Edward Fahey's Blog

You reach a stage in your development when life floods over with minor miracles and bizarre synchronicities. You hardly notice them anymore; they’re just what your life is made of.
- Then you learn to stay in the moment, following subtle promptings. No longer needing feedback that what you’re doing is right; you trust, and stay centered in the joy of higher service.
- As you pull away from old relationships, outmoded habits and beliefs, others gather around to be part of your new team. You may have to leave folks behind who try to hold you back. Do it caringly.
- As you shed ego, you may be offered an even bigger challenge: to shed what could be thought of as your anti-ego. Allow yourself to be powerful; do great things even as you open in naked and humble vulnerability to another. This will really test your honesty and adherence to Truth. Can you admit your failures and foolishness, and just as willingly step in among the spiritual big guns working miracles?
- Everything that happens to you, everyone you meet, everything you do, starts meshing together like gears in a finely tuned motor, driving your life forward into Higher states of purpose and meaning.
- Edward Fahey

This existential battle I write of in "Shadows" may go on for centuries. Easily decades anyway. Some people moving toward the Light; some taking stands against it; some vacillating, moving back and forth between the two pulls or not moving at all.
This is how man grows, evolves, learns, and changes.
There will be no sudden explosion of angels from on High and suddenly all bad guys turn to good and all good guys are made pure.
Mankind doesn't work that way.
We may have a sudden burst of brilliance as in Ancient Greece or in the Italian High Renaissance, but still ... The Darkness will fight for control. The dull or stubborn will sit still. There will be those feeding every choice and extreme, but overall the world of men is trending inevitably toward enlightenment just as the planet they live on is trending toward warming.
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In the real world, obedience was pounded into our butts; discipline nailed each to the cross of his own days. I fought so hard to shut up and buckle under, but couldn’t confine myself to this tiny, hurting world that everyone else lived in. I was like St. Michael slaying the dragon, with me as both the saint and his dragon.
Blind obedience was both our nemesis and our inspiration. What could be more achingly beautiful, more pained by inspiring grief, than that scene in the Garden of Gethsemane? “Not my will, but Thine.” My God, that makes your heart weep. But Jesus knew what he was getting into. Life was rarely that clear for me. I was just a lonely kid with no hope for companionship, in a world where adults claimed to be following God, and God didn’t have to explain Himself. “Abraham, kill your son! I’m bored and the TV’s busted again.” ...
... I couldn’t resist questioning encrusted old beliefs, though questioning was the worst of all sins. Adam and Eve had been fine wandering around nude among tigers and snakes until they’d eaten that apple and started thinking things through. We had to bet our souls on stuff that didn’t make sense; on wandering stars, wives turning to salt, and God stopping the sun so His own children, made in His image, could kill each other. Samson hadn’t cut his own hair, someone else had, but rules must be followed, so the hell with him, God said. Then our principal kicked a kid out of school for refusing to cut his. Adults kept changing “eternal truths,” and I couldn’t keep up. Everybody kept hammering away at the world like blacksmiths, each trying to beat it into something different.... - From "Entertaining Naked People"

We love stories that slam our favorite fictional characters with unforgivable, unresolvable problems. We find ourselves crying aloud, “Oh no; they cut off her head; how’s she ever going to marry him now?”
We despise amateurish authors who keep trying to ride obvious and wearied clichés out of trouble, telling us once again this was only a dream.

If I don’t every 2 or 3 chapters find myself saying, “Wow! I sure didn’t see that coming!” then I feel I’ve failed as a story teller. – Which is one of the main reasons I never outline.
And any time I hit a spot where I get all paranoid that I may never be able to work my way out of this particular twist, I just remember, “Hey; I’m the guy who killed off his narrator 2/3rds of the way through one of his books without any idea whatsoever how I could ever finish the story after that.” I tell myself, “Heck. If I was able to work my way out of that one …!”

If I had one hope for the literary world of the future, it would be that it witness an ever-growing presence of those who take their craft seriously; always trying to reach deeper into their characters, into the richness of metaphors, and whatever all – to offset the hordes of more easily and superficially satisfied scribblers who focus more on marketing, formulae, and kowtowing to what’s popular.

As a writer of mystical literary fiction, every word counts in my novels. I’ll describe a hummingbird slapping abruptly through the air because slapping is more broken and dramatic than flying, and because “brupt” is more like the sound it actually makes.
No one just walks into a room. He stomps, skulks, strides….
You can find out a lot about a character by how he observes his surroundings; like the dust in the room, or what’s going on outside the window. Does Nature seem friendly? Or ominous? At moments when Nature comes alive so strongly that is becomes one of the protagonists or antagonists, I spell it with a capital “N”.
I stew over whether to use the word “people” or “folks” each time. This is only partly because one seems more established and formal, while the other reads more casual and friendly. – Whether I use “anybody” or “anyone” takes all of that into consideration, but also factors in sentence rhythms. As with mystical and sacerdotal chants of ancient times, the rhythms sounded when my stories are read aloud count for something.
I intentionally let poor grammar slip through dialogue, but not narration. I don’t use contractions in journal entries because in the real world people tend not to use them when writing stream-of-consciousness.
Nicknames are substituted for proper names in order to show how the character whose thoughts we have entered feels in that moment about this other person:
On page 30 of Ailana, for example, we find Paulette at war with her own feelings. She wants to despise Marsha, but now and then slips up and thinks of her fondly, thinking of her as Marsh (or is she using that nickname because it makes Marsha seem more manly? Paulette has no real use for men at that point). – In that same internal confusion she refers to herself once as Paulie. She is maybe healing a little by that time, not despising herself as much as she once may have. – These two women; whether or not they want to, whether or not they would even let themselves believe it; are softening, and getting ready to bond.
And one final point for now: These novels are designed to be read and re-read. Each careful run through could reveal deeper layers of meaning, and plot. For example, I weave threads throughout each story that no one is likely to catch on first read-through. Like that recurrent white feather in Ailana; or the willow tree in Mourning. M has a certain awkwardness to her walk, certain tints to her hair, that she shares with Denis’s lovers in his dreams (or earlier lives?).

Depression is a non-life. It just sits there, not stirring. Like you’re mired in the silence and sludge at the bottom of a stagnant sea. Now and then a dim, fuzzy wad of something hangs above, a brief distraction from your comforting gloom, but it hurts to be reminded there is still life in any form. So you snuggle back into your sludge. Snug it in like a thick, fuzzy blanket around your heart, welcoming the dull, slow non-rhythm of pain and numbness.
Depression sticks to your soul, layers around and within you, suffocating all hope.
I may have lost years to this emotional cancer after Julie pulled away. Depression is a timeless state. Each second is interminable. This hideous strangling darkness drew in ever tighter and more dank; closer than my skin because skin is only on the outside.
There was a big ugly hole in my world, and nothing to plug it with but misery.
-From "Entertaining Naked People" - a book from someone who has worked his way free from crippling depression to a life of joy, peace, and magic.

My books are far from formulaic. I could never let myself write just another bodice ripper much like the others, or whip out a "new" thriller mystery or vampire saga every few months, doing little more than change the names and places. My books are living worlds the reader herself can live and breathe in.
I've been developing ideas for this latest one for years. I now have scores, maybe hundreds of pages of ideas and character essences and ...
But when I decide to stick some poor human worker bee in a cubicle I have to THINK about what he might have on his desk; what co-workers dress like. what they feel along their way home.
But this is still not a worthwhile read for me if it is no more than characters acting out a story.
Today the new novel came alive. For the first time I felt myself inside someone's home, heard the rustle as folks moved around, or their sad resigned breathing as they just sat there inert. Their teacup pig chewed on something in the corner and I named the fellow based on the sound he made.
His name is Snerker.
Today this new book came to life, and from here on in, the characters can help write it around them.
This afternoon saw the birth of "The Soul Hides in Shadows".

Asked to list 10 things about myself:
1. In one of my past life memories I was burned at the stake.
2. In another of them my poor starving parents gave me away to the church when I was still a little boy. I hated that.
3. In this life I lived on a cruise ship in the Caribbean for a while.
4. During my career as a massage therapist I have massaged or met a good number of celebrities. I've rubbed among others the first President Bush, Vanna White, and a whole lot of athletes I didn't know because I've never had any interest in sports.
5. I have never had any interest in sports.
6. I live in the mountains of North Carolina, but my girlfriend lives in England, so we trade back and forth, spending months at each home.
7. While in Europe we investigate major spiritual centers and spooky places including haunted ancient graveyards and castles.
8. I once walked out into the fury of Hurricane Andrew in Miami just to see how strong it was.
9. I fell while climbing a waterfall once and busted my head open.
10. So I might be making the rest of this stuff up.