It's true: Before Thursday, only two of my seven books had found their way into paperback and none more recently than five years ago with the publication of The Voice of the Muse. Holding the print edition of Acts of Surrender was powerful evidence for me of a revolutionary shift into the physical from what had previously been strictly etheric in my life. No wonder I was emotional!
The journey to that shift began a few weeks ago when I felt a sudden, urgent and incompressible imperative to get my remaining five ebook-only editions into print, along with an updated version of The MoonQuest. Through that process, work that existed only electronically has started to become manifest in my physical world -- and with mind-spinning speed: At this rate, all my ebooks will boast paperback editions by the end of January.
I'd like to think that the "manifestation exercise" I'm experiencing right now with my books is a staging ground for what's waiting for me in 2014. I'd like to think that it's a sort of dress rehearsal...that with 2014, many of my long-held dreams will finally begin to take physical form.
It is said that just before we die, our lives flash before our eyes. We can also experience some version of that "replay" when we are about to die into a new phase of our lives. Is that what's happening to me on the cusp of a new year, as my current republishing venture forces me to relive many of my lives by rereading all my books?
As a memoir, Acts of Surrender is an obvious blast from my various pasts. But my Q'ntana fantasy trilogy, two writing books and Book of Messages are just as autobiographical, if not quite so obviously. To my surprise, they remain as personally relevant to me as I revisit them today as they were when I originally wrote them. That includes The MoonQuest, which is four months to the day away from celebrating the 20th anniversary of its (conscious) conception.
Of course, I can't know what 2014 will bring. So, for now, even as I ponder the metaphorical meaning of this unexpected publishing enterprise, I continue to surrender to it by rereading all my work and by making minor content tweaks and creating new covers for the new editions.Meantime, I can't get this quote from Acts of Surrender out of my head -- and not just because I read and reread it multiple times over the past few weeks...
"My life, as you will discover, has been rocky, on-the-edge and unconventional. It has been scary, disrupted and a distant remove from what most people still cling to as 'security.'
"It has 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 that I could never consciously chart for myself. In every breath, it reminds me that the story knows best -- the story I'm living as much as the story I'm writing."
Yes, the story knows best. All I can do, in this and every moment -- to the best of my imperfect ability -- is to trust that.
• Get the paperback edition of Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir today at https://www.createspace.com/4535620. Get the ebook edition in the Kindle, iBook, Nook and Kobo stores. You can also check your local Amazon store late next week for the book, and keep checking it through January for paperback editions of all my books.
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