The North West Passage

Posts Tagged ‘books’

I have just learned that the production process for “Loneliness and Revelation“, my fifth book, is now underway. I’m a little surprised to see that the official release day will be the 29th of October, 2010, which is 14 months from now. It’s not unusual for a book to need a year from submission of manuscript to availability on the market, but I was hoping it might be available in time for KG next year. Well, I can’t complain: I’m sure this date was selected to ensure the book gets into the fall and winter catalogues for that year. (There’s probably not enough time to get it into this year’s fall and winter catalogues.) Anyway, 29 October is two days before Samhain: an auspicious time of year, after all. And this way, I continue the trend of producing at least one new book in every even-numbered year since 2004.

I’ve also learned that the book has been assigned its ISBN number: 978-1-84694-355-3, and that it will be 160 pages long (short and sweet!), and will cost £ 10.99 in GBP, or $ 19.95 in USD.

We’ll be posting more info as it becomes available. In the meanwhile, I’m now well underway with writing the next book, tentatively entitled “Twenty-Two Sacred Relationships”. Here’s the table of contents so far:

1. Mind and body
2. Friends
3. Loving couples
4. Families
5. Elders
6. Rural landscapes
7. Urban landscapes
8. Hunters and animals
9. The Kitchen (i.e. people and the food we eat)
10. Storytellers
11. Musicians
12. Scholars and books
13. Teachers
14. Healers and patients
16. Soldiers
17. Sailors, Ships, and the Sea
18. Athletes
19. Leadership
20. Citizenship
21. The Market
22. Life and Death.

If you can think of anything that I should consider in each of these, or any other relationships I should include, let me know. I am hoping to be done a complete first draft by around winter solstice.

Friends,
I’ve finished writing Book the Fifth!

The first draft of Loneliness and Revelation: A Study of the Sacred is finally complete. I’m preparing the cover copy and the proposal for the publisher now, and I will give myself about a month or so to do any last edits, modifications, improvements and minor changes, and produce a final manuscript.

Actually, I finished the manuscript by splitting up my work in progress. The first part of the book, which I had been calling “the argument”, was originally intended as a short 10-page introduction for another project. Then as I began to see more philosophical questions emerging from it, and more prospective directions for answers, it grew longer. Right now that short 10-page intro is 43,000 words with 47 sub-sections. As the argument became more intricate and required more explanation, and as the word count for the whole thing topped 85,000 with still lots of planned material ahead, I decided to split the text into a series of smaller books. Wouldn’t it look silly if the introduction turned out to be much longer than the body of the text! I had been thinking about it for a while, but a conversation with a few friends here helped me finalise the decision. This also means that the rest of the text can be released separately as Parts Two and Three of a series. I won’t have to rush it, nor cram too much material into a small space. It also occurred to me that since we are in an economic depression, it might be better to produce a smaller book: it will be less costly to produce, and less expensive for the reader to buy.

I think this fifth book has some very good material in it. So far I have described it in public at gatherings and book-signing gigs in Milan, in Edmonton, and in Ottawa, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. If I may boast like a proper Celt for a moment: my presentation in Ottawa two days ago was attended by Isaac Bonewits, who subsequently told the audience that I am smarter than he is. High praise indeed! Of course, now I had better live up to it.

By the way: those who contributed to my “Call for Help” a few weeks ago, and answered my short questions about their occupational relationships, will find that material in the subsequent books in the series instead of in this one.

Read the cover copy and a few other marketing points here.

A few announcements, concerning the activities of various friends of mine:

Mention the First
amurphyhiscock has announced a release date for Out of the Broom Closet, a new anthology in which “fifty contributors share their stories of how they discovered their spiritual path, the obstacles they faced, the reactions of their colleagues, family, and friends, and the ongoing challenge of staying honest with themselves and the Divine.”

I am one of the contributors! As are several friends of mine, including erynn999, and blaackangel (who runs Hamilton Pagan Pride Day, one of the largest one-day pagan events on this continent). More info about the book here.

Mention the Second
I really, really like this new blog, Pinch Pennies Save Planet. Yes, a friend of mine of 12+ years is the author.

Mention the Third
brandondedicant, regular reader of this blog and contributor to its comments, asked me if I would be willing to mention Genocide Prevention Month here. He also tells me that he’s helping to organise a genocide prevention ritual, which he described as follows: “It’s an interfaith event of numerous rituals happening worldwide throughout the month of April. Groups and solitaries alike can participate. It will also be performed at the Trillium festival in Virginia.”

Mention the Fourth
By popular demand: well, actually, by request of a friend who emailed me to ask for my opinion about my own Question of the Week: I’ll say a few words about about it shortly. But when this morning I sat down to write a blog post about it, and within an hour it was 2,000 words long, I thought I had better find a more succinct way to say it. Meanwhile, have a look at what Gus DiZerega had to say about a similar topic.

And now, I must get back to marking essays.

This is a surprising book in several ways. On first glance it appears to be a coffee-table travelogue: it is 11 x 9 inches, and every page is dominated by photography (albeit extraordinarily beautiful photography). Some of the sacred places he has selected are those which you may expect to see, such as Stonehenge, and the Pyramids of Giza. Others are less well known yet equally wonderful, such as Lake Funduzi, in South Africa, the Ellora Caves in India (a favourite of mine!), and Mount Tongariro in New Zealand. Yet there is a lot more here than what may be found in other books of its kind. What Carr-Gomm has attempted to do, successfully I think, is expand the understanding of what a sacred place is. Three particular ways stand out in my mind.

The first is that a sacred place need not be “discovered” It can also be created. Certainly, there are places which seem to call out to humanity, and appear as if they have magic whether or not people acknowledge it. Mountain heights like Kilimanjaro, Denali , and special lakes like Walden Pond or the Source of the Blue Nile, are included for this reason. But it is also the case that some places have become sacred because of human activity: perhaps it is the location of a traditional ceremony or an important historical event. Perhaps it is the site of an temple or other edifice of human hands. He therefore includes impressive cathedrals and monuments such as Santiago de la Compostela, and Mecca, and a few that are partially in ruins now, such as the Oracle of Delphi, and the Temples of Malta.

That point may seem obvious to some. The second, more original point that Carr-Gomm raises, is that a sacred place need not be ancient. Carr-Gomm has therefore included the Temples of Humanity in Damanhur, Italy, and the Tarot Garden, also in Italy. Indeed in his introduction he describes a parkland in Wellington, New Zealand, which enchanted him with its beauty. He also noted signs that other people found the park to be most magical, as there is a clearing where people leave offerings of feathers, prayer-ties, and the like, on the trees. Yet the park was built on a reclaimed rubbish dump. Part of his purpose here, I think, is not just to draw attention to these wonderful places. It is also to assert the case that a sacred place can be very new, and it need not be any less sacred because of its youth. I find this an encouraging thought.

The third is that a sacred place is not always entirely peaceful. Carr-Gomm describes not only the wonder and beauty of each site he describes. He also mentions that many of them have long been the site of some terrible conflicts, and even of wars. Sometimes the conflict concerns who or which group controls the site, or who is (or is not) allowed in). It may concern environmental degradation. It may even have to do with political conflict at a regional or national level, from ethnic tension to outright warfare. Carr-Gomm describes the legal and political problems associated with Bear Butte, in South Dakota. A federal court ruled that the land had been seized from the Lakota Nation illegally, and ordered the government to pay damages. The Lakota refused the money, as they wanted their sacred homeland back. This fight for justice continues to this day. Carr-Gomm also describes how Luang Prabang, a World Heritage city in Laos, is threatened by the extreme poverty of local inhabitants, and the consequences of a secret war that the USA fought against Laos during the Vietnam era. Carr-Gomm describes the message of the Kogi people, the indigenous nation that lives in the Sierra Nevada northern Columbia, concerning the environmental disaster taking place there. A sacred place is not “apart from the world” in the sense that it is immune from invasion. I think this is a socially and religiously important insight, and deserves to be acknowledged in the unapologetic way that Carr-Gomm does. Indeed I think he shows great respect to these sites by not white-washing away the problems, and by presenting the social and environmental situation of many of these sacred places as it really is.

Overall, I’m most delighted to recommend this book to anyone. I think it may make excellent Yuletide gift-giving, especially for people who may want to visit these places but cannot afford to travel. And for those who can, let Carr-Gomm suggest a few unusual and less well known but equally amazing places to visit. For the whole of the world is wonderful – if only we look around.

Last summer I was served notice that Dubsar House, the company that published my first book, Dangerous Religion, was cancelling the contract. No reason was given; probably no reason was necessary. The timeline for the expiry, stated on the letter, was two years.

Last week I sent them a postal money order to purchase the last few books in the inventory. Today I recieved an email saying that the money order will be returned to me, as the book is “removed from circulation”. So, I suppose it is official now: Dangerous Religion is out of print.

So I can say, without fear of retribution, that I’m perfectly happy with this arrangement. Dubsar House was a bad publisher. If their reason for withdrawing the book was due to lack of sales, I claim this is their own stupid fault: they have very bad distribution, very bad advertising, very bad typesetting and editing, and very bad internal communication. I made very little money in my own royalties (perhaps less than $100, all together), and spent as much or more doing my own promotional work for the book.

On one occasion they actually lied to an occult supply store about the availability of my book! I was going to the store personally for a book signing event. The store, (Melange Magique in Montreal), ordered 10 copies and paid for them through PayPal. Rather a long time later, only five show up. The reason for the delay was, so they said at the time, they had to fulfill other orders first. Not long after that they admit that they lied about that: there were no other orders. And that the other five books would not be shipped. But the store might have to wait six weeks or longer to get their money back.

Well, we live and learn. Had Dubsar House not published DR in the first place, my second book might never have been published, or perhaps not even written in the first place. Or written very differently. So I can look back and appreciate the little help they gave me. But as Wittgenstein once wrote, “now that we have climbed to the new height, it may be necessary to throw away the ladder.”

So, if any of you have copies, hang on to them. They are the only copies that now exist. There may be a few booksellers with a few left in their stacks for sale, but there are no new printings. I’m off to find another publisher, now. And to do some re-writing, too. (It’s been seven years, after all.)