Rounding Out Spring Dreams 2023 with Legends and Lore

This season, Undawnted has added a few new embellishments to our Spring Dreams lineup.

With combining our seasons with the Hero's Journey, we are tailoring each quarter with a different motif:

Spring Dreams brings science fiction, fantasy, and legends/folklore to life! It is Act I of the Hero's Journey: Beginning of the Adventure. Answer this Call to Action, and become the characters and be your own hero with Undawnted.

This definition will give our audience the action and adventure that comes with swashbuckling hero's such as Robin Hood, of our ground-breaking Hode series. Undawnted brings legends and folklore alive.

After a long, cold winter, readers want to jump into the warm weather, and have their trusted fan favorites to guide them onto their first steps of their journey. Undawnted has also curated future projects to help with our Spring Dreams. Anything to help shed our winter coats and cabin fever.

Additions to our schedule include:

• Metamorphose 
• Seasons change, we have to change with them.
  
• Stonehenge
• An ancient monument that ripples through time is full of lore.
• Whiskey Jack
• A humorous take about Jackalope with an addiction problem.

What is on your list of Spring Dreams? 

Undawnted's unique take on the seasons and our combination of creative writing, the Hero's journey, and so much more! 

Let the energy guide you to Be Your Own Hero! 

 

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A writer at heart, Undawnted's own creative spark, DL Mullan, began writing short stories and poetry before adolescence. Ms. Mullan decided to showcase her literary talents by publishing collections of her poems. She also writes novels, designs apparel, and creates digital art.

Ms. Mullan has a number of poems published in digital and print collections, from academia to commercial anthologies. She produces her own book cover designs for herself and others. She is an award-winning digital artist and poet. 

Currently, she is embarking on a successful prose career. Join our community of creators... become a Fearless Phile.

Be a part of Undawnted's growing community!  

Join A Novelist Idea on Undawnted's Private Substack.  

 

 

Hint of the Divine: Archetypes of Wolves and Werewolves

This year, Undawnted will be endeavoring into the in between spaces of mythological archetypes. 

A Novelist Idea Newsletter updates Undawnted's readership every month and quarter about our news, publications, events, parties, contests, movie nights, and seasonal reads program. 

What our newsletter adds is our commitment to advancing the realm of the imagination. For 2023, we are engaging with this modality by asking the question: how can we use archetypes to stimulate our creative juices and expand our inner innovation? 

Carl Jung believed that archetypes are our unconscious made manifest. Joseph Campbell believed that these archetypes transcend culture, as these ideas are the basic components of the human experience. This pattern in human evolution began with stories by the campfire, and morphed into oral histories, traditions, and myths that have shaped our existence today.

Myths help explain the unfathomable. Myths kept our ancestors safe from harm. Myths gave people a sense of congruity. 

This month A Novelist Idea Newsletter is discussing the wolf archetype, but more importantly we will delve into the in between spaces as well and play with the formulaic aspects of... 

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To read more and participate in our monthly projects, Subscribe to A Novelist Idea Newsletter.

Don't miss out on a chance to invest in yourself.

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Have a great and howling good day!

 

The Hero's Journey: The Threshold to Adventure

It's summer time. 

The Threshold to Adventure is right before you. What will you choose? A vacation to a destination you have never been before? To serve your country? Take a position at another company? Or, to begin college for the first time?

Humanity is on a constant quest in the hero's journey of our lives. Each step is as personal and unique as the last. Since the individual is the ultimate minority, we face our challenges in this life as a species as interlocking singular modules connecting into the next one and future generations. 

So what is your Call to Adventure? What Threshold to do you stand before? 

It's summer... take that first step.

 

 

The Hero's Journey: First Day of Summer (Solstice) is Your Call to Adventure

Today is the longest day of the calendar year (14 hours and 22 minutes in the Sonoran Desert) and on the cyclical hero's journey, the Summer Solstice is the threshold into a wider world.  

Summer is about energy and movement. We are energized by the sun's power, heat, and majesty- our mere mortal's Supernatural Aid. We are thrust into action: pool activities, sports, and whatever we can do to soak up all that Vitamin D. 

We go from the Known World into an Unknown World. Summer is where our adventures lie away from work and school with vacations and hiking. Summer Solstice on June 21st this year is the day our new Call to Adventure begins. 

The human condition is about achieving our own personal goals in the Hero's Journey of the story of our lives. What tests, trials, and temptations have you overcome? Are still overcoming? 

That is your story. The story of the individual. The individual is the ultimate minority. No one else has a story like yours.

So we honor this cycle in our oral traditions and written histories. We also write about the Hero's Journey in our poetry and novels. Creative writing has become the vehicle for which we celebrate our growth as a person from childhood to adulthood.

Join Undawnted this season: Summer Time in our Special Engagements as well as Seasonal Reads program to explore the initiation into the Hero's Journey.

Have a great and wonderful journey.
 

 

 

December 23rd: Today is the Last, Last Day of Your... Death?

You are living mythology and you don't even know you are doing it. 

Religions of the past and their current manifestations tell of a man born of a virgin who died and was resurrected.  

Mythology is why solstices are a little more exciting than equinoxes. Solstices are like we hit the edge (Earth's wobble) and at the last possible second, we are saved by someone yanking on our shirt collar.

The mythical aspects of this time of year, winter, is special too. Humans are connected to our Earth cycles from biology to religion. We are now in our death cycle. We will be in the winter season for 88 days and then spring will resurrect us.

For the mythology and literary aspects, December 21 of Winter Solstice is our annual death day. As religion mimics the natural cycles, the sun stays nearly unchanged in the sky for the next three days. That means December 22th, 23rd, 24th are our mythological death. We are Persephone. 

So on December 25th, the sun in the sky begins to move upward once again. That is how the ancient people knew that the Earth cycle was now on its way back to spring time, thus the resurrection. In a few days, everyone on Earth will be resurrected as was the sun gods of ole.

You are living mythology. You are living your death and will be resurrected. So how does it feel to be a sun god? 

Isn't mythology grand? 

 

Now how can you use mythology in your writing (literature)?

Hint: research Dionysus, Persephone, Osiris, Odin, Ganesha, Lemminkainen, Tammuz, Krishna, Quetzalcoatl, Attis...

Then how can you use these gods' qualities in your character(s)? plot? 

Have a great and wonderful day. 

Fearless Workshop: Love and the Goddess

"This is a prime myth in this period of the Goddess as the redeemer, the one who goes in quest of the lost spouse or lover, and through her loyalty and descent into the realm of death, recovers him."

The myth of the goddess spans the length of human history. Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth delves into the importance of goddess mythology in the different cultures around the world. 

So how do you use the power of the goddess in your writing? 

In Undawnted's Autumn Cider Seasonal Reads, our Fearless Workshop is Lectures for Writers: The Power of Myth- Love and the Goddess. This writing exercise will help you on your way to using the goddess mythology in your writing.

Have a great and wonderful day!

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*Update: all workshops and special engagements have now been concluded, and new projects are now under Undawnted's Substack.

A writer at heart, Undawnted's own creative spark, DL Mullan, began writing short stories and poetry before adolescence. Over the years, Ms. Mullan has showcased her literary talents by self-publishing several collections of her poetry. She also writes novels, designs apparel, and creates digital art. Ms. Mullan‘s creative writing is available in digital and print collections, from academia to commercial anthologies. As an independent publisher, she produces her own book cover designs as well as maintains her own websites. She is an award-winning digital artist and poet. This year, DL Mullan has begun sharing her knowledge via A Novelist Idea Newsletter. If you too want to become a Fearless Phile, then subscribe to her newsletter on Substack.

Her innovative style teaches writers how to reach their creative potential, and write more effectively.

Learn. Grow. Master… with Undawnted.

Lectures for Writer's Workshops: The Power of Myth- Hero's Journey

Spring Dreams Lecture Series I

This seasons lectures are based on learning the foundation of literary works through myth-ology, the hero journey, and how ancient civil-izations used the art of storytelling.

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Where do our myths and legends come from?

"Well, there are two types of deed. One is the physical deed; the hero who has performed a war act or a physical act of heroism ñ saving a life, that’s a hero act. Giving himself, sacrificing himself to another. And the other kind is the spiritual hero, who has learned or found a mode of experiencing the supernormal range of human spiritual life, and then come back and communicated it. It’s a cycle, it’s a going and a return, that the hero cycle represents. 

But then this can be seen also in the simple initiation ritual, where a child has to give up his childhood and become an adult, has to die, you might say, to his infantile personality and psyche and come back as a self-responsible adult. It’s a fundamental experience that everyone has to undergo, where in our childhood for at least 14 years, and then to get out of that posture of dependency, psychological dependency, into one of psychological self-responsibility, requires a death and resurrection, and that is the basic motif of the hero journey, Leaving one condition, finding the source of life to bring you forth in a richer or more mature or other condition."

~Joseph Campbell, author of the Power of Myth 

Lectures for Writer's Workshops: The Power of Myth- Hero's Journey

Join Undawnted for her Special Engagements series of lectures, poetry, and writing workshops. 

Engage in your intellect...

Do we have that power? Can we create our own hero's journey? Be our own hero?

This writer's workshop will help you define the hero's journey through myth and creative exploration. Define your center and define yourself. 

Have a great and wonderful day.

_____

*Update: all workshops and special engagements have now been concluded, and new projects are now under Undawnted's Substack.

A writer at heart, Undawnted's own creative spark, DL Mullan, began writing short stories and poetry before adolescence. Over the years, Ms. Mullan has showcased her literary talents by self-publishing several collections of her poetry. She also writes novels, designs apparel, and creates digital art. Ms. Mullan‘s creative writing is available in digital and print collections, from academia to commercial anthologies. As an independent publisher, she produces her own book cover designs as well as maintains her own websites. She is an award-winning digital artist and poet. This year, DL Mullan has begun sharing her knowledge via A Novelist Idea Newsletter. If you too want to become a Fearless Phile, then subscribe to her newsletter on Substack.

Her innovative style teaches writers how to reach their creative potential, and write more effectively.

Learn. Grow. Master… with Undawnted.

A Brief Discourse in Myths and Legends of Writing and Resources

"All the stories have been told!"

~the oldest known suicide note from a writer

I learned a small stone tablet lamented words similar to the above quote was found by archeologists when I studied literature at the college level. Was the instructor joking? Who knows? But the story still holds water, just read what scholars have discovered about Shakespeare.

According to a New York Times article, Plagiarism Software Unveils a New Source for 11 of Shakespeare’s Plays, Shakespeare used an earlier source study for helping to mold his characters and plays:

The findings were made by Dennis McCarthy and June Schlueter, who describe them in a book to be published next week by the academic press D. S. Brewer and the British Library. The authors are not suggesting that Shakespeare plagiarized but rather that he read and was inspired by a manuscript titled “A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels,” written in the late 1500s by George North, a minor figure in the court of Queen Elizabeth, who served as an ambassador to Sweden. 

For any new writer, this information may seem like a blessing and a curse. 

Have all the stories already been told? 

What writers can learn from historical data, sources, and books is that story inspiration can manifest from the unlikeliest of places. Research into the past is not for naught and should be encouraged. 

My fiction and poetry writings here on Undawnted are inspired by a combination of Shakespearean dramas and comedies, Joseph Campbell's comparative mythology and the hero's journey, and Jane Austen's tenets of good matchmaking as well as her realism perspective in her social commentary. 

Just like Shakespeare, modern writers can be influenced and inspired by earlier works of fiction and nonfiction alike. A seasoned writer knows how to balance the past with the present to make the most of the future. Writing should entertain and inspire others in turn.

What book or author has inspired you? 

Have a great and wonderful day!

Physics, Comparative Mythology... A Perfect Combination

Today, I was kind of spunky. I organized my hobby tools, caught up on laundry, and am really trying to get the house looking like the cats have not taken over. hehehe!

Then I wanted to listen to something while I worked. I ended up on youtube listening to David Talbott: Seeking the Third Story | EU2012. 

Very interesting intersection about physics, plasma, and ancient mythology. I love comparative mythology. I have read Joseph Campbell's A Hero with a Thousand Faces as well as many other books on the subject. 

I am always fascinated by the connections we can make to the ordinary and the extraordinary.

You will find out that I like opening my mind to different knowledge, information, and perspectives. Ever since I began my meditative work, my brain has been eager and hungry for all sorts of knowledge. It seems I cannot get enough learning done.

And, you wonder why I am so tired all the time! My brain is exhausted! hahaha!!! I am hoping this influx of new ideas will make me a better writer and lecturer in the future. 

I enjoy watching intellectual discourses especially when they are free online. I cannot afford cable because I spend my money on life saving supplements. So free is awesome!

That was my Xmas day.

I hope yours went as well and that Santa was very good to you!

Have a great and wonderful Holiday!!!