Friday, June 28, 2013

Now Available: The StarQuest - The Long Awaited Sequel to The MoonQuest!


Journey to the time before time...

when the stars lost their mooring
and the constellations unraveled, 
when chaos was king and evil reigned unchecked 

This is the Q'ntana before The MoonQuest 

Here, in the midst of brutal tyranny,
a legend would not die:
of the Heart of the Star
and of the Fair One who would rekindle it
to bring peace to the land.

The StarQuest (The Q'ntana Trilogy, Book II)

The Long Awaited Second Installment in
The Q'ntana Trilogy


To celebrate the launch of The StarQuest 
all my Kindle ebooks are on sale for $2.99 each through July 2
• The MoonQuest (The Q'ntana Trilogy, Book I)
• The StarQuest (The Q'ntana Trilogy, Book II)
• The StarQuest (The Q'ntana Trilogy, Book II) is currently available exclusively for Kindle apps and readers. Versions for Nook, Kobo and iBooks will be available June 29.


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Electric Muse Radio for July: Authors, Photographers & Celebrities!

One month's radio shows done...and what a month it's been! The Electric Muse with Mark David Gerson got off to, well, an electric start with four creative stars: 

Luke Yankee, author of the critically acclaimed memoir Just Outside the Spotlight: Growing Up with Eileen Heckart, and an accomplished writer/director/producer/actor in his own right.

Michael Scott, the New York Times bestselling fantasy author of the six-book series The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel.

Dorothy McIntosh, dubbed the "next Dan Brown" and an author whose debut novel, The Witch of Babylon, was an instant hit in some 20 countries.

• Photographer Melissa Vincent, whose 200,000-plus Instagram fans have turned her into a mobile-photography superstar. 

(Click on any of their names to listen to a replay of their episode.)

July's lineup is just as good...if not better!

• July 9 ~ Truly a Renaissance man of the arts, Dan Stone is an author, poet, fine-art photographer and visual artist. On this episode, we'll be talking about how each of Dan's artistic pursuits feeds the others and what it means to be creative. We'll also be talking about dreams. As Dan puts it, "Most of what has come into my life so far or what I hope is on the way, started with a dream."

• July 16 ~ Hollywood visual effects master Ed Kramer, whose technical artistry brought you Harry Potter’s Quidditch field, the multiplying puppies in 101 Dalmations, the dinosaur stampede in Jurassic Park II, the weather and ocean effects in Twister and some of your favorite moments in Star Wars. Ed has lots of entertaining stories about Hollywood and moviemaking to share with us.

• July 23 ~  Photographer and watercolorist Lynn Lane, one of Houston’s “Top 100 Creatives,” is exhibited in galleries and museums around the world. With styles from documentary to edgy, he is a favorite with commercial and creative clients alike, from Cirque du Soleil to Saks 5th Avenue. He's also a documentary filmmaker and, a cancer survivor himself, founder of the Voices of Survivors Foundation, which has given scores of cancer survivors a human face and voice.

• July 30 ~  Author, biographer and ghost writer Jenna Glatzer was a recovering agoraphobic still unwilling to be enclosed in an airplane when she was asked to write CĂ©line Dion's authorized biography. Two weeks later, she was in the air, enroute to Las Vegas and to an adventure that would change her life and launch a career that has resulted in more than 20 books, including an authorized biography of Marilyn Monroe. She tells that story in the newest Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul book, and she'll share that inspiring experience and others on this episode.

Wait! Why did I leave out July 2? Because this episode is going to be a bit different...well, a lot different! Instead of asking all the embarrassing questions, I’ll be in the hot seat, answering them! In the host seat will be author Amy Robbins-Wilson. Why the switch? To mark this week's release of The StarQuest, the second book in my Q’ntana Trilogy of fantasy novels, Amy will be interviewing me! So, for a look at the author behind the host, please join us this coming Tuesday via this link!

Meantime, get yourself a copy of The StarQuest in the Kindle, Nook, Kobo or iBook stores -- and check out all my titles, on sale for US$2.99 through July 2 to celebrate their new sibling. (The book is in the Kindle store right now; it should be in the Nook, Kobo and iBook stores later today or during the weekend.)

To listen live to any episode or to hear a replay after the broadcast, click on the name link for any guest. And visit the Electric Muse pages on my website for more about these and other past and future shows.

Tune in to The Electric Muse with Mark David Gerson every Tuesday at 5pm PT / 8pm ET on the Authors on the Air Global Radio Network

Don't you dare miss an episode! But if you must, you can always catch it after the fact. Just look for links to every episode on my website.

Don't forget! Every Tuesday at 5pm PT / 8pm ET: The Electric Muse with Mark David Gerson.

~~~~~

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Thursday, June 13, 2013

My Readers' Gallery - #8

Welcome to the latest installment of my online Readers' Gallery, featuring photos and videos of people from all over the U.S. and beyond reading my books and ebooks and listening to my CD(Look up previous posts herehereherehereherehere and here.)
Today's installment is devoted almost entirely to The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.


I had not yet written The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write when I first met author Estelle Blackburn in Sedona, Arizona in 1997. She was visiting from Australia and I, unknowingly, was at the end of the three-month road odyssey I write about in Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir

After Estelle returned to Australia, the work we had done together in Sedona catapulted her forward with her book Broken Lives, which freed a man wrongly convicted for murder and went on to win multiple awards. "I have so much gratitude for the help and confidence you gave me," she would write me soon after. 

A decade and many lifetimes later (for both of us), we would reconnect in Sedona, where this photo was taken. Read more about Estelle and her work on her website.


From all the way in Jakarta, Indonesia, Maria Theresiya Kussoy (above) is plumbing The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write for inspiration for her writing projects. 

Across the world in Northern Arizona, Sam Farmer Hightower (below) is gearing up to do much the same thing!


I recently interviewed writer/director/actor/producer Luke Yankee (below) for my Electric Muse radio show about his work and his about critically acclaimed book, Just Outside the Spotlight: Growing Up with Eileen Heckart. 

Imagine my surprise when he inserted this testimonial for The Voice of the Muse into one of his answers: "I was desperately looking for some kind of affirmations for writers and stumbled on The Voice of the Muse, your incredible book and companion CD. Now, anytime I get stuck I go back and listen to your 'You Are a Writer' meditation. So, the common thread is that I'm a storyteller and you, Mark David Gerson, have really helped to feed that and get me through some of the lean times." Hear my complete Luke Yankee interview here.


And finally, from across the ocean in Paris, translator Laurent Delpit, featured in one of my very first Readers' Gallery posts (below right), sent me this view of his fridge!


Read more about these and other readers and their projects in my Facebook gallery.

Why not join the online fun 
and get your book, business, event, blog, website
or other success promoted here, on Facebook and on Google+
Interested? Read on...

If you have a copy of any of my books/ebooks or of my CD, I'll post a pic of you to my Readers' Gallery Photo Album on Facebook and on Google+. Just make sure that your face is clearly visible in the photo and that the book/ebook cover and/or CD cover are visible as well.

And to help you promote your book, event, business, success, blog and/or website, I'll include in the photo caption not only your name but your promotional info/link. I'll also post the next batch of reader pics here in a future blog item.

Simply email me your pic and caption information, or contact me via FacebookTwitter or my website.

Feel free to send one pic or several and to include one book, all books, the CD or any combination. Just send separate photos for each item (unless you really are reading both books at the same time!).

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Tuesday, June 11, 2013

"Walk the Earth Naked, Clothed Only in Your Truth..."


This phrase, which has followed me relentlessly since it first made itself known in to me in a piece of unpublished writing back in 1996 and which finally pushed its way into print in Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir, has taken on fresh significance in recent weeks, as I work to dissolve the inner barriers, unconscious until now, that have been holding me back from my next levels of success. 

Like the Tarot Fool, the predominant archetype in my life, this phrase is like a life-motto, a leitmotif, underlying much that propels me forward and reminding me that open-heartedness and vulnerability are not dangerous. Rather, they are the ultimate protection against all perceived threats. 

"Walk the earth naked, clothed only in your truth."
~ Mark David Gerson, from Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir

~~~~~

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Saturday, June 8, 2013

Infinite Creation, Infinite Mind

June 8, 2013 is the 146th anniversary of the birth of Frank Lloyd Wright, the eccentric, iconoclastic philosopher-architect who helped revolutionize how we view our built environment. I first posted this piece two years ago, used parts of it in my memoir, Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir and reprint it today in celebration of a man whose singular story and body of work continue to inspire me.
"If you do the land's bidding, you can build a house that's organic to it."
Frank Lloyd Wright, in Nancy Horan's fictional biography, 
Loving Frank
Although Frank Lloyd Wright speaks here about architecture, what he says applies to all manner of creation. If you do a story's bidding, you can build a novel, screenplay, short story or nonfiction book that's organic to it. And if you do a soul's bidding, you can build a life that's organic to it, too. For isn't life the ultimate creative act?

Too often, we allow the limitations of what we think we know to constrict what's possible, what's natural, what's organic. But the possible, natural and organic have nothing at all to do with what the human mind perceives. They have everything to do with what the infinite mind perceives.

You don't have to believe in God to believe in "infinite mind." For all that the concept of infinite mind suggests is that there is a wisdom that transcends our conscious thoughts, desires and creations. How often has a notion popped into your head that seems to make no conventional sense? And how often have you followed it through only to discover, perhaps in distant retrospect, that it made more sense than anything else you could have ever possibly tried to figure out?

That's God or infinite mind or the muse or, as Wright might put it, nature at work.

My whole life, it seems, has been predicated on that notion -- that there's a force at work that has a much clearer sense of what will serve and satisfy my deepest (often hidden) desires than the childish cravings of a limited mind ever could.

A friend of mine describes it as watching the game not from the field or the stands, but from a blimp floating high above the stadium. It's not a blimp that's separate from us, any more than God, muse, infinite mind or nature are. These are all aspects of all of us, all pieces we carry within us. What we don't all do is acknowledge, access and experience it. What we don't all do is let it, with its broader, deeper perspective and infinite wisdom, be in charge.

Writers often balk when I suggest that their stories are smarter, wiser, cannier and craftier than they could ever hope to be. Writers, like all human beings, would prefer to believe that they can be in control and still create from a place of infinite possibility.

Not even the God of Genesis is that arrogant. God doesn't "make" creation happen. God allows creation to occur. "Let there be light," He says. And light appears. Not because God forces His will on it. But because he allows light its natural form, shape and substance. And when each day's creation is done? He doesn't sit in judgment over it, calling it worthy or unworthy. He recognizes that all creation has innate merit and declares it to be "good."
"...a genius is merely the man who sees nature, and has the boldness to follow it."
~ Frank Lloyd Wright, in 
Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan
I spent more than half the years I've lived so far with my eyes closed and ears blocked to infinite mind, my infinite mind. Although we're all born with a direct link to that source of wisdom and, as young children, act from it, we're often shut down to it by a so-called "grown-up world" that is in fearful denial of anything that can't be accessed by the five physical senses. I don't know why or when I was shut down, or by whom. But, clearly, I was. And it wasn't until a creative and spiritual awakening began to move through me in my early to mid-30s that I began to to tune in to the infinite possibilities of the invisible.

My life since then has been rocky, on-the-edge and unconventional. It's been scary, disrupted and a distant remove from what most people still cling to as "security." It's also been creative, exhilarating, passion-filled, vibrant, exciting, adventurous and enriching. It has pushed me beyond the boundaries of what I believe and what I believe I want, and it has propelled me beyond the frontiers of the conventionally possible. In every moment, it steers me on a course I could never consciously chart for myself. And in every breath, it reminds me that the story knows best -- the story I'm living as much as the story I'm writing.

I wouldn't have it any other way.
‎"I've never been like other people. Not other fathers, not other businessmen. I have never fit into any social norm. And you know what? I don't want to."
~ Frank Lloyd Wright, in 
Loving Frank
• Photos (except the Wright photo) by Mark David Gerson

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Thursday, June 6, 2013

A New Look for an Old Video

With The MoonQuest book getting a new look and its paperback edition going out-of-print on June 15, I needed to find a way to update the one-minute book trailer that was created for it a year or so ago.

If I'd had the raw footage, I could have done it easily. But in one of those many miracles that surrounds my Q'ntana books -- and my life -- someone created the original trailer for me for free. Unfortunately, he disappeared from my life soon after, taking the raw footage with him.

Still, while not an iMovie expert, I was able to use the program to tweak the video...and here it is!



The only downside is that in replacing the video, I lost all my YouTube views. So please take a minute and watch it again if you saw the original, or for the first time if you missed it the first time around. If the video doesn't show up for you, use this link.

And, as a reminder, you can pick up a copy of the soon-to-be-discontinued paperback edition of The MoonQuest for only US$6.29 on Amazon.com or for US$5.99 (signed, if you want) from my website. But only until June 15, when the paperback edition goes out-of-print.

If you'd rather go digital, you'll find the ebook in the Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iBook and Google Play stores for your e-reader, tablet, computer or smartphone.

Now's a great time to read The MoonQuest. Why? Its sequel, The StarQuest, comes out on July 9...with the final installment in The Q'ntana Trilogy, The SunQuest, following on October 3 (in celebration of my birthday)!


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Monday, June 3, 2013

Shattering the Past

As I sat in Starbucks yesterday afternoon, working on my blog post about shattering the old energy of The MoonQuest, a violent gust of wind blew up out of nowhere, picked up the cafe's patio umbrellas and catapulted them into the parking lot. One of them smashed into the driver's side window of the car I had been driving. I was just quoting from The MoonQuest-- "The past is passed. We let it go" -- when the incident occurred.

A few hours later, with both the incident paperwork and my blog post complete, I got into the car to go home. As I gazed out through the now-windowless opening, I had a flashback to a similar incident six years ago, also in Albuquerque, when my car was broken into through the driver's-side window.

As I chronicle below in this excerpt from Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir, that 2007 incident shattered some aspects of how I then viewed myself and how I had been living, and launched me into a major new phase of my life. 

And, so today, as I reflect on the parallel incidents, I wonder: What major life change will this latest shattering trigger....? 


 From "Texas Omens," in Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir

If my first Texas trip had activated the return of my Muse, this second one was about to activate the end my life on the road.

I had just returned to Albuquerque and was asleep in Room 133 of the Howard Johnson Express when my room phone rang. It was a few minutes past seven.

“Mr. Gerson?”

“Yes?” I croaked through my morning fog. I have never woken up easily or quickly.

“You’d better come to the front desk.”

“What?”

“Someone broke into your car. The police are here.”

Some things easily focus the mind. This was one of them. Moments later, I was dressed and in the lobby.

Through thirty-three months of full-time travel, I had never worried about the safety of my car or its contents.

And if I had ever parked in the one spot in a hotel parking lot out of range of security cameras, as I had apparently done the previous night, I had no awareness of it.

A guest at the next-door Clarion Hotel had called 911 when she had seen two young men smash my driver’s side front window. By the time the police arrived, the malefactors had vanished — fortunately, with nothing of real value: personal documents, my inexpensive point-and-shoot camera and, significantly, the now-dusty digital audio recorder I had used to record my God Activation events. Not sophisticated enough to recognize the marketability of my Canadian passport, they had left it on the front passenger seat before fleeing.

As I filled out police reports and called banks, credit card issuers, insurance companies and auto-glass outlets, I wondered what it meant. By the end of the day I knew: If I had lost my itinerant identity in the break-in, it must be time for a new identity, a more established identity. I realized in that moment that my full-time traveling days had come to an end. My new ID, then, would need to reflect my newly settled state...as soon as I could figure out which state to settle in.

• Find out which state I settled in and which life changes this incident sparked in Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir (c) Mark David Gerson, available in the Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iBook and Google Play stores for your e-reader, tablet, computer or smartphone.


~~~~~


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Sunday, June 2, 2013

The MoonQuest Goes Ebook-Only on July 1 ~ Last Chance to Get It in Paperback!


The past is passed. 
We let it go.

Say goodbye to this book cover and, by the end of June, to the paperback edition of The MoonQuest: A True Fantasy. --->

On July 1, The MoonQuest goes ebook-only, and the current paperback edition will go out-of-print.

Why am taking this seemingly radical step? I have both energetic and practical reasons.

Practically speaking, there aren't that many copies of the current paperback edition left. So this edition's days would be numbered, regardless of my current action.

But the energetic/symbolic reason is more important. When this edition was printed in 2007, there was no Q'ntana Trilogy and The MoonQuest's StarQuest and SunQuest sequels, though percolating on the far back burner of my mind, were nowhere in sight.

Since then, my MoonQuest/StarQuest/SunQuest trilogy has gained a name, the remaining books (and all three screenplay adaptations) have been finished, and artist Richard Crookes has designed a unified look for The Q'ntana Trilogy books and films, including new covers for The MoonQuest, as well as for the soon-to-be released StarQuest and SunQuest.



The old MoonQuest look is, well, old. And while Angela Farley's original artwork and Bob Spear's inside design served the book well in its first incarnation, it's time to move on -- to embrace an energy that represents both the full trilogy and the next expression of its potential. To quote from The MoonQuest itself, "The past is passed. We let it go."

The ebook edition of The MoonQuest already sports the new cover, and its insides have also been redesigned and updated (and typos corrected!) to match.

But why now? Well, The StarQuest, Book II in the trilogy, is set to release (finally!) on July 9. And it's important to me that this "old energy" be retired before that happens.

Now the really good news, especially if you haven't yet read The MoonQuest and need to get up to speed before its sequel launches next month:
• Paperback copies of The MoonQuest are now selling for US$6.29 on Amazon.com (down from US$16) through the end of the month)
• Would you prefer a copy signed by me to you or to a friend? You can get one right now on my website through this special link -- for only US$5.99. But only through the end of June. (Signed copies of The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write are also available through that link.)

If you'd prefer the new ebook version, you'll find it right now in the Kindle, Nook, Kobo and iBook stores. (Google Play is very slow at this sort of thing, but it will eventually be updated there as well.)

And don't forget to watch for The StarQuest (coming July 9), The SunQuest, final installment in The Q'ntana Trilogy (coming this fall), and The Q'ntana Trilogy Movies, coming in late 2014/early 2015 to a big screen near you!
~~~~~

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