Kindle Book Review Features The Hidden Abbey

'The Hidden Abbey' is one of Kindle Book Review's Featured Books of the day.

It is also on Sale, today March 2.

https://www.thekindlebookreview.net/

New release - The Hidden Abbey

A fated love and a sacred destiny brought through time.

The Hidden Abbey interweaves the story of two lovers who must fulfill a fated mission that spans across centuries and two lifetimes. In sixteenth century England, Marissa is a headstrong apprentice priestess of the mystical and legendary Isle of Avalon. she must learn to be a wise and responsible leader if she is to one day inherit the title of High priestess. her secret lover, Michael, is a warrior from a noble lineage. The two are charged with a grand and momentous task--to safeguard the Creation Bowl, the sacred vessel of the ancient Goddess tradition, imbued with the power to help heal the world. When King Henry VIII confiscates and destroys all of England’s abbeys, the Bowl is endangered. As Marissa and Michael fight to protect it, they are irrevocably separated, and their quest is thwarted.

When they are reborn and meet again in the twenty-first century as Sophie and Daniel, they are given a second chance. The story follows their efforts to remember—each other and their shared destiny.

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Ten years in the making. 

In 2010 I received guidance to return to Glastonbury, England. Specifically, to the Abbey ruins, as that location would be where my next novel took place. While there, I visited the Mary Chapel, the now open crypt housing an altar alcove and a long nave.

I had received many visions while meditating in this spot when I lived in Glastonbury years before. This time, as I had often done previously, I sat on one of the stone benches in front of the altar. As I meditated, I saw a monk in my mind's eye. Someone who had often visited my previous meditations. Unexpectedly, all the prior year's meditations integrated, giving me fresh clarity and a vision for this novel, The Hidden Abbey.

This is the monk's heretofore untold story of the mystical underpinnings of Glastonbury Abbey, the hidden Abbey. And the tale of the undying love between him and the Avalon priestess, Marissa.

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Book trailer

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Oregon Writers Colony Award

My novel, The Hidden Abbey, isn't professionally edited yet. Oh, yes, I have worked on it and revised it over and again, as writers do. But it lacks the polishing touches of an editor helping to ripen it for publication.

Nevertheless, I entered it into the Oregon Writers Colony 2018 Writing Contest. And I won First Honorable Mention. The other winners and I read from our works in a cozy event venue in downtown Portland this last weekend. It was a remarkably enriching hour and a half filled with talent and promise.

Awards Ceremony venue

Here is my award winning offering from my first chapter. It is trimmed extensively to fit into the five minute time limit for reading, but the essence remains. 

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     In The Hidden Abbey,  Michael is a 16^th century monk  and Marissa is a pagan Priestess of Avalon. They’re secret lovers with a shared destiny to protect the mysterious Creation Bowl. When King Henry VIII destroys all of England’s Abbeys, Marissa and Michael are torn apart, and their quest is thwarted.

Glastonbury Abbey ruins

Interwoven, is the story of these same two lovers reborn in the 21^st century, where they get a second chance to fulfill both their ill-fated love and their shared destiny.

This excerpt is from the first chapter, in 16^th century, Glastonbury.

    “Michael has been dead for nearly a minute.”  That is, by human reckoning of time.

     The words echoed within a whirlpool of magic. The message submerged, nearly soundless. The underwater cries of a drowning boy. It traveled along the rivers of prophecy. The words seeped into twelve-year-old Marissa’s dreams, flooding them with forewarning. She bolted upright in bed.

     The portent morphed into a waking vision. Marissa sat immobile, unable to block the grim Death Vision from showing her exactly how it was unfolding. A boy bobbing in Avalon’s lake, sputtering water, his legs flailing. Marissa reached for him   but caught only empty air.

     The Death Vision linked her to the boy. She clawed the neckline of her nightgown and gulped for breath as his struggle became her struggle. It wasn’t supposed to work that way. She didn’t know how to separate herself from what was happening. Only when the Vision finally showed her Michael floating face down in the lake did the breathlessness leave her chest.

     The placid lake surrounding the magical Isle of Avalon didn’t usually claim victims for its own. But young Michael had tempted fate. He had disobeyed his father’s strict orders not to wander from the hunting party. He had disregarded Fr. Timothy’s whispered warnings before he left home; “Be careful in that summer country, lad. ‘Tis the land of the heathen Faery.”

     Michael had spent many an evening of his mere twelve years listening, enraptured, to his father’s bards singing tales of the mighty sword   Ex Calibur. Late last evening, the hunting party had camped near the lake     legend claimed to be the resting place of that hallowed sword. Stirred  and inspired, Michael lay awake until nearly dawn,   and then he took his chance. With quiet footsteps he crept away from the men sleeping in their tents, determined to prove himself a heroic knight by stepping into the lake’s watery dominion and commanding it to relinquish the fabled treasure. If he claimed the great sword, he might finally become the esteemed young warrior his father had always wanted him to be.

     Through dappled mist, Michael had raced toward the lake with his fist raised high.

     “You will be mine, Ex Calibur!” he declared to the unseen forces that fueled noble deeds in young boys and men.

     Flinging his cloak onto a boulder, he raised his arms to his sides and jumped into the lake. But the mossy rocks beneath his eager feet were slick.

     “Help!” he tried to scream, but water gurgled the word.

      Images of his mother flashed. He pictured her silky golden hair, and the way she always tenderly smiled at him. Just as she’d looked before the wasting illness took her from him.

     Fragments of his life flitted through in a final dreamscape, the harsh sound of his father’s commanding voice reverberating in his memories.

     Immersed in an in-between realm of lake waters and golden light, his soul flickered, then swelled, its flame yearning for freedom. A beautiful ethereal Lady shimmered before him. Silver stars crowned her night-black hair, and she wore midnight blue robes. She smiled, capturing his gaze. He stared into her eyes, unable to look away. Not wanting to. They shone like moonlight and stars, pearly-silver swirls of mystery in motion. Their blue depths reflected kindness, compassion. Her mercy warmed his cold, dying body, and spread to fill the chilled crevices inside him. He felt such comfort from Her presence that all thoughts of family, all thoughts of Ex Calibur, drifted away. 

     She held out her hand. He took it.

     

Novel Writing Festival's Logline of the Day

My upcoming novel, The Hidden Abbey, was honored as the Novel Writing Festival's Logline of the day today.

Glastonbury Abbey ruins

LOGLINE:

The Visionary Fiction Novel, The Hidden Abbey, takes place in both the 16th and the 21st centuries. A headstrong priestess of Avalon, Marissa, falls in love with Michael, who defies his father's military aspirations for him to become a monk at the Glastonbury Abbey. But when King Henry VIII destroys all of England's Abbeys, Marissa and Michael are torn from each other, and are reborn in the 21st century where they have one last chance to fulfill their destiny and their star-crossed love.

Reading Salon was a Success

I am writing my sixth novel, titled the Hidden Abbey. It is, of course, Visionary Fiction, which means stories with spiritual or metaphysical elements that are geared to offering the reader a shift in consciousness.

Last weekend, I joined a group of other writers, including those from my writing critique group "The Destiny Writers," to present a Reading Salon to an audience of nearly fifty interested readers from our Ashland hometown and surrounding areas. We were enthusiastically received and it gave us a wonderful opportunity to share our literary works in progress.

The following was the introduction to my reading excerpt.

The Hidden Abbey is set in Glastonbury, England and its mystical counterpart, the Isle of Avalon. It takes place in two different centuries – the 16^th and the 21^st.

In 16th century England, Marissa, a young priestess of Avalon, falls in love with Michael, the son of a wealthy English landowner. Michael will defy his father’s military aspirations for him to become a monk at the Glastonbury Abbey. As King Henry VIII sets out to destroy all of England’s 800 Abbeys and Monasteries (this is historically true), Marissa and Michael are torn from each other

Interspersed with this 16^th century story is a story set in present day Glastonbury. Sophie, a cynical journalist, and Daniel, a photographer, are sent on assignment to cover the commemoration of the destruction of the Glastonbury Abbey. These two will discover that they are, in fact, destined to fulfill the star-crossed love of the priestess Marissa and the monk Michael.