E.E. Warren's Blog

Hello, everyone! Just a quick update! I finally finished "The Night Shift." I've been teasing it and "Not Quite Human" for YEARS...and now, I can happily say both are released, and live out in the world for anyone to read. It warms the cockles of my heart to know that something I dreamed about back in 2019 is done. Checked off the proverbial 'to-do' list. (If you have purchased a copy, please do me a favor and review it...on Amazon or Goodreads. For indie authors, those reviews matter...

A big scary thing - for ME, at least. I created a class, based around a self-transformation spell that I've now done twice, and am going into the third iteration of. This time? This time will be a bit...different. I'm teaching the spell I created for myself to others. Here's a tiny clip, to show you what I mean: Me, in my office, presenting the class. Simply being in front of the camera is proof the spell worked. :) I'm on camera. Weirdly enough, people have told me I don't even look...

Banner of the Sêthar’vethra I've been busy writing Books 2 and 3 of the Virehnai Chronicles, and I'm having a total blast. I've come to the conclusion that I'm simply a glutton for punishment. Why I write multiple books at once, I don't know. I thought I was doing it in the Magic Abounds series to keep the stories straight. Whoopsie! Guess that wasn't it, after all. :) Book 2 is called "The Night Shift." That's what happens when you're trying to find the cause of a mysterious illness...

Cover of Not Quite Human, with blade known as "witchfang." Not Quite Human is finished. I had an absolute blast writing it, and I'm hard...

Virehnai Rune of Becoming It's out! It's finally out!!! The very first little nugget in the Blood and Eternity series. Tales of Blood...

This is going to be short. :) I'm hard at work putting Tales of Blood and Eternity on Amazon, so it's available for pre-sale. It's...

Front Cover! I've been having SOOOOO much fun writing these! Not Quite Human's about halfway done, and to start off the series, I...

Gratuitous cat photo. Bean, aka "Mischief," (black) and ChaosPixie (flame point siamese) Different for ME, anyway! It's been a minute...

My life took a radical turn the day I learned to read. It felt magical then, and I know the inherent magic that resides within our words even today, as an adult. It only seemed to get more magical as I started writing stories around age ten or eleven, and that sense of magic has never faded - even now, as the words and ideas I'm writing are being published for others to read.

I did something different with the third book in my Magic Abounds series. Radically different: While I see all writing as an act of magic, I consciously wrote a story as a spell.

Really.

In book three, "The Power Within Us," the final story ends, and then it closes with something a friend of mine wrote, that was very much like a poem that summed up quite neatly the lives of one of my characters. That character was entirely fictional, but her life could've been any of ours: tinged with sadness and loss, that in an act of mental alchemy was transmuted into something extraordinary. It should've been the end of the book - but it wasn't. The last, final story was called "A Last Little Bit of Magic - There You Are!"

Here's the intro to that story from the book:

"Eventually, if we take the time to look, we find ourselves among the books we read.  I know I have!  Who among us hasn’t identified with a beloved character, or found a truth that resonated, or heard words out of the mouth of a fictional character that rang true in real life?  We read, and we dream about what could be, and see possibilities. 

Here’s a question:  What if we could rewrite our own lives?  All of us start out our lives by marching to others’ tunes, and living by their rules, and at some point, we realize that we have a choice:  to continue along the path set for us, marching to someone else’s beat...or to rewrite how the story of our life continues from that moment on, as we both take and hopefully keep control of it.

What if this were a moment like that, but charged with magic?  What if you were a part of this story?  Would you want to be?  Do you want to be?  If not, close the book, you’re done, and I hope you enjoyed it. However, if being part of the story sounds like something you’d be interested in, come with me for a little longer on a bit of a journey.  It won’t be unfamiliar.  Ready?  Let’s go!"

And just like that, welcome to a story as a spell. The story that follows that intro, both appearing and written like any of the other stories that appeared in the book, was done consciously. It was meant to insert the reader and their OWN life story into my book. It was infused with intention - as an act of magic, from me, gifted into their lives, if they so chose to accept it. All they need to do is add their own intent and desire.

Truthfully, I waffled back and forth about whether to include it. Finally, I was persuaded by my own guides to put it in. (When I say 'persuaded,' translate that as 'told.' lol)

Why?

Because ultimately, all storytelling is a spell; it's magic. I had a blog earlier in the year called "The Power of Words" that came to be as a result of finalizing that 'story spell' after being told to include it. If you haven't read it, there's a link at the bottom that will take you to it, but the cliff notes version is this: Each letter you see is a sigil. Each word is a hyper sigil, and highly symbolic. Some words mean what we all decide as a society that they mean, and then additionally, each of us attaches our own personal meanings and symbolism to each of them. We can't help ourselves. It's how we're wired. There isn't really any information on the screen you're reading right now. It's all sigils and symbols. As I was told, I share with you: Whether it's your grocery list, or an ancient cuneiform tablet, what is written is merely a placeholder for an idea. Each word has its' own frequency in your mind, as you think it, and when you see it and and again when you read it. Words are containers: For power. For agency in our lives. For ideas which transmit power.

The spoken word does the exact same thing...it also tracks back to the original frequency of your thought. The only difference between the spoken word and the written word is immediacy. You speak, and if you speak rightly, with intent, actions are set in motion. As an example, one of the earliest things many of us who were raised within a Christian structure learned was either out of Genesis (God said let there be light, and light was) or Hebrews (God spoke the world into being through the power of his words.) Most religions and traditions hold to the world being spoken or even sung into existence, and occult tradition holds that we speak our own circumstances into existence, also.

Writing? Writing - our words - can be eternal. When you want something that's important to be remembered...it often gets carved in stone. Whether it's a current monument to a hero or an idea...to an ancient obelisk, the writing on a temple wall or on a cuneiform tablet...it's preserved. If you are given the means to understand what is on a page or a tablet, it resonates at the same frequency in your mind as you read it today as it did 5,000 years earlier. It's like 'power in time-release form,' where suddenly you have the superpower of taking in and understanding the thoughts of someone who has long since passed out of existence.

So here's a bit of magic for you. Knowing the power inherent in our words and our thoughts, ask yourself a question: What story do you tell yourself...about yourself?

My favorite quote on this comes from The Oracle of the 7 Energies deck, by Collette Baron-Reid, from the STORYTELLER Card (which is my favorite, and holds much significance for me):

"Your destiny can be found in the way you weave together the threads of yourself in the world."

In other words, the stories you tell - particularly the stories you tell yourself about yourself - create your own magic and reality. You want a change? Start with telling yourself a new story about yourself.

This is a way of connecting to your true power. You make a choice, and your thoughts and story originate in your mind, along with it's associated frequency. Our words - however they appear, whether written, spoken or thought - are containers for power.   You already have everything you need to tell yourself an awesome story about you that not only weaves blessings and abundance into your life - but also broadcasts those blessings and abundance as your contribution of kindness and goodwill to the world at large.

The world being the dumpster fire it currently is can use all the kindness and goodwill it can get. Start with your own story, laced with magic and power!

Link to The Power of Words:

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P.S. To anyone who's read that final magical story from The Power Within Us: if you followed along, and you experienced anything that you feel tracks back to the story and how you experienced it, can you drop me a note at technowitch.book@gmail.com? I'd love to know!

Hi everyone! It's been a minute; sorry for that! I wanted to post something up to let everyone know that the oft-times alluded to Hearth, Home and Magic Podcast is finally coming to be, and to explain a bit about WHY it's coming to be. I'm somewhere between excited...nervous (it's a really public, forward-facing thing for an introvert to do, lol)...and if I was nervous initially about publishing a book? Well, this is THAT, but on steroids. If I think about it too hard, (TMI warning) I might barf.

There is now a 'bonus' podcast up, if you navigate to the PODCAST button on the menu bar above. It's also on Spotify, and my YouTube channel as a podcast. It's a little surreal to even say ANY of that. Think of it as a placeholder, for now. It's about my book TechnoWitch, published in 2021. If you've read it (or my blog), or you know me...you know I'm one of those early tech adopters. I love tech, I love my devices, and I love seeing what I can do, and see if I can find new uses for them. That's just...me.

I was on YouTube earlier in the week, watching some of the stuff I follow (The Why Files, The Witches' Cookery, Marie Coveley, Mama Eve, Linus Tech Tips, Skill Tree, and Nerdforge) when I ran across a random video on a new AI system I'd never heard of: Notebook LM. I like tech, and I'm not afraid of AI. As total transparency, I have no problem taking my own research, and feeding it into an AI system like ChatGPT and asking it if it thinks I've missed anything. Asking for suggestions, that is; not asking it to DO the work. Then I take what I find, and see if it resonates. If it does, I do more research...my own. What I don't do, and could never agree with are creators who use AI to do all the end-to-end creation of their products, with little creativity on their own ends. I see that as completely disengenuous. I'm a writer, and I was an artist for over 30 years. I did (and still do) take pride in what I can do and create. There's not much creativity in asking a bot to create everything for you, so you can generate a ton of content, cheap. Blech. But that's my opinion, and I digress.

Here I was, minding my own business watching videos on YouTube, and one of the suggestions that came up discussed the various uses for Notebook LM, by Google. It said you could feed your research into it as pdf files - multiple, multiple sources - and it could aggregate it for you. Do I really want a bot doing all my research? No. Am I for anything that will save me some time and point me in the right directions, and help me see if I've forgotten something? Uh...yes. Why yes, I am.

So imagine my complete and utter shock when I uploaded the pdf file of my book TechnoWitch into Notebook LM to 'kick the tires' and start looking for research directions for TechnoWitch 2.0, and it offered to create a podcast discussion for me about the book. Curious, I hit the button, Notebook LM chugged for a minute, and gave me a play button. I was astounded to discover two AI people, having a DISCUSSION about my book.

It blew my mind.

I listened with glee...I mean, they were talking about what I worked really hard to create, right? Simultaneously, I was also a little horrified. These aren't real people. If you aren't completely aware that this kind of technology exists, you might be fooled into thinking they're real, much like how you can't trust video or photos you see anymore (lol, ALWAYS count the fingers; it's the first thing that messes up!) I was somewhere between chair dancing on my sofa, and crying, because it sounded so amazing. I even called my husband to come from the back of the house into our living room, and made him listen to it, poor thing. All he wanted to do was get a little rest after his rehearsal earlier!

Why was the moment so emotional for me?

It was simple: I'd had two offers to appear on podcasts right after TechnoWitch came out, and despite the fact that it could've helped me get the book more visible, and be helpful with marketing - - I was too petrified to appear on either of them. Even a couple of years down the road, I've been inching slowly toward having a podcast - teasing it, even as I tried to summon up the courage to DO it...

...and here one was.

What it did was illustrate to me the power of the medium. So let me tell you straight up. The "Bonus Podcast" that's currently sitting on my Podcast pages, wherever you listen to them - are two AI characters, talking about my book, based on the text of the book I wrote. I couldn't be prouder of it. I hope you listen to it; enjoy it, even. Know that it's not real - but the work that went into it very much was.

And know this, too. It made enough of a difference in how I viewed my OWN material that my sister and I are going to do it for real...real voices, real people, and real research as it's needed...

...all because an AI bot showed me what it could look like...and the inherent power in it.

I think there's a little bit of magic in there.

P.S. If you have ideas for or about TechnoWitch 2.0 - opinions, novel ways you use technology in your practices...or topics you'd like to see covered in the next book, email me at technowitch.book@gmail.com, or leave a comment. Several people told me back then that they really hoped for a 'grimoire.' If you want to know more about the topic, I recommend that you check out my friend Amy Blackthorn, and her friend Natalie Zaman's book, called Social Media Spellbook: 366 Ways to Get Witchy on the Web, available on Amazon! TechnoWitch is also available on Amazon, in print, Kindle, and Kindle Unlimited! Links to both books are below. Thanks again!

TechnoWitch: Ancient Wisdom, Digital Tools

https://a.co/d/5Zvd0ku

Social Media Spellbook:

https://a.co/d/0F9PVjX