Thursday 8 May 2014

Laura K Cowan Guest post


Today's guest on the blog is Laura K Cowan

Laura's new book - Music of the Sacred Lakes is a new arrival on my e-shelf. I am very much looking forward to reading more of Laura's work and recommend that you check this book out. I'll be posting a review of it in the next couple of weeks.

Over to Laura -



Mermaids and God:

Making The Invisible Visible Through Imaginative Fiction

By Laura K. Cowan

 

I once was researching a novel and discovered that many modern physicists believe that the entire basis of matter is vibrating energy at different frequencies, as though different kinds of matter are notes on a scale. Take off one electron, you change the energy level and you also change what kind of molecule you’re looking at. I know, my head exploded too. Because beyond being completely awesome, this idea (from string theory) also has great implications for fiction and for the layers of reality itself. Here’s how I came to understand the possibilities, not only of imaginative fiction, but of the life it reflects.

 

The idea above got me thinking. We now know that even thoughts in our minds have an energy signature, a certain frequency, mappable in the brain. So if you imagined a mermaid, the energy signature of a mythic creature would actually exist in your mind, because your thoughts are real things with a real energy to them. So in that way, don’t mermaids exist, if only in the plane of existence of the imagination? Isn’t anything possible on some level, even if it’s the level of the mind? I began to write stories about the lives of imagined beings, some of whom were aware they were dreamed into existence. Uh oh. Doesn’t that resonate with the mythic truths coded into the Bible about the origins of life? God spoke and the universe came into existence? Whether we believe in God or not, we all know on some level that however this crazy mixed up life began, in mythic terms we were all dreamed up by someone, or something, or dreamed ourselves into existence somehow. Weird, right? But however we define it, it’s true. We were created somehow, and we are ourselves creators. Mermaids living inside our own imaginations speaks to the origin of life.

 

Great stories can come from any genre, but the very best ones bring something more than an entertaining read. We all know that the very best stories leave us humming. Something resonated with us, with the truths of our lives. Whether they inspire or disturb us, the best stories bring us truth. In fantasy fiction, the genre I call home, we do this by making the invisible things in life—the imagination, the spiritual truths of life, the possibilities of the world—come alive in a literal way. We make the invisible visible for the reader so they can experience the world in a new and wonderful way. How can fiction get any more wonderful than that imaginative creative work, in any genre? Dreaming up new life?

 


 

Laura K. Cowan writes imaginative stories that explore the connections between the spiritual and natural worlds. Her work has been compared to that of acclaimed fantasy and sci-fi authors Ursula K. Le Guin and Ray Bradbury, but her stark and lovely stories retain a distinctly spiritual flavor. Laura’s debut novel The Little Seer was a top 5 Kindle Bestseller for free titles in Christian Suspense and Occult/Supernatural, and was hailed by reviewers and readers as “riveting,” “moving and lyrical.” Her second novel, a redemptive ghost story titled Music of Sacred Lakes, and her first short story collection, The Thin Places: Supernatural Tales of the Unseen, received rave reviews, and Music of Sacred Lakes also topped the Kindle free bestseller lists during its launch, including #42 on all of Kindle, and #2 in Genre Fiction overall, remaining on the top 100 Kindle bestseller lists for Metaphysical Fiction and Metaphysical Fantasy after launch. Laura’s short stories also appear in a number of anthologies, including the charity anthology Shades of Fear (#5 on the Kindle free bestseller lists for anthologies during its promotion), and the upcoming historical horror anthology Sins of the Past, the rather ridiculous soon-to-come PANTS! anthology, and the completely absurd upcoming Faery Tale Therapy.

 
Many thanks to Laura for dropping by and sharing her thoughts!
 

 

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