The Beautiful Answer

A Breakthrough

In the eleven months I’ve been keeping this blog, I’ve begun to notice a few things about the way the mind works. How it strives to keep things looking bleak, perhaps so that when joy occurs, it will stand out by comparison. 

Then there are those days when you’re able to break through a pattern that has been so much a part of your life that it’s become like a second skin. Over the years I have raged at it, coaxed and cajoled it, even tried to reason with it as I attempted to move toward some sort of final releasing point, where I could finally be rid of it for good. Today, I stood up for myself in a way I have never done before. And it wasn’t really like anything I expected. 

Most people picture fighting of some sort when you say you’re standing up for yourself. They imagine swords drawn, defensive battle postures, grimacing faces. Not that I didn’t get irritated — I suppose sone of that is required before we all reach our limits and set an impermeable boundary. I did, a little. And then I got tough. 

It’s not something I can talk about in detail because it’s still ongoing, but suffice it to say that I have been offered several great career opportunities since my book Searching for Sassy came out. I’ve had agents circling, publishing companies interested in putting it out on their own labels, and film and television producers vying for the rights. It’s all been pretty heady and confusing at times, even though I have a pretty good working knowledge of how these things work, since I’ve been employed in both the publishing and film industries in the past. 

The thing is, there are all kinds of people, in each of these businesses. There are your sharks, who want to dominate you (and the conversation, apparently), even if no money is actually yet changing hands. There are your artist wannabees, who will never get quite as close to writing a book as sitting across from you on an expensive couch, and those who crave power and influence, to somehow affect the culture at large. You meet enough of them, and they all start to look the same. 

But I’ve learned that breakthroughs seldom come when you’re trying to make them happen. They tend to creep up on you, waiting to strike when you’re not expecting it. So you have to be ready to walk away from something if need be, even if the very thing you’re being offered is the thing you want most. 

I did that today. I was ready to walk away, even though it was painful, and I ended up winning. It required absolute nerves of steel. And even though this may not happen all the time, or even most of the time, just the act of standing firm and saying no made my legs and little stronger underneath me, and my connection to the earth all the support I needed to move forward. 

Time to Leap

I’ve been thinking about risk lately, partially because of my own risk-taking activities like being a healer, writing a book and putting it out there, hell, even being kind is a kind of risk-taking in a world that’s sometimes cruel. Though the Sun has recently left Aries, a fiery risk-taking sign, to enter Taurus, that can be a somewhat deceptive. Taurus has its own adventurous side, albeit one that takes a little longer to manifest. I chose to launch my book Searching for Sassy: An L.A. Phone Psychic’s Tales of Life, Lust & Love during early Taurus because it’s a sign that builds momentum. It takes security as its highest goal, and desires stability and long-term success above all. 

Sure, it would have been easier to release it during Aries, get the quick hit of good fortune and be on my way. But Aries sometimes has a hard time sustaining momentum. Today, as the Gemini Moon sextiles both Uranus and Mercury, squares Chiron and conjuncts Venus, it’s about throwing off old patterns of pain and suffering (they no longer work anyway, if they ever did). It’s about embracing what makes you different, and speaking from that hard-fought place of truth. It’s a place of beauty and creativity and just the slightest but of pride in what you have accomplished. 

In short, it’s a time to take that leap, and know, not hope, that the net will appear. 

(In case anyone’s interested in finding out more about my book, or buying it on launch day — Tuesday, April 24th — in exchange for some pretty cool freebies, meditations, e-books and more, check out http://www.searchingforsassy.com)

And Away We Go

When you’re approaching a big deadline in life, you can go two ways, I’ve found. One is to ball up into the fetal position and rock bak and forth in bed, wondering why you ever had the idea to write that book, or stage that play, or record that song. The other is to try your best to surf the energy of the moment, bypassing any crazy things like sleep or, in many moments, food and proper hydration. 

The latter brings about better balance, and maybe stronger mental health. The former results in, well, better rest, I suppose, as long as you can sleep while fetal. The reason I’m thinking about this, I’m sure has to do with the fact that I have a book coming out in 9 days. I’m not scared. Hell, I’ve been in this position two other times. I’m not exactly blase, either. That just smacks of a kind of arrogance I hope I never feel. I’m somewhere in the middle, even though there are times when the gravity of this moment of my life sneaks up on my and pounds me down to the ground.

It’s in those moments that I find the best stuff to work with. Today I found a morsel of fear connected all the way back to high school, and released that shit for good. I found a pocket of anticipation, and a wee bit of anxiety and, yes, even some anger that had been held back for so long I couldn’t even trace it back to its source. Gone, gone and gone. Thanks for playing.  Don’t need you anymore. 

Releasing all this old stuff in preparation for my book launch was so fun I was releasing negative thought patterns on the treadmill, and kicking old beliefs to the curb in Trader Joe’s. And even when a woman almost ran over my foot with her shopping cart, I was able to laugh and get out of the way, thanking whatever force gave me these reflexes and this indelibly powerful will to live. Not just live. Thrive. 

A Curious Thing

There’s a curious thing that happens whenever you put out a book. A kind of compression of time and space, until you’re living inside yourself, of course (I suppose it’s hard to get out of that responsibility) and living outside yourself as well, seeing what your work does to other people. You begin to see yourself through other people’s eyes. 

The book that’s coming out in 19 days, for me, is my third, but each experience has been really different. The first was an enormous learning curve, where I did just about everything wrong, and nearly drove myself insane with all the expectations. The second was more relaxed. I let it come to me, and it did, in a larger way. It became an Amazon bestseller for around three months, which was nice. The third is … well, it’s still happening. I’m doing a lot more for it, in a much more concerted way, and I’m reaching a lot more people as well. Chalk that up to all the learning experiences I’ve had in the past, or just a realistic set of expectations, I don’t know. I’m just happy I’m not tempted to tear my hair out anytime soon. 

So many people I run into want to write books. They tell me that, and then in the next sentence say something like they don’t have the time, and they don’t know what they’d write, or they’re not sure if they’d be any good at it. Setting aside the “good at it” part (everyone sucks at first, trust me), I don’t know why anyone would want to write a book unless one were burning its way out of you from the inside. Writing books is hard. It takes time, and patience, and perseverance. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. You have to see inside people’s heads, which can get exhausting, and even miss out on the fun stuff of life, like seeing your friends as often as you’d like. Writing can be painful if you’re doing it right, and it can be transcendent. 

For right now, I’m happy to rest in the “done with this one” feeling. The marketing will keep happening, as well as the reading in public and the teaching of workshops. I’ve got a few new things sketched out or outlined on my computer, a few books and plays, and we’ll see how long I can go without diving in again. For me, writing is necessary to balance out the part of my life I live for other people — the healing, compassionate part that needs to do those thing, just as my fingers ache to be on the keyboard again, after too much time alone. 

Sallie Felton’s Book Launch!

My friend Sallie Felton’s releasing a really interesting book tomorrow on Amazon, and I wanted to write a little about it this evening. The book is called Why Can’t I Get Rid of This Clutter? and it’s not just to figure out why you’re a slob. I’m kidding, of course. It’s about how our minds are always spinning around, stressing out about the past and projecting into the future, until we’re overwhelmed and unhappy, not to mention unproductive and procrastinating about what’s really important in life. 

I’ve known Sallie for a few years now, ever since she had me on her radio show to promote my second book. She’s warm, genuine and, most of all, no-bull. Her book is pretty much the same way, providing concrete tools to get started on releasing negative beliefs, and tools (practical, feeling and motivational) to start clearing away all that mental and emotional clutter, so you can find your way to your divine, inspired purpose.  From there, you’re freer to achieve your highest goals and aspirations in life — and isn’t that what we all want? 

Best of all, if you buy the book on launch day — tomorrow, March 21st — you get over $10,000 in bonus gifts, including a pretty nice discount from me on my distance energy healing sessions. There are books, e-books, MP3s, courses, coaching, discounts — hey, I’m gonna have to get this book myself! 

Anyway, just wanted to let you know about Sallie’s amazing book. If it sounds interesting to you, check it out. The value of the bonuses more than makes up for the cover price, and you’ll be doing a pretty cool lady a favor in the process. And as we all know, what does around comes around, and maybe something great will come your way as well. 

Still Tired, Looking Up

You know those days that kind of shoot past, and you realize by the end that you haven’t looked up at the sky at all? It could be raining outside, you have no idea, or it could be sunny and 80 degrees. Today was one of those kinds of days. I have a feeling I’ll be seeing a lot more of those kinds of days in the near future as well. 

Book marketing is going very well. I’m getting some great reviews and quotes, which are all very kind. I’m booking tons of print and radio interviews, and have a few sites wiling to excerpt the book near the launch date of April 24th. 

All I could use now is a huge shot of energy. All right, all right. I know. Writing a book is a huge burst of energy. It’s way closer to the birth process than most people realize. By the end you’re torn up and ready to go fetal for about a month. But then comes the marketing part, which is more like a marathon than a sprint, and you have to talk about yourself (writers aren’t by nature like that, at least not most of them, myself included) for a long time, a few months at least, and more if you’re really driven, as I am. 

By the end you need a vacation like you’ve never needed one, and you don’t want to even hear your own name for like 6 months. I work out a lot anyway, usually 5 times a week, and I mediate each day. I try to work in a fair amount of yoga and Pilates into my workouts, because I get bored easily. So I guess the tiredness I feel now is my wake up call. Time to get your butt in training lady, for this marathon that feels like a sprint. 

Getting some sleep early tonight. Gotta expand that sleeping zone so I can stay rested and ready. I feel so much going forward, and want to be as ready as I can to face the fun stuff ahead. 

Reframe-o-Rama

It’s the best time of year, it’s the most stressful time of year. Maybe that’s unavoidable, given that we can’t choose our families. I’m sure I’ll have all kinds of opportunities to use my daily reframing over the next few months, not the last of which was today, when I figured out that I may not have the books I need when I need them to begin marketing it before my launch. 

Book publicity, for those of you who don’t know, is a long and complicated process. If you believe the Internet marketers (aka scabs who want to sell things to you, not necessarily purvey accurate information), you can write a book in five days, market in in three, and have yourself a bestseller by next weekend. And while that might happen for very, very few people, if you’re doing things the traditional way, with a printed version, hardcover and an e-book version, things take time to build momentum. 

For some people, you need the printed version of your books instead of electronic versions. This needs to happen well within the lead time for their magazines and other publications, in the hopes they’ll write about you and spur sales of more books. So that may or may not happen for me, or maybe not in the “right” timeframe. 

So to reframe this thing I can’t really control, I sent cosmic distress signals out to all media reviewers, all the people in need of content about the subject area I’m writing about, and asked them to be patient with me. That I might be able to help them deliver a great story if they can be flexible about their lead time, or a little malleable in terms of when and where things hit their desks. 

Hoping for a little karmic payback for all the folks I try to help, even though that’s not why I did it. In this case, I need a little something back. Asking, hoping for cooperation. 

Now They Are

You know when you were a little kid, and everything seemed like a ghost? Lights on the wall, the moon, creaks on the floorboard — even your night light could seem haunted and magical. I had really vivid dreams as kid, seeing them almost projected onto the walls of my bedroom. Some nights I was afraid to move, if the dream was scary, while other nights I could run around and cavort with squirrels, chipmunks and butterflies. 

I’ve been talking to a lot of people lately about my book Searching for Sassy, which tells the story of coming to Los Angeles to escape a bad breakup, falling backwards into a job as a phone psychic and having that completely change my life for the better. People always want to know what it’s like to be a phone psychic, if it’s real or if they’ve just hired a bunch of actors to perform the fake readings. I can’t speak for everyone, but I can speak for the people at my line, who were all very gifted. I refused to believe I was psychic for the longest time, and finally gave in when my fellow psychics basically took me under their wings kicking and screaming. 

Luckily, I listend to them. Or they wore me down — either way. I learned everything from tarot to energy work and astrology, with some mythology, Greek literature, psychology and more. I read everting I could get my hands on, in line at the store, on the bike at the gym, in traffic, you name it. My native curiosity just took over and I let it drive the bus for a while. 

I’ve been thinking about that, that knowledge or wisdom can be there and then not there. There as potential and then developed into something you can talk about and practice, not there if you decide to change your mind or even allow ignorance and darkness to flower. I’ve been thinking about ghosts from the past, literal ones who used to haunt the crap out of my apartment in the Ravenswood, and figurative ones that cling to all of us, as beliefs we hold rightly or falsely. Reframing this, I’ve decided to give those ghosts a new home. My ghosts that have no more use in my life. I built it up in the hills of Laurel Canyon, a pretty spot with a view of the Strip when the weather is clear. I’m sending the thoughts, patterns, beliefs and memories that no longer serve me into a retirement home. It’s a cool one, but still for stuff that’s going off to die. 

Those Inner Gremlins

Maybe other people have this —I have no idea. You know when you get really excited, when something really amazing happens for you and you’re kind of clenching up a little, as if in the next moment someone’s gonna snatch it away from you? I don’t have that exactly, maybe a minor version of it. I don’t assume that people are going to eff me up. I’m sure they’re worrying about other things. But I have noticed a little pattern of wanting to downplay my good news. 

So let’s see what we can do about that. 

Having a book published is always exciting. And even though very few of my friends are writers, or can even understand what this process entails (I don’t know, a few hundred days or nights of being on your own, living in your mind, then getting an agent, getting a publisher, going though the editorial production, then putting it out and arguing over the cover. And then the real work begins, of trying to promote it), they smile and like me I guess enough to buy it, or tell people about it and endure my endless talking about every little aspect of the damn thing. 

Today, my publisher and I worked on the cover of my book, and I think we have a central image, which of course will determine the color palette, etc. It’s usually the hardest part of the process. You may have the best manuscript on earth, but until you see that PDF of your front cover, it never seems real. 

Hopefully, within a week or so, we’ll have a proof and I’ll post it. To reframe my little issue with downplaying stuff, I played with telling people today. I told my family (they have to care, I guess) and my husband of course. But then I started telling other people, to see how they’d react. I told a friend I’m not that close to, and the guy at the yoga studio and even, yes,  my landlady. 

All had differing reactions, of course, but most were encouraging. So maybe those inner gremlins in my mind, who tell me I can’t, or it won’t happen, or you better wait until you get permission can and should suck it. 

And So It Goes

Not 24 hours after I took down my “writing for other people” web site, I’ve been besieged with requests for, yes, writing and editing projects. I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but I’m pretty done with that part of my life. I have been published in over 30 publications, I’ve released two books with my name on them, and edited and ghostwritten dozens more. I’ve won awards and learned a great deal about how the industry works, and now I want to concentrate on my own projects.

See, almost everyone I’ve ever met wants to write a book, Not that they all should. They just want to, and feel they’re somehow entitled to it. Most people want me to get them on Oprah, not seeming to know the show doesn’t exist anymore. They say they want to be on her next show, whatever that is. Many of them have nothing to say in a book, but need the platform to speak to others, to let them know how to live their lives. I tell them to try Facebook or MySpace. But none of my advice, honed over more than 20 years of doing this, seems to stick. Sometimes, I feel like I’m trapped in the movie Groundhog Day, talking to the same client over and over and over.

I didn’t want writing, which has been so magical to me, to be robbed of its joy. I didn’t want it to become workmanlike and boring, and it had definitely started to be that. So I pulled the site, and stopped accepting jobs from others to write or edit their books (the latter part happened weeks ago), articles, essays — whatever. I won’t even consider giving advice to someone who I don’t think is trying to add to the planet in some way. The world has enough books. What it needs are people with points of view, and something to actually say. Life’s just too freakin’ short.

But I wanted to reframe this, since the universe seems to be trying to continue sending me good fortune, and recognition of a sort. So I saw all the incoming energy not as an annoyance, to be answered in so many no-based emails, but as a wave of applause and a final bow. As this part of my life is coming to a close, another part begins. I’ve written a few plays, am moving towards getting them staged, and have finished a memoir about the time I spent working as a phone psychic in Los Angeles. My business continues to flourish, and I have so many new ideas it will take me years to write them all. So none of this is bad. Thank you for all the projects and the chance to hone my craft. Now it’s time to open a new door and walk through it.