Margaret Duarte's Blog

BETWEEN DARKNESS AND DAWN is now on sale at Audible, iTunes, and Amazon.

A great big thank you to talented voice actor Kristen Simoes for bringing book two of my “Enter the Between” series to life.

Publisher’s Summary

A powerful tale of miracles that occur when individuals quit fighting for airspace and come together in shared exploration

Marjorie Veil is running again. But this time, she’s not running from herself. She’s running to embrace her past so she may move on with her future, one that includes a man and an orphaned boy who both love her. But in order to build a life with them, she must have the strength to defy the expectations of her overprotective adoptive mother, and she must be steadfast in deciphering the veiled messages coming from the Native American woman who died giving her birth.

Marjorie’s quest is the story of the soul trying to break free of its conditioned restraints to live a life of freedom, courage, and authenticity, and focus on what is really important in her precious present moments.

An eye-opening alternative view of Alzheimer’s disease

What if we viewed the terrible neurodegenerative disease of Alzheimer’s in a new light, with the idea of going back to a collective mind shared with nature and God, connecting everything with spirit? This is demonstrated through a character named Adam, who creates life-sized clay sculptures based on memories of his loved ones, and whose decline is palliated by living in nature and being overseen by a compassionate nurse. 

The award-winning author of the Enter the Between visionary fiction series has conjured up a tale of transformational healing, arising from 10 years of research into contemporary paganism, holistic theory, quantum mechanics, and transpersonal psychology, which takes listeners deep into the depths of consciousness to the unified field underlying physical existence, where separateness is an illusion.

Thanks as always for stopping by,

The post Between Darkness and Dawn now available as an audiobook appeared first on Margaret Duarte.

Unless a novel is a leather-bound, signed, limited edition by a well-known author, it holds no significant monetary value. Once read, especially if it’s a paperback, it’s often donated to charity or passed on to a friend.

So, is purchasing a novel a waste of money?

That depends on how much you value being introduced to characters and worlds you’ve never experienced before and how much you value the joy of meaningful content and learning something new. It depends on how much you value a common space to listen to and understand others and how much you value broadening your imagination and sensitivity.

A novel can change you in someway and/or leave a lasting impression on your mind. It rounds you out, gives you something to contemplate, and makes you a more interesting person.

A novel, like that Caffe’ Vanilla Frappuccino at Starbucks or that double scoop of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream at Baskin-Robbins, is an experience, an experience that engages you with life, an experience that brings you joy.

Joy can’t be financialized. It fills you up, turns you on, keeps you lit.

How can you put a monetary value on that?

With a novel, it’s the experience you’re paying for.

What a wonderful return on investment!

For an inspirational talk by Matthew McConaughey that helps explain what I mean by value, check out 5 RULES FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.

And here’s A LIST OF BOOKS THAT I VALUE, and I believe you will too.

As always, thanks for stopping by,

The post How Do You Measure the Worth of a Novel? appeared first on Margaret Duarte.

A great big thank you to Jennifer Ip at Elk Grove Tribune for narrating the first three chapters of “Between Will and Surrender”, a free service for authors and readers.

She did a great job, especially with the way she narrated “THE VOICE” and transpersonal psychologist, Tony Mendez. I could also hear the emotion in protagonist Marjorie Veil’s voice, another sign of a good narrator.

https://anchor.fm/elkgrovetribune/episodes/EGT-Reads-Between-Will-And-Surrender-e10aos5/a-a5fm3gh Between Will and Surrender by Margaret Duarte

Elk Grove Tribune Reads is a podcast hosted by Editor Jennifer Ip and other Staff writers. Choosing from a variety of literary pieces such as short stories, poems, and excerpts, EGT Reads gives listeners a story to enjoy.

The post ELk Grove Tribune Reads: Between Will And Surrender appeared first on Margaret Duarte.

[image error]Top 10 IAP Select Books of 2020Between Will and Surrender hits #4 out of the top 10 IAP Select Books of 2020!

I find it strange–and wonderful–that when my mind is otherwise occupied, good things seem to happen. I mean, out of the blue! Totally unexpected, even unearned when it comes to seeking out such small miracles.

A few days ago, while checking my email, I received a message that my name had been mentioned on Twitter. Not an everday occurance, believe me, so, I was eager to take a look.

Which lead to the subsequent tweet:

Check out the top 10 most read #IndieAuthorProject Select titles of 2020: https://indieauthorproject.com/top-circing-iap-select-books-of-2020/… Congrats to all of the authors & cheers to reaching even more readers this year! #TheFutureIsIndie#IndieAuthor#BiblioBoardLibrary@LibraryJournal@PublishersWkly@BiblioBoard

Okay, I thought, but what has that got to do with me?

I followed the link provided to the announcement:

“2020 is firmly in the rearview and while we are full steam ahead in 2021, we wanted to take a moment to showcase the authors of the top 10 circulating Indie Author Project Select titles of the last year. These titles accounted for over six thousand reads on BiblioBoard Library from library patrons all over the U.S. and Canada. 

Congratulations to all of the authors and cheers to reaching even more readers in 2021!

Read on to see who made the list.”

Of course, I couldn’t resist reading on and, to my surprise, saw that my book, Between Will and Surrender, was listed as #4 out of the top 10 most read IAP Select books in 2020.

#4 out of the top 10 IAP Select Books of 2020! Really?

Apparently, for an entire year, and without my knowledge, library patrons all of the U.S. and Canada had been reading the first book in my “Enter the Between” fiction series.

I’m still wondering how this came to be, but in my experience, it’s often best with small miracles to savor the moment and not ask too many questions.

According to Wikipedia, the word miracle is often used to characterise any beneficial event that is statistically unlikely but not contrary to the laws of nature, such as surviving a natural disaster, or simply a “wonderful” occurrence, regardless of likelihood.

As if to demonstrate the point, a bookmark with the following quote dropped out of the journal in which I was writing this morning:

If it is true, if it is beautiful, if it is honorable, if it is right, then claim it.

~Rob Bell

Okay, Rob Bell, I’m claiming #4 out of the top 10 most read IAP Select titles of 2020!

And then I move on, confident that more unexpected miracles lie ahead.

As always, thanks for stopping by,

The post Top 10 IAP Select Books of 2020 appeared first on Margaret Duarte.

While selecting best-selling novels for the VFA bookstore, I faced the question: What distinguishes a novel as visionary fiction?

Two people whose opinion I value—John Alegeo, Professor Meritus of English at the University of Georgia and Vice President of the Theosophical Society, and Hal Zina Bennett, PhD, Author-Publishing Consultant, provided a guideline to narrow my choices:

“Visionary fiction reveals aspects of this world that are sharply at variance with the common assumptions of the man-in-the-street about what his world is really like. It helps the reader to see the world in a new light, to recognize dimensions of reality that we commonly ignore. It transforms our vision of ourselves and our environment.” ~John Algeo“Visionary fiction reaches beyond the surface of things, touching the deeper mysteries of the human experience beyond ordinary, everyday consensual reality.” ~Hal Zina Bennett, PhD, Author-Publishing Consultant“Visionary fiction is more obviously ‘spiritual’ in nature and an individual’s movement towards self-actualization is a primary theme.” ~ Tahlia Newland, Editor, Author, Publisher

At the time of this writing, 139 books
are listed in the VFA Bookstore (those of best-selling authors and of VFA
members who have contributed in some way to our website). With more to come.

To help new readers find books in
this genre, I’ve come up with examples of visionary fiction written by some of
my favorite best-selling authors, for which I’ve provided descriptions,
favorite quotations, and inks over a series of posts.

After that, I’ll do the same for visionary fiction written
by less-well-known, but equally deserving VFA members.

If you have suggestions for a novel from the VFA Bookstore to include in my series, share in “Comments” those titles you’ve read and for which you’ve posted a review on Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, or Kobo that I can reference in my post.

I’m also interested in novels written by VFA members that
have won various book awards.

So, here are some great books I’ve personally read and loved
that feed the heart and soul. I won’t give you a detailed synopsis of the
story. You can read our bookstore description for that. However, I will provide
you with some of my favorite quotes from each book.

The
Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon: In this powerful, labyrinthian thriller, David Martín is a pulp fiction
writer struggling to stay afloat. Holed up in a haunting abandoned mansion in
the heart of Barcelona, he furiously taps out story after story, becoming
increasingly desperate and frustrated. Thus, when he is approached by a
mysterious publisher offering a book deal that seems almost too good to be
real, David leaps at the chance. But as he begins the work, and after a visit
to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, he realizes that there is a connection
between his book and the shadows that surround his dilapidated home and that
the publisher may be hiding a few troubling secrets of his own.

FAVORITE QUOTE
FROM BOOK: “A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a
word of praise in exchange for a story. He will never forget the sweet poison
of vanity in his blood and the belief that, if he succeeds in not letting
anyone discover his lack of talent, the dream of literature will provide him
with a roof over his head, a hot meal at the end of the day, and what he covets
the most: his name printed on a miserable piece of paper that surely will
outlive him. A writer is condemned to remember that moment, because from then
on he is doomed and his soul has a price.”

Keeping
Faith by Jodi Picoult: An
addictively readable novel that makes you wonder about God. And that is a rare
moment, indeed, in modern fiction.

FAVORITE QUOTES FROM BOOK: “This is
1999. Those things don’t happen anymore. Those phenomena get x-rayed and
carbon-tested and scientifically proven to be fakes.” “I’ve never believed that
spirit comes from religion. It comes from deep inside each of us; it draws
people to us. And your daughter has a lot of it.” “The thing about having
something hidden in your past is that you spend every minute of the future building
a wall that makes the monster harder to see. You convince yourself that the
wall is sturdy and thick, and one day, when you wkake up and the horrible
things does not immediately jump into your mind, you give yourself the freedom
to pretend that it is well and truly gone. Which only makes it that much more
painful when something like this happens, and you learn that the concrete wall
is really as transparent as glass, and twice as fragile.”

Drawing
in the Dust by Zoe Klein: Brilliant archaeologist Page Brookstone has toiled at
Israel’s storied battlegrounds of Megiddo for twelve years, yet none of the
ancient remnants she has unearthed deliver the life-altering message she
craves. Which is why she risks her professional reputation when a young Arab
couple begs her to excavate beneath their home. Ibrahim and Naima Barakat claim
the spirits of two lovers overwhelm everyone who enters with love and desire.
As Page digs, she makes a miraculous discovery—the bones of the deeply troubled
prophet Jeremiah locked in an eternal embrace with a mysterious woman. Buried
with the entwined skeletons is a collection of scrolls that challenge
centuries-old interpretations of the prophet’s story and create a worldwide
fervor. 

FAVORITE QUOTE FROM BOOK: “Midnight is the
most intimate of instants. The most hollow, superstitious, lost-in-the-woods,
something’s-in-the-attic moment of the day. Twelve is the knifepoint between
the day’s deepest darkening and the commencement of its lightening, the kiss
between the kingdom of the moon and the kingdom of the sun. It is a
razor-breadth’s flash between despair and hope.“

Spirit
Circle by Hal Zina Bennett:
When anthropologist Tara Fairfield gets a cryptic message from her long-lost
father, a tabloid reporter who specializes in alien-abduction narratives, she
sets off for his last known whereabouts: Coyote Mesa on the Zuni Indian
reservation in New Mexico. It’s an odd place, complete with spotty cell-phone
reception and local stories of witchcraft and flying saucers. Tara is soon
besieged by uncanny experiences: strange images on motel TV sets; mesmerizing
lights and episodes of lost time; apparitions of Katchinas, the eight-foot
masked bird-men of Zuni myth; and visions of Hollywood heartthrob James Dean
telling her that “the world you believe you have mastered is an illusion.”

FAVORITE QUOTES FROM BOOK: “These revelations
echoed what she had been saying for years—that one day there would be evidence
to show that the shamanic traditions on this continent predated both
Christianity and Judaism by at least 2,000 years.” “Who were these people? What
magic did they invoke, allowing them to see beyond what scholar-philosopher
William James had once described as the ‘filmy veil’ that separates everyday
life from this other reality that theologians and spiritual leaders have been
exploring for centuries.? And what records did these ancient shaman-priests
leave behind? What artifacts? Somewhere out there, hidden even from probing
aircraft, this ancient village, perhaps already buried under centuries of
decaying adobe and desert dust, waited for her to pull back the veil and reveal
its secrets.”

Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz: The story of five days in the life of an
ordinary man born to an extraordinary legacy—a story that will challenge the
way you look at good and evil, life and death, and everything in between.

FAVORITE
QUOTES FROM BOOK: “I wrote this to explain life to myself. The mystery.
The humor, dark and light, that is the warp and weft of the weave. The
absurdity. The terror. The hope. The joy, the grief. The God we never see
except by indirection. In this I have failed.” “I can’t explain the why of
life, the patterns of its unfolding. I can’t explain it—but, oh, how I love
it.” Insanity is not evil, but all evil is insane. Evil itself is never funny,
but insanity sometimes can be. We need to laugh at the irrationality of evil,
for in doing so we deny evil’s power over us, diminish its influence in the
world, and tarnish the allure it has for some people.

The post Novels that Feed the Mind and Soul appeared first on Margaret Duarte.

Interest in ethnic origin searches and genealogical DNA testing has become one of the most popular hobbies in the US. Over-the-counter genetic test kits alone have developed into a billion-dollar industry.

Just give your personal information to one or more genetic databases, and, in exchange, sites, such as myheritage.com, genealogy.com, ancestry.com, and genealogybank.com offer easy ways to explore the lives of your ancestors and discover your family history.

Your name is the magic key to birth records and information on who your ancestors are and what they looked like. Billions of historical records and millions of family trees from sixty countries lay at your fingertips. Easy-peasy.

Between Will and Surrender and Native American Medicine Wheel Teachings
Chapters Twenty-two-Twenty-seven

In 2001, however, when my protagonist Marjorie Veil discovers she was adopted and is hit with the urge to uncover her birth-family’s history, genealogical research is not yet the craze it is today. Saliva-based direct-to-consumer DNA testing, for instance, didn’t begin until 2007. As far as Marjorie knows, there is no defined method or clear-cut technique to guide her in her search.

The only clues her adoptive mother is able to give is that Marjorie is part of the near extinct Native American Esselen tribe and her adoption may have been illegal.

No family photos, diaries, journals. No handy paper trails. She doesn’t even know her birth parents’ names. So, where does her search begin?

Fortunately, clues start to appear to which Marjorie grabs hold:

An antique mirror
An unmarked grave
An Esselen tribal member
A bit of library research
And the voice in her head

Marjorie’s aim is not the mapping of her pedigree, but discovering what she can about her ancestors’ lifestyles and beliefs. Her search is therefore less genealogical and more in-depth study of family history with emphasis on each ancestor’s life story.

She arranges to meet Esselen tribal member, Ben, Gentle Bear, Mendoza, who entertains her with stories about the Esselen way of life. He then touches on the Esselen’s profound understanding of the mysteries of life, the purpose of existence, and the forces of nature, which prompts Marjorie to ask, “What about the Native American Medicine Wheel?”

“The indigenous people on the west coast didn’t follow Medicine Wheel teachings,” Ben replies.

“But the Plains and Esselen tribes must’ve shared some common spiritual principles and themes,” she argues, desperate to gain some kind of spiritual understanding with her ancestors.

“Earth Medicine may not be the right path for you,” Ben cautions. “You won’t know how to interpret the wheel teachings or apply them to your daily life.”

Marjorie refuses to take no for an answer. “Maybe the parts I could interpret and apply to my life would help me broaden my world view.”

Ben relents, and over the course of several months his lessons about Earth Medicine and the Medicine Wheel begin, lessons that will kindle within Marjorie powers that will prove invaluable on her path to self-discovery.

The post Family History: choices, not genetics appeared first on Margaret Duarte.

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In 1960, Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon from New York, published a book on self-image psychology and goal visualization called Psycho Cybernetics.

In it, he introduced the analogy of the brain as a cybernetic “servo-mechanism”, like a computer designed to find a path to the target it is programmed with.

Maltz suggests that you…

1. call up, capture, and evoke the feeling of success. When you feel successful and self-confident, you will act successfully.

2. define your goal or end result. Then picture it to yourself clearly and vividly. The image you have of your desired future makes explicit what is implicit in your present situation.

3. share your dreams and tell others about your vision of the future. Verbalization is the key to strong visual imagery

4. use your internal machinery (which is geared for success) to guide you in making the correct muscular motions and adjustments; to supply you with creative ideas, and to do whatever else is necessary in order to make the goal an accomplished fact.

5. throw yourself into achieving your goals full scale.

6. focus on solutions that provide hope and energy, even during challenging times.

7. use imagery and simple emotive words to invoke the unconscious, dreaming mind.

It took all seven of these forms of self-image psychology to write the four novels in my “ENTER THE BETWEEN” Visionary Fiction series.

Have you used any similar forms of self-image psychology in realizing some of your life goals?

As always, thanks for stopping by.

The post Psycho Cybernetics; self-image psychology appeared first on Margaret Duarte.

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According to Radio Times, the very best audiobook narrators don’t just read a novel – they perform it. They inject life into a book, adding pace, emotion and tension with their voice alone, while mastering all character accents, tricky location names and often foreign languages.

Emmy-nominated voice and video artist Kristen Simoes has professional training in voice-over, yet she’s the first to admit that narrating an audiobook is a LOT harder than you think.

I’m thrilled that she lent her time and talent to converting the first book in my “Enter the Between” series into an audiobook that, if all goes according to plan, will be available at Amazon in time for your Christmas shopping.

Here’s a clip of Kristen narrating BETWEEN WILL AND SURRENDER in her recording booth.

As always, thanks for stopping by.

The post Narrating an Audiobook is Harder than You Think appeared first on Margaret Duarte.

In 2016, when BETWEEN WILL AND SURRENDER won first place for General Fiction in the NCPA’s 23rd Annual Book Awards, I thought sales would hit the roof.

Wrong.

The resulting sales more closely resembled a bleep than a leap.

Same thing in 2018 when BETWEEN DARKNESS AND DAWN won two major awards and in 2019 with two more coveted awards for BETWEEN YESTERDAY AND TOMORROW.

What the heck?

After some research, I made the shocking discovery that even the most prestigious awards such as the Pulitzer Prize, Booker Prize, and Edgar Awards don’t affect book sales in the way you’d suspect.

There are simply too many books in the marketplace demanding readers’ attention, which means even award-winning novels have a difficult time rising above the pack.

So, why bother, right?

Wrong.

Awards still matter in ways that may surprise you.

Contest wins…

go far in validating an author’s work and are a huge incentive for the author to keep at it until someone takes notice.  create a renewed opportunity for the author to connect with existing and new readers and talk up their books.can lead to speaking and teaching opportunities.help an author gain the respect of family, friends, and writing peers.elevate the author’s work from hobby to vocation and/or career.

So, this week when the last book in my “Enter the Between” series BETWEEN NOW AND FOREVER won GOLD for General Fiction in NCPA’s 26th Annual Book Awards, I no longer weighed its value via book sales.

Instead, I found myself doing a happy dance for what I knew in my soul was a great accomplishment.

To learn more about book awards, join me in the podcast below: FINDING AND APPLYING FOR INDIE AWARDS.

As always, thanks for stopping by.

The post Do Book Awards Matter? appeared first on Margaret Duarte.

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A book titled THE CULTURAL CREATIVES devotes an entire chapter to THE BETWEEN, describing it as “the time between worldviews, values, and ways of life; a time between stories.”

Though it was published twenty years ago, the book’s authors Paul H. Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson could have been writing about today, a time of transition filled with confusion and chaos, danger—and promise.

The Between is a place of inner knowledge and breakthrough experiences, where the gates of the mind are pushed ajar, making room for threshold experiences that Carl Jung called  synchronicities and Dr. Deepak Copra calls the power of coincidence.

Do Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson have any suggestions for survival during our passage through THE BETWEEN?

Yes.

Befriend uncertainty and get a clear vision of the road ahead. A matter, they say, of consciousness more than information.

And that’s where Visionary Fiction comes in.

Visionary Fiction places emphasis on clearing our awareness and awakening our spiritual vision.

Take, for example, Marjorie Veil, the protagonist in my “ENTER THE BETWEEN” visionary fiction series, who faces uncertainty itself, when, in book one, BETWEEN WILL AND SURRENDER, she begins hearing a voice when no one is there: You are not who you pretend to be.

Is she losing her mind?

The question plagues her for three weeks until she finally seeks help.

Transpersonal psychologist, Tony Mendez, advises, “You need to clear your mind and quiet your thoughts, enter the mystery and live the questions rather than seek the answers. You need to push past your perimeter of comfort and safety, slow down, follow some blind alleys, let the truth catch up to you.”

And so, Marjorie begins her journey through THE BETWEEN.

As one reviewer wrote: “You may find yourself examining your own life after reading this book.”

As always, thanks for stopping by.

The post “The Between,” A Place of Breakthrough Experiences appeared first on Margaret Duarte.