A Little Joy For October

• October Tarotscopes Podcast
• Bridge Spread
• Ace of Wands Party Cheese Dip
• NaNoWriMo Is Coming
• Arwen Recommends
• Book Your Consultation

I love creating spreads. Here is one that I shared in the Litha Blog Hop. If you want to see the full post which details how I came up with this spread, clickity clickity clickity! (back to the top)

Arwen’s Bridge Spread

Pick something you loathe. Let’s say “I need to lose weight.” Replace it with a word or a phrase you like. Let’s say Rethinking How I Eat.” Now lay three cards out.

1. The middle card is the one you turn over last.
2. Turn over the “bad” phrase card. Journal about why this card hits you in all the bad spots around this idea. Let yourself go. Don’t edit. Try to write for at least ten minutes.
3. Turn over the “good” phrase card. As above, journal why this emphasizes the good. Let yourself go. Don’t edit. Try to write for at least ten minutes. (Is it me or is there an echo in here?)
4. Now turn over the middle card. This is the bridge card. It shows you how you can move from the “ick ew I hate that” space to the “empowered Goddess of everything” space. Now journal. This time write down specific steps, action points, mantras. Let yourself go. Don’t edit. Try to write for at least ten minutes. (Yeah, there’s definitely an echo in here.)

I’d love to hear your results. (back to the top)

---

I love to cook. Here is a great dip for your holiday party season. If you want to learn more about how this dip came about and who the culprit was who helped me, clickity clickity clickity!

 

Ace of Wands Party On Cheese Dip

• 1 lb Jimmy Dean sausage, mild
• 1 can Garlic/Onion Tomatoes, not drained!
• 1/2 C white wine (we used an off brand that was very drinkable. Never cook with a wine you wouldn’t want to drink!)
• 1 16 oz box Velveeta(tm) cheese
• Garlic Powder

In a large skillet, brown the sausage. Chop up the Velveeta ™ into a medium sized crockpot. I melted the cheese in the microwave for about 3 minutes.

Add the sausage along with the tomatoes to the cheese. Stir thoroughly. Add in the wine until you have reached a smooth consistency. Now starting with 1 TBS garlic powder, stir in the garlic until you have reached a taste you like.

I did add a bit of pepper as well.

Turn the crockpot on low and serve when nicely melted. If this is for a party, keep an eye on it. When it is all gone, you are going to want to turn it off so the cheese doesn’t bake in the pot making it nearly impossible to remove. (Yes, voice of experience on that one, lol.)

Serve with tortilla chips or bread or pretzels.

And, <<First Name>>? Don't forget to invite me to your party! I love this stuff. (back to the top)

---

 

NaNoWriMo Is Coming

Are you a writer? Published? Unpublished? Have no clue about how to get published? The first step is a no-brainer. You must write a compelling story. One key element to that is the Hero's Journey which is the basis of my book currently in edits. I will be teaching this workshop in a different way this year. It will be self-paced. This means you will get all of the lessons on November 1 and be able to do them at your leisure. If you want to be on the list to hear about the details including early bird pricing, contact me using this link (it will filter into a special box for special specialness.)

Here's a snippet of the first lesson for you.

The Hero’s Journey is a monomyth. This is a description of a basic pattern found in many narratives from around the world. To learn more about how and why Joseph Campbell came up with this, you should read his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Bollingen Series). The first edition was in 1949. What Campbell did was give parameters to something all good story tellers new. Campbell named the building blocks of a story. Another book I highly recommend is The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, 3rd Edition.

The Call to Adventure

"Take the adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes! 'Tis but a banging of the door behind you, a blithesome step forward, and you are out of your old life and into the new!" Kenneth Grahame

The next step in our Hero’s Journey is that clarion call to adventure. Here the Hero is jolted out of his comfortable world. There is something that must be done and only he can do it. It might be the Hero jogging over a dead body or finding out his father was a Jedi Knight or learning that her dog is going to be killed. Maybe his brother was killed and he is needed on another planet. What if some ruler confines a bunch of fairy tale creatures to his swamp? Someone has to do something. And that someone must be your Hero.

Whatever this moment is, it must be life-changing. It is utterly disruptive to the Hero’s Ordinary World. But, as Kenneth Grahame puts it, you need to heed the call before the moment passes. This is the moment in the book where your reader begins to identify with your character. Remember the Ordinary World and what is chafing. This call will alleviate that itch eventually. At first, it may appear to only make things worse.

Interested? Contact me ASAP. This will be launching November 1st and I'm not sure I will teach it again once the book is out. (back to the top)

---

---

(c)2012 Tarot by Arwen provides monthly astrological forecasts using Tarot for each sign. These are not meant to replace traditional Eastern/Western healing modalities. If you're sick, go see your doctor. Ace of Bows from the The Wildwood Tarot: Wherein Wisdom Resides, Sterling Ethos, 2011