Friday, December 14 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico
I'm sitting at a book-signing table at the Hastings store on Tramway Boulevard with my friend and fellow author Gary A. Wilson. Somehow, through a miracle of grace (and Gary's enthusiasm for my book), I've managed to sell three copies of The MoonQuest, even though I've felt thoroughly ungrounded and largely incoherent since arriving here.
A young couple approaches our table. As is often the case, it's the woman who's the reader. She picks up The MoonQuest and, instead of scanning the back cover, immediately begins reading from page one.
Her eyes and face begin to glow with pleasure. It's clear she doesn't want to put it down.
"I love it," she exclaims, "the names...the places...the story. I love it!"
I sign it for her and she and her friend move on, leaving me profoundly grateful -- not for the sale but for the light in her eyes as she read my words.
Although, I've been blessed with good reviews and positive feedback, I've never witnessed someone experiencing my story. I've never been gifted with the immediacy of a reader's delight. I've never experienced the instant gratification of a reader's instant gratification.
It's a rare privilege -- one closed to most authors. Tonight, I have seen the impact of my words in real time and I'm humbled by the power of the story that lives within me, the story that lives within us all.
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Instant Gratification
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
A Sandia Earth/Sky Montage
Tuesday, December 4 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico
Photos of the Sandia Mountains and Albuquerque sky by Mark David Gerson
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
In Gratitude
Wednesday, November 21 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico.jpg)
I'm sitting at my kitchen table on this day before Thanksgiving, the wind outside my window blowing the last of the warm weather away, contemplating the cornucopia of blessings in my life for which I'm grateful.
Despite all the upheaval in my life and in the world around me, the blessings are still limitless.
The first on my mind, for I leave in a few minutes for the two-and-a-half-hour drive to pick her up, is my daughter, who will join me here in Albuquerque for Thanksgiving this weekend.
This is our first Thanksgiving together as just the two of us and the first time since her mother and I separated that I have a home of my own to welcome her into. I'm profoundly grateful for her presence in my life and for the home I'm now able to share with her.
This time last year, still on the road and about to spend my second consecutive Thanksgiving with my friends Bob and Diana Mitchell in Michigan, I could not have begun to imagine all the unexpected gifts this year would bring, among them:
• a home of my own after 30 months of full-time travel...and the arrival here in Albuquerque, a month after mine, of one of my closest friends -- who now lives a five-minute walk away.
• a home in the foothills of (and with a view of) the Sandia Mountains, which have inspired and uplifted me from the moment I first saw them nearly three years ago. (In fact, my very first place drawing was of the Sandias.)
• the long-awaited publication of my novel, The MoonQuest, not to mention the two awards it has already garnered and the glimmerings of interest in my screenplay adaptation of the book.
• the imminent publication of a second book, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write and the production of its companion CD. (I'll have more to say about these in a newsletter in the next week or so, when I'll unveil its amazing cover...though you can get a small-size sneak preview on MySpace.)
• all the wondrous and miraculous ways I have been taken care of, even as I've let go most of the touring, teleconferences and private sessions that were my financial mainstay on the road.
There is so much more...too much to enumerate. But I can't complete my incomplete list without mentioning you. Through all the radical shifts and transformations in my life and, no doubt, in yours over the past year, I'm enduringly grateful that you are still in my life, part of my creative and spiritual family.
Whether or not you celebrate Thanksgiving tomorrow, I wish you an abundance of all that would bring joy and gladness to your heart -- today, tomorrow and every day.
Photo by Mark David Gerson: Sunrise over the Sandias
On the Air with Mark David
Tuesday, November 20 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico
Through the miracle that is the internet, I'm able to share with you two recent radio/podcast interviews.
The first, aired back in October and produced by Authors Access, talks about how to get through and past writer's block. You can listen to it here.
(I have lots more to say about writer's block in my upcoming book and companion CD set, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.)
The second, aired earlier this week and part of the Authors On the Air series hosted by the irrepressible Marlive Harris, is free-range talk about writing, including how I came to write The MoonQuest. You can listen to it here.
Please check them out and let me know what you think!
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Paying More Attention
Friday, November 2 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico
Sometimes messages come to me through insects and cars, sometimes through dream.
Sometimes, they come in dream shorthand -- through snatches of song that flit and flutter through my consciousness (or repeat insistently) as I wake up in the morning.
This morning's was the latter, an Elton John lyric that is still looping through my mind hours after I opened my eyes.
For you and I have a guardian angel
It's the second consecutive morning I've been awakened by these reassuring words from the song "True Love," and they remind yet again me that as I pay attention, I am taken care of...magnificently.
Yesterday's guardian angel message, for example, arrived shortly before I learned that The MoonQuest had been named a finalist in a national book award!
"How can I doubt?" I ask myself....even as, in my humanity, I still sometimes do.
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
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
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
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
Sunday, October 07, 2007
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
The MoonQuest makes a great gift for the holidays! (Find out where to buy it and read/hear excerpts at TheMoonQuest.com.)
Thursday, October 04, 2007
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,
Monday, September 10, 2007
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.
