Atlantis mythology began to be a reality for me with these words . . .
“Anything can happen in the next half hour.”
Although I never saw the ocean until I was nine, I got hooked on undersea adventures watching cartoons as a preschooler. Actually, not just any random cartoons, either. But specifically Gerry Anderson’s Stingray shaped the whole trajectory of my life. As the first British TV show to be produced in color, “Stingray” was revolutionary in more ways than one. Its puppet characters came to life under what the show’s filmmakers called supermarionation. As a child, I sat spellbound by the lifelike, dreamy, and yet oh-so-familiar characters. I had no way of knowing anything about Atlantis mythology then. Although looking back, I could say this cartoon stirred something quite deep and profound within me. Something that for many years I neither knew how to address or express. On some level, I knew a story waited to be told. But like an old vine Zinfandel or a rich broth, some of life’s finer things can take time.
And yet, after high school, I realized I just didn’t have the courage to try for a career as an author. Basically, I felt like I needed to find a more “practical” way to make a living. So when I attended West Virginia University, I turned my love of literature into a journalism and advertising degree. Post-college I moved to New York and worked as an advertising copywriter before back pain brought me to an acupuncturist. I found so much relief that I decided acupuncture would make a wonderful second career – something I didn’t pursue until 2004. During those years, the Atlantis mythology remained deep and dormant in my bones. Not dead, but sleeping deeply. And it would sleep until rudely awakened when tragedy struck.
Acupuncture and unexpected loss . . .
Upon receiving my masters in Oriental Medicine in 2008 from Daoist Traditions in Asheville, NC, I worked in private practice with my beloved life partner and Reiki Master Greg Hagin in Black Mountain. We moved to Athens, GA in 2011, living on a farm and opening a joint holistic healing practice downtown.
When Greg passed away unexpectedly in 2013, I felt I needed to re-evaluate everything . . . to reclaim “my life” as opposed to what had been “our life” together. I also felt Greg’s death had been a wake-up call to ensure I made life’s every moment count. Just the week before his death, Greg and I worked together to create a list of things we wished to accomplish in 2013. “Completing a first novel” was at the top of my priorities.
And so on August 5, 2013 – two days after Greg’s memorial service – I sat down at the computer and decided to write. Really write. No matter how bad the words sounded or how much I didn’t feel like it, I committed to write without judgment, without editing and without missing a day until a first draft was completed.
Writing in secret . . .
I told no one what I was doing. I abstained from movies and television and the radio to eliminate outside influences and be able to write as purely as possible from a meditative place. Every day, after treating my acupuncture patients and finishing farm chores, I would meditate and then sit with pen and paper, allowing an answer to keep unfolding to the questions I’d been asking since Greg’s death: What does a balanced and healthy but impossible love look like? What can it endure? And will it endure? I couldn’t help but be drawn to the first love story I’d ever known – the one between Stingray’s mute Marina and Captain Troy – for inspiration. He’d been so devoted to her. It had all been so beautiful. And so an Atlantis mythology born of fond and comforting memories of a simpler time welled up. They enveloped my story like a reassuring hug. Pages and time passed.
Then on March 7, 2014, I completed the first draft of the final chapter in Atlantis Writhing, my written response to those questions I had been asking for so long. Many revisions followed, leading to the book now published by Absolute Love Publishing.
And now?
More recently, the sequel Atlantis Splitting was published in December 2023. I’m now working on Book 3 from western New York, immersed in an outdoor enthusiast’s wonderland. And it’s my deepest wish for you to feel as hopeful as I do. So when you have a moment, please check out these feel-good thoughts rooted in ancient wisdom here. Wishing you a beautiful and blessed day!
