The MoonQuest Wins National Award!

Thursday, November 1 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

The MoonQuest: A True Fantasy by Mark David Gerson has been named a finalist in the Visionary Fiction category of the 2007 Best Books Awards.

The national awards, sponsored by USA Book News, the premiere online magazine and review website for mainstream and independent publishing houses, were announced today in Los Angeles.

This is the second award for The MoonQuest, which was a New Mexico Discovery Award winner for unpublished fiction in 2006.

The MoonQuest is available online through Amazon.com, where it's a five-star selection, and coast-to-coast in the U.S. at selected retailers.

Recent reviews have praised The MoonQuest as "an evocative and emotionally moving tale of adventure" (Midwest Book Review) and "an exceptional, timeless novel" (The Mindquest Review of Books).

Mark David's newest book, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, will be published in February 2008 by LightLines Media. For Mark David's upcoming book-signings and events, visit booktour.com/author/mark_david_gerson.

At this writing and for a limited time, The MoonQuest is available at a discounted price through Amazon.com

Paying Attention

Sunday, October 28 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

Whenever I doubt that some higher force is keeping an eye on the human me, I'm given a little reminder.

Friday's was a praying mantis that had settled on my front door. In most traditions, the praying mantis guides one toward rest, stillness, prayer, meditation and an openness to dream and revelation. In the busyness of my days, I had neglected all of those.

Then, in case I missed the message, my car's battery died the following evening -- in the parking lot of an Albuquerque Hastings store as I was leaving a book-signing for The MoonQuest.

My plan had been to do a bunch of errands before going home from the signing. The higher powers-that-be had a different idea.

After 77,000 miles in 26 months, my car's battery needed more than a roadside recharge. Apparently, so did mine!

With an eye to the praying mantis, I spent today immersed in quiet, renewing my battery for the journey ahead.

It's easy for me to get caught up in all that I think needs doing. It's harder to remember that unless I take care of my physical and emotional health, the human me will be ill-equipped to journey anywhere.

Photo by Mark David Gerson

Deeper Levels of Trust

Saturday, October 6 ~ Santa Fe, New Mexico


I'm at The Ark bookstore reading from my novel The MoonQuest as part of the Santa Fe Short Story Festival.

"When's the sequel coming out?" someone asks.

When, indeed?

I've been so focused on getting The MoonQuest out into the world and completing The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write that I haven't given a lot of thought to The StarQuest.

It's not that I haven't begun writing The StarQuest. I've begun it twice.

Unlike The MoonQuest, though, whose first two drafts each took me less than a year to write, The StarQuest, which has no completed drafts, has been in my life for more than nine years.

When, indeed?

That the question was asked by someone named Ben is significant. There's a Ben in The StarQuest. He's the main character's son. And he's the main character in The SunQuest, the final book of this projected trilogy.

It's almost as though the character himself leapt off the page to find out when I plan to complete his story.

When, indeed?

With The MoonQuest, I rarely knew from one day to the next — some days, from one word to the next — where the story was taking me. It was frustrating, stressful and scary to be forced to live moment-to-moment, word-by-word, in trust that the story would ultimately reveal itself.

It did, of course. In its time, not mine.

As I ponder Ben's question, I realize that what has held me back from completing The StarQuest is a deeper level of the same trust The MoonQuest demanded of me. By this point in The MoonQuest, in terms of page count, I had a sense of what the story was about. Not a complete sense, but enough to keep me going.

The StarQuest has yet to similarly reveal itself, and I realize now that I have not trusted it enough to continue.

I was ready to trust The StarQuest only to the extent that I had trusted The MoonQuest. Where's the growth in that?

In writing as in life, we're constantly being pushed to have more faith, to trust more fully, to surrender more completely. It's true for Toshar, The MoonQuest's protagonist. It's true for Q'nta, The StarQuest's protagonist. No doubt, it will be true for Ben as well, when I get to The SunQuest.

Meantime, it's certainly true for me -- in my writing as in my life.

I still can't answer Ben's question, but I can commit to whatever level of trust my stories (and his) are asking of me. And I do.

While you're waiting for me to finish The StarQuest, check out The MoonQuest.

It's a five-star selection on Amazon.com and a story the Midwest Book Review calls "an evocative and emotionally moving tale of adventure." The Mindquest Review of Books calls it "an exceptional, timeless novel."

The MoonQuest makes a great gift for the holidays! (Find out where to buy it and read/hear excerpts at TheMoonQuest.com.)

Shining Hours

Wednesday, October 3 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

This moment, this minute
And each second in it
Will leave a glow upon the sky
And as time goes by
It will never die

Those Johnny Mercer lyrics from the song My Shining Hour float through my mind as this day, my 53rd birthday, draws to a close.

As adults, our milestone birthdays are generally the decade-markers. Turning 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 have a particular significance to us that 27, 34, 42 and 53 often lack.

I remember most of those landmarks in my life: On my 30th, I was on a bus tour in the border country of northern England feeling nauseous. On my 40th, I stepped off the ferry into a new life in Nova Scotia...and a stomach-churning panic. On my 50th, an uncomfortable sense of foreboding proved accurate 30 days later when my marriage suddenly ended.

Frankly, so many of my birthdays have heralded uncomfortable shifts that their approach tends to make me nervous.

Last night, I made a different choice.

After nearly three years of full-time travel, this would be my first birthday off the road and the first in my new Albuquerque home. It would, I determined, be a new kind of portal -- one that would be low impact, high vibrational...and fun. One that would anchor my desires, and a way of being, for the coming year.

It has been all of that. Apart from the usual calls from friends and family, it has been a quiet and low-key day: a morning and evening hike in the Sandia foothills; a long, meditative soak in the tub; selective work tasks that move both The MoonQuest and The Voice of the Muse forward (tasks performed at my favorite cafe over a pleasingly decadent coffee drink); and a delightfully self-indulgent gift to myself.

It was a day without expectation or necessary outcomes, a day stripped of perfectionism and self-judgment -- a day filled with shining hours that were all, as Mercer put it in his 1943 song, "calm, happy and bright."

Most importantly, perhaps, it was a day that perfectly models the potential carried by every day. It was a day that reminds me that the most powerful birthdays are not those once-a-year (or once-a-decade) landmarks. Rather, they're the ones that set in motion a year of shining hours, each a brilliant spotlight of consciousness and possibility.

Incidentally, Johnny Mercer wrote My Shining Hour for a film titled The Sky's the Limit,another reminder to carry into all the new moments of my new year.

A Guide for Living in These Times

Monday, September 10 ~ Sedona, Arizona


Click on this audio link to hear the audio archive of my interview on Blog Talk Radio this evening, in an hour's conversation with host Phil Harris.

It's a free-ranging give-and-take about spirituality and metaphysics and a guide for living in these times.

Breaking In, Breaking Out

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Thursday, August 9 ~
An Omen?

This final morning in this Albuquerque hotel, I wake up to a dream about another Albuquerque hotel -- the one around the corner I'll be checking into later today.

In the dream, I'm standing in the parking lot of this second hotel. As I gaze up at the building, I remark with some surprise that this hotel is such a powerful vortex that I ought to create an energy drawing of it.

I think nothing of the dream until...


Friday, August 10 ~ Breaking In

It's my first morning in the new hotel. The telephone rings, jarring me out of a deep sleep and a dream about...about something.

It's the front desk.

"Your car," the concerned voice says. "It's been broken into."

I stumble out of bed, into some clothes and out to the parking lot. A police cruiser is parked next to my minivan, an officer jotting down notes from the sea of shattered glass at his feet.

As I peer anxiously through the now-missing driver's-side window, I try to determine what's been taken -- not an easy task given how jam-packed the car is from my 30 months (to the day) of full-time travel.

"Don't touch anything," the officer cautions, as I poke my head into the car, doing my best to avoid the stray shards of glass still clinging to the door frame. I can't open the door until it's been dusted for prints, he says. Just like on TV.

Unlike on TV, my car is parked at the security camera's only blind spot. The camera captured nothing usable.

Bad news for the thief: he captured little of significant monetary value.

Bad news for me: the cases he grabbed (thinking that they held computer equipment) contained identity-related documents, including bank and credit card statements.

I spend most of the day in shock, too busy on the phone with glass, insurance, bank and credit card companies to deal with the deeper meaning of the incident.

The only thing that keeps pounding through my head is the phrase "breaking patterns."



Tuesday, August 14 ~ Breaking Out I

It's funny. I've been on the road for nearly three years, everything I own stuffed into my van. Through that time, I've never felt at risk, nor have I spent any time worrying about the security of my belongings.

Yet here I am, noticing a new missing something every time I step into the car.

It's interesting to me that the break-in occurred during daylight hours and that no other car in the lot was stolen. It's also interesting what was taken. It's almost as though the perpetrator was directed to my car and was guided what to take.

Among other MIA (missing in action) items are
• the bulk of my art supplies
• the digital audio recorder I use to record my sessions, teleconferences and live events
• a variety of documents and other objects relating who I have been and how I have viewed the world

Unthreatened and untouched are my copies of The MoonQuest and anything and everything related to my writing.

Now I see one of the patterns that shattered along with my car window: My work with healing art and sound. Whatever my future vibrational offerings, I know now that they will look and sound different than they have in the past.

It's in this moment that I feel called to make way for the new by offering my complete inventory of sound initiation/activation CDs at clearance prices. [See my August 14 newsletter, The Sounds of Change.]

Throughout my adult life and regardless of whatever else I've been doing, my primary focus has always returned to writing and related activities. Today and as a result of the break-in, it appears to be doing so once again.


Wednesday, August 15 ~ Breaking Out II

Until this morning, my thought has been that I would stay in New Mexico through the fall, perhaps hitting the road again with The MoonQuest after the holidays. To that end, I've been searching out furnished rentals on Craig's List.

It's a pattern I've followed through my 30 months of full-time travel: periods of being on the road interspersed with stops of various length in furnished sublets and vacation rentals.

This morning that pattern, too, fractures and dissolves.

As I drive to the bank to deal with more identity-related fallout from the break-in, wondering en route why I'm not finding any suitable furnished rentals, my mind wanders back more than a dozen years -- to a meditative walk I took in Nova Scotia just after returning to work on The MoonQuest after a seven-month hiatus.

It was on that walk that I knew it was time to leave my furnished rental and find a new place that was unfurnished.

As I recall that long-ago walk, a 2007 version of my 1994 knowingness washes over me: It really is time to stop. To truly stop. To drop anchor. To land. To create not only a home base but a home.

My first thought, as it was 13 years ago, is that I have nothing with which to fill an unfurnished house. My second thought also parallels my Nova Scotia experience: Trust, and it will be fine.


Monday, August 20 ~ Breaking Out III

Hobby Lobby, a regional crafts chain, is running a mega sale on art supplies this week. Is that a sign, I wonder, to replace my stolen colored pencils?

Once in the store, I study my options and settle on a set of watercolor pencils.

Yet as I drive away with my new purchase, it feels all wrong. To my shock, I realize I don't miss my old colored pencils and don't want new ones.

My desire to draw hasn't vanished. But all I want now is a few plain sketch pencils to play with.

Another old pattern makes way for the new.

It's time, I realize, to add my inventory of healing art to my selloff of the past.



Friday, August 24 ~ Breaking Out IV

In my frequent moments of overwhelm this week, I ask for confirmation of my decision to drop anchor.

The signs and signals, while not abundant, are eloquent.

Perhaps the earliest, gone unnoted at the time, was the realization that my thick stack of membership cards in frequent-hotel-guest plans was taken -- probably because it looked like a collection of credit cards.

A more recent indicator (for the author of a book titled The MoonQuest) is that the house I'm most drawn to has the word moon as part of its street address.

A phone call today is the capper: Even though I have no house yet, I've been offered my first housewarming present.


Saturday, August 25 ~ The Eagle Has Landed

I have just signed a one-year lease on a house that is everything I asked for...and more. I'm excited and abundantly grateful, even as tremors of anxiety continue to ripple through me.

It's been 15 days since the break-in. Each of those days might as well have been a year for all the openings and transformations that have occurred since that morning.

There have also been many synchronicities and miracles through that time, and I know that at least as many will carry me forward into whatever's next.

Are my traveling days over? I wouldn't dare suggest that. Nor would I dare guess what lies ahead.

All I think I know is that writing will remain an integral part of it...whatever "it" is.

These New Earth Chronicles will likely continue in some form. After all, the New Earth we are co-creating won't disappear just because I'm experiencing it from a less mobile perspective. My newsletter, too, will live on in its own as-yet-to-be-determined way.

Meantime, I'll continue to promote and market The MoonQuest, work toward completion of its sequel and move forward with publication of my book on writing, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.

Through all that, I'll do my best to stay open to whatever gifts and growth await me on this next phase of my journey...wherever it carries me.

Thanks for being one of those gifts!


• Save up to 75% on healing art and CDs at my Web Store.

• Order your copy of The MoonQuest today -- through www.themoonquest.com or through Amazon.com using this direct link. Or click here for a list of retailers who carry the book.





Photos and Art by Mark David Gerson.
#1 Santa Fe sunflowers; #2 Albuquerque sunset; #3 Waxing moon over the Sandias; #4 Drawing #117 "Portal to Your Passion"

The Heart of Texas

Wednesday, August 1 ~ Junction, Texas

Images from a week in Texas....




#1 Stained Glass Image of St. Francis, Monastery of the Poor Clares, Brenham

#2 Monastery of the Poor Clares, Brenham

#3 Rt 965, near Enchanted Rock

#4 Rock Formation, Big Bend Nat'l Park








#5 Rio Grande River

#6 Chisos Mountains, Big Bend Nat'l Park

#7 San Padre Island Nat'l Seashore, Gulf of Mexico

Texas Photos by Mark David Gerson|

Giving Up the Need to Know

Sunday, July 22 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

More Texas license plates. Everywhere I look on the drive from Sedona to Albuquerque, I see Texas plates.

They're there, it seems, to tweak my dawning awareness that when I leave Albuquerque on Tuesday, it will be to head into Texas.

Not that I have any idea why I'm being drawn to Texas...again. Why should I, when I still don't know why I was pulled there earlier this year [see God's GPS].

"Not going to work this time," I insist to whoever's in charge. "If you really want me to go to Texas, you'll have to do better than license plates."

It's now my second night in Albuquerque, and I'm chatting with the hotel owner about The MoonQuest, which she's just begun reading. My post-Albuquerque plans never come up. Yet, somehow, it emerges that her husband has family in -- you guessed it -- Texas.

I don't make the connection until an hour later, when I'm talking to Josh, the new guy on the front desk.

"Are you a native New Mexican?" I ask.

"No," he replies. "I'm from Dallas. Texas."

I almost surrender in that moment.

But not quite.

Unconditional surrender comes 24 hours later.

I'm parked outside Office Max. Across from me is a small black car with Texas plates.

"Not going to work," I say, shaking my head at the Universe. "Show me people, not plates."

I come out of the store a few minutes later, following the man who was ahead of me in line. He heads straight for the Texas-mobile and takes off. For Texas, no doubt.

As I walk across his now-vacant spot, something flashes up at me from the pavement. A penny.

I stoop to pick it up and know where I'm going.

I still don't know why, but in that moment I remember my own words from a week ago as I spoke as part of a Sunday Service talk at Santa Fe's The Celebration. The topic? "Too Much Knowledge Is a Dangerous Thing: Giving Up the Need to Know."

I give up.

You Want Me To Do What?!?

Tuesday, July 10 ~ US-93, north of Kingman, Arizona

I'm in Sedona a few days ago when, for the first time since turning it into an eBook five years ago, I begin rereading my book of writing practice and inspiration, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.

The idea is to update and repackage the eBook to restore some of my focus on teaching writing.

The more I read, the more excited I get. Not only is it good -- better than I remembered -- it ties in perfectly with The MoonQuest.

If among its other themes, The MoonQuest is a call to live more authentic lives by telling our stories, The Voice of the Muse is the primer that shows how to do it.

I continue my reading with that thought in mind until, somewhere on the highway out of Kingman, I hear the voice of my muse (ie, Evan Almighty's boss -- see Use Me).

"Forget the eBook," the voice says. "Publish it as a book. Not in a year. Not in six months. Now. Start the process now."

"You want me to do what?!?" I shout. "But The MoonQuest-- It's just barely out. This is insane!!"

"No more insane than building an ark," it replies.



Thursday, July 12 ~ Mono Lake, California

I wake up this morning in Hawthorne, NV in fear. It seems to be one of those unfocused, nonspecific fears, but it's likely related to the whole Voice of the Muse thing.

I struggle out of the womb-like safety of my hotel bed, into my clothes and into the car.

As I climb the Wassuk Range that separates Nevada from California, I open the car window. It's the first time in weeks that morning temperatures anywhere have been cooler than the low-90s, the first time opening car windows has been a comfortable option.

It rained last night in Hawthorne, a brief but pounding thunderstorm that soaked the streets and flashed electric bolts of white up in these mountains.

As soon as I lower the windows, the umistakable scent of sage -- heightened by the moisture -- blows into the car. I breathe in the cleansing, purifying smell and let it wash away my anxiety.

Now, ten minutes later, I'm parked on the side of SR-167 across from Mono Lake. Like some latter-day Avalon, Paoha and Negit islands rise up out of the lake's morning mist.

The stillness is complete.


I don't know what's ahead -- with my books or in my life. But in this moment, embraced by the mountains, enchanted by the lake's Camelot-like formations, and having written these words, I am at peace.


Thursday, July 12 ~ Oakhurst, California

I spend most of my day at elevations exceeding 9,000 feet -- in the skyscraping heights of Yosemite National Park. Now, most of the way down the mountain, I sit at an outdoor cafe as dusk drains the last color from the sky. With the final glimmerings of light go the final shreds of my resistance.

I feel both the insanity and the perfection of this divine directive to publish The Voice of the Muse.

I don't know how I will produce and pay for a second book while still paying for and promoting a first.

Yet, as God did with Evan and his ark, the God within me and the sentient spirit of both books will provide all the resources, inner and outer, that I need.

As long as I say Yes.

As long as I surrender.

And I do.

Photos by Mark David Gerson: #1 Yosemite Nat'l Park; #2 The road to Tonopah & Hawthorne, NV; #3 Mono Lake, CA

Use Me

Sunday, July 8 ~ Sedona, Arizona

As I watch the new movie, Evan Almighty, with my daughter this afternoon, tears mingle with laughter at the story of the ambitious newscaster-turned-Congressman whose life is turned upside-down when God tells him to prepare for an impending flood by building an ark.

My tears come in Evan's surrender to the higher power that always knows best, the higher power that I, like Evan, have been known to resist, curse and fight.

I have never been asked to build an ark, but I have been guided along roads that seem equally bizarre and incomprehensible, in directions that others have judged or mocked.

Ultimately, though, as with Evan and his flood, the higher guidance has always proven itself wiser and more knowing than a limited human mind that is always trying to figure things out and cling to control.

As the film credits roll, I'm reminded of the song Use Me, Rickie Byars Beckwith's ardent anthem to ultimate surrender:

Use me
Oh, God
I stand for you
And here I'll abide
As you show me
All that I must do

I'm reminded too of author Madeleine L'Engle's description of the Old Testament as filled with bearded prophets shouting up to the heavens, "You want me to do what!?"

Evan is just such a prophet, as am I and each of you. For in every moment, the God Power we carry within is calling on us to do and be the impossible, to build our own version of Evan's ark, even though it makes no conventional sense, even though we don't know where to begin or who we'll be when we're done.

I wrote about the song Use Me in a November newsletter (The Choice for God), after having cried while singing it during a Sunday service at L.A.'s Agape International Spiritual Center.

Ironically, I had just recommitted to my then-unpublished novel, The MoonQuest, not realizing that this act of recommitment would result in its speedy publication -- by me! (You want me to do what!?)

My tears then as now are the tears of truth. I know that whether I stand in the vibration of that powerful lyric, in the resonance of today's movie or at one of life's many crossroads, my only choice is the highest choice, the choice that prophets through the ages -- all the way up to Evan -- have made: the choice for God.

My God is neither actor Morgan Freeman nor some force outside myself. My God is the divine within me, the highest imperative, infinite wisdom and creative intelligence that asks of me only that I surrender and allow it to use me -- to be me -- as it guides me forward.


As I prepare to leave Sedona tomorrow for parts (yet again) unknown, I recommit to that path of surrender and know that, in so doing, I walk in the path of God. And I am never alone.