A Visionary State

So last year sometime I got contacted by someone doing a book about magical places in California and they wanted to talk to me about Greyhaven. That seemed reasonable. Visiting Greyhaven has been accused/described, as entering a visionary state/going to Elfhill/meeting up with the witches often enough. Eventually the photographer arranged to come by. He wanted a picture of an altar, so I decided to create one for Frigga in my kitchen. This involved clearing the end of the table that would be in the picture.

The photographer was late. So I cleaned up the rest of the table. The photographer still hadn’t come, so… well, eventually, when the entire kitchen had been cleaned, including mopping the floor, the photographer came and took a great picture. I figured that was just Frigga’s way of getting me to clean my kitchen.

The author was supposed to interview me, but it never happened, so I figured the photo would end up on the cutting room floor.

But I just found the book in a bookstore. Greyhaven is indexed twice. One reference discusses the foundation of the SCA and Marion Zimmer Bradley and mispells my first name. The other is the photo, which is labeled an altar for Freya.

Now I would have been happy to make an altar to Freya–I have done so many times. But that wasn’t what I did, as the contents of the picture should make clear to anyone who is familiar with the iconography. I hope the ladies both understand and will forgive the confusion. It wasn’t my fault!

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I have gotten some good PR on RAVENS OF AVALON. An interview with SCI FI WIRE has been posted at www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=5&id=43490. And a phone interview will be aired on the Minneapolis show “Write On” September 13th from 11-noon CDT, or you can pick it up at www.kfai.org . And thanks to Lorrie, we are finally getting www.Avalonbooks.net, the Avalon website, up at last. New content is appearing daily, and the photo gallery is up with some really good pictures.

That’s almost enough to console me for the fact that Tor is about to remainder about 7,000 leftover copies of THE GOLDEN HILLS OF WESTRIA. I am buying some, so if anybody doesn’t have one, let me know. I just hope that they recycle the paper.