If it’s been a while since you’ve been by, you’ll notice the web site has a completely new look. Things have finally slowed down enough for me (or maybe I am getting more organized?) to spend some time updating and redecorating the place. I could be in nesting mode or something, I have been renovating and painting the real life house as well.

Since I am an artist and not a programmer, some of the things I still want to do are really giving the old brain pan a work out. I will get them figured out eventually. After all, other people have managed to get such things done on their sites, it’ll just take me while to get that light bulb going off over my head. Now that’s an image.

I am so thrilled with my progress through my to-do list for this week. I have managed to cross off nearly all the items I needed to get done. The last item on the list is the pencil rough for Rabbit’s Song. When I finish it up it will be scanned into the computer and sent to the people who need to approve it. I am half way there, so getting it out by Thursday should be no trouble.

On Friday I head out to Ozark Avalon for a very full 4th of July weekend. The land’s wardens are being handfasted on the 4th. On Saturday I will be giving a craft workshop of Sparkling Spiral Mobiles. On Sunday morning the very popular Family Story time is to occur. I have been rereading and memorizing some of my favorite childhood animal myths and adding the re-tellings to my line up of picture books. The kids love to be read to. I am just amazed at their faces when they hear new stories. I am reminded why I became a picture book author in the first place.

The only thing I didn’t do this week was check my calendar for appointments on Monday. So, all things being equal, I forgot about an appointment yesterday. Der. My daughter was scheduled to have her braces removed. You think she might have remembered as it was her mouth. Oh well, I was able to reschedule for next week. I had better NOT forget again.

Also next week, I have an appointment for an interview. I will be heading into the city to have my entrance interview for Voices for Children to be a child’s advocate in the court system. I’ve spoken to the director several times on the phone, she said I most likely will be accepted into the program. Training starts in August.

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Spring is just around the corner, and after the snow we had this year, I am just about ready for it. In a little over a week Ostara will be upon us. This year will be especially powerful as the Full Moon falls on the following day.

This month’s coloring page; the “F” installment of the Lessor Known Goddesses ABCs will feature Flidais, an Irish woodland Goddess. I will be drawing that out this afternoon, so expect your new coloring page by week’s end. It usually takes me several days to get the page perfected.

Speaking of “perfected” my third picture book “Watchers” is currently in production. I put the finishing touches on the last painting on Saturday evening. It took me slightly longer than I anticipated since I had two very important occasions to celebrate last week. One was my daughter’s birthday. Rabbit has turned 14. It’s so hard to believe that the little girl from my first book is all grown up (almost) but she’ll be off to high school next year. We celebrated with my elder daughter, the younger son and the two grandchildren and a nephew. We ate Mexican.

The other bit of news, which will actually mean something more to you that my daughter’s birthday is the next book. I have joined forces with SJ Tucker (http://www.skinnywhitechick.com) to illustrate her marvelous mythological tale “Rabbit’s Song.” She co-authored the story with her dear friend and High Priestess Trudy of “In the House of Mama Dragon” fame. We expect the book to make it’s appearance in about a year.

Watchers is now available for pre-order on Amazon or through Magical Child Books web site (http://www.handcraftedpagan.com/shop/ ). All books purchased through the Magical Child Books’ shopping cart will be autographed, so make sure you let me know who to make the autographs out to when you order yours. Books will be shipped as soon as they arrive.

In other news, “Aidan’s First Full Moon Circle” will be featured in New Age Retailer in Shelf Life – Early Lessons due out in the Spring 2008 issue. Plus, after a couple of set backs, and scrambling to find a qualified teacher, I am proud to announce that the promised teaching guide (http://handcraftedpagan.com/magicalchild/aidanguide.html) for “Aidan’s First Full Moon Circle” is now available on my web site. The teaching guide covers all US school based curriculum requirements and includes a moon based craft at the end. Perfect for home schoolers and Moon Schools. My undying thanks goes out to Natalie Zaman, a NJ Certified Teacher (English K-12), of Broomstix.com for stepping so gracefully into the gap left by my previous guide writer.

If you haven’t heard of Broomstix before, it’s an e-zine for Pagan kids (http://www.broomstix.com ). It comes out around each Sabbat and includes all kinds of wonderful stories, crafts and activities. I will be the features author in their Litha issue. More on that in future updates.

Those of you in the St. Louis area I will be making several appearances:

March 30 1:30-2:30 pm
Story time for families (Free)
Pathways 11419 Concord Village Avenue, St. Louis, MO
call (314) 842-0047 or visit http://www.pathwaysstl.com for direction

April 5 All Day
Spirit Awakening (April 4-6)
The Days Inn, Alton, IL
visit the web site for details http://www.spiritawaken.org/
I’ll be doing book signings all day and giving a workshop – Sacred Art: Creations for Worship and Healing
Also appearing are Ellen Dugan and Mickie Mueller, among others.

April 8 7-9 pm
Sacred Art: Creations for Worship and Healing ($15 pre registration required)
Pathways 11419 Concord Village Avenue, St. Louis, MO
call (314) 842-0047 or visit http://www.pathwaysstl.com for direction

And finally, I am on both myspace and covenspace. If you are there, send me a friend request!

Bright Blessings,
Lyon

Watchers, Aidan’s First Full Moon Circle and An Ordinary Girl, A Magical Child
Magical Child Books – http://handcraftedpagan.com

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Whatever posessed me to believe that making booksigning appearances was glamorous?

I went to the Northwest Indiana Pagan Pride day last weekend. Frankly, I am still recoverying from the ordeal. Now don’t get me wrong, the event itself was wonderful, the hosts gracious and the public attentive and flattering. It was the 5 hour drive that became a 12 hour nightmare that was the problem.

Portage is a smallish Indiana town outside of Gary, which as it happens is south east of Chicago by about an hour’s drive. According to map quest the trip wuld take me 4 hours and 45 minutes. Completely doable even by my drive-a-phobic standards. Things were going just fine until I hit just outside of Gary. Then EVERYTHING came to a screeching halt. And stayed that way for the rest of the afternoon and on into the evening. We are talking about a stretch of about 5-6 miles of highway. No one was going anywhere. 4:00 dragged into 7:00 and inch by inch I went from exit 1 to exit 2 where all traffic was exiting the 4 lane, rush hour Friday evening, clogged highway. And I had to pee. BAD. Really, really bad. My poor bladder is still sore!

I finally crawled off the highway with all the hundreds of other cars, trucks and trailers and inched my way to the first service station hoping to relieve myself. Not happening. There had been so many other people with the same desparate need the place’s sole toilet had broken. I took in the situation with as much grace as I could muster given the circumatances, but the woman behind me was not so understanding.

She was certain it was all an evi plot against her personally. She berated the woman behind the counter for not having a separate facility for women. Then she berated her for not having a working facility. All the while the shop keep apologized for the unfortunate breaking fo said facilities. Finally the irrate woman came to the realization she was NOT going to get to go to the toilet at this place. In a huf she proclaimed loudy for all to here. “Well, if I can’t use your bathroom, I’m not buying your gas!” I had to laugh.

By the time I got past all that mess and into my hotel room it was half past 9 already. Luckily there was a resturant right in front of the hotel. I had a yummy catfish dinner and had the place to myself because the bar side had live music happening and it seems like the band’s entire compliment of friends and family had turned out to cheer them on.

By the time I had finished my meal I was so loopy that I subtracted the tip from my bill instead of adding it. The poor waitress had to chase me out of the resturant to get me to fix my math error.

So who thinks life of a traveling author is still glamorous?

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This was my first trip to the lovely state of Iowa. The wonderful people from IPAN invited me to give workshops and do a pre-release reading from my upcoming book Aidan’s First Full Moon Circle (available at Magical Child Books for pre-order), at their annual Iowa Lammas Fest held in a cozy little camping area in the Cottonwood Reservoir in Coralville, Iowa. The event went from Friday Aug 3 at noon through Sunday Aug 5 until noon. A ritual was held each day, there were lots of workshops given on Saturday, and musical performances for the evening’s entertainment. and of course the wonderful vendors with an assortment of wares for attendees’ shopping pleasure.

The workshops I gave were called:

• Crafting the Children’s Circle which was scheduled at 9:30 am and lightly attended. My husband tells me if I offered hot coffe along with the workshop in my early morning appearances, I’ll have better attendance. I’ll have to fugire out how to make a coffee pot work without electricity, since I haven’t mastered that trick quite yet.
• Bringing Ritual into your Everyday the second workshop was better attended. People are actually awake in mid afternoon. We had a very spirited discussion on what ritual is and how to move from a mundane place to a more spiritual one in our daily activities.
• Late afternoon brought the reading from Aidan’s First Full Moon Circle. Since the book is not yet done, I read from the art I am preparing for publication. All the kids under Jr. High age attended. From their reaction, I am confident that Aidan will be a big hit with kids when it is released.

I had a great time at Lammas Fest and hope to be invited back sometime in the future. I highly recommend this event for your first foray into the world of Pagan retreats. It is rather intimate, has a secure campground close to civilization while still being remote enough for a private feel. The three day event was perfect for celebrating the first of the Harvest Sabbats and a great way to end the summer events for me.

My next appearance is scheduled for September 25th at the 10th Annual Pagan Pride Day to be held at Woodland Park in Portage, Indiana from 11am to 5 pm.

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WolvenWold was host to Soule Feste 2006, Elk Creek, MO. It was the perfect ending to my first year of being a published, touring book author/illustrator.

The grounds were lovely. Even though the owners have been there a number of years (8 if I remember correctly), they have done a lot of work to reclaim the pasture areas and wooded lots to native plant life. Once you get off the graveled entry drive there is little if any human intervention in evidence. Camping is where ever there is a clearing in the brush. There are two “buildings” of sorts which house toilet facilities. After a summer full of port-a-pots and public restrooms that were often less than clean, these out houses were very refreshing. Let me explain. Each bulding is a rough built cabin-like room. Inside is a seated area under which a bucket resides. This is where you sit and do your business. After you make your deposit, there is a large barrel of sawdust with an old can on the other end of the room, you fill the can with sawdust from the barrel, cover your deposit in the bucket and walah. All done! When a bucket becomes full, a staff member removes it and places an empty one in its place. All the full buckets are emptied into a composting bin somewhere else on the grounds. The whole operation was truly amazing and what’s more it DIDN’T smell.

The festival itself was very laid back, workshops happened in a lazy way and everyone was very calm, except for one very young Paganite who didn’t like being put down for sleep unless Mama was with him.

The only drawback to the entire weekend was the unseasonalble cold weather. I was not prepared to be sleeping in a tent where I could see my breath puff out before me. I, unfortunately, forgot to pack my warm sleeping bag and ended up piling on every article of clothing in my possession at night to stay warm enough to sleep.

I did manage to get a picture from this event, although it was at the tail end of the weekend, so we are all rather disheveled from the proceeding days of camping. Of course, everyone was miles taller than I am. All except little Bela who is almost 2 now. )

I am now in the studio for the remainder of the year, my first appearance of 2007 is planned for early April. WooHoo. Then I get to start with the packing and unpacking all over again.

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WytchHaven Weekend #4: Recording the Path, was a total blast! The organizers Brennan (left) and Niki (right) are in the picture with me below. Don’t they absolutely glow with happiness? This event was held on their very own land, named Pyrth Annwn.

The weekend was put on by the I.S.I.S. Foundation, an Arkansas interfaith organization of which Niki and Bren are ordained ministers. I arrived early, around dinner time on Thursday afternoon. These people KNOW how to have a good time. The most memorable thing about this event was the non-stop laughter. I laughed so much and so hard that my lungs developed charlie horse by Saturday morning. Ouch! The only time during the whole weekend when laughter was not heard was the few hours in the wee morning hours when all were asleep. Then we heard owls, coyotes and cows. There were crows and an assortment of other noisy bird-life as well.

Staff camp, where I was set up in a wonderfully appointed tent, had a permanent altar for the weekend. The entire campground felt so friendly and welcoming, I had the experience as if I had known Niki and Brennan my entire life. When the other guest speaker, Alexandria arrived on Friday afternoon, we instantly hit it off as well. By the end of the evening we were finishing each others’ sentences and we’d never met or even e-mailed before that day!

On Sunday after I gave my second workshop (Blessing the Boundaries) I was honored with creating and leading the innaguaral boundary blessing ceremony for the Pyrth Annwn land and campsite. Niki promises to make it a yearly event.

So much happened in such a short space of time, and all of it so loving and happy, it’s hard to know what to talk about first. Suffice it to say that I am still all smiles from the wekend even after a week’s worth of work under my belt. I absolutely cannot wait to return for Weekend #5: Celebrating our Diversity, Memorial Day Weekend 2007.

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Pinnacle Ministry – MoonSpirit Gathering 2006 was held July 10 – 15. I went out on the 13th. It was a super long drive up to Blue River, Wisconsin, the longest one I will do this year for my book tour. The drive is almost 500 miles. I was wobbly by the time I arrived but I made very good time and got there in just a little over 9 hours. Of course, being me, I had to get lost at least once and turn around, but I am used to that, so I just take it all in stride.

MoonSpirit is a fairly new event and very intimate. It was a pleasure to get to speak with almost all the attendees on a one-to-one basis, something I can’t possibly do at any of the bigger events.

The campgrounds were very nice, and there were the luxury of both flush toilets and built in bath stalls. The campgrounds also had a restaurant and provided a heap of food to anyone with the money to pay for it. Since I brought enough food for three people, I ate and cooked all my own food, except for Thursday night, when I was offered fish and chips from someone who couldn’t finish the food on her platter. Being the fish lover I am that was hard to turn down, especially when I was so tired from driving straight through from Missouri.

Friday, Patricia Telesco arrived. You can see her, me and the festival’s coordinators (Gina – left; Osyrys – right) in the picture above. That afternoon, I gave my workshops, they just sort of blended into each other. It was intimate and everyone did their best to contribute. After the workshops, we all wandered down to the lower area of the campgrounds and set up a labyrinth.

Saturday was very warm. The picture above was taken in the evening and we all were kind of wilted from the extreme heat. Most of the attendees decided to either nap or take the cave tour that afternoon, so Trish’s workshops didn’t really happen, but there was an informal chat shortly before the pot luck feast for dinner. People brought lots of good “cool” entrees because of the heat. There were plenty of salads and fruit things, and there was a hunk of sausage for the meat eaters.

After dinner Trish, Gina, a few others and I gathered together to create the evening’s closing ritual. Gina and Osyrys had decided on a Fairy ritual. Both Trish and I advised against inviting the Fae to stay at the closing of Circle and we came up with a careful wording to thank them and send them on their way without causing offense. A woman was selected to do the opening and closing portions of the ceremony and Gina would be presenting the gifts. By the time we got to the portion of the ritual that the woman was to do, she had become confused as to what she was doing and Gina asked me to step in. Something I had declined to do earlier because I did not want to deal with a stray fairy following me home and being in my car for a 500 mile journey. But all things being equal, I knew what we had discussed and there was no one else who did. So I called in the Fae to join us in getting gifts and listening to stories. The gifts were presented and the stories were shared. All was going according to plan and I was bidding them farewell without extending an invitation to stay after the ritual. Unfortunately, someone decided that my release was not up to par and shouted out “Stay if you will!”. The damage was done. There was nothing further I could do so I just said “Hail and Farewell” and hoped for the best.

The evening’s entertainment included poi, fire spinning and breathing. The fire Elementals were very happy with the flames and even decided to keep a few of them burning after the performers attempted to blow them out. I stayed up way later than my usual hour, retiring after the performances were over and the mead came out to make the rounds.

I guess the water Elementals decided to cause some mischief after I fell asleep. There were minor injuries, hurt feelings and miscommunications late in the night. Of course, Mercury being retrograde didn’t help to soothe things over quickly, either.

I left very early Sunday morning before anyone was awake so I could be home before dark and in time for a bit of unpacking. About two hours down the road, the air Elementals made it known that they were going to be driving to Missouri with me. My car was infested with swarms of no-see-ums. And they were biting me! At every stop I made for either gas or food, I looked for bug spray, there was none to be had. I tried driving with the windows rolled down but the heat was too much, so eventually I rolled them up and turned on the AC. Those darn bugs bit on any exposed skin for the entire ride home. Waah!! Good thing I was wearing long pants and sleeves.

Monday morning, when I went out to my car to drive my daughter to camp, there was not a bug to be seen.

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Pictured above are 6 of the 7 authors present at this year’s Pagan Picnic held June 10 and 11. From left: Ellen Dugan, Mickie Mueller, MR Sellars, W. Lyon Martin (yours truly!), and Joyce and River Higgenbotham.

I do believe that this year’s Picnic was the biggest and best ever. It also has to have been both the hottest and the coldest by far. We were cooked in 95°+ heat on Saturday and after a fierce onslaught of thunderstorms, wind and rain that evening on into the next day, we were looking for sweaters and shawls on Sunday while the temperature struggled to rise above 70°.

Even with the extremes of weather, and some unlucky vendors who sustained damage from the storms, the event was a huge success. After the closing ritual all the musicians got together to jam with SJ Tucker (yes, her again!). We got treated to two renditions of Mama Dragon with backup sax and (darn senior moment) other instrumentation besides SJ’s own guitar. I now have a limited quantity of SJ’s “Tangles” CD on sale at Magickware.

It was a pleasure to finally meet Ellen Dugan, who is a local author. As luck would have it, this is the first time our paths have crossed. Ellen cracked me up as she was leaving Saturday. She stated that she felt as if we had bonded in sweat. It was just that hot. I am hopeful that it won’t be another 6 years before we cross paths again, we had a blast hanging out and signing books. Of course, she had many more books to sign than I do, being a very prolific author.

I was seated between MR on my right and Joyce and River on my left. MR and I had a chance to catch up, something we were both too busy to do at Heartland. Plus I was able to come home with a pile of new books to sell from both authors. They were gracious enough to sign several copies. If you head over to my other site, Magickware, you can pick up a copy or two of your favorites.

On Sunday, I gave my workshop, almost as scheduled. We had to rush around ahead of time to find an un-muddied spot to hold it at. Once that was taken care of, I held my best attended workshop to date. I was a bit taken aback when one of the attendees told me she’d been on the Pagan Path for over 60 years. I was worried I couldn’t possibly have any wisdom to teach this lovely elder. I was quite gratified when my class ended and she thanked me for sharing my knowledge with her.

That marks the big appearance for this month. On the 25th, I will be giving a brief presentation and doing booksignings at Pathways. Other than that I will be “home-bound” until mid July. The plan is to buckle down and finish the picture book dummy for my next children’s book. I also hope to again have enough time to do the Illustration Friday weekly themes. I have been too busy preparing for and recovering from my travels to keep up with them!

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May 25 – 28 was HPF’s Wisdom in the Woods. The entire family was invited and I was billed as an “Honored Guest Speaker.” I am still getting used to that title. It does feel good to get such recognition so early in my publishing career.

We arrived late afternoon on Thursday the 25. The drive out was uneventful and there was no getting last because my husband drove. He has been to Kansas before and was a returning camper to Heartland, even though it’s been a decade since his last visit. I was just content to be a passenger for this event.

When we arrived there was a small mix up as to where we were staying but it all got smoothed out very quickly. Heartland is one of the largest events in the MidWest. There were approximately 800 people in attendance at this years Festival, many of them children. I did notice that there was a different demographic from the early events I attended back in the late 80s. We are “growing up” as a group. There were a lot more age groups represented at this event than at the ones I went to years ago. I can’t help but be excited about the growth and change in the community that I saw.

HPF organizers are AMAZING. We felt like royalty the entire weekend, as they saw to our every need. I cannot thank Patrick enough for all his time and patience with this newbie author and my family. Even with a snafu with scheduling workshops and their locations, everything ran so smoothly, if you hadn’t known about the mix up, you wouldn’t have noticed anything was amiss. I really liked the way the changes and additions were announced. Notices were posted in every Port-a-pot so no one missed seeing them. (Unless of course, they held it in all weekend!)

Both my workshops were well attended. I only had minor stage fright by the time Sunday afternoon rolled around for my second workshop. I might even become good at this! Plus, Amethyst Camp had attendance for the evening meetings every evening. Thanks to Cy the Drum Guy we had an amazing geodesic dome to hold them in. I even got to sit in with Dorothy Morrison, MR Sellars and Kristin Madden when they held their workshop So you want to be a Pagan Author. Unfortunately, the workshop ran longer than I expected so I had to skip out early so I could get some lunch and prepare for my workshop, and I missed seeing Skinny White Chick perform at the musicians tent. I was told that she again gave my book a mention. Thank you, SJ! You rock!

Saturday morning at about 10:30 I was asked to do a live interview on the air for the Pagan Radio Network which was broadcasting during the entire event. I showed up at the sound stage at 11 and was promptly seated at a mike and put on air. Yikes. That did make me a bit shaky, indeed. Later in the weekend a listener sought me out to tell me that she liked what I had to say. I am glad she did because it’s all a blur now!

Aside from the overwhelming heat, the event was marvelous. I wish I had been able to have a bit more free time to attend the other presenters’ workshops and browse through the stalls full of wares. The only down side for me the whole weekend was the passing of my grandfather on Saturday afternoon, which due to poor cell phone reception, I found out about on Sunday morning. There was a rough patch for a while as I was ushered around to find a cell phone with a strong enough signal to call my brother in Florida to find out what happened. After the intial shock of the news, I was able to continue my day until we left after my afternoon workshop.

No pictures this time. I remembered that I had forgotten my camera about halfway through Missouri.

I will definately attend Heartland again. The entire event was wonderful, if you are in the Kansas City area during any Memorial Day weekend, this festival is definately on the the to-do list!

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May 4-7 saw me at Our Haven Nature Sanctuary’s Beltane Gathering in French Lick, IN. The weather was cooperative, although the evenings were cool. I battled with my covers most of the weekend as they slipped off of the air matress more often than not. Brrrr…

I managed to find the campgrounds with only a minor wrong turn that ended up being someone’s driveway instead of the gravel roadway. The grounds for Our Haven are lovely and if I hadn’t been working all weekend, I would have liked to wander off into the woods and gotten myself lost there.

The organizers, Roger and Michelle, (see photo) were very gracious and set me up in their own campsite where I promptly became a source of endless amusement for their two elder children, a three year old and a five year old boy. I felt like a mother duck with the two boys following my every move throughout the event. I also got to hold their newest child, a lovely daughter, for small snatches of time. As with all new babies, she was subject to lots of oooing and aaahhing from many folks who go gaga over little ones.

Late Friday night SJ Tucker, aka Skinny White Chick, and her crew showed up after a hair-raising drive from Denver. SJ, as always, put on a magnificent performance and even told folks to buy my books during her show. Thanks SJ! You’re the best!

After the music there was the nightly fire circle with drumming. Drumming and dancing went on all night, every night until the sun started to rise the next morning.

Sunday before I left, the presenters and the performers were interviewed by the Pagan Radio Network (Interview at Our Haven). It was my first interview done on a mike, and I was a bit nervous that I wouldn’t be “loud” enough. I did fine though, said my bit and hit the road for home. Sometimes trying to coordinate the schedules of four people can be a bit overwhelming, my husband’s traveles and mine coincided this particular weekend and I had to rush back to Missouri to be in time to have my X drop off my daughter for bedtime, since the next day was a school day! On the way home, I did indeed get lost finding the highway and ended up going about 10 minutes out of my way before deciding to turn around because nothing looked familiar. I was exactly 20 minutes later on arrival than I had planned and the X and daughter were sitting in his car waiting for me. Oh well. You do what you can.

Manelqua, the head man at Our Haven, invited me back for a future date, but when is at this point undecided. I had a relaxing time and enjoyed the people I came in contact with.

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