Cultural appropriation and the spirits of the land.

I don't want this to be a political blog -- or a food blog or a dieting blog or a Pagan blog, although I've blogged about all those topics over the years. hearth/myth started out as a blog about writing, specifically about writing my books (and, y'know, trying to sell a few). I'm not doing much writing these days, so my posts about writing have been few and far between. But today's post is a little bit about writing, and about Paganism, too.

I'm going to try to keep the political stuff to every other week or so. There's a fresh outrage every day (a recent example: I'm concerned that we're going to end up at war with our NATO comrades over Greenland, all so that Trump and his superrich cronies can lock up the wealth in natural resources that will reveal itself as the Arctic ice recedes due to climate change), and I simply can't cover them all. 

Anyway. This week's post is about writing and Paganism and cultural appropriation. 

JosefKlopacka | Deposit Photos

I can't remember whether I've mentioned it here on the blog, but I've been attending a Pagan group once a month for almost a year now. I don't want to go into too many details about who's running it, etc., because I'm going to air some misgivings I've had about the founders since pretty much the first meeting, and I don't want to trash them. Paganism is a big tent, and everybody has a place under it.

Anyway, I've quit the group. I have several reasons, and it took me way too long to put my finger on one of them.

I've mentioned to the group's founders in passing that I'm an author. They are also authors, although they don't write fiction. But I could never get a conversation going with them about the writing process or publishing or anything else, which struck me as odd. Usually, when two or more authors get together, they inevitably start talking shop. Never happened with these folks. But then, over the holidays, it dawned on me that while they haven't come right out and said it, a couple of times they have mentioned cultural appropriation while not quite looking my way. And maybe I'm wrong, and if so, I apologize for jumping to conclusions, but it made me wonder whether they'd actually looked me up on Amazon and read a book or two and, well.

It's not the first time I've had cultural appropriation aimed at me for what I write. I'm a white woman, after all, and a lot of my books feature Native American characters and Native American deities. I did a whole bunch of research into myths, traditions, and tribes in the process of writing The Pipe Woman Chronicles, but it was all arm's-length research. I don't have any lived experience as a Native American because I'm not one (other than that family legend that has yet to pan out). 

But nobody with any authority on the subject has ever approached me and said, look, what you're saying is all wrong and you need to take these books off the market. The criticism has always come from politically correct folks who believe that you shouldn't write about a minority group or another culture -- or anybody, really -- if you're not a member of that group or culture.

I mean, tell that to men who write female characters. Or women who write male characters. Hardly any humans have been in space, but that hasn't stopped authors from writing science fiction. Tolkien never went to Middle-Earth, but it didn't stop him from writing The Lord of the Rings. Storytellers use their imaginations. 

Anyway, I'm sympathetic to those who are concerned about cultural appropriation, but I decided years ago that I was okay with what I was writing. My characters, to me, are people first, before any society-derived labels are loaded onto them; I imagine their humanity, and that's how I write about them.

Now, a bunch of my characters aren't people, precisely; they're gods and goddesses. I'm a polytheist, and while a lot of Pagans, including this group's founders, believe that all goddesses all over the world are aspects of a single Goddess, and all gods all over the world are aspects of the same Horned God, I don't. That's not how I experience them -- and now we are talking about my lived experience. Heck, I wrote Morrigan into a series of novels, and then She approached me. And enlisted me into her army.

If you think that last sentence makes me sound crazy, I don't know what to tell you. It's a thing that happened to me. And Morrigan didn't complain about me writing about Her, either. In fact, none of the gods and goddesses I've written into my books have ever shown up on my ethereal doorstep, seeking vengeance. 

You would think They would if They were mad, right?

That segues, more or less, into this: The group's founders have been living here in New Mexico for many, many years. One of them said something at one point about how they hadn't heard anything from the spirits on their land -- except, "well, there was that one time...". 

I was quietly incredulous. You got a message from a local spirit and didn't respond? That, to me, is crazy. I got the sense that they didn't want to start a relationship with gods or spirits who weren't, y'know, theirs. But you have to be on good terms with the land spirits, wherever you live. If one of Them approaches you with a message, it seems to me like it would be a good idea to listen -- and even say hello from time to time. That's not cultural appropriation; that's being neighborly.

Anyway, bottom line: The group is not my cup of tea. I'm going to get through this year's legislative session and then look for another Pagan group. Or start one myself. All I really want to find is folks to observe the Sabbats with.

***

I mentioned my day job a second ago. This year, we have a 30-day session; our department started working seven days a week last Monday, and we'll be done February 19th at noon. I am hoping to keep blogging every Sunday night throughout, but we'll see how it goes.

***

These moments of slightly politically incorrect blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Take care of yourselves. We need everyone at their best for what's to come.

A late summer roundup.

A view from my porch.
Lynne Cantwell | August 2025

I'm back, having never been away.

I can explain!

In my last post two weeks ago, I said I would be having carpal tunnel release surgery on my right hand on August 8th, then traveling to greater Chicagoland this past weekend for my high school reunion. Neither of those things happened.

I decided to put off the surgery because of the portable swamp coolers. I wrote about them earlier this summer -- you can go here to refresh your memory, if you like -- but the problem relating to the surgery was that I use a two-gallon watering can to fill them, and I realized I wasn't going to be able to lift it with just one hand. And it has been too hot to go without using the swamp coolers. So the surgery has been rescheduled for the end of September, which hopefully will not conflict with our governor's reported plans to call a special legislative session within the next few weeks.

That explains the surgery delay, but what about canceling the trip? That's because of the Bathroom Vanity Project.

The original vanity was the one the builders installed when the place was built in 1987. It was the same design as the kitchen cabinets, except shorter in height. It was also so long that I had to move the litter box every time I wanted to do laundry. Some previous owner had replaced whatever the original countertop was with Talavera tile: countertop, backsplash, and matching sinks. I like Talavera tile, but there are lots (and lots) of designs, and I wasn't wild about this one. Here:

Lynne Cantwell | 2023

The tile was inoffensive (which was part of my problem with it, to be honest) and some of it was dark green, which clashed with the laundry closet door after I painted it turquoise blue.

I spent a lot of time looking at replacement vanities online. The ones in my price range looked like boxes; the ones with a little style to them were over my budget. So last fall, when my friend Kim was in town, we checked out consignment shops and found this: 

Lynne Cantwell | 2024

It had started out life as an entertainment center. I knew I wanted a vessel sink; this was the right height and definitely did not look like a box. So I bought it and had it delivered, and it sat in my storage closet until last month, when I contracted with the cabinet makers down the street to put it in.

Well. The top is not flat, which I knew, and the thing is not square. Plus I had to have more Saltillo tile put in because the people who installed it didn't pull the old vanity to lay it underneath. (It turned out there was nothing under the old vanity but the subfloor.) Then there was the miscommunication about the sink; I'm going down to one sink from two, and I had the plumbers put the new connections in the wrong place, so that had to be fixed.

Anyway, the bottom line is that it's not done yet. The floor tile and vanity are in, the new countertop will be installed tomorrow, the backsplash will go up Tuesday, and then I can have the plumbers come back. Hopefully it'll be all done by the end of this week. Then I get to spend Labor Day weekend painting. 

The joys of homeownership...

***

This post is already pretty long, but I wanted to mention the death this week of James Dobson, who founded Focus on the Family in 1977.

Dobson -- along with Jerry Falwell, founder of Liberty University and creator of the label "the Moral Majority", and Pat Robertson, who founded the Christian Broadcasting Network and what's now Regis University -- were probably the most well-known promoters of evangelical Christianity in the 1970s and '80s. All three of them espoused the sort of "family values" that include opposition to abortion and the claim that LGBTQ+ people are misled and should undergo conversion therapy. (Conversion therapy doesn't work, has been proven detrimental to those who undergo it, and is now banned in 23 states and DC.) But Dobson in particular is vilified by a lot of people whose parents ascribed to his harsh, abusive childrearing techniques. One blogger began his post with this: "JAMES DOBSON, 89, died this week after a long battle with children." He goes on to say that Dobson's philosophy on raising children was in reaction to that of Dr. Benjamin Spock, who said kids do best when disciplined with love and understanding: "Dobson contended that children were born sinful and must be beaten without mercy in order to secure their bond to their parents and the church, and, of course, to save them ... from damnation." 

A charming fellow. But he, Robertson, and Falwell insinuated their hateful brand of Christianity into the highest echelons of government in this country, and for decades, conservative candidates have appreciated their followers' support. Ronald Reagan courted the evangelical vote. So did George W. Bush. And I'm sure you've seen the laying-on-of-hands memes featuring the current occupant of the White House -- a man whose behavior is in no way Christian, but whose supporters claim he was sent by God to save the nation.

Dobson, Robertson, and Falwell are all gone now; Falwell died in 2007, Robertson in 2023. But the poison they introduced into our national discourse has become deeply rooted, and it needs to be uprooted from our government before we can recover from the mess we're in.

***

You could argue that I conceived of The Pipe Woman Chronicles partly as a response to the damage evangelicalism was doing to the nation.

I used to say that I thought Falwell was the Antichrist until Robertson came along. Then I realized that Falwell was the anti-John-the-Baptist.

I hope they're all enjoying themselves now, wherever they've ended up. I'm pretty sure it's not heaven.

***

These moments of deconstructive blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

The no-writing life, three years later.

 

orlaimagen | Deposit Photos

I mentioned at the end of my post last week that it's been more than three years since I published my last novel. The final book in the Atherton Vampire trilogy, The Atherton Vampire: Midnight Creeps, was released in December 2021. 

I originally wrote that series for Kindle Vella, a new Amazon platform that was half book sales and half gaming, or so it seemed to me; you had to buy tokens to pay for the books you bought. I thought it would be a place to find new readers on a brand-new platform that wasn't as glutted as the regular Amazon marketplace had become. I figured maybe I could break out there and inspire those new readers to find the rest of my books. 

It didn't work out that way. As usual, the writers who did well on Vella already had a name elsewhere. Vella must not have made any money for Amazon, either; the Zon shut it down earlier this year.

Jerry Atherton was my last-ditch effort to goose my book sales. By the fall of 2021, I'd been self-publishing for about ten years. I did pretty well with the first five books of the Pipe Woman Chronicles, but the follow-on series didn't sell all that well. My top sales year was 2013. (I actually moved 15,000 copies of all my books that year. Damn! I wonder if that's enough to get me into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association? SWFA membership was one of my goals, once upon a time.)  

By the way, here's a shout-out to the person who bought all five of the Pipe Woman Chronicles books on Amazon this year. How the hell did you find them? They're all ranked at like #2,873,965...

I am off topic, a little, and now I'm going to go a little farther off-topic. Bear with me.

***

A few weeks back -- actually, it was the afternoon of the day that the legislative session ended -- I chatted with a Tarot card reader. Now, alert hearth/myth readers know that I know how to read Tarot and I do readings for myself on the regular. But it can be easy to miss things you don't want to think about. So it's not a bad practice to check in with someone else every now and then.

The main message from this reading was that I had an internal conflict. I'd left DC and moved to Santa Fe (in the midst of a pandemic!) for a reason, and since then, I had kind of lost the plot. And I needed to think about how I was going to get back on track and re-focus on my original goal.

That original goal didn't have anything to do with fiction writing, although I did have vague plans to republish all my books with new covers and maybe make audio books for them all. No, the goal was to quit working full time. And here I am, back at work full-time.

I mean, shit happens. I bought a condo in a building that needs a lot of work. To afford that, I had to go back to work. And now, to be completely honest, with Trump back in office and the DOGEbros loose at the Social Security Administration, I'm just as happy to have a paycheck in case our Social Security and Medicare safety nets disappear.

But when I went back full time, my goal was to do it for just five years, until I turned 70. After these idiots in DC started mucking about, I was bracing myself to work 'til I dropped dead.

But I'm tired, y'all. I need to go back to having unstructured days at some point. So I'm returning to the "retire at 70" mindset, and we'll see where we are in three years.

***

Circling back to the question that some of you may be asking: Am I going to write any more novels?

Honestly? I don't think so. I do so much reading at work nowadays that I can barely read for pleasure anymore; I tend to nod off after about 20 pages. (To be fair, I also nod off while watching stupid TV every evening. Maybe I just need more sleep...) The idea of sitting in front of a computer for even more hours a day sounds less like fun and more like, I dunno, I should get out and take a walk or something instead.

After I re-retire and get a few months of those sweet, sweet unstructured days under my belt, I may try writing again. Or if I get a kickass idea for a book in the meantime. But otherwise, I plan to stay retired from the writing life.

***

These moments of introspective blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell, all of whose 40-ish titles are still available on Amazon. 

Sometimes family legends check out.

 

shepherd302 | Deposit Photos

As you may remember from a couple of weeks ago, after several nudges (either subconscious or Otherworldly, take your pick), I succumbed and signed up for a membership to Ancestry.com -- whereupon I found out, almost immediately, that my brother had died last year. 

Of course, once you find out something like that, you wonder what else is going on in your family tree that you didn't know about. So instead of canceling after the free trial, I've gone on to flesh out some other details. In particular, I've been trying to confirm some family legends.

It's been easier to find stuff on my father's side of the family. (Mom's parents came from what's now Czechia -- back then, it was Bohemia, a province of the Austrian Empire.) For one thing, I've already seen a family tree developed by a distant cousin who was adopted young, went looking for his birth family, and found out he was a Cantwell. (We got acquainted when he called my parents' house, asking whether we had a Lawrence Cantwell in the family. He didn't want my brother; he wanted my grandfather, whose given name was Lawrence, although he went by Tug, and who died when my dad was nine years old.) So I already had a general idea of the Cantwells' migration: from Delaware to Michigan where my dad was born, with stops in Maryland, the Carolinas, Kentucky, Indiana, and Wisconsin.

I remember hearing from Dad three family stories pertinent to this part of the tree: we were Irish, two brothers had married two sisters, and we had an "Indian princess" in the family whose maiden name was Terwilliger. 

About being Irish: That family tree I mentioned earlier (there's a copy in the Library of Congress -- ol' Henry Cantwell did it right!) traces us back to the first Cantwell in America, Capt. Edmund Cantwell, who came with the British fleet in 1664 to capture New Amsterdam from the Dutch. (New Amsterdam is now known as New York City.) The Brits were successful, and Capt. Cantwell stayed in the New World, marrying a Dutch girl born in New Amsterdam, and went on to have a successful career as high sheriff of what became New Castle County, Delaware. Anyway, the point here is that our first Cantwell wasn't technically Irish; he was born in Berkshire, England. He may have had Irish relations, and his immediate family might have emigrated from Ireland after Cromwell kicked them out. But there were also other Cantwells in England at the time. Bottom line: I don't know whether Capt. Cantwell was Irish. But if he wasn't, then which ancestor was?

I direct your attention to this snippet of a page in the 1870 census for the town of Rock, Wisconsin. 

On line 22 is William H. Cantwell. He's my great-grandfather. My grandfather, Daniel, is on line 26; he was just three years old in 1870. But just below William is his wife Margaret. Take a look at where Margaret was born. Ha! There's our Ireland connection!

It gets even more interesting. Skip over the Caughlins and go down to line 32. There's another Cantwell -- William's brother, James. See his wife Jane? She was also born in Ireland, right? 

I know from other sources that Margaret and Jane's maiden name was Lynch. And here on lines 38 and 39 are their parents, Timothy and Hanora Lynch, both born in Ireland.

In the 1880 census, James and his family are still in Wisconsin, but my great-grandparents are living in Marcellus, Michigan. I have no idea why they moved. But I've got two of my three family legends confirmed: we're Irish, and two brothers married two sisters.

The third one, about our Native ancestry, is proving trickier. See, there's a record of Daniel having married a woman named Mary Fobare in Holland, Michigan, in 1887. Her people were supposedly French. But what about the Terwillegar connection? There's a family of Terwillegars who lived north of Holland, in Bear Lake, Michigan, and who emigrated from Canada. Through them, I traced the last name of Weir. And there's a birth record for a Mary Weir in Ontario that says the father is "John (of the Nation) Weir". Does "of the Nation" mean he was a member of a First Nation? I don't know, but it seems worth checking out. 

I have a request in to Indigenous Services Canada for a genealogy search. Even that may not be definitive; he may not have been part of a registered tribe. But we'll see.

***

If you've read this far, you must be a genealogy buff. I can't imagine all this would be that interesting to anyone besides me.

Still, it would be cool to find that my interest in Native American mythology -- the springboard for my Pipe Woman Chronicles novels -- comes from somewhere other than just idle curiosity.

***

These moments of bloggy historical investigation have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell, who really can trace her ancestry back to colonial America. Stay safe!

Making the mundane sacred.

I usually agree with John Beckett, the Druid priest who blogs over at Patheos Pagan. But I had a problem with today's post from the get-go.

His post is in response to a question he received on a post-class survey: "How can we learn to see mundane activities through a sacred lens?" His TL;DR response: we can't. Because as soon as we consider the mundane sacred, the sacred necessarily becomes mundane.

That's going to be news to the members of certain Native American tribes, not to mention monks of various religious orders. 

It's easy, I think, for most of us to see how Catholic monks would consider day-to-day activities as sacred. They've pledged their lives in service of their Lord, so anything they do that helps the community thrive becomes a sacred duty -- even peeling potatoes and scrubbing floors. While Buddhist monks don't pledge their lives to a deity, they do separate themselves from the world in order to achieve enlightenment. Buddhists employ various types of meditation to reach this state, and enlightenment can strike any time -- even, say, when doing the dishes. 

Quasarphotos | Deposit Photos

As for Native Americans, the first thing I thought of was the Navajo Beauty Way. For the Navajo, as I understand it, beauty isn't just superficial; it's a way of life. It's living in balance with the land, with other people (including non-human people), and with their spirits. If a Navajo has somehow fallen away from the Beauty Way, whether by their own actions or through no fault of their own, rituals may be done to set them on the right path again.

I am broadly generalizing here. But the common denominator, as I see it, is in the attitude you employ as you go about your day. You don't have to be a monk or a Navajo to attain this, either: If you have settled on what you consider to be your moral imperatives, and you build your life around them, then everything you do that gets you to the goal of living your truth could be considered sacred. In other words, it's not the stuff around you that's sacred, although depending on how you believe it all got here, it could be; the important thing is how you interact with it.

Let's say you're a lawyer. What they teach you in law school is that everybody -- and I mean everybody -- is entitled to representation before the law. If that's your moral imperative, then you theoretically would have no qualms about representing a defendant who has admitted to killing multiple people in the most gruesome manner possible. Sure, your client is a horrible human being, but they deserve -- they must have -- a lawyer who will advocate for them before a judge and jury, and even plead for mercy.

That's one sort of moral imperative. But what if you're a lawyer whose moral imperative is that killing is wrong? Or what if you've been okay with representing killers for a while now, but something has changed? Maybe your latest client shot up a school, and you have kids who are the same age as the victims. (Full disclosure: I soured on being a news reporter when I had to cover a story about a scumbag who killed his three-year-old stepson because he wouldn't eat Thanksgiving dinner. He buried the boy's body in a truck toolbox in the Great Dismal Swamp. My daughters were toddlers at the time.) Now you have a moral dilemma. How do you resolve it? Do you move into another field? Or do you keep doing your job, even as you feel yourself falling farther and farther away from what the Navajo call the Beauty Way?

In The Pipe Woman Chronicles, Naomi Witherspoon resolves a similar dilemma by becoming a mediator. And then she meets a Lakota goddess and a hot Ute shapeshifter, but I digress. 

And I guess I've digressed pretty far from the point of this post, which is this: I believe that if you're working toward living an ethical life -- in other words, living up to your own standards of morality -- then every step you take toward that goal can be considered sacred. Even doing the dishes.

***

These moments of moral blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Do the right thing: Mask up, maintain your social distance, and above all, get vaxxed!

The Payoff: Patience rewarded.

The preorder is up and the wait is nearly over. The Payoff  goes live this Friday, April 30th. Thanks to all of you who have preordered already! I'm grateful to each and every one of you.

Cheetah 123 | Deposit Photos

Patience is a virtue, or so I've been told. We have all been forced to practice patience during this past year plus, waiting for our vaccinations to take effect and for the world to reopen. Some of us have been more gracious about this down time than others, it's true. But whether we grump or whine or take more drastic measures -- or sit back and resign ourselves to waiting -- it's all really just the way we choose to pass the time until the pandemic is over.

Even before the virus hit, we had a choice about how to react to waiting. There are all sorts of coping strategies available, from meditation to creative crafting to kickboxing. But really, the only thing that will fix the problem is the passage of time.

In The Payoff, Janis and Jan have had a lot of time to practice patience. Forty years, in fact. Raised together at a quasi-research facility called the Institute, they fell in love -- and then to protect themselves and each other from the woman who tormented them there, they split up. Four decades later, they have reunited to finally right the wrongs that were done to them all those years ago.

Seems like a ridiculously long time to wait, right? I received some similar complaints about Naomi Witherspoon's ten-year romance with Brock Holt in Seized. Why did she wait around so long for him to ask her to marry him? Why didn't she dump him when she realized he was a jerk? Well, to be honest, it was partly because that was the timeline that the story demanded. 

But the book's critics also didn't seem to want to give enough credit to inertia. You know, you're in this thing and it's not great, but it's really not that terrible if you squint just right, and you can manage it okay or anyway you tell yourself you can. And life happens and pretty soon you realize you've been with this guy for ten years and nothing's happening, and why is this owl dive-bombing you in downtown Denver?

Naomi was not so much practicing patience as she was practicing inattentiveness. She woke up pretty fast when Joseph showed up, though.

In The Payoff, Janis Fowler and Jan Marek are in a completely different situation. As children, they mentally granted outsized power to Dr. Tandy, who had total control over their lives. They weren't much more than children when they left the Institute -- they were certainly naive about how the world worked -- so they never had the chance that you and I have had, as adults, to recast our mental picture of the adults in our young lives as fallible people who don't control us any longer. And Jan had Seen that he and Janis would be reunited someday, and that would be the time they could finally give Tandy what she deserved. 

So they've waited. For forty years.

There are lots of true-life stories about couples who split up when they're young due to circumstances beyond their control and reunite decades later. Usually, in the meantime, they've gotten on with their lives: they've married somebody else, raised a family, worked, or gone to war. In these tales, when the couple gets back together again, they often find that while they're different people now than before they split, their reunion was worth the wait.

Janis and Jan seem to think their reunion was worth the wait. I'm hoping you, dear readers, will agree.

***

I don't have a link for the paperback edition yet. I'll share that next week. And not to be too much of a tease, but I might even have news about a special edition of The Payoff then, too. 

Sounds like it's a good week to practice patience. See you next Sunday.

***

These moments of impatient blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Keep masking up and social distancing! And get vaccinated when you can!

A woo-woo follow-up.

Free Photos | Pixabay

I want to thank everybody who commented, both here and on Facebook, on my post last week about my weird experiences. I was gratified to get so many responses. (Okay, I didn't get as many responses as I got on this week's viral Facebook post -- "who's the most famous person you've met?" -- but still.) And I'm certain others would have commented if they'd seen my post (thanks, Facebook...) or if they'd felt comfortable talking about their weird experiences in public.

Because a lot of us aren't. One of the stories I shared last week, I'd kept to myself for 30 years. People think no one will believe them -- or that others will think they're crazy. Depending on their religious persuasion, they might even be accused of consorting with the devil.

Our society doesn't give us a useful frame of reference for these experiences. Science is no help; you can't reproduce a weird experience on command. Look, I am a big booster of science.  How else would we have gotten Perseverance to Mars this week? How will we ever be free of this virus without medical breakthroughs like vaccines? 

But science doesn't have all the answers. 

I heard that: "Yet." Well, maybe. Or maybe there are some things science will never be able to explain. Especially if scientists insist on approaching weird occurrances with a materialist mindset. You can't force a ghost to materialize, after all, or allow someone to hear a voice from the Otherworld that's speaking only to you.

And as John Beckett mentioned in his blog post today, the frames of reference we do get from society aren't helpful. A whole lot of them are from fiction -- TV, movies and books -- and the woo-woo just doesn't work in (pardon the expression) the real world the way it does when someone's making it up. I am here to tell you that a real-life Naomi Witherspoon could never demand that a goddess show up in her living room Right Now and have the goddess actually show up. That's just not how it works.

I mentioned religion a little while ago, and I'd like to go back to that for a second. A number of the folks I talked with about last week's post are refugees, if you will, from a fairly mainstream religion they consider to be a cult. They associate tales of the woo-woo with certain practices they experienced in this church, and it has made them skeptical, or more accurately disbelieving, of anyone who says they've had weird things happen to them. That's an avoidance response, and it's a reasonable coping mechanism for someone who has been traumatized. I've read about people who have had similar reactions after escaping from an evangelical church. 

The recovery process for an abuse victim is long and not a lot of fun. But recovery is possible. And as part of the process, it might be worth thinking about whether two things could be true at once: that cult leaders, whether they founded a religion or not, are charlatans who have abused a lot of people and that magic is real.

Thanks again to everyone who commented last week. And if you're still working up to talking about your weird experience, I'm still listening whenever you're ready.

***

These additional moments of bloggy woo-woo have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Keep wearing a mask and social distancing! 

True tales of the woo-woo.

Mist on the Rhine | copyright Lynne Cantwell 2019

So you all know I write a lot of stuff that deals with the woo-woo, as Naomi Witherspoon calls it. What you probably don't know is that I've had a number of brushes with the woo-woo myself. 

A lot of people have. But those who experience odd things don't often discuss it because they're afraid -- rightfully so, in many cases -- that they'll either be scoffed at or (depending on the religion of their audience) told they're consorting with demons.

Right now I'm taking a Paganism-related class online in which the instructor encouraged us to share our weird experiences in our private group. A whole lot of people came forward. Their experiences run the gamut from seeing ghosts to experiences with deities to, well, weird things.

Here are three of mine.

***

I'm reasonably sure that at least some of what we call intuition is more than just thoughts in our own heads. Take this weird thing that happened to me more than 30 years ago. 

The Mensa chapter of which I was a member organized a regional gathering, and as part of the entertainment, a friend and I offered to do divinations for any attendee who wanted one. I did a Tarot reading for a couple I didn't know, and as I looked at the cards I'd laid out, I was suddenly sure the woman was pregnant. I had no idea what the news would do to their relationship (this was the '80s -- for all I knew, they could have hooked up at the RG) so I said something vague like "big news and big challenges are coming" and left it at that. They weren't from our chapter and I had no way of finding out later whether I was right. But I was sure I was.

You could call that intuition, I suppose. But that certainty didn't come from inside my own head.

***

This next weird thing is more recent -- and a little weirder. As y'all know, I made a big move this past July. And in preparation for it, I sorted through all my stuff, including things I'd inherited from my mother after she died in 2008. In one of my bins of crafting stuff, I ran across a couple of Mom's unfinished projects that I'd kept, meaning to finish them someday. One of the projects was a bunch of embroidered fabric squares for a baby quilt. Mom had done all the embroidery; all that was left was to piece them together. Now I say "all that was left," but it would still have been a ton of work. The blocks needed be sewn together with fabric strips between them, and the batting and the backing fabric attached -- none of which I had -- and then the actual quilting had to be done. And I realized some of the blocks had those rusty stains that old fabric sometimes acquires out of nowhere. I'd have had to figure out how to get those mystery stains out before I did anything else. 

As I contemplated my options, I clearly heard my mother's voice: "Oh, throw it out!"

Mom grew up in the Great Depression. She never threw anything out. But it was definitely her voice. "Are you sure?" I said aloud.

"Yes, throw it out!" she said. 

"Well, okay," I said. "If you're sure." 

Silence. Apparently that was her final word. So out it went.

I am pretty sure I posted about this on Facebook at the time, and I could tell it made some people uncomfortable. I seem to recall that someone tried to talk me into keeping the project anyway. Did they think I was making up hearing Mom's voice to justify dumping those quilt blocks? Or did they think I was delusional? I couldn't tell you. But I'll tell you this: Mom was adamant that I get rid of the thing. Who was I to say no?

*** 

One more weird thing: This one happened in the mid to late '90s, around the time my divorce was final. I had picked up a book called Secret Native American Pathways by Thomas Mails. It included instructions for things like making a prayer stick and a medicine wheel, and for setting up your own vision quest. I didn't have the time to head out into the wilderness, or a helper to make it safe -- but I had floor space in the basement. I marked off a rectangle with string, tied the proper colored fabric on each side to mark the four directions, sat in my square, and started praying to Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit of the Sioux. I babbled for quite a while. And as I was asking to be made worthy of love, a voice interrupted me -- literally interrupted me -- and told me I already was. 

I began to cry. Trust me when I say this was not a thought that would have come out of my own head back then. 

I think that was the point when I began to believe the woo-woo was real.

***

Now it's your turn. Feel free to leave a comment about your own weird experience. Or if you don't feel comfortable sharing it in a public forum, which I completely understand, drop me an email at lynne.cantwell@hearth-myth.com. I believe the more we share our experiences, the less alone we'll feel, and the more accepted the woo-woo will become.

***

These moments of bloggy woo-woo have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Wash your hands! Stay six feet apart! And wear a mask!

Moving into autumn, Ruth-less.

Yurumi | Depositphotos.com

In early August, not long after I arrived in New Mexico, I posted about all the things I planned to do this fall. I was going to design new covers for the Pipe Woman Chronicles omnibi and start working on audiobooks for all of my novels and I forget what else.

So here we are at Mabon -- the autumnal equinox -- and I've done none of those things.

I did start writing a new short story. It's about half done. Haven't finished it.

I could beat myself up over it, but what's the point? Guilt has never been one of my stronger motivators. I'm more interested in why it's happening (or more accurately, not happening). And I think it's because I'm just flat exhausted.

I've been working for 40 years -- first in broadcast journalism, then as a legal secretary. Sure, there have been times I wasn't showing up at a job every day, but during those breaks I was: on maternity leave, which is so not a vacation; or laid off and looking for a new job; or going back to school for my paralegal certificate. Even when I was on sabbatical from WilmerHale, work was still on my mind. On my first sabbatical, I got a call from work asking me to take on additional duties when I got back. On my second sabbatical this spring, I couldn't hand in my work laptop and phone because the office was closed due to the virus.

And then in July, when I was supposed to be done working, I got talked into staying on for another three weeks. By the time I mailed all the equipment back, I had just enough time to pack the car and hit the road for Santa Fe.

On top of that, for almost the past ten years, I've been writing and publishing three books a year. 

And on top of that is all the political upheaval of the past four years. 

Long-time hearth/myth readers will recall that back in 2016, right after the last presidential election, Amy and I created a dumpster fire ornament. We hung it on our Yule tree that year, never dreaming that things could get worse than 2016 had been. But then 2020 looked 2016 square in the eye and said, very clearly, "Hold my beer."

This past week, we surpassed 200,000 Americans dead from COVID-19. We have a decently-performing stock market, but a limping economy in all other respects. We have a president who is apparently incapable of making any of this better. And now we've lost Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the Court's stalwart liberals, and it looks like the Republicans in the Senate will gleefully break their own rule from 2016 and replace her ASAP -- regardless of the fact that we're only 43 days out from Election Day and early voting has already started. 

I'd make another dumpster fire ornament, but honestly, who wants a 2020 keepsake? 

For Pagans, the equinoxes are all about balance. Day and night are of equal length at this time of year, and that encourages us to find balance in our own lives. Now is the time to begin to take stock of our personal harvests and set aside what will sustain us through the winter.

So I'm taking stock. 

I think when I announced those goals in August -- Write ALL the things! Make ALL the book covers! Record ALL the books! -- I was still in go-go mode. I didn't realize how tired I was. Now, I'm beginning to. And to be honest, I'm relieved to be off the damned clock for once.

Eventually, the book covers will get made and the audiobooks will be recorded. Eventually, I'll finish that short story I started. 

And eventually, we'll have a vaccine for the virus.

What's most important to me now -- and especially so, since Justice Ginsburg's death -- is to see Joe Biden elected as our next president. 

And by the way, the Constitution doesn't specify the number of Supreme Court justices. We have had as few as six and as many as ten -- and there's no reason we couldn't have ten again. Or more, even. Merrick Garland could still get a seat on the Court. And additionally, I think Justice Barack Obama has a nice ring to it.

Blessed Mabon, you guys.

***

These moments of balanced blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. For the love of all the gods, VOTE!

Do you really want to meet your Inner Goddess?

luidger | Wikimedia Commons | CC3

This week, I ran across an article on the Patheos Pagan channel about the idea of women having an inner goddess. The author, Astrea, is a polytheist witch, and she has some strong opinions on the subject. 

But first, let's meet our charming lady to the right. She is Coatlicue, the Aztec mother goddess. Here, let me excerpt myself; this description of Coatlicue is from A Billion Gods and Goddesses, my mythological companion volume to the Pipe Woman Chronicles.

***

You have to give the Aztecs props for one thing: They don’t have much in the way of cuddly deities. Two serpents, facing each other and made of blood, form Coatlicue’s head. Her skirt, too, is made of serpents, and She wears a necklace of human skulls, hearts and hands. Her taloned feet clutch a root of the Aztec world tree.

Coatlicue was a sacrificial mother figure: the goddess who birthed, or rebirthed, Huitzilapochtli, the god who led the Aztec people from their original homeland of Aztlán to Mexico. As Coatlicue was sweeping out a temple at Coatepec in Mexico, She caught a ball of feathers and tucked it inside Her shirt. When She was done sweeping, the feathers had disappeared, and She realized they had impregnated Her. Her other children – four hundred sons and a daughter – were so upset with Their mother that They plotted to kill Her. But when They cut off Coatlicue’s head, Huitzilapochtli sprang from Her body, dismembered His sister, and killed nearly all of His brothers.

Experts speculate this tale of the rebirth of Huitzilapochtli may relate to the ascendance of a new, very human leader of the Aztecs who may have been seen as the second coming of the god. But it also shows Coatlicue as a figure in the spirit of the Hindu goddess Kali – both creator and destroyer. Just like the Earth itself.

***

Wouldn't you just love to have Coatlicue as your inner goddess? With her responsibility for birth, death, and rebirth? Snake heads and all?

I admit I'm being snarky. Indulge me while I unpack this.

The concept of human women having an inner goddess has been around for quite a while. I can't find anything online to back this up, but my gut tells me it started as part of the backlash against patriarchal religions like, say, Christianity. According to New Age theory, Woman embodies the Divine Feminine, in all her Jungian archetypal glory -- from  Maiden to Mother to Wise Woman, with stops at Warrior, Lover, Queen, and yes, Goddess. The idea is that every woman contains each of those archetypes, and integrating them all into her Self -- embracing both the Light and the Dark, and manifesting them all -- is the only way to self-actualize and self-integrate and basically become the best woman she could be.

And then the author of 50 Shades of Grey got hold of the concept and "inner goddess" work became nothing but a BDSM romp. Imagine -- our inner goddess had been Aphrodite all along!

When that happened, the marketers saw an opportunity. This is one of the arguments Astrea employs in her post, and I think she's on to something. Any time someone can sell you on the idea that you're not quite perfect -- no matter how hard you have tried -- they can sell you on the idea that only they can get you where you want to go. And if they can't, well, the problem isn't with them -- it's with you. 

That, my friends, is the recipe for low self-esteem in a nutshell.

I asked Mama Google for info on finding your inner goddess, and she gave me So. Many. Listicles. And. OMG. Quizzes. (I'm told my inner goddess is a Sphinx, by the way). There's even a WikiHow listicle on "How to Find Your Inner Goddess," complete with two methods: through balance, or through doing nothing. Number two on the "balance" list is to smile often. Gee -- which of us hasn't had a guy tell us to smile more? Maybe they're on to something! But then the do-nothing (or Taoist) approach says that to allow your inner goddess out, one thing you ought to do is "drop your false smiles." Hmm. So which is it -- smile more or smile less?

Are Coatlicue's snake heads smiling? 

Which brings me to Astrea's other main argument: The gods are real, and they don't live inside us. 

I know a lot of folks aren't going to buy this, but if you're a polytheist it ought to at least give you pause. If the gods are real, they're independent beings with their own agendas. They may ask us humans (or demand) that we do what they want us to do. They may even take over a specific human in a ritual setting. But they don't leave crumbs of themselves behind. 

And if you're on the fence about whether the gods are real? Or what if you've decided they don't exist at all? No problem -- because all those Jungian archetypes inside you are human. There are certainly sound, healthy reasons to integrate all the parts of your personality, and to embrace the Dark along with the Light. But the idea that we are flawed from birth is a myth, guys. Excising that myth is actually part of the self-actualization process.

The idea that we've been created in God's image is a Christian belief. The idea that we're all born with something lacking is also a Christian belief. There's no idealized Someone inside of us that we need to let out -- or live up to. We're all just human.

Personally, I find that a great relief. I wasn't nuts about finding either Coatlicue or Aphrodite lurking inside me. Or, for that matter, the Sphinx.

***

These moments of archetypal blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Social distance! Wear a mask! Wash your hands!

Betwixt and between.

Greetings from the Land of Enchantment!

View from the elevator "lobby."

I am now ensconced in a 500-square-foot apartment a couple of blocks from the historic Santa Fe plaza. The weather has been lovely -- or at least it seems so to me, coming from the land where "hazy, hot, and humid" is basically the forecast from Memorial Day to mid-September. I've been sleeping with the windows open every night here. I can't remember when I've ever done that in August, in all the years I lived in DC.

Here I am, talking about the weather like I've been out in it for any length of time. I haven't. That's because the governor of New Mexico has mandated a 14-day self-quarantine for anyone entering the state by any means. A few folks are exempt -- those on essential business, etc. -- but "moving here to retire" is not on the list of exemptions.

I'm not complaining about the restriction, truly. My last stop before crossing the state line was in Amarillo, Texas, where mask wearing is mandatory -- but I have never seen so many chin masks, bare noses, and didn't-bothers as I did at the restaurant where I had dinner that night. It was pretty scary.

So I'm on board with mask wearing and social distancing and waiting out the 14 days. It's just kind of a pain because don't have all my stuff yet. I packed the car full (and bought groceries in Amarillo), so I have the essentials. But the U-Box I rented from U-Haul is undergoing its own quarantine in a storage facility in Albuquerque. I have movers bringing it to me on Thursday. It has been interesting, McGyvering meals without my usual array of cooking implements. (Why didn't I think to bring along a cookie sheet? Or another mixing spoon?)

But for now, I can show you the view from my bedroom window. Think of it as a foretaste of the neighborhood tour to come. Sorry about shooting through the screens. 

The white stuff at the bottom of the photos is a rice paper covering that the management put up. It softens the natural light coming in, plus it's also an effective privacy screen -- and honestly, the only part of the view I care about is the mountains anyway.

The crenellations on the next block belong to the
Lensic Performing Arts Center.

This is the view that sold me on this apartment.

Besides unpacking, I have several projects teed up. One is to redo the covers for the Pipe Woman Chronicles omnibus editions. I spent several hours last night working up a cover idea featuring Naomi and Joseph. It still needs a lot of work. I'll let you know how it goes.

I also think it's time to do omnibi for the Transcendence trilogy, and maybe the Elemental Keys books, too.

And I'm thinking of recording audiobooks for at least some of my books. I attended an online class last week about how to create them in Audacity so that the folks at Audible will accept them. I'm currently waiting on the arrival of a new microphone and stand.

All that and NaNo, too. It's going to be a busy fall (once I get out of quarantine)...

***

These moments of self-isolated blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Wash your hands! Wear a mask! And stay at least six feet away from me!

Reading options for your coronavirus cabin fever.

What a difference a couple of weeks makes. When I blogged about Mercury retrograde and the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 two weeks ago, the situation was a lot more uncertain. Now, health officials are telling people to stay home. Schools are closed, professional sports leagues have suspended their seasons, and lots of entertainment events have been either postponed or canceled outright. Social distancing is one new buzzword, and flattening the curve is another. The idea is to keep everybody from being sick at the same time, because too many cases requiring hospitalization would overwhelm our healthcare system and lead to a situation like Italy's, where they're in danger of running out of intensive care beds. The country reported 368 new deaths from the virus today.

As I type this, the Centers for Disease Control has recommended canceling gatherings of 50 or more people (not counting schools and businesses, inexplicably) for the next two weeks.

This is a serious situation. But of course there are opportunists out there like this clown: He and his brother cleaned out the stocks of hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes from the shelves of every store in several counties, and then sold the stuff online at a stiff markup. Ah, capitalism. But now he's being investigated for price gouging. And he has donated all the stock he couldn't sell (because Amazon and eBay cracked down) -- including nearly 18,000 bottles of hand sanitizer -- to churches in Tennessee and Kentucky.

We at hearth/myth would never stoop to that sort of crass commercialism. But we sympathize with those who will be stuck at home with very little to do for next several weeks, and so I have discounted the price of the Kindle version of the Pipe Woman Chronicles Omnibus to just 99 cents starting tomorrow through the end of the month. That's about 20 cents per book. Even if you've read them all, maybe it's time for a re-read?

In addition, I'm rebooting the Elemental Keys series with new covers and titles. The book that used to be called Rivers Run is now entitled River Magic. It was released this week and it's just $2.99. Isn't the new cover spiffy?

The rest of the series is getting similar cover treatment, and the new versions will be coming out directly. And when I say directly, I mean directly. Book 2, which used to be Treacherous Ground but is now Bog Magic, will be out this week. Book 3, formerly Molten Trail and now Gecko Magic, follows next week. And Book 4, which nobody's read except my editor and me, will be out April 9th.

I may do a preorder for the final book. If so, I'll let you know.

So now you're all set with reading material for the next few weeks, right? And I'll be busy getting the new versions of the Elemental Keys books ready to go. We'll get through this together.

***
These moments of virtually close blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Games night.

I hear there's some kind of sportsball thing happening tonight. Which means some of y'all will soon be really happy, some will be angry and/or sad, and some will be too stuffed from the buffet to care.

Then there's the contingent who suffer through the game just to watch the halftime show. From what I'm seeing in my Facebook feed, those folks are already regretting their life choices tonight.

Well, fear not! I have here a thing that everyone can win.

Do you guys like word searches? I loved them as a kid. I was already good at spelling, and it turned out I was also good at spotting letter combinations in word search puzzles. You wouldn't think that would be a useful life skill -- but then I became an editor.

Anyway, below you will find a word search puzzle. The word list consists of the names of some of the deities in the Pipe Woman Chronicles universe, as lifted from the table of contents of A Billion Gods and Goddesses, 2nd Ed.

I used an online word search generator for this puzzle, and I haven't tried it myself yet. The words can go in any direction -- up, down, across, forward and backward, and diagonally. The generator wouldn't take a word that was more than 15 characters, so White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman has been shortened to "goddess," which is what Naomi calls her most of the time anyway.

Also, the graphic is a .png converted from a pdf. I hope it's clear enough. If not, Adobe owes me fifteen bucks.

Enjoy!

***

These moments of bloggy fun and games have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

To opinionate or not to opinionate?

TPHeinz | CC0 | Pixabay

When I was a kid in the '60s, my parents used to watch the news on Channel 5 out of Chicago, partly because Dad liked their anchor, Floyd Kalber. Then Kalber began delivering commentaries at the end of some of his broadcasts. It turned out he was kind of a liberal, or at least more liberal than my father was. Dad kept watching, but he often complained that he'd liked Floyd Kalber until he started giving his opinion about things.

I'm telling you this to illustrate that the argument over celebrities airing their opinions didn't start with Twitter. It's been going on for decades. Maybe centuries. In fact, it's probably been happening ever since Caveman Og developed the sort of standing in his community that worked best if he maintained his neutrality -- which meant keeping his personal opinions to himself.

The subject pops up in indie author circles every now and then, but it has been an almost constant topic of discussion since the 2016 U.S. presidential election. A lot of authors contend that we, like celebrities and sports figures, shouldn't make political posts on social media, lest we turn our fans against us. And they have a point. I follow a few traditionally-published authors on Facebook and/or Twitter, as well as a few actors; whenever they post political stuff, they get haters and "I really wish you'd stop posting so much about politics" right along with the people who agree with them.

However, despite the complaints, none of the authors and actors I follow have dialed it back.

As for independent authors, many of us have developed work-arounds. Mine, for a long time, was to separate my author persona from my personal stuff -- that is, I would post only writing-related stuff on my Facebook author page and my Twitter account, and keep my personal views confined to my personal timeline on Facebook. That worked pretty well until Facebook started limiting the organic reach of business pages to encourage us to buy ads. At that point, I started setting all, or nearly all, of my timeline posts to public. I've had the occasional troll by doing this, but now that Facebook is getting a handle on its Russian bot problem (ahem...) the trolls have dwindled to very nearly zero. (Of course, now that I've said that, I'll probably get a rash of 'em this week.)

I do think that, like my father and Floyd, some readers are surprised that authors they admire hold the opinions they do. A lot of us are liberals. A lot of us are very liberal.

Here's the thing: Fiction readers -- particularly those who read literary fiction, often develop a finer sense of empathy. And writers are big readers. Plus it takes empathy to get inside the head of a character and write convincingly from that character's point of view. And studies have shown that liberals tend to have higher levels of empathy than conservatives (hence the term "bleeding-heart liberal"). So it really shouldn't be a surprise that authors (and actors, who also have to get inside the heads of the characters they portray) are often liberals politically.

As a journalist, I wasn't comfortable with offering commentaries on the air. I was a reporter, and as a reporter, I believed I needed to view the stories I was covering as objectively as possible. So like Caveman Og, I kept my opinions to myself. Now, though, I'm free of that constraint. And anybody who's read the Pipe Woman Chronicles has a pretty good idea of my political leanings anyhow. So I expect I will continue to offer my opinions on social media -- although I will still keep them off my Facebook author page. And I'm still not going to turn this into a political blog.

***
I said I was going to do a giveaway for the Transcendence books this month, didn't I? And here it is, the last Sunday of the month, and I'm not ready. Let's do it next week.

***
These moments of opinionated blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

We have winners!

It's nearly moving day for us here at La Casa Cantwell, and we have all hit the stage where we are so totally over it.

The old place looks like a disaster area, but nearly everything is packed. Today (and yesterday -- long story, don't ask) we finished assembling the wardrobe at the new place. The movers will be here bright and early tomorrow morning.

And you, my friends, are the most awesome ever, because I will not have to move those two sets (13 books each!) of the paperback editions of the books in the Pipe Woman Chronicles universe.

Please help me congratulate Stephanie Grant and Amanda Smith, the winners of the giveaway! Ladies, I've emailed you for your addresses so I know where to send your books. (If you don't see my email, please check your spam folder.)

I'd love to write more tonight, but I still have to pack up the kitchen (aieeeee...). Thanks to everyone for playing -- you're the best!

***
These moments of bloggy winning have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Moving sale.

Moving. Ugh.

I mentioned last week that we're moving to a new apartment. Along with the usual packing and sorting and packing, we spent several hours yesterday at IKEA. I spent most of today at the new place, assembling the wardrobe I bought yesterday. Good times.

Anyway, there's a lot of packing still to be done, but one thing I would like to not have to pack are a bunch of paperback books in inventory. I bought several copies of each of the books in the Pipe Woman Chronicles last year, intending to run a giveaway on Goodreads...and forgot. The good news is that I now have two -- count 'em, two -- full sets of the three series to give away to you, faithful hearth/myth readers.

Sorry that the photos of the prizes are so awful. The lighting was bad and I've already packed my book stands. But all the books there! In order, they are:

The Pipe Woman Chronicles
Seized
Fissured
Tapped
Gravid
Annealed

Land, Sea, Sky
Crosswind
Undertow
Scorched Earth

Pipe Woman's Legacy
Dragon's Web
Firebird's Snare
Spider's Lifeline
Turtle's Weir

And the second edition of A Billion Gods and Goddesses: The Mythology of the Pipe Woman Chronicles.

The fun starts tonight and ends Saturday night, May 5th, at 7:00pm Eastern time. Unfortunately, I can only afford to ship these sets to folks in the US and Canada. (I also have a couple of sets of the Transcendence series that I meant to give away in this contest, but I realized I'd already packed them. So I guess I'll be giving those away next month -- and since there are only three books in that series, I'll be able to ship them anywhere.)

Of course, the usual and customary rules apply:

1. Friends and family may definitely enter.
2. Winners of previous contests may win again.
3. There will be a winner. I am not moving these books!
4. As always, the judge's decision is arbitrary, capricious, and final.

Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway


***
These moments of contested blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

We may have a book problem.

There's lots more where these came from.

You may have noticed that hearth/myth took a break last week. Frankly, I didn't have the energy to write a blog post; we'd spent several days driving around town, looking for a new apartment, and made the final selection last Sunday.

Go us! Right?

Except now we have to move. Which means packing. Which is not my favorite thing to do ever.

Back when I was in radio, I moved approximately once every two years -- and not just to a different house or apartment, typically, but to a different city. I traveled a lot lighter in those days.

Over the past ten or fifteen years, though, I've only moved a couple of times. And then my mother died and I ended up with a bunch of her old stuff (although not nearly as much of her old stuff as I could have taken -- that woman was a packrat from way back). In any case, packing for this move is likely to be no fun at all.

In particular, my daughters and I have gone kind of crazy collecting books. We took nine boxes of books to our favorite used bookstore this afternoon and brought the empty boxes home. Those have now been refilled, and another sixteen have also been filled with books (and some DVDs). And we aren't done.

A lot of the books I'm keeping are mythology-related. I collected a whole bunch of material for the Pipe Woman Chronicles and I'm not quite ready to part with it. I mean, if I follow through on my threat to move into a tiny house when I retire, I'm going to have to cull the herd again, and a whole lot of those mythology tomes will have to go. But not yet.

One thing I may cull shortly is my inventory of paperback editions of my own books. I stocked up some time ago, intending to do a Goodreads giveaway or several, but never got around to it. Now that we're moving, though... Hmm. Watch this space next week.

***
I'm getting pretty close to being done with the memoir. We take possession of the new apartment a week from tomorrow; it sure would be nice to have this project out the door before then, but I do need to pack. So we'll see.

***
These moments of herd-culling blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

What would Naomi do?

eric1513 | 123RF.com

Like most of you, I've spent the last 48 hours alternately outraged and horrified by what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia, this weekend.

To catch you up: Three people died and 26 were injured in connection with a protest conceived by alt-right groups to protest the Charlottesville city council's plans to take down a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. One of the dead is Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old woman who was attending a counter-protest when a car plowed into the group. The driver, 20-year-old James Alex Fisher Jr. from Maumee, Ohio, is being held on charges of second-degree murder, malicious wounding, and hit-and-run. The Justice Department is investigating and may file additional charges against Fisher. His high school history teacher says Fisher was enamored with Nazis even then.

The other two dead were Virginia State Troopers whose helicopter crashed on landing in a wooded area not far from downtown. The cause of the crash is under investigation.

Reaction to the events has been almost unanimously against the neo-Nazis, white nationalists, KKK members, and fellow travelers who conceived of the event. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have condemned the groups' actions. About the only people who have spoken out in support of these groups, in fact, are other white supremacists.

And then there's President Trump, whose remarks could most charitably be described as noncommittal. Instead of condemning the march's organizers, he spoke against "the egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides."

He also tweeted condolences to the family of the dead woman and "best regards to all of those injured."

"Charlottesville sad!" he said in another tweet.

I keep saying I'm not going to turn this into a political blog, but that guy in the White House, who has at least a couple of white nationalists on staff, keeps testing my resolve.

However, I will forbear. Instead, I'll risk turning this post into a shameless plug for my own books by dreaming aloud about how the characters in the Pipe Woman Chronicles universe would react.

As it happens, the Land, Sea, Sky trilogy -- which is part of that universe -- is set in DC, mostly, and not too far in the future. Thanks to the return of the gods to Earth some years before, a powerful coalition of military, industrial, and legislative leaders has been watching its power slip away. The co-conspirators are organizing what they believe to be a foolproof plan to defeat the gods and put themselves on top again. (You may see a parallel here with the white nationalists who would like to claw back majority control of the United States by staging protests like the one in Charlottesville.)

The good guys in Land, Sea, Sky include Sue Killeen, who works as a project manager for a nonprofit called Earth in Balance; Tess Showalter, an investigative reporter for the New World News Network; Darrell Warren, a Potawatomi healer turned Navy SEAL; and their gods. All the gods, actually. And I included cameo appearances by some of the main characters from the original series: Naomi Witherspoon Curtis, Joseph Curtis, and their children, Sage and Webb.

Any of the humans would give the alt-right a run for their money. But I'd especially love to give Naomi a crack at them. Her special talent is pushing people to do the right thing, and she would have a field day with the boys of the alt-right. And in the White House, too. If Naomi could get hold of President Trump, his tweets would sound very different. Believe me.

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These moments of speculative blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

What is Maggie transcending?

Big publishing news this week: Maggie in the Dark is out!

Big hugs to those of you who have already picked up a copy. I know the book is a bit of an unknown quantity; I haven't talked much about it, other than mentioning that it has something to do with the giant earthworks that the Hopewell and other ancient Native American civilizations built in the Eastern and Midwestern part of the United States.

As it happens, the series doesn't have a whole lot to do with the earthworks themselves. But archaeologists have speculated that the Newark Earthworks in Ohio were built to mark the passage of time -- not just of seasons or years, but of the moon's transit across the heavens on its 18.6-year cycle -- and they've further speculated that ceremonies were held when the moon appeared to stand still, at the northernmost and southernmost points in its cycle. Presumably, the thinking goes, the ceremony or ceremonies may have involved an effort to renew both the moon and the earth. So the idea of renewing the Earth was one of the jumping-off points for me, when I began planning the series last year. As Transcendence is the series title, it makes some sense that someone may have to transcend something in order to accomplish Earth's renewal.

Renewal was a theme in the Pipe Woman Chronicles, too. The whole thing was put in motion by White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman, who believed monotheistic religion was preventing humanity from becoming all it could be. Her solution was to send all the gods and goddesses back down to Earth to knock heads and persuade everyone to behave. But that turned out to be harder than it looked. The peace that Naomi and Joseph fought so hard to attain in the first five books was almost constantly under attack. In the end, the gods couldn't solve every problem. Humans still had to save themselves.

Pixabay

Where the Pipe Woman Chronicles went for a global renewal, the Transcendence trilogy is much more personal. Here, the gods don't show up on anyone's doorstep; they send messages by way of mysterious strangers, gut feelings, and dreams. The main character, Maggie Brandt, meets an elderly woman named Granny at the Great Circle Earthworks. Granny charges Maggie with -- you guessed it -- Earth's renewal. Maggie's journey is a personal one, done face-to-face: she must revisit turning points in her life by visiting the people who were involved in them, and she must then repair the damage she did back then. Her reparations are sometimes more painful to others than the original wounds, but like surgery, they're necessary for healing. It's not easy. To make matters worse, she's going largely by gut instinct; her only road map is the copper turtle effigy she found when she was a child.

Another aspect of the series is that several of the characters are elderly women with memory problems. That's no accident. I'll talk about that next week.

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For the next few days, the Kindle edition of Maggie in the Dark is available at Amazon for just 99 cents. Please feel free to stop by and pick up a copy, if you haven't done so already. And thanks in advance!

Oh, and one more thing: If you know of anyone who might enjoy the Pipe Woman Chronicles, please let them know that they can get a copy of Seized for free at Instafreebie. Thank you! And I hope your friend will thank you, too...

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These moments of bloggy transcendence have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.