Last year I had the good fortune to participate in an anthology for writers published by Twilights Times Books, the publisher of my Psychic Closet book. The new release's title is How I Wrote My First Book: the story behind the story by Anne K. Edwards and Lida E. Quillen, Editors.
Twenty authors tell amazing stories about the efforts that went into writing their first book.
Below is an excerpt from my chapter.
The Manuscript from a Mystifying Source
by Toby Fesler Heathcotte
An unseen source dictated my first book through automatic writing, a process where the practitioner enters a meditative or light trance state and writes without conscious thought of what words will be produced. I hadn’t a clue how to go about it or what it might mean in my life. Even now I can’t explain with any kind of certainty what happened, where the material came from, but maybe why. Confusion reigned in my mind despite the fact that I held a degree in English and hoped to become an author, so I should have understood writing techniques.
The year was 1983 in Arizona. I taught speech, drama, and English in a Phoenix high school. My older son had enrolled in college in Tuc¬son and moved away from home. The younger graduated from high school and worked at a fast food restaurant, saving money to join his brother. A difficult divorce lay two years behind me. My main emotional support came from my women friends, fellow teachers who had gone through divorces themselves. My friends encouraged me as I cast around for new ways to add meaning to my life.
Some odd dreams and intuitions began occurring to me, experiences for which I had no spiritual framework. I had always remembered occasional dreams. Now I became serious about writing them down, analyzing them, and trying to know myself better. These dreams proved significant both in my personal growth and as seed material for my writing.
One episode especially provoked me to search for answers. We had a gorgeous white cat that stayed outside at night. One morning I opened the door for him but didn’t see him on the patio. I lay down on the couch to wait for the coffee to perk, accidentally fell back to sleep, and dreamed I saw the cat in a plastic bag sitting on green grass. The cat did not come home all day. The next morning I found the caretaker for the condo complex, and he told me that he had found a white cat dead on the grounds, placed it in a plastic bag, and dropped it in the dumpster. By comparing times, we discovered that he had found the cat within a half hour of my dream. Needless to say, the cat never returned.
Although I did not understand the how and why of things like dreams that came true, a voice in my head, or intuitive knowing, they began to happen to me more frequently. I felt alternately afraid and titillated by these experiences. I felt a spiritual lack that was difficult to define. I had learned Christianity in a Methodist Church as a kid but abandoned the belief for agnosticism during my college years. After my divorce I attended a Fundamentalist Christian Church for a while.
One night I didn’t want to attend a Bible study, but a voice in my head said, “Toby, go to the Bible study.” I went without hesitation. That could have been Jesus or an angel speaking. Who knew? The subject for discussion at the Bible study turned out to be people who heard voices in Biblical days, like Daniel did in the lions’ den. The bizarre coincidence of subject matter with my experience of a few hours earlier awed me. I asked whether people heard voices in mod¬ern times. The answer? No, only in Biblical times.
end of excerpt
If you have a yen to write or know someone who does, this would be an excellent choice.
How I Wrote My First Book is available in many places. To buy it from Amazon (where all my other books are available) in paperback or for Kindle, go to:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_25?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=how+i+wrote+my+first+book&sprefix=how+i+wrote+my+first+book
Showing posts with label book. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book. Show all posts
Monday, March 21, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
HEATHCOTTE BOOKS WIN EPIC PRIZES
The top prize in metaphysical fiction went to The Comet's Return, a novel by Arizona author Toby Fesler Heathcotte at the EPIC banquet held in Williamsburg, VA on March 12, 2011. The yearly awards presented by The Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition celebrate e-books in all categories. (epicauthors.com). Another Heathcotte book Out of the Psychic Closet earned a finalist award in nonfiction.
The Comet's Return tells the stories of six souls who reincarnate after building centuries of karmic connections. In 2061 Arizona, Angela dreams of people she should recognize and events she should remember. With her career and her sanity in jeopardy, she goes to the trunk opening for Halley's Comet and finds her love. Remembering their previous lifetime opens Angela to the great knowledge. Kegan yet walks the world, intent on ending the blood feud from Celtic times. Nanci-Lee Roias said of The Comet's Return, " I am amazed at the storyline, very suspenseful. I had a hard time stopping to do anything else. I did not expect the ending at all." The book is the fifth part of the Alma Chronicles.
Out of the Psychic Closet: The Quest to Trust My True Nature is a self-help handbook in two parts that will show the reader how to step out of the psychic closet, to rise above anxiety and distrust, and to incorporate psychic abilities into a more honest model of personal reality. The first part narrates the author's psychic experiences. The second part details scientific research, historical background, and previously unpublished anecdotes of the paranormal. The second part also includes print and web resources.
Both The Comet's Return and Out of the Psychic Closet are available for sale in multiple e-book formats as well as in paperback on Amazon.com. Look for further information on the author's website (tobyheathcotte.com)
The Comet's Return tells the stories of six souls who reincarnate after building centuries of karmic connections. In 2061 Arizona, Angela dreams of people she should recognize and events she should remember. With her career and her sanity in jeopardy, she goes to the trunk opening for Halley's Comet and finds her love. Remembering their previous lifetime opens Angela to the great knowledge. Kegan yet walks the world, intent on ending the blood feud from Celtic times. Nanci-Lee Roias said of The Comet's Return, " I am amazed at the storyline, very suspenseful. I had a hard time stopping to do anything else. I did not expect the ending at all." The book is the fifth part of the Alma Chronicles.
Out of the Psychic Closet: The Quest to Trust My True Nature is a self-help handbook in two parts that will show the reader how to step out of the psychic closet, to rise above anxiety and distrust, and to incorporate psychic abilities into a more honest model of personal reality. The first part narrates the author's psychic experiences. The second part details scientific research, historical background, and previously unpublished anecdotes of the paranormal. The second part also includes print and web resources.
Both The Comet's Return and Out of the Psychic Closet are available for sale in multiple e-book formats as well as in paperback on Amazon.com. Look for further information on the author's website (tobyheathcotte.com)
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Psychic Closet book now available
DREAMS CAN COME TRUE, SO WATCH OUT
If you’ve had a premonition, seen a ghost, or guessed who was calling when the phone rang, if you’ve denied your experiences or worried that you were going nuts, you need ways to cope. It’s difficult to accept that people sometimes know things it’s impossible for them to know. That’s when gooseflesh races along your arms and legs.
At seven, Toby Fesler Heathcotte spoke with her best friend killed in a car wreck three months earlier. Her parents dismissed the episode as imagination. She knows what it’s like to distrust herself, to suffer ridicule and disbelief, to fear for her sanity, and to search for guidance and understanding.
Out of the Psychic Closet: The Quest to Trust My True Nature describes Heathcotte’s paranormal experiences and her failure to integrate them. It details anecdotes of other people, analyzes research in the field, gives historical background, and suggests print and online resources for further study. Topics include ghosts, near-death experiences, retrocognition, dreams and lucid dreaming, doubles, déjà vu, visions, glossolalia, auras, remote viewing, UFO’s, voices, precognition, channeling, telepathy, spirit guides, peak experiences, xenoglossy, electronic transmission, past life memories, intuition, mystical awareness, and much more.
This book is your go-to source when you’ve seen a ghost, dreamed something that came true, felt a nudge to change your mind, heard a voice in your head, felt at home in a new place, or smelled the aftershave of a dead loved ones. It shows you how to step out of the psychic closet yourself. You will rise above anxiety and distrust and incorporate your psychic abilities into a more honest model of personal reality. You can turn your consternation into awe and your fear into gratitude.
Buy the book on Amazon.com, Bn.com, or from the publisher, Twilighttimesbooks.com
If you’ve had a premonition, seen a ghost, or guessed who was calling when the phone rang, if you’ve denied your experiences or worried that you were going nuts, you need ways to cope. It’s difficult to accept that people sometimes know things it’s impossible for them to know. That’s when gooseflesh races along your arms and legs.
At seven, Toby Fesler Heathcotte spoke with her best friend killed in a car wreck three months earlier. Her parents dismissed the episode as imagination. She knows what it’s like to distrust herself, to suffer ridicule and disbelief, to fear for her sanity, and to search for guidance and understanding.
Out of the Psychic Closet: The Quest to Trust My True Nature describes Heathcotte’s paranormal experiences and her failure to integrate them. It details anecdotes of other people, analyzes research in the field, gives historical background, and suggests print and online resources for further study. Topics include ghosts, near-death experiences, retrocognition, dreams and lucid dreaming, doubles, déjà vu, visions, glossolalia, auras, remote viewing, UFO’s, voices, precognition, channeling, telepathy, spirit guides, peak experiences, xenoglossy, electronic transmission, past life memories, intuition, mystical awareness, and much more.
This book is your go-to source when you’ve seen a ghost, dreamed something that came true, felt a nudge to change your mind, heard a voice in your head, felt at home in a new place, or smelled the aftershave of a dead loved ones. It shows you how to step out of the psychic closet yourself. You will rise above anxiety and distrust and incorporate your psychic abilities into a more honest model of personal reality. You can turn your consternation into awe and your fear into gratitude.
Buy the book on Amazon.com, Bn.com, or from the publisher, Twilighttimesbooks.com
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Women of Wisdom Foreword by Jean Houston
Foreword by Jean Houston
Women of Wisdom is in the forefront of the biggest change in human history – the only change that will assure our continuity as a species. Those who organize and participate in the Women of Wisdom experience know that for a new world to be born we have to bring a new mind to bear. Critical to this is the rich mind style of women that has been gestating in the womb of preparatory time, lo, these many millennia. In their ebullient and evocative conferences WOW demonstrates a tremendous change in who we are and how we do things.Playing their part to usher in feminine mind, WOW emphasizes process rather than just product, and making things cohere, relate, and grow. Cultures in which the feminine archetype is powerful are almost always non-heroic; they tend to make things work together, each piece has its part to play. The feminine principle expresses itself as an unfolding of levels of existence, not as conquest of facts. The relationships between people and things become more important than final outcome. The world within becomes as important as the world outside.In each and every WOW conference women discover ways to manifest this consciousness, embrace their power, challenge the way things are done, and build a new social order. They learn how women are more geared to team building and leading enterprises through natural growth stages.The conferences demonstrate that governance, games, education, work, health – society itself – can be held to a new standard, one that promotes and honors the fullness of who and what we can be rather than just collective rights and liberties. They empower women to challenge the most sexist institutions from the medical establishments to business institutions, and at long last, allow their full creativity to be set free.The women’s movement as a whole, and events such as the Women of Wisdom conference in particular, may be the outward manifestation of what is happening on depth levels in essential, mythic, and archetypal space-time. Whether the women’s movement has evolved because the crisis of the eternal world is calling for the rise of the goddess to restore the balance of nature, or because the release of women into full partnership demands a similar release of its archetypal principle, or even because, in the cosmic cycle of things, the time of the goddess has come around, we cannot say. But all the evidence indicates that the feminine archetype is returning.This is perhaps the most important event of the last five thousand years, and its consequences may well have an immense, unimaginable effect on cultural and ecological evolution.Because its approach is systemic rather than systematic, because it sees things in constellations rather than as discreet and disconnected facts, the feminine mind view is supremely concerned with the networking of the individual with the larger social organism. This is most important as we try and create a planetary society with deepening of individual cultures.As I have had the opportunity to talk with many of the participants at these conferences I am moved to celebration and gratitude for what these remarkable women have done and how they have served in the creation of this new society.--Jean Houston, PhD
Women of Wisdom by Kris Steinnes, is a book that deals with this and other important issues. It is being offered beginning on June 23rd, 2009 at 12:01 am. We invite you to go to this page - www.wisewomanpublishing.com/womenofwisdom.html - to access the order page and then go back to this page to access the bonus page. On the Exclusive Private Invite page, enter your order confirmation code. That will allow you to gain entry to the bonus gifts that are available to people who buy the book on June 23rd.
Women of Wisdom is in the forefront of the biggest change in human history – the only change that will assure our continuity as a species. Those who organize and participate in the Women of Wisdom experience know that for a new world to be born we have to bring a new mind to bear. Critical to this is the rich mind style of women that has been gestating in the womb of preparatory time, lo, these many millennia. In their ebullient and evocative conferences WOW demonstrates a tremendous change in who we are and how we do things.Playing their part to usher in feminine mind, WOW emphasizes process rather than just product, and making things cohere, relate, and grow. Cultures in which the feminine archetype is powerful are almost always non-heroic; they tend to make things work together, each piece has its part to play. The feminine principle expresses itself as an unfolding of levels of existence, not as conquest of facts. The relationships between people and things become more important than final outcome. The world within becomes as important as the world outside.In each and every WOW conference women discover ways to manifest this consciousness, embrace their power, challenge the way things are done, and build a new social order. They learn how women are more geared to team building and leading enterprises through natural growth stages.The conferences demonstrate that governance, games, education, work, health – society itself – can be held to a new standard, one that promotes and honors the fullness of who and what we can be rather than just collective rights and liberties. They empower women to challenge the most sexist institutions from the medical establishments to business institutions, and at long last, allow their full creativity to be set free.The women’s movement as a whole, and events such as the Women of Wisdom conference in particular, may be the outward manifestation of what is happening on depth levels in essential, mythic, and archetypal space-time. Whether the women’s movement has evolved because the crisis of the eternal world is calling for the rise of the goddess to restore the balance of nature, or because the release of women into full partnership demands a similar release of its archetypal principle, or even because, in the cosmic cycle of things, the time of the goddess has come around, we cannot say. But all the evidence indicates that the feminine archetype is returning.This is perhaps the most important event of the last five thousand years, and its consequences may well have an immense, unimaginable effect on cultural and ecological evolution.Because its approach is systemic rather than systematic, because it sees things in constellations rather than as discreet and disconnected facts, the feminine mind view is supremely concerned with the networking of the individual with the larger social organism. This is most important as we try and create a planetary society with deepening of individual cultures.As I have had the opportunity to talk with many of the participants at these conferences I am moved to celebration and gratitude for what these remarkable women have done and how they have served in the creation of this new society.--Jean Houston, PhD
Women of Wisdom by Kris Steinnes, is a book that deals with this and other important issues. It is being offered beginning on June 23rd, 2009 at 12:01 am. We invite you to go to this page - www.wisewomanpublishing.com/womenofwisdom.html - to access the order page and then go back to this page to access the bonus page. On the Exclusive Private Invite page, enter your order confirmation code. That will allow you to gain entry to the bonus gifts that are available to people who buy the book on June 23rd.
Women of Wisdom - buy a new book with bonus gifts
I have a book to recommend because it contains works and models by outstanding women and also because it draws attention to problems women have in our society.
One important example is the lack of the Divine Feminine and female leaders in traditional churches. Some churches still don’t allow women leaders and priests or if they do the women are not equal to men. The male dominance in these churches has resulted in women's leaving the church. They want to find a model that allows for the balance of the feminine and masculine in the Godhead. When women are not seen as Divine and the male is seen as Divine through our language of “He” as God, women have a hard time relating to that God and leave in search of something that reflects their Divinity such as Wicca, Goddess religions, or New Age religions such as Science of Mind, Religious Science, and Unity. I personally feel a kinship with all of these religions but prefer to work on my spirituality at home or in psychic development groups such as those sponsored by spiritiualist groups.
Women of Wisdom by Kris Steinnes, is a book that deals with this and other important issues. It is being offered beginning on June 23rd, 2009 at 12:01 am. We invite you to go to this page - www.wisewomanpublishing.com/womenofwisdom.html - to access the order page and then go back to this page to access the bonus page. On the Exclusive Private Invite page, enter your order confirmation code. That will allow you to gain entry to the bonus gifts that are available to people who buy the book on June 23rd.
One important example is the lack of the Divine Feminine and female leaders in traditional churches. Some churches still don’t allow women leaders and priests or if they do the women are not equal to men. The male dominance in these churches has resulted in women's leaving the church. They want to find a model that allows for the balance of the feminine and masculine in the Godhead. When women are not seen as Divine and the male is seen as Divine through our language of “He” as God, women have a hard time relating to that God and leave in search of something that reflects their Divinity such as Wicca, Goddess religions, or New Age religions such as Science of Mind, Religious Science, and Unity. I personally feel a kinship with all of these religions but prefer to work on my spirituality at home or in psychic development groups such as those sponsored by spiritiualist groups.
Women of Wisdom by Kris Steinnes, is a book that deals with this and other important issues. It is being offered beginning on June 23rd, 2009 at 12:01 am. We invite you to go to this page - www.wisewomanpublishing.com/womenofwisdom.html - to access the order page and then go back to this page to access the bonus page. On the Exclusive Private Invite page, enter your order confirmation code. That will allow you to gain entry to the bonus gifts that are available to people who buy the book on June 23rd.
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