tests their belief in the past life realm. Though the ‘fables’ concern physical struggles of the dragonfly in a straightforward narrative, the perception of the tales by the qaraq adds a level of meaning to them.

Perhaps it’s all a matter of our perception, of how deeply we read into a fable, that gives it a transcendental meaning. This thought brings us to the modern fable, the authored fable, where an individual can bring as much vision to its meaning as possible. The outstanding example of such a writer is Italo Calvino, master of many short stories, compiler of a classic Italian folktale collection, and often called a fabulist.

So what is a fabulist? It has two definitions. “An author of fables, in the sense of a narration intended to convey a useful truth” is the first, where the term ‘useful,’ speaking to the fable’s homespun tradition, lessens Calvino’s philosophical range and the fable’s visionary potential. Calvino would have enjoyed the second definition of fabulist, “A liar, especially a person who invents elaborate, dishonest stories.” In early Islamic history, fiction was prohibited because it was considered lies: someone’s dishonest account of their encounter with the Prophet was probably very elaborate, as in ‘embellishing the truth.’

I am a big fan of Calvino, the more elaborate his narrative the better. His masterpiece of literary science fiction fables is Cosmicomics, where we follow the main character, Qfwfq, through various incarnations in cosmic history: the Big Bang, the formation of the galaxy, or the end of the dinosaurs. In “The Aquatic Uncle,” two young amphibians vie for who should embrace life on land. It’s Calvino’s version of The Tortoise and the Hare. That story has a love triangle, political discourse about the nature of progress, and Qfwfq’s inner soliloquy about his evolving soul. A far cry from “Slow and Steady” as a moral, the tale passes for Visionary Fiction with humor and talking animals thrown in for good measure.

Calvino is actually a member of the French literary school called the Oulipo, which grew out of a marriage of mathematics, puzzles, poetry, and whimsical narrative. Oulipoans use constraints in their work, such as avoiding the letter ‘E,’ or structuring a narrative after the path a Knight makes in chess where it lands on every square without repeating any. The Oulipo have little to do with the moral lessons of fables or the mind-expanding way of Visionary Fiction, so it is a testimony to Calvino that he used sophisticated constraints, filled fables with contemporary sensibility, put forth a vision of the cosmos, and earned a reputation as a literary genius.

Calvino and Cosmicomics had a great influence on The Reincarnation Chronicles. He freed me to consider reincarnation stories where inanimate objects are ensouled beings, even for fifteen minutes, where nuclear matter can lead separate lifetimes, and where, inspired by “The Aquatic Uncle,” the qaraq recalls its four billion year karmic history locked in an evolutionary debate as prokaryotes and Pre-Cambrian five-eyed organisms.

Recently I launched the second book of the 1001 series, The Qaraq and the Maya Factor. The present day group loses its ability to recall past lives, and throughout the book they learn that they are blocked by Maya, the Hindu concept of everyday details clouding our awareness of higher reality. The lessons they learn about Maya and human consciousness are surprising and multifold. I hope the book holds up on a modest level to Visionary Fiction, Calvino, and the fabulist tradition.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BIO:

In his past life before writing 1001: The Qaraq, Book One of The Reincarnation Chronicles, Stephen Weinstock created music for theater companies, choreographers, and dance studios (Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham). His theater works included the musical Rock and Roy, with writer Barry Jay Kaplan, about the double life of Rock Hudson.  He has worked as a musician/teacher at UC Berkeley, Princeton, Juilliard, and the ‘Fame’ school, as well as at the NYU Musical Theater Writing Program.

For years he had the idea of a novel puzzling out an intricate past life history between a group of souls, but only with the epiphany of using the ancient frame tale structures of The Thousand and One Nights did he decide to jump fields.  By day he still bring dancers to ecstasy with his improvisations, but at night he enters the world of metempsychosis, time-honored storytelling, and worlds ranging from historical fiction to romantic fantasy.

You can find 1001: The Qaraq, Book One of The Reincarnation Chronicles here. Stephen’s second book, The Qaraq and the Maya Factor. recently published, can be found here. You can find more information on the 1001 series, Stephen’s posts on culture and cosmos, and free book offers on his website. http://www.qaraqbooks.com/subscribe.

secrets that the legends hide.”

~The Singing Stones

Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki and T.L. Ashcroft-Nowicki, mother and daughter, have both written new takes on the Arthurian legends in the last few years. Dolores wrote The Singing Stones for her grandson and she plans to write more. T.L.’s first novel of a planned trilogy is entitled Merlin’s Daughter. In each novel, we get a glimpse into the spiritual traditions and teachings behind the Arthurian legends from one of England’s foremost magical families. Dolores studied with W. Earnest Butler, and is the head of the Servants of the Light, the organization founded (now renamed) by Western Mystery Tradition Occultist, Dion Fortune. T.L. grew up in her mother’s magical household, and I’ll just bet learned a couple of things here and there.

In The Singing Stones, the main character, Thomas Greystone, learns about his life’s destiny to sing awake the standing stones in his ancestral homeland and allow the Once and Future King to return. His mentor, Bald Bessie, an apparently homeless woman who lives in a cave with a Jack Russel terrier, turns out to be no less a personage than—but wait. Should I tell you? Let’s just say she’s a major player in this myth’s cast of characters.

We follow Thomas as he discovers his true heritage, regains his lost manor, evades the Others in the nearby village who are trying to stop him from coming to full consciousness of himself and his role, finds the circle of singing stones that move about from hilltop to hilltop (a portal to other worlds and realms), and fights a battle against Mordred and Morgan le Fey to bring back the light and the King. Many of us will have read Marion Bradley’s remake of Morgan into a priestess fighting to keep the old religion against the persecution of the short-sighted Roman Christians. Ashcroft-Nowicki has returned Morgan to her older role as a villain. Guinevere is a bit different as well. (I’m not telling.) Published in 2009, Ashcroft-Nowicki promises a sequel. She’s a busy lady, but I can’t wait to read it.

T.L. Ashcroft-Nowicki’s Merlin’s Daughter begins with the intertwined stories of Nimue and Merlin, telling the tale from the death of Merlin’s teacher to the death of Arthur’s father, Uther Pendragon. But the timeline is not entirely linear; it weaves back and forth. Just a little at first, but later we begin to understand the truth of Merlin’s title of being the Walker Between the Worlds, someone who can move outside time and space, and of course through the portals of the standing stones. The Dragons are presented as Lords of Time and Space. We get to meet one, much to my delight.

In this novel, Merlin gets his powers from study and practice, yes, but also from his faerie bloodline. Merlin is the son of the Faery King Gwyn App Nudd, and a human mother who died young. Nimue’s mother is a Priestess of Avalon, also human, named Aeryn. They are both charged with the task of protecting the Thirteen Treasures that hold the magical energies of the Golden Age that will ensure Arthur can rule using their power and wisdom. Speaking of Arthur, their immediate task is to create the conditions for Arthur to be born, which turns into a rather arduous job involving perilous journeys. The book covers the major events of the mythical Arthurian saga through the eyes of different characters. The descriptions of life during that era, as well as details of the castles and keeps, the magical woods, and the Glastonbury Tor, all served to take me deeply into the story.

These novels will deliver an enjoyable and entertaining read for all readers. And they will even whisper teachings and visions to some.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Theresa Crater brings ancient temples, lost civilizations and secret societies back to life in her paranormal mysteries. In The Star Family, a Gothic mansion holds a secret spiritual group and a 400-year-old ritual that must be completed to save the day. The shadow government search for ancient Atlantean weapons in the fabled Hall of Records in Under the Stone Paw and fight to control ancient crystals sunk beneath the sea in Beneath the Hallowed Hill. Her short stories explore ancient myth brought into the present day. The most recent include “The Judgment of Osiris” and “Bringing the Waters.” Theresa has also published poetry and a baker’s dozen of literary criticism. Currently, she teaches writing and British lit in Denver.

www.theresacrater.wordpress.com    @theresacrater on Twitter

The goal

Simply stated, we can say that Visionary Fiction has the power to open up readers’ awareness of broader dimensions, stimulate their imaginations, and create a much-needed relief from the pressures and challenges of our frenetic, “connected” epoch.

One step beyond

Let us imagine for a moment how we could take this further and devise a technique capable of blurring the line between fact and fable sufficiently to suspend disbelief more completely. We would then be free to draw readers into an ethos of meta-reality (transcending normal awareness) so that fiction can morph into perceived truth long enough to cross the threshold of rationality and sow the seeds of visualization. At which point doors can open to even more fascinating possibilities.

Getting there

Noble principles. But how can we reach such a goal? Is it really achievable? The only way of being sure we are making our mark is to closely monitor readers’ feedback and reviews, hoping we can excite comments like these:

“Once you have turned the last page, you can return to your linear world, to the safety of those physical or metaphysical explanations for our existence you have always taken for granted. But if you have just read this book, they will never be the same.”

“The book created many questions, which is great. It stretched my mind beyond what I knew. Who can say it is not based on real facts? What it made me do was research other religions, past lives, the in between and lost cities, to name just a few…”

This “extension” of Visionary Fiction, exploring a world that transcends reality, may be further defined as a combination of “True Fable” and “Crafted Facts.” The fable is the ongoing story, with its paranormal, ancestral, metaphysical components and inspirational essence, while the crafted facts provide solid contemporary corroboration of these archetypal events, giving them an aura of believability. These ancillary elements can take many forms; press cuttings, advertisements, radio or TV interview transcriptions, diary entries, e-mails, scientific papers, web pages and even vehement criticism from opponents to the fundamental principles being expressed!

For example, if your fable features unicorns, you can include a paper on the discovery of a unicorn hind’s skull in Pennsylvania in April 2012 (backed by photographic evidence) or an article about a young deer spotted in an Italian nature reserve with a single, central antler… If these components are presented convincingly enough, the original “fable” gains much more credibility than it could possibly command otherwise. Readers can get a very long way into such a book before fully realising that everything is part of a multi-layered parallel reality demonstrating the highly subjective nature of “perception” and “truth.” The variety in layout, typefaces, and presentation of these various elements also gives this kind of book added credence, and may even make printed versions more attractive, since many readers perceive them as being more “collectable” than text-only or e-books. Our illustration demonstrates the potential diversity.

Defining the sub-genre

This multi-layered invention designed as a means of giving authority to the impossible has been dubbed “meta-realist allegory.”

Wikipedia defines the allegory as a “literary device, in its most general sense an extended metaphor. It has been used widely throughout history in all forms of art, largely because it can readily illustrate complex ideas and concepts in ways that are comprehensible or striking to its viewers, readers, or listeners.”

“Writers or speakers typically use allegories as literary or rhetorical devices that convey hidden meanings through symbolic actions, imagery, and/or events, which together create the moral, spiritual, or political meaning the author wishes to convey.”

It would be fair to say that most Visionary Fiction has an allegorical aspect. By adding the meta-realist elements described above with their added symbolical connotation and “irrefutable” assertions, the whole visionary message comes alive, making it really possible to stimulate visualization and everything that implies.

Dangers of disenchantment

Like everything else, this approach does have a downside and must be carefully managed. Since the suspension of disbelief is so compelling, different readers experience their “Epiphany Moment” (realizing all is invention) at different times. Naturally, some fully understand the genre from the outset, particularly if they have noted the Visionary Fiction Alliance Association or see through the carefully worded disclaimers. This audience is likely to relish the way the various elements and intrigues are orchestrated, although being fully aware of how the allegory is structured does not prevent many from still wistfully thinking, “Yes, but what if?”

Others are completely drawn into the ethos and have faith in the veracity of what they are reading. On average, readers in this category will have their “EM” about 25% into a work of this kind, probably when they try to find some corroborative information from independent sources on the Internet. By this point, the crafted facts and true fables are so intricately intertwined that most of them willingly continue to suspend all disbelief. Readers in this category are most likely to follow through into visualization and ultimately contribute to manifestation.

There is a third category consisting of those who refuse to acknowledge the allegorical nature of the genre, subscribing wholeheartedly to the authenticity of both “fable” and “facts” until the very end. An “EM” at this point, or later, can result in total disenchantment or even resentment leading to feelings of having been duped; a dangerous scenario that could result in disparaging reviews. Authors should therefore make every effort to handle this type of situation with great care.

Summary

All the components of the “meta-realist allegory” are woven together in a fabric designed to draw readers little by little into an enveloping ethos that blurs the line between fact and fable. Readers find themselves so totally convinced by the compelling, fully documented ancillary material that the original “fable” gains greatly enhanced credibility. It can take readers some considerable time to fully realize that everything is part of a multi-layered invention demonstrating the highly subjective nature of “perception” and “truth.” Making everything – and anything – possible.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Author Bio

Initially a compulsive writer of poems, dramatic monologues and radio plays, from 1967 – 1973, Gordon Keirle-Smith was a visionary artist, producing highly symbolic paintings. Everything changed when he met Johfra and Ellen Lorien, two founder members of the Dutch meta-realist visionary art movement. He desperately wanted to emulate them… but lacked the formal training needed to come anywhere near their technical mastery…

He therefore decided to start painting with words rather than oils and brushes. In 1973, he moved to France, where he drafted the first version of “Zandernatis” incorporating all the symbolic and visionary images he would never have had the time – or the skill – to paint.

After a series of contrasting careers, Gordon founded his own communications coaching, copywriting and transcreation business in 1994, allowing him to hone his journalistic, creative writing and copy editing skills in an incredibly diverse range of fields. Perfect grounding for what came next. In 2013, he unearthed the original typescript of “Zandernatis” and began updating it, adding the innovative aspects of the work he was now able to introduce. Two years later, all three volumes of “Zandernatis – Where Legends Were Born” – a definitive “meta-realist allegory,” had been published with translation into French underway.