When my brother from another mother offered to take me on a trip to Sedona because he thought I needed a vacation, I didn’t understand what that meant.

I knew about the vortexes but I’m not really too New Age in my practice. I like crystals. There’s something to reiki but I think it’s unetihical to charge so much for classes. But the hippie, freedom loving side of me said, “OK, let’s go.”

And we did.

Over the summer, I had started going around in the Denver lit scene and reading my pieces at Telling Tales. The respones to my writing were always interesting. I saw people were intrigued with my mystical take on reality and there was an audience.

Around the same time, The Where There is No Night Art Book was released from time out at Amazon. I had to cuss them out for a month to get a tech error fixed so my damn book had a REALLY soft launch. Good thing it was just the teaser for the novel and not the novel itself.

I decided to run a free promotion for the book and it did really well in the charts. Amazon had put the book into some weird categories like Rockstar Romance but it worked. I broke into the top 30 of the US market in 3 genres and into the international market in Rockstar Romance, Gothic Romance and Metaphysical fiction. I felt like a the fucking rockstar so I decided to take it further.

I decied to take the full text for Where There is No Night: The Last Moments before Dusk down to Sedona with me and get the damn thing DONE and READY TO GO. I also found important drafts of books 2 and 3 of the series on a thumb drive while moving so I have the KEYS to publishing the whole series in full.

Then eclipse season hit and we got a mini moon??? The astrology started getting crazy and all of a sudden 2016 was back from the dead. 2016, for example, was the last time that Where There is No Night was close to being published in full.

Another 2016 skeleton that fell out of my closet was an old short story I’d written because I was looking for ways to promote the release of Where There is No Night. I pitched a horror story I wrote for an unrequited love in 2016. The story was about a drinking contest with Death. I was still finding my voice as a horror writer back then. It was during that time that I embraced writing horror and fell in love with the genera.

So with all the 2016 eclipse energy hanging about, I sent the story away. All of my readings on how my story would fair in the selection process were cups, cups, cups galore! My guides were clearly saying, “You’ve got this.”

Then I waited.

And took off to Sedona!

Sedon was a trip. First we went to the Stupa and I felt something moving there.

We went walking in town after a short hike and I found a statue that I had saved a picture of as inspiraiton for Where There is No Night about KUNDALINI RISING. I’ve been doing a DEEP chakra cleanse and I’m on the crown chakra finally. I knew something was opening.

That night I sat down to edit with the cool Arizona breeze blowing into the suite. Much to my surprise, a muse showed up and the magic started.

My hands did the work but the inspiraiton was foreign. By 2AM I had ripped 20 pages out of the manuscript.

The whole plot gained so much CLARITY that I felt like I was reading the book for the first time.

I continued to slash through the manuscript feeling exited because I FINALLY got what all the editors had been trying to tell me during rewrites and resubmits in 2016 — that there were things that didn’t move the plot forward but if I pulled those things out, people would be BEGGING for more.

The next morning my friend and I went hiking.

We visited the birthing cave and took a picture of children literally popping out of it. A message of fertility.

On the way back from the hike, I got the message that I was accepted ot read my story at DenverFright! I screamed with excitment in the car. Aparently Denverite liked it and selected it to be read on Colorado Public Radio.

Later in the afternoon, my friend and I went to Bell Rock and there was a wedding.

I got whisked up the side of the rock formation by something I couldn’t explain. I felt like I was chasing something I couldn’t catch. We played a game for a while but I didn’t want to go full on Pinic at Hanging Rock so I decided to go find my friend. But I slipped on some pebbles and pulled a muscle in my knee.

Later I read that the hide and seek energy I felt at Bell Rock was something people commonly experience at the vortex site.

I also saw a little whirl wind right where they say the center of one of the portals is. It swept the leaves up in a little cyclone and I thought I saw something shimmer.

It was pretty amazing.

I did another hike to Airport Mesa and my leg was killing me. It wouldn’t have been hard for me usually but I definitly regretted not stretching before hiking was what did me in.

So my guides said, “Sit down, finish those edits.”

And I did. I was nice to myslef. I sat on the patio overlooking beutiful rock formations and tore into my manuscript until it was time to leave.

It was a nice retreat.

Back in Denver, there was a lot to do. I threw a the 3rd Tarot Tea Party and only 2 people came. I was really said. But the two people who showed up told me it was OK because I was competing with a BIG Halloween parade.

I juggled working my ass off at my part-time job and editing whenever I could because I wanted to do a final pass to make sure everything made sense with Where There is No Night. I pulled so much out of the story in Sedona and I wanted to make sure I didn’t lose any of the plot or make any careless mistakes because the text was already publisher desk ready when I tore into it.

Then the Day of DenverFright arrived!

It was a trip hearing a professional actor read my story “Le baiser de la mort” on stage tonight. Thank you to Denver Fright and Denverite for choosing my story!

I had flashbacks to the 6th grade Halloween party at school when I won the short story contest with a cheesy horror romance about a girl and a ghost. Everyone was enchanted by my story and I felt the same energy tonight.

As a writer, I always fantasize about my work being performed. It was surreal to watch it happening before my eyes. And the actor NAILED IT. He had me laughing at all the jokes out loud! The audience was intrigued. At times you could hear a pin drop. Laughter filled the room when the actor hit my punch lines.

And of course my guides, who I am starting to feel more and more may be my French ancestors, planted a giggling baby in the audience for a story about a drinking contest with death. I just had to laugh, because I got the #SunTarotcard when I read about tonight and that card features, you guessed it, a laughing baby.

It felt good. I wanted to network afterwards but my ride needed to get home so here I am, getting ready to eat and then get more done for my book release of #TheLastMomentsBeforeDusk full novel on Saturday, just in time for Denver Witches’ Ball and Samhain!

So in honor of all the excitement, I have some promos going on.