My newest book has been germinating in my head for years. About a decade, really. They say that ideas come to you in a flash, and writer Elizabeth Gilbert talks about how ideas, like living beings, pin themselves to an unsuspecting artist in a bid to get produced, actualized, born.

In 2016, I had just sold my herbal apothecary and “handed over the keys” so to speak after 11 years at the helm. My herbal business had consumed me and had grown to include hundreds of retail and wholesale products, a teaching garden, and an in-person herb school where I held retreats and workshops. It was a substantial business and selling it was a huge change in my life. Immediately after the sale, I sat down for what became a few weeks of intense tax preparation. 

I remember the day I finished my taxes. I stood in my living room and looked around and said aloud, “Now what?”

As they portray in the movies, it was like a bolt of lightning – the idea for the book came zipping into my head nearly fully formed and ready to go. The concepts of Descent and Resurrection, the Beast & the Guide, the ideas of the locations of the Abyss (which I later termed the World Journey), and where people and characters in quest and adventure stories go in search of themselves, real and fictional.

Epiphany and the Creative Urge

Where do ideas come from? It's one of the themes of my book and a question asked by people throughout time. The whole idea for this book came to me like a sweeping, lunging, breathing animal eager to be birthed into the world. And it's an exploration of epiphany and creativity--we all have it, we all experience incredible moments of understanding and ideas and we have no idea how they came to be (or what our responsibility toward them is).

From there, I worked and reworked the book, changing the title and subtitle countless times (and even my final title was changed again by the publisher, which is something I go over with my students in my Book Proposal Bootcamp course, along with how to write a compelling book proposal whether you're pitching to an agent, an editor, or self-publishing). I was active on the book for months on end, and then it resided, collecting dust, somewhere on my laptop for months and months. It was a cyclical process of on-again-off-again that fed my soul and nourished my spirit. Having already published 7 books, I learned even more about writing and research and how to convey ideas, and ultimately how to craft a special work that explored something innate to all of us.

It was fascinating for me to research the global and multi-cultural stories for this book. In Once Upon A Place, the stories range from ancient myths to fairy tales written in the Victorian era to box office productions screened just last year. The stories are all colorful and bewitching and fun and fantastic, and they serve a purpose, namely to be metaphors to help us understand, through imagery, the vital ingredients of personal growth, and how we can take symbols from literature and identify the challenges (and solutions) in our real lives.

Once Upon A Place: Forests, Caverns and Other Place of Transformation in Myths, Fairy Tales and Film is available for pre-order now! Purchase from your favorite bookstores or order from Amazon, Llewellyn, Barnes and Noble, and anywhere you get your favorite books. Go here for more info about Once Upon A Place.