Waking Darkness

A woman finds out she's a siren and has to go to a magical school to learn how to manage her powers.

2022 Foreword INDIES Award Winner | Silver: Body, Mind Spirit 2023 IPPY Award Winner | Bronze: New Age/Mind, Body, Spirit Hidden in the darkness is an ancient secret suppressed by every aspect of our light-drunk modern world—there is a Great Mother from the bottom of time who has always guided us through perils and calamities. Now is the hour of Her return. “An exigent, affecting summons to rediscover the night.”—Kirkus Reviews Is darkness synonymous with ignorance and evil? Or is it the original matrix from which all life emerges, and the Mother to whom it returns? Higher and higher levels of artificial illumination have suppressed our contact with the numinous since the Industrial Revolution, with dire consequences for society, our planetary ecology, and our souls. This mystical testament weaves together paleobiology, memoir, history, science, and spiritual archaeology to lead readers back into the lost mysteries of the dark. Not since The Teachings of Don Juan or Ishmael has a book diagnosed with such urgency and cultural coherence the problems at the heart of modern life. In Waking Up to the Dark, Clark Strand offers penetrating insight into the spiritual enrichment that can be found when we pull the plug on our billion-watt culture. He argues that the insomnia so many of us experience as “the Hour of the Wolf” is really “the Hour of God”—a wellspring of rest and renewal, and an ancient reservoir of ancestral wisdom and inspiration. And in a powerful yet surprising turn, he shares with us an urgent message for the world, received through a mysterious young woman he calls Our Lady of Climate Change (aka THE VIRGIN MARY), about the challenges we all know are coming.

Wise recollects her near fatal suicide attempt following the death of her young husband from Lou Gehrig's Disease. This account of the entire process navigated through therapy is told from the rare perspective of the patient, yet is written for people who sit on both sides of the couch.

At the edge of the galaxy, a research station has gone dark… Volka, 6T9, and Carl Sagan are called to help in the rescue mission … A mission that triggers telepathic nightmares in their starship so terrifying battle hardened Galactic Marines break down and weep. They’re about to discover some nightmares are real. The Darkness is Rising. Keywords: science fiction, sci-fi, space opera, first contact, alien invasion, artificial intelligence, AI, space colonization, galactic republic, space marines, speculative fiction, romance, slow burn, fade to black, humor, aliens, robots, fun, First Contact, Space Fleet, Metaphysical & Visionary, Adventure, Mutants, Mystery, Invasion, Contact,, Fleet, Extraterrestrial, Action, genetic engineering, mutants, cyborgs

SIX TWISTED TALES OF HORROR AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TORMENT Layers of Darkness is an anthology that celebrates the many subgenres of horror. Existential, Folk, Fairy Tale, Psychological, Body, Cosmic, Western, Supernatural, and LGBTQ+ are all explored in this emotionally engaging and unnervingly creepy collection of chillers. THE GROVE A woman and her child visit their local cemetery, only to become lost within the spiral of a mysterious grove that has seemingly materialised from another dimension. ARIEL Beth and Dante Fiennes have suffered a wound so deep it can only continue to fester. What appears to be the couple's salvation could instead be a sinister warning. She's home, but she's not the same. OLD CRONE As Prince Darius clings to life in the midst of serious illness, the king and queen take desperate measures by seeking out a hermit believed to be a witch in order to save their only son and heir. ONE FOR THE NIGHT Two strangers get more than they bargained for when they stop over in a deadbeat Texas town on the edge of the Mexican border. Every bad deed deserves another. DREAM TOWN Retracing his deceased mother's steps, a young boy embarks on a journey of discovery with his grandmother, peeling back the layers of a seaside resort deeply mired in the most unsettling form of unreality. RIPE During a long-distance trip across state to visit his sister, a troubled young socialite gets lost on an isolated road and is forced to choose between the comfort of self-preservation and saving an innocent soul from the clutches of a child-thirsty cult.

A modern gospel that is an investigation of the relationship between darkness and the soul. The darkness Clark Strand is talking about here is literal: the darkness of the nighttime, of a world before electricity, when there was a rhythm to life that followed the sun's rising and setting. Strand here offers penetrating insight into the spiritual enrichment that can be found when we pull the plug on our billion-watt culture. He argues that the insomnia so many of us experience as "the Hour of the Wolf" is really "the Hour of God"--a wellspring of rest and renewal, and an ancient reservoir of ancestral wisdom and inspiration.