Dorothea Hunt's Blog

“Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists.” ― Eudora WeltyLike writing, I find dancing to be a deep form of listening. I find solace there. Constant movement settles my mind. In beginner music lessons, they teach first about meter and rhythm and once that becomes internalized, then the music can begin. The meter is the pulse, and first you must get quiet and find that pulse, then everything else can happen. And you let it happen. You let the music move through you. Listening. You can always see the real musicians tapping their feet inadvertently and constantly. A form of deep listening. It's the thread, or backbone, of the music. When playing music, you are following that thread. Same when you are dancing. Or writing. You get quiet, and it moves through you. A listening. Don't think too much about it. Listen and allow it to move through you. The sounds, the movements, the images, the writing. The moment you think too much about what you are doing, you become self conscious, and lose the connection. You lose the listening.It is the same for love and lovers. Listen. Let it move through you, and move you.As a writer, I follow the sounds of the book wherever it leads. Listening. As I finish up the first draft of book III of the Tantra Series, I find that once again in romance, love prevails. Hurray! No great shock there, only delight. Thank goodness for music, dance, love, and the threads they weave together. Thank you for listening.

I like to read biographies, and I have recently finished a biography about Albert Einstein. In turns out that he thought in images. For example, he would complete experiments in his heads, mini movies of how an experiment might go. If a human could run as fast as the speed of light, what would they see? These feats of imagination or magic allowed for him to think really expansively. Einstein was also known for asking simple questions. And as the mathematician Bronowski said, "and what his (Einstein's) life showed, and his work, is that when the answers are simple too, then you hear god thinking." I love that idea. Take Pythagorean's Theorem- a squared + b squared= c squared... every time. It's just how triangles work in this world. James Watson who discovered the double-helix of DNA described it as, "too pretty to be true." When these mental giants found themselves overthinking it, they would re-direct and often find that the answer was simple and beautiful and right there. That is what I love about romance books. As romance writers, we are hounded for keeping it too formulaic, predictable, etc... I love writing romance because of it's inherent simplicity. I get to write about stories that are 'too pretty to be true'. That's the point. That's love. I have finished the first draft of book three and it feels great! In a few months the trilogy will be complete, printed, bound, and on the shelf- and in my eyes... 'too pretty to be true'.

Not flaws. adornments. The word finally came to me. To me the imperfections are, in fact, adornments. I look for the adornments such as wrinkles or messy morning hair or scars in my characters and my writing indulges in them. They shape my characters. There is a Keith Richards documentary that details his softer, more poetic side. His face is so intense and wrinkled, like the way water digs out a canyon. His face tells an amazing story. And when he smiles, you can see clearly that a lot of the wrinkles are from a place of child-like wonderment. It's a full-faced smile. To me one of the privileges of love is the deep study and appreciation of the adornments that make us rare, not pretty but rare. What's pretty about the Earth are it's canyons, valley, craters, mountains, etc... It's dramatic features and unique spots. To me, people are the same. The more adornments, the more there is to love.

Translation- Love is all that there should be. As a romance writer, I spend a lot of time contemplating love and its importance in the landscape of life.First of all, it is a beautiful word: amour, laska, liefde, armastus, cinta, kama, etc... the list of words for love on our planet goes on and on and each is uniquely beautiful. Part of the complexity of the word love is that, in a way, love isn’t earthly. It's impossible to pin down with one word. It is nothing tangible that we can touch. We can not hold it in our hands (although we certainly can hold each other and objects that represent and summons our love); we cannot point to it directly, and yet our senses see, smell, feel, taste, and hear it. And boy, do we know it when we do.Perhaps love is the glue that binds all, that binds us. In particle physics, they talk about how the majority of the universe is seemingly bound by a cosmic glue called the "God particle" or the Higgs boson. It exists, thankfully, and appears to keep the universe from falling apart. In my mind, the parallel is noteworthy. Without love to hold us together, things would fall apart.War, the opposite of love, causes destruction and chaos. In the cosmos, without the Higgs boson, the universe would fall into chaos. But like the Higgs boson, love exists, and we are sentient beings. Anyone can feel anything. Love keeps us coming back to the table, and makes our story go round and round. Love is an exchange. We discover it in people we meet, in animals, in places, through our feelings, but in reality it was there all along. It is always present. For me, living in love and writing about love feels like a calling, an ideal, a way of life and of moving in the world. To be sure, it is sometimes, the most difficult path to travel. People can hurt you or disappoint you. Indeed, they often do. My characters hurt and get hurt, but they always sort it out through a lens of love. These are romance novels afterall.What I love about writing romance novels is that love is imperative. It matters. Telling the myriad stories of how people bind and unbind in love, no matter how difficult the story may be, makes my world go round. I am so appreciative to my readers for allowing me to have a career telling the love stories of different women. Exploring, creating, and sharing how they grow; how love changes them and makes them better, makes me a better and happier person. L'amour est tout ce qu'il faut, indeed.

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love. -Mother Teresa paradox- noun 1. a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth. 2. a self-contradictory and false proposition. 3. any person, thing, or situation exhibiting an apparently contradictory nature. 4. an opinion or statement contrary to commonly accepted opinion. Søren Kierkegaard, for example, writes, in the Philosophical Fragments, that But one must not think ill of the paradox, for the paradox is the passion of thought, and the thinker without the paradox is like the lover without passion: a mediocre fellow... This, then, is the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think.[11] What is interesting to me about the etymology of the word paradox is that its Greek root is paradoxon meaning literally beyond belief. There is no broken down root, just the word itself. Paradoxical thinking must be part of the human condition. I think it is why we are so drawn to puzzles and riddles. Love, it seems, is our biggest puzzle.

“Our life is a manifestation, and we can very well make that manifestation beautiful and meaningful and have a good influence.” - Thich Nhat Hanh No doubt, manifestation is a potent word. It is perhaps, commonly used enough in this time and age, that it may have lost some of its potency. 'To manifest' comes from the Latin manifestus meaning detected in the act, evident, visible. man·i·fes·ta·tion ˌmanəfəˈstāSH(ə)n,ˌmanəˌfesˈtāSH(ə)n/ nounan event, action, or object that clearly shows or embodies something, especially a theory or an abstract idea.As a writer manifestation is everything. You have to imagine it. You have to write it. You have to share it. If you don't do it, it simply won't happen, it won't manifest.Like with love. You share it, you make it visible, you act on it, it becomes evident to the beloved. Otherwise, does love happen? Does love occur if it is not manifested? Does passion? Does romance?Manifestation is energy, highly focused energy. It is about taking control of potential through focus. Einstein was as much a philosopher as a scientist. E=MC squared is a lesson in manifestation. In physics, E=MC squared is the concept that mass and energy are equivalent. The implication is that any small amount of matter contains a very large amount of energy. Thus, an atom can hover stagnant and do nothing or it can create a nuclear transformation. Einstein's idea was radical because he theorized that all atoms have that nuclear potential, the potential for manifestation. And, of course, like nuclear potential that potency or potential energy can be used for the good or for the bad. I believe humans are the same.If we direct our energy towards love and the beloved, in a loving act, we can manifest the good. Sometimes, if we misdirect that energy, we break someone's heart. Sometimes it's our own heart that feels that bitter destruction, and we then need to rebuild. Newton was also a philosopher and a scientist. His law of motion speaks to the same understanding of human potential. His first law of motion is often stated as- an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction, unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. The motion of an object, therefore, has nothing to do with discipline and everything to do with inertia. If life is energy contained in a mass, then the same rule applies.The atom can hover stagnant or it can manifest. Action, in both accounts, is everything. If a writer doesn't write, she will not make books. If a writer writes, she will make books. If the lover loves the beloved, love is made manifest. It happens. But inertia can mean the love is stagnant. Perhaps resting. Or love can move forward. In a romance, a force shifts the love forward, sometimes backwards, but love is in movement. The passion may even be burning. Can it keep burning? Of course, for me the real work of life is love. But writing about love is part of that manifestation of a higher purpose: to love, to work, to write, to manifest love stories on and off the page, and to share that love with others. If my writing was not infused with my heart, it would simply be words on a page. Thus, I offer you, dear reader, imaginations of love and burning passion, manifested.

Revival, reassurance, redux, relationship ... all “re” words. There are so many.Resplendent, one of my favorite words means characterized by a glowing splendor, splendid and sumptuous x 2. re. The resplendent sky, the resplendent bird, his resplendent fire-blue eyes gazing into mine move me so. How beautiful.Re- is potent. It is one of the unique aspects of being human. Again. Every day is again. The sun comes up. The sun goes down. Our mind toils with the day.We returnWe repeatWe loveOur love returnsOur love repeats and grows strongerRe-tell. People love to retell their stories and I love to listen. There is a certain magic in the re-telling, which details are remembered and which are left behind. There is a certain and separate magic to the reliving that happens in the retell.Tell me a love story ….I did not know what I was going to say to my son the other night at bedtime. Then I told him a version of the lullaby I wanted to hear, one that says everything is going to be okay. Reassurance … just the word has a reassuring ring to it.And in all his sweetness, he received so gracefully that everything, indeed, was going to be alright. And he fell softly to sleep. Revisiting the day in his nighttime reveries.Re-wind. I print something most days and today a picture of my grandparents rests on the printer. It is one of my favorites. To be able to rewind and be with them again. What a gift that would be to go back in time. So often I want to revisit them. Revisit the ones I love. Those I miss.One aspect I love about the ritual of yoga is how you revisit the same poses on the same mat over and over again. And with the repetition comes an internal and external release over time, day to day, through the movement, in 'the again'.A key to writing is the ritual of it. Sun up, sun down. A key to meditation and running is the ritual, the re- of it all.Water is the ultimate 'again'- set in its constant movement and cycle of flow, evaporation, condensation. It’s recycle. The waves, the river.Lily strives to be like the river. To come again. To flow again. To reinvent herself, to resurrect love.

“Sublimity,” Hauptmann says, panting, “you know what that is, Pfennig?” He is tipsy, animated, almost prattling. Never has Werner seen him like this. “It’s the instant when one thing is about to become something else. Day to night, caterpillar to butterfly. Fawn to doe. Experiment to result. Boy to man.” ― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See Sublime: 1- to cause to pass directly from the solid to the vapor state and condense back to solid form 2[French sublimer, from Latin sublimare] a (1) : to elevate or exalt especially in dignity or honor (2) : to render finer (as in purity or excellence) b : to convert (something inferior) into something of higher worth For me, romance books are as much a study of the sublime as anything. We read and write them because we want to feel that feeling of exaltation and elevation. Ah, mountains, the oceans, the moon, and, yes, romance books are all sublime... And as a writer, I wrap my characters and their stories with words, symbols, metaphors to create that feeling that is so uniquely human. After all, don't we all want to reach out to try to touch what is sublime? Steve Jobs had a deep understanding of sublimity, of how to make an inanimate object, a computer screen sublime. His story is one of deep and dark contrasts, but certainly one of sublimity. He was always striving for it. Water, too, is sublimely beautiful because it is always in this process of sublimity, of becoming something else. When you are near it, you can literally hear it happening, in the lapping, the trickling, the rushing, etc... I went running by the river today, stopping to stretch and watch the water flow past every obstacle with grace and a quiet humility. "Nothing in the world is more flexible and yielding than water. Yet when it attacks the firm and the strong, none can withstand it, because they have no way to change it. So the flexible overcome the adamant, the yielding overcome the forceful. Everyone knows this, but no one can do it." Lao Tzu To touch and behold that which is sublime... to me that is so much of the journey of life and why I write romance. The world needs more sublimity:)

Since I spend so much of my time playing with words on the computer while writing romance novels, there are many days when I contemplate language. Love crosses language boundaries. And a love of language is a gift. Here are some of my favorite words from other languages. 1. Koi No Yokan Japanese – The sense upon first meeting a person that the two of you are going to fall in love. 2. Waldeinsamkeit German – The feeling of being alone in the woods 3. Wabi-Sabi Japanese – A way of living that emphasizes finding beauty in imperfection, and accepting the natural cycle of growth and decay. I find this useful in thinking about love. 4. Nunchi Korean – The subtle art of listening and gauging another’s mood. It could be described as the concept of emotional intelligence. Knowing what to say or do, or what not to say or do, in a given situation. (I like my characters to have some good Nunchi skills) 5. Duende Spanish – It’s original use was to describe a mythical entity that lives in forests, sort of like a fairy or a sprite, that possesses human beings and causes them to feel awe, fear, or a sense of beauty in their natural surroundings. Since being updated by the Spanish poet and playwright, Federico García Lorca, in the early 20th century, it is now used to refer to the mysterious power of a work of art to deeply move a person. I love how words and books can move us. Do you?

"The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do."-GalileoOn January 7, 1610, Galileo turned the first telescope to the sky. He modeled it after a toy, a spyglass made by a Dutch optician. The spyglass magnified the world by three; Galileo’s telescope magnified the world by 30. The device was so crude that it seemed the most normal and childlike of actions. After all, where better to turn a telescope?What did he see? He saw the dark age-spotted moon. He saw that the Milky Way was a tight, clustered collection of stars, too innumerable to count. He saw Jupiter had four moons. And he saw that the sun had many imperfections. His most controversial belief, however, regarded his support of the Copernican idea that humans were not the center of the universe. It turned out that both the Church and leading views were wrong. The planets revolved around the sun.That was a difficult, radical revelation and challenge for the human ego of the times. So much so that Galileo was thrown in jail. His radical beliefs cost him his freedom. He could not speak or write about what he knew. He lost his vision. And in spite of myriad requests for clemency, Galileo spent the last eight years of his life confined to his home. He wrote to a friend, "The universe which I with my astonishing observations and clear demonstrations had enlarged a hundred, nay, a thousand fold beyond the limits commonly seen by wise men of all centuries past, is now for me so diminished and reduced, it has shrunk to the meager confines of my body." Blind and imprisoned, he still believed in the magic that he had seen. My son keeps asking me questions about Santa. He figured out the fallacy of flying reindeers, of space and time, and the improbability of delivering presents to so many in so short of a time. He looked at me and said, "you know what mama, if it's not true, I don't want you to tell me. I still want to believe." He craves the magic of it. We all crave the magic of the flower floating on the water, of Aurora Borealis, the feeling of a first kiss, the way a song or book moves us. I think what Galileo taught us is as much a spiritual lesson as a scientific one. It is a metaphor for love. Love entails a de-centering, where our beloved becomes the sun that we revolve around. Our galaxy expands and wobbles. We are no longer the center of our own universe. We have our own internal Copernican revolution. In Freeing Lily, Book Two of the Tantra Series, Lily Seger asks, “what metaphors can we use for love?”: “I’m a very good catch myself; perhaps I fell too quickly and gave too much away too soon. I really despise that we have to play these games, but I am not so naive to believe that they don’t matter. Let’s face it, romance is a game and how we play the game is important. I’d like to find and live a better metaphor for it, but for now, that’s what I’ve got. Maybe love is a journey? Milan Kundera discusses this in one of my favorite books as a teenager, The Unbearable Lightness of Being , when hesays ‘love begins with a metaphor,’ and as such can be a dangerous phenomenon.Choose the right metaphor, the right story. The story we tell matters. What will be my and Win’s story?” (Freeing Lily, 2018)We ask your, dear reader, which metaphors guide your heart in love? (purchase Freeing Lily on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2EP2xth