My Links
I’m
not always sitting with a pencil in my hand or in front of my computer. Sometimes
even writers have to do other things. I
like movies and have a pretty good video collection. My favorite movies are movies
in which people sing and tap dance. My favorite kind of music is musical theater–I
much prefer songs you can understand the words of. And I’m a member of the
Michael Ball Fan Club.
You don't know Michael yet? He's a charismatic and wonderful singer. Go to his
website——with your sound on——and find
out for yourself.
For a decade or
more, I have been a sometime volunteer with the American
Holistic Health Association (AHHA). I’ve known Suzan Walter, the founder
and president, for 25 years and have written for their newsletter. Now I edit
AHHA's e-updates and I'm on call for Suzan when she wants help with "gooder
English." What I like about AHHA is that it’s not one of those marginal,
"woo-woo" groups. They say to use whatever healing modality helps you.
If you’ve got asthma (as I do), for example, you shouldn’t depend
on herbs and homeopathic pills, which take way too long to work when you’re
turning blue. Go to an M.D. and get a prescription inhaler. AHHA’s purpose
is to empower health consumers. As a
double Cancer, I'm a nester and a collector. I have close to 200 little witches
(every Hallows I take “the girls” to the Circle of Aradia "Crone
Encounter" ritual) and about as many goddesses. If you want to start your
own collection, visit Sacred
Source. They’ll also send you a catalog. When
I finally got serious about building this site, I decided to link to a few of
my friends. Here (in no particular order) are some of them: The
Goddess Temple
of Orange County is one of my favorite places, and Ava Park, the religious
director, is a good friend of mine. Because her mission is to serve as a bridge
between mainstream metaphysics and the Goddess community, she offers a place where
women can learn who the Goddess is and step into their own power. I've written
two or three brochures for the Temple, have facilitated some sabbat rituals, and
occasionally serve as guest priestess there. I also feature the Goddess Temple
in Pagan Every Day, along with other temples, web sites, zines and e-zines,
and well-known pagans.
I believe that Elizabeth
Cunningham is the best writer of Goddess fiction living on the planet today.
We’ve been friends forever; before either of us had a computer and email,
we’d write long letters to each other, commiserating about the vagaries
of publishers. When I flew to New York a couple years ago, we met in Penn Station.
I was lost (of course), but she found me and we spent a friendly afternoon in
Central Park. Alexis Masters is not only the
builder of this site and
a good friend (when I did a book tour in the Bay Area, she drove me from bookstore
to bookstore and even kept smiling after she’d heard my jokes a dozen times),
but she’s also the author of a terrific novel, The
Giuliana Legacy. Patricia Kelly
is a poet, a tarot reader, and another long-time friend. She also plays the djideridoo
and the flute. Patricia's blog, Roswila's
Dream & Poetry Realm, she tells us, "creatively explores dream, poetry,
and Tarot symbols so that they may inspire and nurture our deepest selves."
You can read some of my poetry when you go there. I
met Patricia Monaghan
over a decade ago. She wrote one of the first reviews of my Rituals & Celebrations
and has been consistently kind and generous ever since. I’ve had the pleasure
of reviewing several of her books. I also
met Timothy Roderick
in the early 1990s. We were coming from opposite directions at the Booksellers
Association Convention and ran into each other (thump) just outside the Llewellyn
booth. Tim gave me a hug like we were old friends. Then we introduced ourselves
to each other. It was love at first site. I've done rituals with him and admire
his work. Donna
Henes and I seem to have grasped the same idea about the same time from opposite
ends of the continent. In the 21st century, the “traditional” Maiden-Mother-Crone
(which was really invented by Robert Graves in The White Goddess in 1948)
paradigm isn’t enough for women who live thirty years or more past menopause.
Donna and I have proposed a fourth stage of a woman’s life: the Queen. When
your kids grow up and you’ve still got all your juice, you have time to
pay back to the community, start your own new business (as I did), and share your
wisdom with younger people. Another friend
back east is Nancy Blair.
Nancy is both an artist and a writer. When she owned Star River Productions, I
bought several of her goddess sculptures, a bit later I reviewed her Amulets
of the Goddess and she wrote a blurb for one of my books. You can learn more
about the work she does, and see a nifty photo of Nancy and her cat, at her site. I
first met Vicki Noble
in a workshop in an artist's loft where she let me play with her seed-pod rattles
during one of the guided meditations. She's cocreator of the Motherpeace Tarot,
of course, and author of The Double Goddess (Bear & Co.), which is wonderfully
thought-provoking. Charlene
Proctor is another friend I knew via the Net before we met in person. Char
owns the Goddess Network, which is "a resource for helping women achieve
balance by bringing the Divine Feminine Spirit into their personal and organizational
lives through books, live events, discussion groups, and an online presence. Our
message is one of female empowerment and positive thinking." I
edit manuscripts for authors who go to on-demand publishers. Would be authors
investigating Trafford Publishing
can find me in Traffords Talent Pool of editors, book designers, and others. I've
edited nonfiction from religious and business topics to holistic health to memoirs.
I've edited fiction from vampire tales to Vietnam War stories to romance to science
fiction to mysteries. I met Margaret
and Jon Harwood at (I think) a local Covenant of the Goddess meeting several
years ago and it was love at first sight. Margaret is a fine artist who has been
painting all her life. I persuaded her to paint the cover for Quicksilver Moon.
She read my mind. That’s what the characters really look like. Jon is a terrific
photographer. He took many of the photos of me that you can see on this site.
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