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Mary Mackey

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Interview with novelist and short story writer Valerie Miner

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Valerie Miner is the award-winning author of fifteen books. Her stories and essays have been  published in more than sixty anthologies. A number of her pieces have been dramatized on BBC Radio 4, and her work has been translated into German, Turkish, Danish, Italian, Spanish, French, Swedish and Dutch. Miner has won fellowships and awards from The Rockefeller Foundation, Fondazione Bogliasco, The Brown Foundation, Fundación Valparaiso, The McKnight Foundation, The NEA, The Jerome Foundation, The Heinz Foundation, The Australia Council Literary Arts Board and numerous other sources, and has received Fulbright Fellowships to Tunisia, India and Indonesia. Since 2005 she has been Artist-in-Residence at the Clayman Institute. Bread and Salt is her fourth collection of stories.

Mary: Welcome to People Who Make Books Happen, Valerie. Let’s start at the very beginning:  How did you become a writer?

Valerie: I started out as a journalist and reported from Africa, Europe, Canada and the US. Although I studied literature at university, we were rarely assigned books by women. When I later discovered books by Doris Lessing, Toni Cade Bambara, Bessie Head and Margaret Atwood, I began to dare to write fiction. My first co-authored book (1975) emerged from my writing group. I’ve been in writing groups ever since; they sustain and provoke my work.

Mary: Which writers have influenced you?

Valerie: I continue to be moved by the language of Shakespeare, Milton and Whitman, favorites since my U.C. Berkeley days. The feminist writers above inspire me as do Rohinton Mistry, Toni Morrison, Grace Paley and others who attend to the music of language and the challenges of fostering social justice and compassion. I’m grateful to my current writing group for close readings of Bread and Salt and to many other writers who “swap” drafts of new books with me. This kind of contemporary critique is crucial.

Mary: How do you get the initial idea for a story or novel?

Valerie: My novels are usually ignited by a question–a philosophical, spiritual, moral, political quandary. My stories are usually imagined from a particular scene. Place is very important in all my fiction.

Mary: Tell us more Bread and Salt. What is the most important thing readers should know about it?

Mary: The stories deal with women’s friendships, gun violence in families, falling in love, state terrorism, guardian angels, suicide as well as provocative encounters in India, Indonesia, Italy, Turkey and other places. The title novella follows two lovers from Tunisia to Boston to France and back to Tunisia. Three quarters of the stories feature queer characters. (Two of my previous collections were finalists for the Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Fiction.) In a variety of forms ranging from mirco-fiction to novella, the characters in Bread and Salt navigate romance, terror, grief, passion, and whimsy.

Mary: If you could ensure that one of your stories would survive to be read 500 years from now, which story would it be, and why have you chosen it?

Valerie: If I’m brief, may I pick two? “Incident on the Tracks,” depicts a short train journey during which three strangers of various races, classes, ages and genders discover an unlikely friendship. “Hollow” explores the often ignored tectonic shifts within a family that can lead to catastrophe in our gun-obsessed culture.

Mary: Thank you for joining us here today, Valerie. Before you go, where can readers buy copies of Bread and Salt?

Valerie: Bread and Salt is available (in paperback and ebook) from independent bookstores as well as Amazon, B and N, etc. For book clubs who buy Bread and Salt, I’m happy to offer a gratis Zoom visit. I enjoy meeting readers and hearing their insights.

Links
www.valerieminer.com

Instagram valerieminer1

 

John Keats influences Mary Mackey’s poetry

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Poetic Influences: Mary Mackey on John Keats’s “Negative Capability”

John Keats’s Letters on “Negative Capability” and “The Poet Has No Identity”

One of the most important influences on my development both as a poet and a novelist are two letters written by the English poet John Keats in 1818. In the first letter, addressed to his brothers George and Tom, Keats develops the concept of “Negative Capability,” which he defines as the ability to “remain in uncertainty” as one writes. I believe that Keats has touched on something profound here that is integral to the creative process.

By definition, creation involves uncertainty. When you create, you make something that has not existed before. If there is no uncertainty, if everything about your subject is already known, then you cannot add to it by creating something new. In his letter to his brothers, Keats suggests that writers needs to find the courage to write without knowing where they are going and without judging if everything they are saying is logical. Keats calls this “negative capability.”

When I write, I intentionally enter this state. I don’t judge what I’m doing or worry about endings or goals. I write whatever comes to mind and let the poem create itself. A poem initially comes from my inner voice, often bubbling up from the depths of my unconscious as a wordless image that translates itself into words. That said, it is vital to recognize that this spontaneous first draft is not a finished poem. The state of “negative capability” does not extend to revision. In order to succeed, poems must be crafted with the logical part of your mind. To turn a first draft into a finished poem, you need to summon all the strength of your intellect, drawing on everything you have read and thought. You need to revise, revise, and then revise again, all the while preserving the power of that first draft while transforming it into a work of art.

In the second letter, addressed to his friend Richard Woodhouse, Keats claims that “the poet has no identity.” This is an invaluable concept that is as important for a novelist as it is for a poet. What Keats is saying is that poets must put aside their identities, abandon their egos, and fully imagine what it is like to be other people even if those people are wicked when the poets are virtuous, cruel when the poets are kind, deceitful when the poets are honest. In other words, Keats is again suggesting that poets must be able to suspend judgment and spontaneously empathize with everyone and everything. This radical act of compassion is at the basis of poems which transcend autobiography as well as the creation of characters in novels who are believable and have psychological depth.

Thanks to Keats, I have learned to put  Mary Mackey aside when I write and become Ophelia, Juliet, Cleopatra, Leda, Cytherea, a Portuguese conquistador, Carmen Miranda, dengue fever, Elizabeth Bishop, Santa Teresa, a ball of army ants, a tropical jungle, a flock of parrots, a troubadour who lived 6,000 years ago, and my own mother. To have no identity is to become, for a brief, joyous moment, all things. It is a great gift, a touch of infinity, the soul of great poetry.

 

From John Keats On Negative Capability: Letter to George and Tom Keats, 22 December 1818]

… several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason—Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge. This pursued through Volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.

From John Keats On The Poet Has No Identity: Letter to Richard Woodhouse, 27  October 1818

As to the poetical Character itself (I mean that sort of which, if I am any thing, I am a Member; that sort distinguished from the wordsworthian or egotistical sublime; which is a thing per se and stands alone) it is not itself – it has no self – it is every thing and nothing – It has no character – it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated – It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation. A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity – he is continually in for – and filling some other Body – The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute – the poet has none; no identity – he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God’s Creatures.

…

When I am in a room with People if I ever am free from speculating on creations of my own brain, then not myself goes home to myself: but the identity of every one in the room begins so to press upon me that I am in a very little time annihilated – not only among Men; it would be the same in a Nursery of children….

Mary Mackey’s original Chapter One essay can be found here.

Mary Mackey received a BA from  Harvard and a doctorate from the University of Michigan. Her award-winning writings reflect her experiences in the cities and jungles of Latin America, her childhood summers on a western Kentucky farm, the visions and dreams of high fevers, and meticulous research for her historical novels. She is the author of eight collections of poetry including The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams: New and Selected Poems 1974 to 2018, winner of the 2019 Eric Hoffer Award for the best book published by a small press and a 2018 CIIS Women’s Spirituality Book Award; and Sugar Zone, winner of the 2012 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award and Finalist for the Northern California Book Reviewers Award. Her poems have been praised by Maxine Hong Kingston, Wendell Berry, Jane Hirshfield, Dennis Schmitz, Al Young, and Marge Piercy for their beauty, precision, originality, and extraordinary range. She is also the author of fourteen novels, one of which made The New York Times Bestseller List. A Professor Emeritus of English at California State University Sacramento, she was one of the founders of the CSUS Graduate Creative Writing Program and the CSUS Women’s Studies Program. In the late 1970’s she joined with poets Adrienne Rich and Susan Griffin and novelist Valerie Miner to found the Feminist Writers Guild. From 1989-1992, she served as President of the West Coast Branch of PEN American Center involving herself in PEN’s international defense of persecuted writers. Mackey’s literary papers are archived in the Sophia Smith Special Collections Library, Smith College, Northampton, MA. Her collection of rare editions of small press poetry books is archived in the Smith College Mortimer Rare Book Room. Mackey’s teaching and public readings are famous for their hilarity as well as for their memorable insights.

This essay was originally published on the Chapter One page at https://marshhawkpress.org/poetic-influences-mary-mackey-on-john-keatss-negative-capability/

Writing A Series of Novels: An Interview With Mary Mackey

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“Writing a Series of Novels” is an interview with Mary Mackey whose most recent novel The Village of Bones is a prequel to her  Earthsong Series. The interview was conducted by writer, author, and editor Charlotte Seaberry; and first appeared in the literary blog How To Write a Book. The Village of Bones has recently become available as an Audible Book.

Getting Started: The First Steps to Writing a Book

Charlotte: Mary, your new book, The Village of Bones, is a prequel to the Earthsong Trilogy, which includes The Year the Horses Came, The Horses at the Gate, and The Fires of Spring. Why did you decide to write this newest book? What inspired you?

Mary: I decided to write The Village of Bones, because I knew this was a book whose time had come. I thought it might, in some small way, help stop the on-going violence we are witnessing on a daily basis. And I was eager to explore the backstory of the Earthsong Trilogy.

I was inspired by two nonfiction books: The Civilization of the Goddess and The Language of the Goddess by Dr. Marija Gimbutas, a Professor of Archaeology at UCLA.  Her extensive research on the Goddess-worshiping people of Prehistoric Europe is a treasure-trove for any writer of historical fiction. I was also inspired by European legends, fairy tales, and myths; and by the hundreds of beautiful statues of of goddesses, some no larger than my thumb, which I saw in museums during my research trips to Romania and Bulgaria.

European legends were a particularly important source of inspiration since The Village of Bones is more magical and myth-based than the other novels in the series. This is because in the Goddess-worshiping cultures of Prehistoric Europe, prophecy and magic played major religious roles. For example, an important section of The Village of Bones takes place in Greece at Delphi, where in classical times the Delphic Oracle made predictions that often changed history. I researched the pre-classical myths of Delphi, which led me to the conclusion that it was a site of magic, prophecy, and Goddess-worship thousands of years before the Greeks claimed it for their own.

In a similar way, I drew on the ancient Icelandic, Scottish, and Irish myths of Silkies. These are powerful, shape-shifting creatures who lived as seals in the sea but became human on land. They were so human that they could mate with human beings and produce magical children who could also shape-shift.

Charlotte: How did you know your series needed a prequel? Did you have new ideas or themes you wanted to write about? Or did you want to give more background context to the series?

Mary: My sense that I needed to write a prequel grew increasingly stronger as I wrote the first three novels in the Earthsong Series. To be specific: The Year the Horses Came, The Horses at the Gate, and The Fires of Spring all deal with the Earth-centered, Goddess-worshiping cultures of Prehistoric Europe at a crucial turning point in human history. About 6,000 years ago, the horse was reintroduced into Europe during a great invasion of Sky-worshiping nomads who swept down from the steppes of what is now Ukraine. They brought patriarchy, genocidal warfare, and slavery to a people who had lived in relative peace for thousands of years. It’s an exciting story of struggle and massive culture upheaval. After I finished those three, I wanted to know more about what the Goddess People were like before the invasion.

I also wanted to know more more about Sabalah, the mother of Marrah, the main character in The Year the Horses Came, The Horses at the Gate, and The Fires of Spring. Marrah is a brave, strong, passionate woman who is utterly devoted to defending her people. How did Sabalah raise such an exceptional child? I already knew Sabalah had fled with baby Marrah across Europe to save her from the marauding nomads. What dangers did Sabalah encounter on that flight? Who was Marrah’s father? Was Marrah the result of a passionate love affair? I had to know.

Inspired by my own curiosity and my sources of inspiration, I set out to write The Village of Bones. As I did, I fell in love with Sabalah, baby Marrah, and a whole host of new characters. In fact, I liked living in the pre-invasion world of the Goddess People so much that it was sometimes hard for me to stop writing about them long enough to pay my bills and the get dust balls out from under the beds.

The Process: Writing One Part of a Series

Charlotte: Can you tell us about your writing process while writing The Village of Bones? Was it different from writing the other books of the series? If so, how? Did you have to write it while keeping the other books’ plots in mind? Or did you find yourself able to write this as its own separate project?

Mary: Writing The Village of Bones was very different from writing the other three books in the series, because I had to constantly keep the plots of the other books in mind. The story unfolds twelve years before the the opening of The Year the Horses Came, which means that I couldn’t contradict anything I had said about the past in The Year the Horses Came, The Horses at the Gate, and The Fires of Spring. This presented some real challenges.

For example, when Sabalah appears in the first chapter of The Year the Horses Came, we learn that she has never seen the nomads, never seen a horse for that matter. It was hard to figure out how to make this work in The Village of Bones. But I found a solution that not only solved the problem but became one of the most important moments in the novel. By the time I finished, it didn’t feel like a work-around. It felt perfectly natural. I think trying to overcome difficulties like this turned out to be a plus. I suspect that having to keep four plots in mind at the same time even made me more creative. 

Charlotte: How do you think writing for a series is different from writing a standalone book? What are some of the advantages and disadvantages to writing a series versus a standalone book? Were there any issues with writing or publishing you faced specific to writing a series?

Mary: When I was writing The Village of Bones, I found myself in the peculiar position of writing a standalone book after I had already written three novels that under any other circumstances would have been sequels. Writing The Village of Bones also reordered the whole Earthsong Series, which is now (in chronological order) The Village of Bones, The Year the Horses Came, The Horses at the Gate, and The Fires of Spring. This is doing things the hard way, but it also had certain advantages. For one thing, I knew right from the start where I was going, which is not always the case when I begin a novel.

That said, probably the easiest way to write a series is to do it in chronological order. The benefits of a series are considerable. You get to create a long, complex, interesting story that develops over a years, giving you a chance to show major changes in your characters and the world they live in. You get to develop characters in a deep, consistent way that makes them come alive. A well-done series creates a world that feels real and compelling. Readers care about your characters as if they are real people. They want to know what Marrah, or Sabalah, or Claire and Jamie Fraser are going to do next. Personally, I love historical fiction series. I check in every few months to see if Diana Gabaldon has finished her next novel.

The downside is that if readers don’t like the first book in your series, the rest will probably not get published. Fortunately that wasn’t the case with the Earthsong Series which has had good reviews and a lot of enthusiastic readers over the years, but it’s always a risk when you start out.

The Backbone: Research and Background

Charlotte: Can you tell us about your research process? How much did you have to research for this book specifically? How did you translate that research into narrative writing? Did you have to look back at the other books of the series at all to make sure aspects lined up and connected?

Mary: I had to do less historical research on the Goddess people when I was writing The Village of Bones because I already knew their world right down to the clothes they wore and the kinds of cups they drank out of. But that didn’t let me off the hook, because Sabalah travels to places that aren’t mentioned in the other novels and participates in religious rites that I hadn’t described before. This meant that I had to do extensive research online, in libraries, and on location. For example, I had to travel to France, find a deep lake that had existed since ancient times, and take photos of it so I could describe it accurately. I needed to find out how much a lion heart weighs compared to a human heart, what herbs repel sharks, and if there were oysters in the Black Sea in 4387 B.C.E.

I believe in doing meticulous research and I work hard at it, but to tell the truth, it’s more like fun than a job. I’m fascinated by the details that can make the past come alive for me and my readers. I love what I call “fun facts.” For example, I found an account of the Delphic Oracle that claimed that when she uttered a prophecy her hair stood on end.

Charlotte: How much of the book would you say is based in factual history? How much was your own narrative and invention? Could you tell us a bit about the real history that is included in the book? While writing, did you consciously want to keep some factual accuracy throughout?

Mary: We don’t have any written history from 6000 years ago, but we do have the research of archaeologists, paleontologists, archaeomythologists, and other scientists and scholars. I drew on their findings whenever possible, because I wanted my readers to feel confident that they were getting as accurate a picture of the daily life of the Goddess people as they could have without actually stepping into a time machine. Whether I am writing about Europe 6000 years ago or Imperial Russia under the Tsars, my goal is always as much factual accuracy as possible.

Still, there are places where we have no facts, and those are the places that allow me to fill in the blanks with imagination, narrative, and invention. How did people think 6000 years ago? What did they feel? Did they experience love, hate, passion, despair, and joy the same way we do? They left behind religious objects, but how did they actually use them in their rituals?

In other words we have bones and bits of broken pottery, but we don’t have the people themselves. I was my job as a novelist to bring them alive using my imagination and my knowledge of human psychology. I had to put those pots back together and fill them with offerings and incense, raise up the bones of our long-lost ancestors and make them dance.

Between the Pages: Know Your Reader

Charlotte: Who do you envision as the audience for The Village of Bones, as well as for your other books? Did you envision readers to already have a knowledge or interest in this period of time? Did you write these books with a specific demographic in mind? If so, how did you use certain language, tone, themes, etc. to engage with that specific audience?

Mary: The only demographic I had in mind when I wrote The Village of Bones was adults. There is sex in the novels, which some parents might consider unsuitable for their children. As for audience, most, but not all, of my readers are women, so in general I envision women of all ages as my audience.

This is not surprising. Women buy the most historical fiction, as opposed to men who tend to buy mysteries, action-adventure, and science fiction. More importantly, the novels in the Earthsong Series celebrate women at a time when Europe was a place where the Earth itself was worshiped as a living female body—a Goddess—who brought forth all life. Women were powerful, adventurous, and independent. They fished, hunted, sat in council, performed religious rituals, but they did not, as far as we can tell, oppress men.

I think this sense of harmony between the sexes is why men also like the Earthsong novels. This is a time when men and women were equals, doing the same things, performing the same tasks. With the exception of a few bad apples (which you always need to have to keep a plot interesting), the men in the Earthsong Series are kind, considerate, intelligent, thoughtful, brave, and compassionate. They are also great in bed. They’re much better lovers than the nomads who keep their women in a state of near-slavery. Like the women, the men of the Goddess people are often talented artists. For example, the main male character in The Village of Bones is a troubadour who travels across Europe playing a lute-like instrument and singing the songs and poems he’s composed.

In order to engage a wide audience of both women and men, I used plain, contemporary American English with no slang words. I felt it would be artificial and off-putting to try to invent a language people spoke to one another 6000 years ago. After all, when we hear our own native language, we aren’t particularly conscious of the sound of it or how arbitrary the words are. “Chair” seems like the only right word for that object we sit on, but a Portuguese speaker probably feels the same way about the word “Cadeira.” I worked very hard to make The Village of Bones easy and enjoyable to read.

Charlotte: Your writing style and voice is so engaging in The Village of Bones. I read the first sentence and before I knew it, I was halfway through! Did you use the same voice throughout the series of books? Did you experiment with different styles or voices before writing or did the voice come naturally as you wrote?

Mary: The style came naturally as I wrote. I use the same third person narrative voice for all the novels in the Earthsong Series. I like third person and have used it extensively in the majority of my other novels. It allows me to get into the heads of different characters, whereas first person limits you to one point of view. Most of the action in The Village of Bones is seen from Sabalah’s perspective, but there are some very important moments when we learn what other characters are thinking. At that point, we as readers know things Sabalah doesn’t know.

Keep Going! Finding Ideas and Continuing a Series

Charlotte: You are quite a prolific writer, with fourteen novels published! How do you get the ideas for so many novels? Do you ever feel “stuck” or like you can’t come up with an idea that you like? If so, how do you overcome that issue? What are some tips you would give our readers who feel “stuck” trying to come up with book ideas?

Mary: I rarely feel stuck, because over the years, I’ve developed a simple trance technique for coming up with ideas. It’s very rich and productive and gives me more workable ideas than I could ever use. I don’t sell it or teach it, but so many people have asked me about it, that I’ve written a blog piece describing it entitled “Using Trance to Get Ideas for Novels and Poems”.

This trance technique is the best tip I can give you for mining your unconscious and coming up with ideas. I developed it, because over the years I discovered that struggling to think up an idea is one of the surest ways to get writers block. You need to relax so your unconscious can send you messages. I get ideas for novels and poems when I’m not focused on finding them, not only when I’m in a trance but other times: early in the morning when I wake up, when I’m cooking or walking or meditating. I actually got the idea for the entire plot of my bestselling novel A Grand Passion while taking a shower. There’s something about the feel of water falling on my head that relaxes me and lets my mind wander.

The moment I get an idea, I write it down as completely as I can without trying to figure out if it’s good or bad. It’s really important not to prejudge your ideas or, once again, you’ll freeze up. I’d say a good 80% to 85% of my ideas are either silly, impractical, or not things I want to pursue. But that leaves 15% to 20% that I might be able to use.

When I finish a novel, I wait a few months to recover. Then I open my journal, pick the idea I like best, and start the process of writing a new novel: research, first drafts, character development, etc. Sometimes I go on to the end. And sometimes I discover that this new novel is not working for reasons I can’t control. I have to abandon what I’ve written and start in on another idea and begin yet another new novel.

For example, I once wrote 350 pages of a novel about a passionate love affair. I became intoxicated with research. I had stories of the lovers’ families going back three generations. However, I wrote and wrote and couldn’t get the main characters to be born, much less fall in love. I later realized when I started the writing this doomed novel, I had given it the working title Parallel Lines. Apparently my unconscious knew something I didn’t know.

The next best tip I can give you is not to hesitate to abandon something that’s not working. So you spent months on it. So you wrote 350 pages. Forget it. Move on. Keep going and sooner or later, you’ll find the novel idea that works. And at that moment you will be very happy.

Charlotte: Do you have any plans to write another book for the Earthsong Series? When you write books in a series like this one, how do you know that the series is complete? Is there a part of you that will always want to go back and keep expanding the narrative of Earthsong? Or do you think it will feel complete?

Mary: I already have the beginnings of outlines for two more novels in the Earthsong Series. One begins right after the end of The Village of Bones and relates Sabalah’s search for her lover, Marrah’s father. The second is a sequel to The Fires of Spring, which tells the story of Marrah’s return to her home in the hope of finding her mother Sabalah still alive after many years. Both novels are stories of love, quest, and reunion. My only challenge is to figure out which one to write first.

Once I finish these two novels, I think the Earthsong Series will be complete. But you never know . . .

The Last Steps: Publishing and Promotions

Charlotte: The Village of Bones had a different publisher than the rest of the series. Why did you decide to use a different publisher? What do you like about this publisher and their style of publishing and book promotion? What is some advice you have for how to decide what publisher to use?

Mary: It’s not uncommon for novels in a series to have different publishers. The Year the Horses Came and The Horses at the Gate were both published by a division of Harper Collins. The Fires of Spring was published by Onyx, an imprint of Penguin/Putnam.

However, The Village of Bones is an unusual case. I don’t think many writers, particularly debut novelists, will run into the same issues I did when deciding on a publisher. Thanks to my agent, I own the film rights to The Year the Horses Came, The Horses at the Gate, and The Fires of Spring. The Earthsong Series is an excellent candidate for either a feature film or a TV series, but that can’t happen if I don’t also own the film rights to The Village of Bones. At present, it is almost impossible to sell a book to a major publisher without giving up your film rights. That’s why I went with Lowenstein Associates, which made it possible for me to keep the film rights.

The best advice I can give someone is to get a good agent who will work on your behalf. Your agent should be the one helping you decide between publishers. If you don’t have an agent, then first take a look at who your editor is going to be. Can you work with this person? Do they get what you’re doing. Then look at the other books that publisher has published. Did the publisher stand behind them? Promote them? Make sure you don’t use a for-hire press that will charge you a lot and do nothing for you. It’s not enough for a book to be published no matter how good it looks. It needs promotion.

Charlotte: What are some things you are doing to promote The Village of Bones? Is it any different from how you promoted your previous books, including the ones in this series?

Mary: I started writing novels at a time when publishers still gave you a first-rate publicity person to handle promotion, sent out review copies to all major publications like The New York Times, and sent you on nation-wide tours. All that is history. Now, unless they are selling millions of copies, authors have to do their own promotion. This is a problem because it takes time away from writing and many authors are rather shy.

Fortunately, I’m not shy. I want readers to know about The Village of Bones, so I’ve been talking about it in person and online. I did 42 readings, interviews, and TV/radio appearances for the novel when it came out. My social media presence includes my website where I run an ongoing blog interview series with interesting writers entitled People Who Make Books Happen. I have two Facebook pages; Twitter; Linked In; Goodreads; and my Amazon Central Author’s Page. I also put out a quarterly newsletter, and encourage my readers to add their names to my mailing list so they can be the first to know when a new book is coming out or when something important has happened like an audio book or a movie deal. I also encourage them to send me their own good news so I can personally congratulate them in my newsletter.  My aim is to build a community of people who share good news and rejoice in one another’s successes.

In addition, I’ve arranged to give subscribers to my newsletter birthday presents as a thank you. I was delighted to discover that it was possible to do this without running the risk of them being spammed. I believe in being good to my readers and am grateful that they read my novels.

Charlotte: What is some exciting feedback you’ve received since publishing The Village of Bones? Is the feedback different from your previous books? If so, how?

Mary: I’ve gotten some excellent reviews, which is very important to the success of a novel. Many cite the same things that made the first three novels in the series popular with readers including praise for my historical research and pleasure in a vision of a peaceful society where children are cherished, men and women are equal, and people live in harmony with the earth. The reviewers have also said that The Village of Bones is lively and entertaining.

The most exciting feedback has come directly from my readers who told me they love the magical, prophetic elements. One asked if I could see into the future like one of my characters does. I can’t, but the fact that she asked means I’m doing something right. Today, I got an email from a woman who said The Village of Bones gave her hope and provided refuge from all the bad news in the media. I treasure comments like that. They make all the hard work of writing novels worthwhile.

Charlotte: How can our readers reach you?

Mary: You can email me through my website. Find me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @MMackeyAuthor, and put and put your name on my mailing list and receive a direct email address. If you’d like to write me a letter,  email me and I’ll send you a physical address.

Mary Mackey is Professor Emeritus of English at California State University, Sacramento. Her books have appeared on The New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller Lists, sold over a million and a half copies, and been translated into twelve foreign languages including Japanese, Russian, Hebrew, Greek, and Finnish. Mackey’s nonfiction, scholarly works, and memoirs have appeared in various journals and anthologies. 

She helped found the Women’s Studies Program and the English Department Graduate Creative Writing Program at CSUS. In 1978 she founded The Feminist Writers Guild with poets Adrienne Rich and Susan Griffin and novelist Valerie Miner.

 

VILLAGE OF BONES A Kindle Monthly Deal Through September 2017

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News Flash: Amazon.com has chosen The Village of Bones to be one of its Kindle Monthly Deals for September 2017. CLICK HERE before October 1 to buy a Kindle copy of The Village of Bones for only $1.99.

The Village of Bones: Sabalah’s Tale

Written as a Prequel to Mary’s best-selling Earthsong Series, The Village of Bones is now the first novel in the series. (The Earthsong novels in chronological order are: The Village of Bones: Sabalah’s Tale, The Year the Horses Came, The Horses at the Gate, and The Fires of Spring.  )

hi res b of v front cover March 21 2016

“Mary Mackey’s The Village of Bones, gives us the vivid adventures of The Clan of the Cave Bear, the magic of The Mists of Avalon and Lord of the Rings, and the beauty of Avatar. Filled with the belief that love drives out fear, it contains stunning twists that will leave you wanting more.”
            Dorothy Hearst, author of the Wolf Chronicles

A perilous journey, a stunning prophecy, a dangerous love that could destroy humankind: In 4386 B.C., a young priestess named Sabalah conceives a magical child with a mysterious stranger named Arash. Sabalah names the child Marrah. This child will save the Goddess-worshiping people of Europe from marauding nomad invaders called Beastmen, but only if her mother can keep her alive long enough to grow up. Warned by the Goddess in a vision of the coming invasion, Sabalah flees west with Arash to save her baby daughter, only to discover that she is running into the arms of her worst enemies. In the dark forests of northern Europe, other human-like species left over from the Ice Age still exist. 

 

Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves: 7 New Books

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motherpeace-star

Vicki Noble, co-creator with Karen Vogel of the Motherpeace Tarot Deck, recommends seven new books to heal us and give us hope.

A Writer’s Journey Guest Post:

Vicki Noble:  I have seen so many wonderful books come out in the last year or so—many of them done by respected friends of mine—that I decided to share them with you. Given the state of things in our materialistic and celebrity-focused culture, it’s rare that such out-of-the-box books are even published these days, let alone marketed and distributed properly.

1.  Starhawk’s wonderful visionary novel, City of Refuge, the happily-awaited sequel to her earlier book, The Fifth Sacred Thing. I’ve read them both more than once and recommend them as heart-warming, thoughtful, intelligent, and incredibly hopeful versions of future possible realities in which the power of nonviolent, magical consciousness becomes contagious and carries the day. Starhawk is in the process of getting these novels made into movies, which would be fabulous. May it be so!

City of refuge, Starhawk

2. Mary Mackey has come out with a “prequel” to her earlier feminist trilogy of books in the Earthsong Series, based on the impeccable archaeological research of Marija Gimbutas into ancient prehistoric Goddess civilizations of Old Europe. Mary’s newest book in this series is called The Village of Bones: Sabalah’s Tale, and it’s a page-turner.

The-Village-Of-Bones-Low-Res
3. Charlie Bensinger has released a futuristic trilogy of quirky, suspenseful novels called Radical Option, Beyond Fire, and Primal Source—all part of a series he calls People of the Change—that I have totally enjoyed reading. I’m not going to spoil the intrigue here by telling you the plot, but trust me, it speaks directly to our current global situation and offers up unique and imaginative solutions to world problems and dilemmas.

radical-option-charlie-bensinger

4. Craig Comstock released a book late last year called Gift of Darkness, in which (as I said in a blurb for the book) he “captured the poignancy of a young, frightened human being” faced with what Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil” as a teen in Amsterdam during the terrible period of the Nazis. It has eerie similarities to our own time.

the-gift-of-darkness

5. In a whole other vein, the Goddess movement’s own Ruth Barrett has compiled Female Erasure, a brilliant anthology of essays by authors speaking discerningly about what they perceive as the “dogma of transgender politics” in our culture at the moment. In a time when this controversial subject has become so heated and the debates so downright violent—often delivered with highly-charged sound bites, rather than the depth the subject deserves, it’s a relief to have this whole book of thoughtful analyses from diverse feminist positions and backgrounds.

female-erasure-cover


6. Starr Goode’s brand new book, hot off the press, shares decades of her research into the enigmatic and archetypal image of the Sheela na gig (or what Miriam Robbins Dexter has called Female Sacred Display). The exquisite hardcover book is called Sheela na gig: The Dark Goddess of Sacred Power. Well written and beautifully illustrated!

sheila-na-gig-bookcover

7. Also, in memory of Lydia Ruyle, I’d like to recommend her final book about the marvelous banners she created to honor Goddesses all over the world; Lydia’s banners have graced the walls of temples, festival halls, and museums around the world. This book, Goddesses of the Americas, presents images, stories and mythologies of Goddesses she found in North, Central, and South America. A fine memorial!

goddesses-of-the-americas-lydia-ruyle
8.And last but not least, I hope, I have included the anthology compiled by me and Miriam Robbins Dexter and published at the end of last year, Foremothers of the Women’s Spirituality Movement: Elders and Visionaries; the book features the personal stories of many of the women who were there from the beginning. We wanted to share some of the vision, originality, and vitality that emerged spontaneously in the late 1970s and early 1980s to became a global Goddess movement.

Foremothers Cover

 I wish all the other progressive authors out there the very best in getting your books into print and out into the world. Goddess knows we need inspiration in these times!   Vicki Noble

 

Using Trance To Get Ideas For Novels And Poems

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Mining Your Unconscious Using A Simple Trance Technique

   Sunset Sacramento on American River Your unconscious is packed with ideas, metaphors, visions, plots, dreams, colors, characters, emotions—in short, everything you need to write a great novel or collection of poems. But how do you get to it? How do you step out of the social agreement we call “reality,” and dip into this incredibly rich resource?

You could go to sleep and try to mine your dreams, but even if you dreamed an entire novel, the moment you woke up, you would forget most of it within seconds, because you hadn’t processed the ideas into your long term memory. Worse yet, when you dream, you are not in control, so you can’t do specific things like talk to one of your characters or work out a specific plot problem. Granted, some people manage lucid dreaming, but lucid dreaming is not a practical writing technique for a number of reasons. For example, you cannot always go to sleep when you need to.

Many years ago, I started looking for a technique that would allow me to be asleep and awake at the same time. What I came up with, after much trial and error, was a form of creative trance that allows me to delve into my unconscious whenever I want to, get the material I need for my poems and novels, bring that material up to my waking reality, remember it, and write it down.

Developing this technique wasn’t easy. Besides relying on my own imagination, I drew on many sources such as self-hypnosis, theta cycle sessions, neurophysiology, Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, and the Surrealist technique of Automatic Writing.  As you might expect, I had many failures, but in the end I came up with a deceptively simple technique, which has proved extremely effective. Since I taught myself how to use creative trance, I have written many novels, collections of poetry, and screenplays. Better yet, I have avoided writers block.

I’ve used my creative trance technique weekly, sometimes daily, for many years. As with all things that are visionary and out of the range of ordinary consciousness,  it can’t be completely described in words, only experienced. So, since I cannot sit down with you and personally guide you through the process step by step, I am going to give you a chance to get a feel for it by taking you into the heart of  my creative process as I worked on my most recent novel The Village of Bones.

The Village of Bones is Historical Fiction which has visionary elements, but even in my novels which are purely Historical Fiction (such as my bestseller A Grand Passion, the story of three generations of women involved in ballet), I created most of the original storyline in a voluntarily induced creative trance.

Unlike A Grand Passion, The Village of Bones presented a special problem. On one hand, it was meticulously researched historical fiction firmly based on archaeological evidence, yet at the same time, it was set in Prehistoric Europe in Goddess-worshiping cultures that were filled with myths, visions, and prophecies.

With this contradiction in mind, I put my phone in Airplane Mode, sat down in a comfortable chair, picked up a pen (I find computers get in the way), opened my notebook, closed my eyes, took several deep breaths, and counted backwards to ten, imagining as I did so that I was walking down a flight of stairs. By the time I got to the bottom, I was in a light trance. The word “light” is important. I was neither awake nor asleep. Instead, I was poised on the threshold between my conscious mind and my unconscious mind, ready to move in either direction.  

On this particular day, I had some work planned. Sabalah, my main character, was in big trouble. She was caught in a storm, her boat had turned over, and she was drowning. As she struggled to stay afloat, she going to have a vision of the Sea Goddess that might or might not be a hallucination. There were no surviving statues of this particular Neolithic Sea Goddesses as far as I knew, so my task for this afternoon was to envision the Sea Goddess so I could describe her.

I started with the Goddess’ name which I had created the previous day: “Amonah, Amonah, Amonah,” I silently chanted. ”Come to me”. A vague, shadowy form began to materialize behind my eyelids.  

Before I go on, I want to be clear about what was happening. As I thought the word “Amonah,” I didn’t believe I was conjuring up a real spirit, channeling a mystical force, or having a religious experience. I believed, and still believe, that  I was simply unlocking the resources of my own consciousness and my own imagination using the very practical tool of creative trance. I don’t claim to know where these visions come from, but I am convinced that under the right conditions,  anyone can have them.

The form grew brighter and more distinct. I saw a woman walking toward me across the waves. Walking on water. Interesting. Since question/answer is the key to this technique, I settled down and began to ask myself questions.

“What color is her hair?” I asked myself. “Black, brown, blonde?” Suddenly the word “seaweed” came into my mind. Instantly, the woman’s hair turned green.

“What kind of jewelry is she wearing? Diamonds, topaz, garnets?” No, she’s wearing pearls, and something else, something reddish, something like . . . coral!

“What color are her eyes?” For a moment her eyes shifted back and forth between brown and green. Then, suddenly they glowed.

“Skin color?” All colors. No colors. She’s a Goddess. She is all of us.

“What’s she wearing?” Not skinny jeans for sure. (Odd thoughts sometimes interrupt the flow of the trance). Long dress. Yes. She’s wearing a long dress. Wave-like. Blue of course like the sea.

“What does she smell like? Wind, salt, kelp?” Like flowers.  She smells like flowers. “What kind of flowers?” Roses.

“How much does she weigh?” She weighs nothing. She’s a spirit.

For a long time, I sat there asking specific questions and waiting for answers most of which came in the form of wordless images. For some reason, I never could figure out how tall She was. My unconscious wouldn’t give that one up. But by now, the Sea Goddess Amonah looked real to me. I could see Her distinctly right down to the coral rings on Her toes.

Slowly I began to count backwards from ten to one, moving out of the trance as I climbed back up the stairs toward waking consciousness. On every step, I paused and made myself visualize Amonah again, and  I commanded  myself: “Remember. Remember.”

This final command to “remember,” is perhaps the most important part of a creative trance. If I couldn’t carry a complete image of Amonah back into the waking world, I’d have to start all over again.

When I got to ten, I opened my eyes just wide enough to see my notebook. Grabbing my pen before the last bits of trance faded away, I quickly wrote everything down paying no attention to grammar, spelling, or logic. I even wrote down the silly bit about the skinny jeans.

The result was not something I could use immediately. What you get out of your own unconscious is raw material. After creativity comes craft. So over the course of the next year, I polished this description of Amonah. Now I worked wide-awake, using all the techniques of novel-writing that I had learned over the years. I read the passage out loud over and over again. Searched for better words. Took out commas and put them in again. Here is the result which appears in Chapter One of The Village of Bones:

A woman emerged from the wall of crashing waves and walked across the sea toward Sabalah. Sabalah abruptly stopped crying and stared at the woman, stunned. This was impossible! . . .The woman kept walking, stepping over the waves as if they were furrows in a field of wheat. Her flowing dress was blue as a summer sea; her hair long and green, twined with seaweed and pearls. Her skin was dark and light at the same time, her eyes so bright, they glowed like the last flash of the sun when it falls into the sea at midsummer. . . . A sweet scent suddenly filled the air like the perfume of roses blown across water.

“Don’t be afraid,” the woman said. “I am Amonah, Goddess of the Sea,” and water is my path. I can walk above or beneath it as I wish.

Sitting down beside Sabalah, Amonah let Her feet dangle in the water. They were bare except for toe rings of rose-colored coral. She must have weighed nothing, because the end of the mast didn’t tilt the way it would have it a flesh-and-blood human being had sat there.

     The Village of Bones was created from scores of similar visions, as were all the poems I wrote that year, and even part of one of the screenplays which I co-wrote with director Renée de Palma.

Using creative trance is a gentle, pleasant way to create the raw materials for a work of fiction. It is not like meditation because your goal is not transcendence. It is not like many forms of self-hypnosis because you are not trying to lose weight, stop smoking, or change your behavior in any way. It is not like prayer, because you are not seeking a closer relationship with God. Creative trance is a tool, a key if you will, that lets you unlock the riches you already have stored in your own unconscious.

Yet its power should not be underestimated. So let me leave you with a warning: If you decide to go deeply into your own unconscious, you have to be ready to deal with what you find there. Creative trance is not therapy. If you are upset, unhappy, depressed, or anxious, wait until you have a calm mind and specific writing goals and can set firm limits on what you will accept from your unconscious.  

When you are in a creative trance, you should always be in control. If your Goddess appears before you with a hairdo made of snakes, you should be able to instantly turn those vipers into cobwebs and seaweed. Nothing you experience should harm you, scare you, or make you uncomfortable for more than a few seconds. A creative trance should be enjoyable from start to finish.

In The Village of Bones, the Goddess Earth gives Her people six commandments. The First Commandment is: “Live together in love and harmony.” The Sixth is: “Enjoy yourselves, for your joy is pleasing to Her.”

(An earlier version of this essay appeared as a Guest Post on the Visionary Fiction Alliance Blog on October 10, 2016).

 

 

Sept 21 Mary Mackey at University Press Books in Berkeley

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University Press Books Berkeley, CAWednesday, September 21, 2016, Berkeley, CA: Celebration of the paperback edition of The Village of Bones. Mary will read selections from The Village of Bones and sign books. There will be time to have fun, browse the books in one of the West Coast’s finest bookstores, and talk to interesting people. TIME: 5:30 to 7:00 pm. PLACE: University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way, Berkeley CA

How to Archive Your Literary Papers

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Earthsong SeriesA few months ago, I packed up six drafts of my recently published novel The Village of Bones and sent them to Smith College along with thirty-eight boxes of other materials that span my writing career. I have been saving these materials for well over forty years; and after fifteen years of inventive procrastination, I finally gotten around to archiving them. The result is that I now have a clean basement (who knew the floor was made of concrete?) and the Sophia Smith Special Collections Library in Northampton, Massachusetts has my Literary Papers.

What are “Literary Papers?” Well, “The Mary Mackey Papers,” as Smith calls them, include among other things: copies of all the foreign and English language editions of my novels and collections of poetry; multiple handwritten drafts of my works; copies of every magazine with my written work; fliers for most of the readings and lectures I’ve done; photographs of me from age two to the present; literary correspondence from famous writers like Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Marge Piercy, and less well known writers who should be better known; posters almost too big to mail, and chapbooks so small that if you gasped, you might inhale them.

Smith even asked me to send them my juvenilia, a term for the things I wrote when I was a child; so I have had the fun of finding my first novel (a science fiction piece written when I was nine about a little girl who outwits alien robots) and my first collection of poetry (handwritten on lined paper when I was eleven).

As you can see, “archiving” your literary papers means much more than simply placing copies of your books in a library. A university archive is like a safe or a time capsule. Smith is going to put every scrap of my materials in a specially constructed part of the Special Collections Library where they will be preserved in a climate-controlled environment and protected from insects and mold, not to mention floods, fires, mudslides, and earthquakes. Thus, The Mary Mackey Papers will be available to the general public, students, and scholars of the future for all eternity, or at least until climate change makes the human race extinct.

I want to encourage every woman writer reading this to think about archiving her literary papers. (Actually every male writer should too, but that’s another issue.) Please don’t think: “There’s no use my trying to find a place to archive my work. I’m not important enough. No one will want my papers.” Almost every woman I’ve told about the archiving process has said this, including famous poets and best-selling novelists. On the other hand, when I mention archiving to male writers they tend to say: “That’s a great idea. Of course my work should be preserved for posterity.” Or sometimes: “I don’t think anyone will want my papers, but I’ll give it a try. All they can do is say ‘no.’”

The men are right. If you contact an institution about archiving your papers, the worst they can say is: “No, we can’t take them.” But if you don’t try, your work may end up in a dumpster. You need to archive your papers now, while you are alive and can made all the important decisions. Don’t leave archiving your papers to your heirs or they may dump your old love letters in with the rest, and you may end up being known to future generations as “Snookums.”

So how do you go about archiving your papers? Well, that depends. If you are younger, you probably don’t have much. In fact, everything you have may be in digital form, so you need to begin printing some of it out. Not all of it, but a few drafts, important emails, etc. You should also start saving fliers from the readings you do. And don’t throw away those poems you wrote when you were nine. Keats kept his early poems. Keep yours.

If you are over fifty (or already very well-known), you need to make a general list of what you have and estimate how much room it takes up. Then you need to find out which libraries, universities, or museums already collect the kinds of things you have.

Next, you need to send a brief email to places you think might be interested in archiving your papers. Introduce yourself, describe the highlights of your collection and its significance, attach a very brief bio, and ask them if they are interested in seeing more. My initial email was three paragraphs, sent out with the subject line “Interested in a literary collection?”

Archiving your papers is particularly important right now. Literary correspondences are occurring in emails; drafts of novels and poems are being stored in the Cloud; news of readings are coming via MailChimp. According to the archivists I have spoken to, the life of digital material is about five years. Then bit rot sets in, and the files are no longer readable.

In other words, the entire literary life of the twenty-first century is being written on water. Let’s see that it’s written in stone.

If you do archive your papers, that is to say if you place them in a climate-controlled environment in a university or museum archive, I have a present for you: I have created A Guide To Women Writers’ Archives on my website. Send me your information, and I will put you up there with Mary Shelley, Margaret Atwood, Jane Austen, and Maya Angelou.

woman reading a book in a library

Mary Mackey is a bestselling author who has written seven volumes of poetry including Sugar Zone winner of the 2012 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence. She is also the author of fourteen novels some of which have appeared on The New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller Lists. For more information about Mary’s books, including her recently published novel, The Village of Bones, please visit her website.

This article was originally posted on the Women’s National Book Association, San Francisco Chapter, website. To see it in its original context CLICK HERE.

MARY MACKEY’S “THE VILLAGE OF BONES” HAS JUST BEEN PUBLISHED

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The-Village-Of-Bones-Low-Res

Lowenstein Associates has just published The Village of Bones, Sabalah’s Tale,  the Prequel to my best-selling Earthsong Series. If you buy the novel before May 15th, you can get a FREE Kindle edition of The Year the Horses Came, which is the next novel in the Series.

“Mary Mackey’s The Village of Bones, gives us the vivid adventures of The Clan of the Cave Bear, the magic of The Mists of Avalon and Lord of the Rings, and the beauty of Avatar. Filled with the belief that love drives out fear, it contains stunning twists that will leave you wanting more.”   –Dorothy Hearst, author of the Wolf Chronicles

A perilous journey, a stunning prophecy, a dangerous love that could destroy humankind: In 4386 B.C., a young priestess named Sabalah conceives a magical child with a mysterious stranger named Arash. Sabalah names the child Marrah. This child will save the Goddess-worshiping people of Europe from marauding nomad invaders called Beastmen, but only if her mother can keep her alive long enough to grow up. Warned by the Goddess in a vision of the coming invasion, Sabalah flees west with Arash to save her baby daughter, only to discover that she is running into the arms of her worst enemies. In the dark forests of northern Europe, other human-like species left over from the Ice Age still exist. 

Click here to buy the Kindle e-book.
Click here to buy the paperback edition.
Click here for your FREE Kindle e-book edition of The Year The Horses Came.