Because my academic credentials (and my wife’s) include a wee bit of Jungian depth psychology, I occasionally get asked the question, “What book do you start with if you’re new to C.G. Jung?”

It’s a fair enough question, one that I was asking at the beginning of my graduate studies.

Now, there’s an easy answer to this question, but it’s not the one I’m going with…

Erinnerungen, Träume, Gedanken…

Or, as the English speaking world calls it:

Memories, Dreams, Reflections, known affectionately by Jungians as MDR.

Now, MDR has a lot to say, especially about Jung, as it is semi-autobiographical. If you really want to explore Jung on Jung, it’s a great starting place, bar perhaps his artistic-psychological grimoire/magnum opus, The Red Book.

Still, I think there’s a work that captures Jung better than either MDR or The Red Book, for the following reason:

This…

Once upon a time, there was a bright young girl named Marie-Louise who loved fairy tales. One day, she made a journey to visit the famous psychologist, Dr. Carl Gustav Jung.

Dr. Jung explained to Marie-Louise that he had a female patient who lived on the Moon.

She corrected him – surely he meant to say that the women thought she lived on the Moon.

Jung replied that he had meant exactly what he said: the woman lived on the Moon.

As future Jungian analyst and collaborator Marie-Louise von Franz later recalled, ”[I] went away thinking that either he was crazy or I was.”

Regardless as to who was (in)sane, von Franz returned to work with Jung.

Jung called this phenomenon Psychic Reality; essentially, it is a form of ontological phenomenology.

*

Who-da what-a what? you might be asking at this point. Let’s examine those words together.

Ontology means the…

Saturday, December 1, 2018

Welcome, my chuckaboos!  With promoting the release of Atonement in Bloom, I haven’t done a Straightlaced Saturday in awhile.  Let’s take a little #SteamPunk jaunt today. 

As most of you know, I’ve been rerunning the serial, Copper, the Alchemist, and the Woman in Trousers.  We haven’t reached the halfway point of the story yet.  Damfino why it takes me so long to tell these stories.  Anyhow, I want to keep your enthuzimuzzy going, so I thought we could do a character recap post!

Character Recap

Felicity Deringer

First we met the narrator of this serial, Felicity Deringer aka The Woman in Trousers.  Some readers said they imagine her as a young Katharine Hepburn, but when I started writing this serial I heard the voice and saw the face of Jamie Murray, as she was in her part as H.G. Wells on the Warehouse 13 television…

Saturday, November 10, 2018

The amazing Sue Vincent recently hosted me at her Daily Echo blog.  We were talking about superstitions and I shared some from my youth.  I had a great time at Sue’s and I hope you’ll click over to visit her.

I expect the townsfolk in fictional Atonement, TN would tend to be superstitious.  How could they be otherwise with all the strange goings on and supernatural beings?

The first writing advice I heard was something I took to heart ― Write what you know.  When I wrote Atonement, Tennessee I followed that guidance and created a fictional southern town where the urban fantasy takes place.  Of course, the second novel, Atonement in Bloom, is also set there.

I made it a very small, rural town so some of the manners and personalities I grew up with would not seem out of place.  The townsfolk…

A rare gift comes to the writer when the story and its mixed tape of music ka-chunk and transform. No longer is the music merely the writer’s atmosphere, her source of ambience while storytelling. Oh no. The music is the heroine. The music is the villain. The music is the tension. The music is the scene.

This happened to me during 2010’s National Novel Writing Month when I first began drafting Fallen Princeborn: Stolen. At the time I was only using instrumental music for storytelling, while  music like The Who’s Quadropheniahelped me survive the piles of grading in my dropbox. The month had barely started, so I was early in the story of Charlotte and her sister leaving their abusive family in the Dakotas for Wisconsin. Their coach bus breaks down in the middle of nowhere. Another peculiar bus appears with far-too-friendly good Samaritans, and despite Charlotte’s suspicions…

From the moment I could hold a pencil I was always either drawing or writing. In terms of satisfaction, I don’t think there’s a dividing line between the two disciplines for me. But at different stages in my life…