✨Happy Birthday, Radiant ✨

The sort of renegade who is willing to hold the door open for the next system also must be brave enough to dissatisfy the hungry ghost of linear strategy.*

It’s not a memoir, but it’s the most personal book I’ve written. 

I wanted to write about women, power, business, art, money and consciousness.

I wanted to transmit through the eyes of a synesthete, and show what it’s like to have involuntary sensory perceptions. (I don’t see coloured auras around animals like Lillian, but I do have braided cognitive pathways. My auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory and gustatory senses interact in “abnormal” ways.)

I wanted to show the social dilemma we’re in, and to describe it with nuance and empathy. I did not promise to solve the problem: I just wanted to see if I could describe it correctly. With love. And a critical eye. And a sense of humour!

There is a lot to satirize about the wellness industry, goddess culture and high-frequency guru coaches, but that wasn’t the reason for my book. 

I’m fascinated by creative writing and neurology, and all the ways our nervous system creates our experience of reality.

What is metaphor, if not a written form of synesthesia? 

Writing Radiant Shimmering Light showed me how to pay attention, to look for complex and layered truths, and to occupy the space between right and wrong. It also showed me how to have WAY more fun writing a book!

I’m grateful to my readers for getting my sense of humour, and telling me how they saw themselves mirrored in the world of these characters. 

I’m grateful to my influences, the leaders in business, art, poetry and consciousness who inspired my characters, including Margaret Atwood, Martha Beck, Dolly Parton, Danielle Laporte, Kelly Diels, Marie Forleo, Brené Brown, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Byron Katie. 

If you’re reading this and you’re also trying to bring clarity and insight to the problem we’re in: thank you for doing your work, making your art, writing about it, and bringing your shimmering light to the atmosphere. 

As you push the limits of what the current systems can tolerate, you radiate.

Radiant Shimmering Light is published in Canada, the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Poland (in Polish). You can get it at your local independent bookstore, or buy it here.

And you can download the book club discussion guide here!

*I wish I knew the origin of this line (but what is authorship, anyway?)

Photo credit (top): Jess Bell Photography

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