Today's the Day! Pagan Portals - Scrying is Launched!

I'll admit it, I always get nervous before my books are launched. You'd think I'd be used to it by now as this is my fifth title published by Moon Books and I've written roleplaying game books for Call of Cthulhu published by Chaosium before that. But it doesn't get any easier.

Books take me a long time to write. I managed to complete my manuscript for Pagan Portals - Scrying in six months, but that was during lockdown when I wasn't getting out much. Usually it takes me the best part of a year. I love writing. I enjoy sitting at my computer and composing my thoughts in text on a page. I guess I wouldn't have written daily blog posts for well over a decade if I didn't like doing that. 

But blog posts are different to books in that you write them and publish them online almost immediately. There isn't the long wait while someone edits your words, then the manuscript goes through the production process to be turned into a real book, then there's another wait of many months while it waits its time before the allotted day of official publication. 

It's as that day draws closer that I start to feel nerves. Will the book that I spent so much time writing, and then waiting to see on shop shelves, be well received? Will people want to buy it?  Is it good enough? I'll admit those are the thoughts that keep me awake fretting over.

My first Pagan Portals title - Candle Magic - is a best seller. Poppets and Magical Dolls sells steadily each month. Guided Visualisations has 100% 5-stars on Amazon and gets rave reviews. The community book I edited, Every Day Magic - A Pagan Book of Days, still sells a few copies each month and I'm extremely proud of it. 

Will Scrying meet any of those successes? I hope so. Although it only took me six months to write, it includes a lifetime of my own experience in using crystal balls, mirrors, water, fire and other things for divination. I've been teaching workshops on it for many years and believe my book offers really practical methods of learning to scry or to get better at doing it.

This is the description of my book from the back cover:

Scrying is the practice of looking into crystal balls, mirrors, water, fire, clouds and many other things to see visions, find messages and gain knowledge. It can be done for personal guidance, for inspiration, to find the answers to questions, to look at distant places or other realms, or for fortune-telling and prophecy. It is a form of divination that taps into our psychic senses and powers of intuition. Pagan Portals - Scrying shows how anyone can learn to develop the necessary skills to scry in a variety of different ways.

If you want to learn more then this afternoon, at 4.30pm on Friday 25 February, I'm doing a Facebook Live launch event where I'll be answering questions. Here's the link: https://www.facebook.com/events/418230773383634

Tomorrow, Saturday 26 February, I' ll be signing copies of my books at Treadwells, 33 Store St, London WC1E 7BS at 3.30pm. You can join me just to say hello or to ask questions if you want to. The event is free, just turn up. Find out more about Treadwell's on the bookshop's website: https://www.treadwells-london.com/

You can buy my books at Treadwell's and at other esoteric bookshops as well as order it through Amazon either as paperback or Kindle version, or find it via my author page at publisher Moon Books.