Desert Fire: Befriending the Monster in my Mind

I’m please to share that Desert Fire is finally finished.

YAY!

It is available in print and digital

HERE AT LULU and also on AMAZON.COM should you dare to enter the desert, and the strangeness of my mind. In brief, what do you get when you combine a transplant to the Sonoran Desert with mind-created monsters, living landscapes, elemental impressions, Ayurveda, flower essences, earth-centered spirituality, dogs, history, geography, archaeology, desert denizens, and writing therapy? You get Desert Fire.

I could easily have spent another six to twelve months fine-tuning Desert Fire further,

but felt that its time has come to go out into the world just as it is.

Now I can move on to other writing projects pressing to be heard.

__________________

[excerpt from Desert Fire]

If I hadn’t researched the dogs of the Americas, seeking to understand the history of the tiny Chihuahua dog, I might never have met and resonated with a deity on my own continent who shares some of the qualities of my beloved Artemis. Dogs and forest wisdom are threads that link the Greek Goddess Artemis and the South American Goddess Yampani Nua. In the Achuar, a tribe of South America, they tell of a divine Mistress of Dogs, the “female spirit Yampani Nua.“^[i] The Achuar are situated just below the equator putting them in the Southern rather than the Northern Hemisphere where I live. Their traditional lands ride the boundary between Ecuador and Peru, and they are far from being desert dwellers. Achuar women held status within their communities, and, similarly, pre-Hellenic Artemis is aligned with the former matrifocal cultures of Greece. The mythical Artemis roamed the wild woods with her pack of dogs, her Alani, and it is not a stretch for me to see Yampani Nua as sister-goddess to Artemis, each representing a different continent. Both are responsible for the care and protection of these remarkable canine Beings that I consider sacred guides for and protectors of humans. While Artemis and Yampani Nua resonate through unique patterns of cultural divinity, their roles are both that of a Mistress of Dogs. Thus, I feel a kinship with them because of their strong relationship to dogs and the forests. [i]. Schwartz. A History of Dogs in the Early Americas. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. Print. Page 59.