DOUBLE SCOOP of BIG NEWS! The Crystal Ball Book Release, New JoyceMason.com

 The Crystal Ball Video Book Trailer

Dear Radical Readers,

I’m sure it’s no accident that I’m getting to check off Item #1 on my Bucket List during Prayer and Thanksgiving Month on The Radical Virgo. My bucket is overflowing with gratitude about the publication of my first novel. This is the answer to a prayer so old; I wondered if I’d outlive the response. (No wonder I made sure my book had longevity as one of its major themes.)

The Crystal Ball: A Micki Michaels Mystery, the paperback version, is now available for order on Amazon’s CreateSpace store. In about a week, you can purchase it on the “full service” store, where you likely shop for most things on Amazon in the US (Amazon.com). Availability on Amazon’s other channels in the EU and other countries outside the US may take longer. I’ll update links, as they become live, here on The Radical Virgo (check the sidebar) and on JoyceMason.com.

The first eReader version is now available on Smashwords. (Apple iPad/iBooks, Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, and most e-reading apps including Stanza, Aldiko, Adobe Digital Editions, others.) The Kindle version will be available soon. Again, check the sidebar here and JoyceMason.com.

Website Revamp. Speaking of JoyceMason.com, I’m happy to announce yet another milestone I met today. My website makeover is now complete. Please visit and enjoy my new cyber “digs.” I’m grateful to friend and graphic artist Sara Fisk for her fine work and artistic eye that gives the site a brand new atmosphere to celebrate the release of The Crystal Ball and make it an “information kiosk.” Besides being the place that will focus on my fiction, JoyceMason.com will “give directions” on where to find my non-fiction blogs and books, including those on astrology. All astrology and related topics are now housed here on The Radical Virgo. My namesake website will be dedicated primarily to my new career as a novelist and being the one point of referral with links to find all my publications.

The Blurb. The plot and flavor of The Crystal Ball are captured on the book trailer video, above, but if you’d rather have it in words, see them at the new party on JoyceMason.com. The new incarnation of my namesake site really does have a balloons-and-confetti atmosphere, complete with Fun and Games and a Treasure Hunt on the bottom of the homepage.

Sacramento Book Launch and Signing Party.  If you live within driving distance of Sacramento, California: Don’t miss my Book Launch and Signing Party on Nov. 20, 3:00 – 6:00 PM at The Blue Prynt Restaurant and Bar, 815 11^th St. (at H), downtown Sacramento. There will be food, fun, drawings, fabulous people, and of course, books. I’m so excited!

Not Local, but Want it Signed? See the Crystal Ball under Books on JoyceMason.com for details on how to get a signed bookplate.

How You Can Help Spread the Word and Mainstream Astrology. On the bottom of the new JoyceMason.com homepage in the How-To section, there’s a list of ways you can help get the word out about The Crystal Ball. Readers and writers have an interdependent and exciting dynamic for making a book successful—and the sooner it catches fire and the more popular The Crystal Ball becomes, the more Micki adventures I’ll be able to bring you. I hope you’ll be a part of the buzz, because it really does give you one!

One of the many things I’m jazzed about is the potential for The Crystal Ball to help mainstream astrology. Read more about that in my Thanks  to all of you for your support and friendship. It's at teh bottom of the News on my website.

As always, I’d love to hear your comments or personal emails regarding these new adventures: joyce [at] joycemason.com

Thrilled,
Joyce

What Early Readers Write About The Crystal Ball

A real page-turner and a guilty sweet pleasure … provocatively woven with fiction and facts, past and future, New Age and pragmatism--resulting in a tightly beautiful and colorful wordsmith's tapestry.  An intelligent, fun and thoughtful read.
~ Michael Bartlett, Business Consultant, Astrologer and Co-creator of AstroTheatre

Glittering, breezy, and a bit sexy … The Crystal Ball shimmers with Joyce Mason’s obvious delight in storytelling, mystery, and especially her spunky heroine of a certain age, Micki Michaels. She will delight you, too. 
~ April Elliott Kent, author of The Essential Guide to Practical Astrology

Charming and well-written … Joyce Mason took me on a rollercoaster ride of emotions from laughter to tears and excitement to fear as I kept turning the pages to discover what would happen next.   If you're looking for a mystery novel with a New-Age twist, look no further than this memorable book.  If I were to look into a crystal ball and read this book's future, I'd say it will be a big success." 
~ Ingrid Hart, Author - My Year in California: A Journey Toward Midlife Renewal

A Prayer for Deep Peace

Deep peace of the running wave to you

Deep peace of the shining stars to you

Deep peace of Mother Earth to you

Forever and ever more

Deep peace of the nesting bird to you

Deep peace of the sprouting seed to you

Deep peace of the drifting cloud to you

Forever and ever more

Deep peace of the gentle rain to you

Deep peace of the falling snow to you

Deep peace of the loving touch to you

Forever and ever more

~ From the Celtic with additions from Gina Rose, may be sung.

~~~ 

Photo Credit: © creative_stock - Fotolia.com

Notes:  

This is a Prayer and Thanksgiving Month post. 

There are many beautiful renditions of the musical version on YouTube. Here are a few choices that vary in breathtaking visuals:

"Deep Peace" Spiritual 

Deep Peace Choral 

Deep Peace

The Prayer of St. Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace;

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is error, the truth;

Where there is doubt, the faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek

To be consoled, as to console;

To be understood, as to understand;

To be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

~~~

Photo Credit: © Perseomedusa - Fotolia.com

NOTES

This is a Prayer and Thanksgiving Month post. 

For more on the history of this beautiful prayer, read The Prayer of St. Francis on Wikipedia. St. Francis is the patron saint of animals and ecology. He was born in Assisi, Italy on November 26, 1182.

For an inspiring musical version, Make me a Channel of Your Peace, enjoy this YouTube video by Angelina.

Prayer to Chiron

This is the first post of Prayer and Thanksgiving Month on The Radical Virgo.

 © 2013 by Joyce Mason

All Rights Reserved

Gentle healer

help me see past pain

to its purpose:
catharsis

breakthrough.

Help me know

that a broken heart

or body part

cracks open

my structures

pulls them apart wider

for more love and life

to flow through.

Help me laugh at myself

embrace humor’s healing balm

as you surely must have

laughed at your own predicament:

a man with a horse’s ass

who wasn’t one

the universe in its multiple

misfits

abandonments

providing the riddle

that we ultimately solve

returning to the One

where all pain

duality

and separation ends

where joy is endless.

~~~

Author’s Note: Written in honor of the 36^th Anniversary of Chiron’s Discovery – Nov. 1, 1977. (See discovery chart data.)

Photo:  Centaur sculpture purchased in Greece, photo by Joyce.

November: Prayer and Thanksgiving Month on The Radical Virgo

Dear Radical Readers,

By now you’ve probably noticed how 2013 has shaped up to become a very theme-oriented year on The Radical Virgo. In April, we had Poetry Month. May brought us the Planetary Fishing Trips where we went on a metaphorical outing to reel in each of our planets in hopes of catching a more personalized relationship with them. In July we did dreamwork. August found us dabbling in oracles.

In September, we celebrated Old Home Month, a homecoming of sorts to the sign this blog was named after and a deeper look at Virgo. During October we hosted my favorite articles from my spirited living blog, Hot Flashbacks, Cool Insights.

But wait—there’s more!

In the USA, we celebrate Thanksgiving in November--the perfect time to pray and count our blessings. Recently my husband had the second of two scary hospitalizations in five months. In an effort to turn the cusp of worry into something more productive and faith-full, I visited the chapel at UC-Davis Hospital in Sacramento. There I found brochures with prayers from every kind of spiritual path: Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Native American and Islam, to name a few. It reminded me how important prayer has always been in my life and what a comfort it is in times of stress. While we tend to pray when someone needs healing or when thing go wrong, the best prayer of all is Thank God he’s going to be all right! Counting our blessings is a positive prayer, thanking God/Goddess/All That Is for what’s right in our world.

In the chapel that day, all alone except for the sound of a beautiful wall fountain running over a metal sculpture to rocks below in the basin, I was grateful for the faith of my childhood. It was both a rock for building a solid spiritual life and a place where there was always a lot of water in the form of holy water and baptismal fonts. As I grew spiritually to encompass the best of many paths, I became more involved in doing eclectic ritual, borrowing from them all, resonating to the core of strength and well-being evoked by prayer and spiritual poems.

You’ll see some of my favorites and new discoveries in November—and we’ll explore why prayer and gratitude are such potent practices for keeping our connection from Earth to Sky wired for miraculous results.

Every sunrise is a gift of the  recurring cycle of life. It deserves my favorite, most simple prayer of all: Thank God. [1] More specifically, thank God for another day of loving.

May every day be Thanksgiving,

Joyce

Photo  Credit: © Bernd S. - Fotolia.com

NOTE:

[1] Throughout this series, I’m going to invite you to substitute whatever is comfortable for you when it comes to describing Higher Power: God, Goddess, All That Is, Spirit, the Universe—or fill in the blank.  Just today a friend told me, “I still have trouble with the G-word.” She was raised in a fundamentalist religion, and having experienced the results of religious rigidity myself, I know how important it is can be to find a new vision of deity or the Divine All Together, as I sometimes call Him/Her/It/Them. What I hope we won’t do is throw out the baby with the holy water when it comes to a great prayer that just may need a minor edit of terms for you to find its healing gold.