California Trip--Pantheacon report

Pantheacon 2011 Report
[Note: This is the report I did up for my pal Rebecca at The Magical Buffet blog. She is kindly letting me post it here too, so I don't have to write it up twice!]

I don’t much like crowds. Or traveling. So why do I haul my witchy butt across the entire expanse of the country to go to Pantheacon? Because it’s worth it.

Pantheacon is the largest gathering of Pagans/Witches/Wiccans and assorted Heathens in the country, with well over 2,000 people attending over the course of four days in February. (I heard a rumor that they hit 3,000 this year for the first time, but I don’t know whether or not that’s true.) It is held at the beautiful Doubletree Hotel in San Jose, California, where they give you a warm chocolate chip cookie when you check in. Yum.

This was my third Pantheacon. I first went in 2008, after my Circle, Coven & Grove came out. I had such a blast, I went back last year, and then again this year. My traveling companion from my first visit, my step-daughter Jenn, loved it so much, she actually moved to San Jose after last year’s con, so one of my perks was getting to spend some time with her. I also got to meet up with my fiction-writing partner, Lisa DiDio, who lives in Northern CA and took the train down to stay with me. We had a blast together.

On the official side of my visit to Pantheacon, I got to go to two great workshops (they literally offer HUNDREDS over the course of the 4 days, including classes given by such Pagan notables as Starhawk, and everyday folks who are willing to share their wisdom with others); a fabulous chanting workshop with the amazing Margot Adler, and a lovely, healing Pagan Death Passages ritual with the also-amazing Selena Fox (I had lost my beloved grandmother less than a week before PCon, so the timing was perfect).

Both these ladies are wise and warm and gracious, and I was beyond pleased to be able to spend a little time in their company.


I also took part in two Llewellyn events; a “Meet the Authors” and 110 Year Anniversary celebration (with cake) on Saturday night, and a Publishing Panel on Sunday morning. [I met a great new Llewellyn author, Melanie Maquis, at the Meet the authors event…you are going to want her new book, Bag of Tricks, when it comes out in June. I’m reading an advance copy right now, so I can write a blurb for it, and it is fabulous!]




I also led a workshop of my own, called “Spiritual Spring Cleaning.” There were about 80 people attending, and we had a great time. Raised a lot of good spring cleaning energy, too!

Of course, no trip to Pantheacon would be complete without spending time with my wonderful Llewellyn editor, Elysia Gallo. This year, Lisa and I decided to look for a really fun place to go out to dinner that first night, and we ended up at a Moroccan restaurant called, fittingly enough, Moracco’s. We dragged Elysia out with us, along with my step-daughter Jenn and her friend Madeleine. And, oh, man—the food! If you are even in San Jose, you have to track this place down. It was some of the best food any of us had ever had. We got a variety of things and put them in the middle of the table to share, which made it both cheaper and a lot more fun.



The deserts alone made it worth the trip. And the company was as good as it gets. We had a blast.



That’s Jenn, Lisa, me, and Elysia at Moracco’s.

All in all, it was another great Pantheacon. I got to see old friends, make some new ones, visit with authors I admired, meet a few of my fans in person (some of whom I’d already “met” on Facebook or Twitter), eat some great food, and even learn a thing or two. It was worth pushing myself outside of my comfort zone to do it, and I recommend it highly to anyone with the slightest interest in Paganism. Bring an open mind, as much energy as you can muster, and a few dollars to spend on goodies in the Vendors room. (Pagan chocolates…that’s all I’m saying.) And if I’m there next year, be sure to come on over and say hi!

Library Journal Review

Check out this fabulous review of my newest book, The Goddess is in the Details: Wisdom for the Everyday Witch. I'm told that the Library Journal rarely reviews Llewellyn books, and when it does, the reviews are rarely favorable. That makes this glowing review even more precious!

Blake, Deborah. The Goddess Is in the Details: Wisdom for the Everyday Witch. Llewellyn. May 2009. c.240p. bibliog. ISBN 978-0-7387-1486-8. pap. $16.95. PARAPSYCH
Blake (Circle, Coven & Grove: A Year of Magickal Practice) dons the mantle of the high priestess with grace, wisdom, and a dose of humility as she doles out advice on incorporating magic and pagan philosophy into everyday life. Brief but not superficial, the book glides smoothly from private concerns such as internalizing Wiccan beliefs or mindful eating to more external and social issues like creating sacred space, home keeping, and working with a coven. Along the way, Blake manages to cover most of daily life, from raising children in the craft to dealing with horrified unbelievers in a cheerful and inclusive tone. Lovely spells, ideas for rituals (with some unique adaptations to “mundane” holidays), and thoughtful assignments at the end of chapters round out the offerings. Blake’s view is highly personal, but she frequently references other Wiccan writers, such as Scott Cunningham, and concludes with a meaty bibliography. High praise and recommendations; this title is for all public libraries with a dedicated pagan or Wiccan collection.—Janet Tapper, Western States Chiropractic Coll. Lib., Portland, OR

Whoo hoo! If you know any librarians, please bring this to their attention.Thanks,Deborah

Great news and this week's writing goals

This week was quite productive, and I managed to do all but one of the goals on my list. But I am TIRED and am devising a slightly more manageable list for next week.

THE GOOD NEWS IS: I got the call from my aquisitions editor at Llewellyn, and they will be contracting for my 4th book, The Everyday Witch A to Z Spellbook. Yahoo! That puts me in line to achieve my goal with the NF, which was 5 books in 5 years. (I decided that was what it would take to get me "known.") So big ol' happy dance here! Of course, now I have to finish writing it:-)

Did: updated my blog, entered two contests (small free ones), got info to my webmaster pal so we can update my website, wrote all of the "C" and some of the "D" entries for Everyday Witch A to Z Spellbook, reread and polished Witch Ever Way pages 100-190, sent out 3 queries for it (got 2 rejections almost immediately--sigh) and finished reading and scoring my entries for the Golden Heart and Great Expectations contests and sent them in.

Didn't do: I only managed to get through part of "D" for the A-Z, when I'd been aiming at finishing thru "F." Still, not a bad week, all in all.

Updated Writing Goals

This Week (Jan 19-25):
1. Update blog
2. Enter “Chase the Dream” contest again
3. Write up mini-proposal for Itty Bitty Kitty Spellbook
4. Write D-F on Everyday Witch A to Z Spellbook
5. Reread and polish WEWYC page 193-263 (end)
6. Send out 3 Queries for Witch Ever Way You Can
7. Send out Full of WEWYC to Lois Winston
8. Review and revise 1st 35 pages of King Me!

I hope everyone is doing well keeping up with their goals and new year's resolutions. I am working on a few personal goals too, but it is a little to early to share them. I'll let you know if things go well:-)

Interview with C. S. MacCath

Here is my interview with the wonderful C. S. MacCath, my co-writer in The Pagan Fiction Anthology:


You were a finalist in the Pagan Fiction Award contest. How did you come to write a pagan-based short story, and is much of you other work pagan as well?
I've been writing short stories with Pagan elements throughout my writing career. For me, Pagan fiction isn't so much a genre like speculative fiction, horror or mystery as it is an application of our particular world-view to storytelling. Having said that, all of the fiction I've written has been Pagan-themed, either explicitly, as in the case of "From Our Minds to Yours," or implicitly, as in the case of "The Longest Road in the Universe," which is forthcoming in Murky Depths next March.
I think it's healthy for the literary community to be exposed to Pagan themes in what it publishes and reads. They allow a safe place of entry into Paganism that can be accessed from the private relationship between the reader and the text. From there, tolerance might follow. So though I try not to be didactic about the inclusion of my faith in my work, it's usually always on my mind when I write, and I hope it reads well for Pagans and non-Pagans alike.
How long have you been writing, and where can people find your work other than the Anthology?
I've been writing since I could pick up a pen, but I've only been publishing my work with regularity in paying markets since 2004. My bibliography can be found at: www.csmaccath.com/view/csmbiblio and from there, folks can look for what they want to read in the appropriate places. A recently published story that might be of interest to Pagan readers is "Akhila, Divided," which can be found in Clockwork Phoenix: Tales of Beauty and Strangeness, edited by Mike Allen. It's a science fantasy war story set in the far future at a monastery where various denominations of Paganism are practiced in combination with other faiths.
Your short story, "From Our Minds to Yours," is a disturbing look at a possible near-future scenario. How did you get the idea, and do you really think it could happen?
My husband brought the idea home to me one afternoon while he was in college a few years ago. He had been taking a course called "Computers, Ethics and Society" and was reading a book entitled Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century, by Simson Garfinkel. I believe he asked me, "What do you think would happen if people could become physically addicted to products?" After the long philosophical conversation that followed, I read the book as well, and then I did some research into current applications of nanotechnology. "From Our Minds to Yours" was the natural outgrowth of those things.
I wrote the story with the feasibility of the plot in mind. Right now, nanotechnology is used in everything from water reclamation to clothing manufacture. Given the current interpretation of Moore's Law, that the size and/or speed and/or functionality of a piece of technology doubles every eighteen months, and given a modest effort on the part of corporate lobbyists to legalize the relationship between nanotechnology and advertising, yeah, I think it's an absolutely realistic scenario in the next 25-50 years.
What would readers be surprised to learn about you?
I was born and raised a Jehovah's Witness.
You were able to go to Pantheacon for the presentation of the awards. What was your favorite aspect of the convention? [For readers who don't know, Panthecon is a huge pagan gathering held every February is San Jose, CA]
I very much enjoyed the oracular seidh hosted by Diana Paxson on Saturday night. I've been practicing various forms of divination for twenty-three years but have never encountered that particular configuration of group journey work and team divination before. I told Ms. Paxson afterward that it was interesting to see the weave between Michael Harner-esque shamanic practice and Northern European lore. And the seidh-workers themselves were remarkable, both in their stamina and in their accuracy.
Aside from your own, what was your favorite story in the Anthology and why?
I loved April's "A Valkyrie Among Jews," which placed first in the contest. I thought she juxtaposed Judaism with Paganism effectively, addressed some serious questions about the relationships between Pagans and non-Pagans and spoke to the transition between life and death both mythically and mundanely. It was a kick-ass story that was relevant to modern people of all faiths, and I hope it finds its way into the hands of folks who might need that safe place of entry into Paganism I mentioned before.
What are you working on these days and where can people contact you if they have more questions?
I'm currently working on a novel entitled Twilight of the World Sea People. It's the first novel in a trilogy entitled World Sea Legacy, which is itself part of a three trilogy/nine-novel space opera entitled Petals of the Twenty Thousand Blossom. I've pretty much ceased production at present on any short stories for the sake of the novels, but I'm hoping to write a few by the end of next year for a collection I'm piecing together entitled Spirit Boat. We'll see how that goes, though. Folks can contact me by using the contact form at www.csmaccath.com/contact, which drops messages into my primary e-mail account.

An Interview with Author Alex Bledsoe

I was lucky enough to be able to interview my fellow-author, Alex Bledsoe, who also has a story in The Pagan Anthology of Short Fiction. Here it is. I hope you enjoy it. An interview with C. S. MacCath will follow next week!

DB: How long have you been writing short stories and is this your first pagan story?
AB: I've been seriously writing since 1996; and my first published story, "The Chill in the Air Wakes the Ghosts Off the Ground," was actually a pagan-themed story, although that wasn't a primary consideration at the time. In the nineties I had several pagan stories published in PanGaia magazine, and have also been published in The Wheel, Five Feathers (South Africa) and Dragonswood (UK).

DB: What draws you to write about pagans and how did you get the idea for the story in the anthology?
AB: I found the pagan view of the world to be amenable to my own, and it allowed me to deal with issues and topics that fascinate me in a way that might surprise the reader. Respect for nature, balance between men and women, and a direct relationship with a higher power free of institutionalized dogma are all things I believed in *before* I knew about paganism, and within these ideas are plenty of places for conflict with traditional society's values. That's usually where my stories come from.
When I heard about the anthology I knew I wanted to submit something, and I asked myself, "What's the *least* likely genre to have a pagan-themed story?" I decided the answer was a Western, so I challenged myself to write one that was both a traditional "oater" with a sheriff, a gunslinger and a showdown on main street, and that also brought in pagan ideas to generate the conflict.

DB: Your story takes place in the Old West, but in a very nontraditional way. You tend to write work that combines genres in an unconventional way, like your novel The Sword-Edged Blonde, which mixes sword and sorcery fantasy with the noir detective novel (quite successfully, I might add). How do you pull off such unusual pairings and what draws you to this approach?
AB: Usually it's a variant of the question I mentioned above: What's the least likely way to tell a particular story? The Sword-Edged Blonde started out as a straight epic fantasy, but it was too traditional, too average if you will, to come alive that way. So I thought, what's the most unusual way to tell this story, and decided to write it as a forties pulp detective novel, keeping the high fantasy setting. (The sequel, Burn Me Deadly, continues that approach). When I wrote my vampire novel Blood Groove, I had a story that technically could've worked in a contemporary setting, but had no real spark to it. So I backed it up to 1975, which put it before Anne Rice revolutionized the public idea of the vampire and allowed me to work with the vampire archetypes that spoke to me (Stoker, Hammer, etc.) free of any post-Rice irony.

DB: What can people expect from you next?
AB: Blood Groove will be released by Tor in the spring of 2009. The following fall, Burn Me Deadly (also from Tor) hits shelves. And a couple of other projects are making the rounds.