Interview with inspirational author Curran Galway

Welcome, readers. Today’s special guest is Curran Galway. She’s chatting with me about her new inspirational fiction, Ordinary Mystic: Practicing the Presence.

Bio:

Curran Galway lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has a degree in English and Education with a Master of Divinity degree in Transformational Spirituality from Seattle University. Ms. Galway has been a spiritual teacher and transformation coach for fifteen years. She is an inspirational speaker, leading retreats and facilitating workshops focused on awakening the true self and practicing the presence.

Welcome, Curran. Please tell us about your current release.

My novel, Ordinary Mystic: Practicing the Presence was released in August of 2016. It is available at Amazon.com. I write stories of awakening and connection to the divine.

What inspired you to write this book?

I had a profound encounter with God while on a spiritual retreat. I wanted to share my story to inspire others and to awaken my readers to the experience of the divine.

Excerpt from the prologue of Ordinary Mystic: Practicing the Presence:

Bridget McGuire fell in love with God when she was thirty-five years old. Drowning in a sea of diapers and lost in her routine life as mother and wife, she felt invisible until that day in 1980 when she was on a retreat in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. Caught up in an unexpected encounter with God, Bridget’s life was turned upside down forever.

Her journey of transformation wasn’t easy. The tragedies she endured, a brutal divorce, betrayal, forbidden love, and the agony of death, challenged her to continue to reach deep inside and hold on to the dignity of her own divinity. Her story is about the struggle to live the extraordinary in the ordinary.

What exciting story are you working on next?

I am working on the sequel to my current novel. The title is, Ordinary Mystic: The Gift of Stillness.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

When I was in the 6^th grade, my teacher praised me for a poem I had turned in for homework. She told me I had a talent for writing. I believed her and continued to write poetry and journal for years.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?

I teach elementary school during the week and am not able to write until the weekends. I try to carve out a block of 2-4 hours to write on Saturdays and Sundays.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

I often write in my head while I am taking a power walk. I get many ideas when I walk. I write in my head and then type on a computer later.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I always wanted to be a teacher. My grandmother was a teacher. When I received my Master of Divinity degree I decided to become a spiritual teacher of wisdom.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

Writing is my passion! It is a creative outlet for me. I have tried to use the current spiritual principles in a story form so that readers can see what spirituality looks like in daily life.

Forty-nine percent of the people in the United States (according to the Gallop Poll) have had mystical experiences but were afraid to talk about them. My novel is one of the first to offer readers permission to recognize and honor the mystical experience and feel comfortable sharing their stories.

Thanks for being here today, Curran.

Interview with vegan writer Kayla Keyes

Writer Kayla Keyes is in the hot seat today. She’s chatting with me about her self-help weight loss book, Weight Loss for Vegans.

Bio:

Kayla Keyes is a compassionate vegan writer and editor who loves to get adventurous and share her findings with the world! She has also written articles for various nutrition and self-growth oriented websites such as “Your Zen Life” and “Step-to-health”.

Welcome, Kayla. Please tell us about your current release.

Weight Loss for Vegans is definitely the right book for everyone that wants to start a healthy lifestyle. It can be a real kick-start to finding your ideal weight and at the same dropping some mental “baggage”. It is not a book that claims that you HAVE to be “skinny”, it just aims to make you feel good within yourself. Everybody is beautiful, especially if they are caring well for themselves. That being said, you can lose quite a few pounds with it if this is what you are striving for. It also shows how you can find a balance lifestyle after having finished the plan. In my opinion, the best part about it is that it is a vegan guideline, based in compassion for animals, human and nature itself. You don’t have to eat 3 chicken breasts a day to become slim, you know?

What inspired you to write this book?

I’ve been a vegan myself for a long time and have tried many varieties of veganism myself. As quite a few vegans have incorporated “comfort foods” into their diets and some may have gotten “out of balance”, I thought it would be great to reintroduce a healthy guideline that is easy to follow and is based on abundance of tasty, healthy and fresh foods. The book is also great for meat eaters and vegetarians, as this vegan plan will help them lose weight even faster due to completely leaving out animal products. Also, as we all know, eating and emotions go hand in hand – a point that is very important and well-explained in the book. This also includes some easy, helpful and effective psychological processes which are outlined in Weight Loss for Vegans.

Weight Loss for Vegans is a detailed, effective and fast weight loss and detox system that will kick start your metabolism and help you lose weight in ten days on a healthy, plant-based diet. The concept is also designed to connect mind, spirit and body and to help you maintain your ideal weight long-term.

What exciting story are you working on next?

That’s still a secret, haha. But I will let you guys know asap!

Links:

Facebook | Amazon | Website

Thanks for being here today, Kayla.

Interview with literary writer Rea Nolan Martin

Literary writer Rea Nolan Martin is here today to chat about her new visionary fiction novel, The Anesthesia Game.

Bio:

Rea Nolan Martin is the award-winning author of three novels: The Sublime Transformation of Vera Wright (2009), Mystic Tea (2014), and The Anesthesia Game (2015), as well as a collection of essays: Walking on Water (2016).

Mystic Tea is the recipient of the 2014 IPPY Gold Medallion and US BEST BOOK Award for Visionary Fiction; the 2014 PINNACLE Gold Medallion in the category of Literary Fiction; and Finalist in the 2015 International Book Awards.

The Anesthesia Game is the recipient of the 5 Star Readers’ Favorite insignia; 5 Star Clarion Review insignia; 2016 IPPY Gold Medallion for Visionary Fiction; 2016 PINNACLE Gold Medallion in the category of Best Novel; and most recently, Book Viral’s first Crimson Quill Award.

A collection of her most inspirational essays, Walking on Water, was released in the spring of 2016.

Rea is the author of numerous short stories and poetry, most of which can be found in national literary magazines and anthologies. She is a regular Huffpo blogger, former literary magazine editor and MAW adjunct professor.

Welcome, Rea. Please tell us a little bit about your newest release.

The story behind The Anesthesia Game is very close to my heart. The fifteen-year-old protagonist, Sydney, suffers a life-threatening illness that requires frequent spinal procedures for which she undergoes regular anesthesia. Having spent years accompanying my own child through such procedures, I understood from page one the spectrum of courage (or cowardice) my characters would likely exhibit, patient and family members alike. Having said that, this story is far from a memoir. The personalities of my characters vary greatly from those of my own family. I constructed the characters from scratch, asking myself—what if not one, but all of them suffered some kind of affliction, real or imagined? What if, in order to manage their afflictions, each one of them was also under the influence of her own version of anesthesia? How would they manage to help each other? How would they progress? Or would they? Who would lose a life and who would find one? After the first 100 pages or so, the characters showed me the way.

As a writer of Visionary Fiction, I imagined the child’s disease and the resulting anesthesia, not as a means of sedating her life, so much as awakening it. After all, what value do negative experiences contain if not to hone us and/or those around us? The problem is, at what price the experience? The risks in this story are as high as they can be. Lives hang in the balance.

Circumstances surrounding childhood cancers are tragic from anyone’s perspective, but much is to be gained if we have the courage to tread consciously through such toxic waters. The patient is of course the central concern, but the peripheral damage to family and friends can also be acute and widespread. If they’re paying attention, almost everyone involved ends up learning something powerful about him or herself in the process. Coincidentally, the essential component of Visionary Fiction is the awakening of the deep self to greater purpose.

I first learned about Visionary Fiction (VF) when my previous novel, Mystic Tea, was awarded several literary prizes in that genre. Exploring it on Google, I discovered the VFA (Visionary Fiction Alliance) www.visionaryfictionalliance.com with a mention of my name as one of its contemporary authors. VF, as it turns out, is the oldest new genre there is. Myth is VF; fairy tales are VF; even ancient sacred texts contain all the consciousness awakening components of this powerful genre. I wrote Visionary Fiction decades before I knew what it was, as has been the case with most of my peers in that sector. It was simply the truth as we knew it. VF authors tend to be highly intuitive and imaginative believers in infinite possibility. Unlike other genres, its literary DNA emerges not from the demands of plot or even the growth of its characters, although those are important, but from the authenticity of the writing as an expression of the soul.

In writing The Anesthesia Game, I did my best to honor that tradition.

What exciting story are you working on next?

Right now I’m working on a novel about two quirky elderly sisters who run a generations-old family funeral home in the foothills of West Virginia. 

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

I have always been a writer. I wrote plays as a child, hilariously acted out by legions of neighborhood kids in front of our parents, cocktails in hand. I continued to write plays and other genres in grammar school and high school. In college, I majored in writing and graphic arts. Post college, I worked as copywriter, then creative director of a Chicago advertising firm. Years later, while consulting, I pursued a Master of Arts in Writing degree, eventually becoming an adjunct professor in the same program, teaching the Art of Fiction. I also edited a prominent literary journal, contributed stories and poetry to many more journals, and eventually settled into a full-time writer’s life. 

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

My quirkiest habit is sniffing a box of 96 crayons whenever I’m stuck on a scene. I didn’t realize it was a habit until a friend pointed it out. Apparently, I’m addicted to the smell of crayons.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Well, I read voraciously, so the only job I could even imagine was a novelist. It still is.

Thanks for being here today, Rea. Happy writing!

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