Cross-Media Mythology for a Renaissance of Wonder
We live in a world bereft of wonder. And perhaps more than ever, we’re hungry for the sacred stories that, like Ariadne‘s thread, show us the way through life’s dark labyrinths. As a writer, I’m fascinated with the ways artists can use multiple media channels to create a new mythology relevant in the modern age.We need a renaissance of wonder. We need to renew, in our hearts and in our souls, the deathless dream, the eternal poetry, the perennial sense that life is miracle and magic.” — E. Merrill Root
I believe in my heart that there is something behind the stories that shines through them. Something deeper. Deeper truth. That's why stories are sacred. The language of God is parable and story.
Creating New Myths for the Modern Age
I’m committed to creating cross-media stories that make myth alive and relevant in the information age. Raven Wakes the World (available now!) is about an artist who is mythologizing her own life to heal a wounded heart. Christmas Past: A Ghostly Winter Tale is also about stories and healing. The Star in the East: A Winter Tale of Ancient Mystery is a holiday action/adventure thriller with mythic roots. My contemporary fantasy novel Blackthorne Faire (coming in September) is a statement of the problem. The Widening Gyre (coming in 2025) is a new myth for today’s world.I’ll have some news about these and other projects to announce soon. Let me know if you’d like to be notified or follow me on the Twitter! Please drop me a line to let me know what you think.
By the way, signed copied of all of my published books are available from Eagle Eye Books here in the Atlanta area. They are happy to ship and it's usually free.
Myth must be kept alive. The people who can keep it alive are artists of one kind or another. The function of the artist is to mythologize the environment and the world." — Joseph Campbell
Maybe together we can all answer novelist Ian McDonald's challenge:
“I have this dread that afflicts me… it is that, somehow, we have lost the power to generate new mythologies for a technological age. We are withdrawing into another age’s mythotypes, an age when the issues were so much simpler, clearly defined, and could be solved with one stroke of a sword called something like Durththane. We have created a comfortable, sanitized, pseudo feudal world of trolls and orcs and mages and swords and sorcery, big-breasted women in scanty armour and dungeonmasters; a world where evil is a host of angry goblins threatening to take over Hobbitland and not starvation in the Horn of Africa, child slavery in Filipino sweatshops, Columbian drug squirarchs, unbridled free market forces, secret police, the destruction of the ozone layer, child pornography, snuff videos, the death of the whales, and the desecration of the rain forests. Where is the mythic archetype who will save us from ecological catastrophe, or credit card debt? Where are the Sagas and Eddas of the Great Cities? Where are our Cuchulains and Rolands and Arthurs? Why do we turn back to these simplistic heroes of simplistic days, when black was black and white biological washing-powder white? Where are the Translators who can shape our dreams and dreads, our hopes and fears, into the heroes and villains of the Oil Age?”
