All authors need inspiration. We need ideas that spark our imaginations and have us running away madly with ideas for stories that no one has previously been able to imagine. If you want to write alternative spirituality, supernatural tales, and genuinely mysterious mysteries, this might be a book to add to your shelves...

DICTIONARY OF MAGIC & MYSTERY by Melusine Draco

I admit that I don’t normally ‘read’ dictionaries, but this one by Mélusine Draco really is as gripping as any thriller. The proverbial page-turner, with its tantalising introduction and often startling entries. Every fiction or non-fiction writer should give this wonderful reference book space on their desks, not only to show what lies beneath our present day, so-called ‘civilisations,’ but also as a conduit to what may well lie beyond. To step from their comfort zones and give their work ambition, fresh interest. A need to take the reader on more unusual journeys.

I am convinced of a growing fascination with alternative spiritualities. Of other ways of living life and of dying. Melusine Draco, delivers her expert and painstaking research into all this in such a way that will surely ignite further enthusiasm. She takes us from the Argentinium Astrum - the Order of the Great white Brotherhood (Adepts) founded by Aleister Crowley; the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance; Alphitomancy - which will make you look at barley bread in a new light - to the Field of Reeds and Dead Man’s Teeth, to Sea Witches and beyond.

I found myself making excited notes on Podomancy, Cramp Rings and the Angel of Death – and already wondering where these different springboards could lead. Within the dictionary format, the work is helpfully constructed into sections, ie; Black Magic, White Magic, while references for further research are relevant and not too copious. In a crowded marketplace where the ups and downs in publishing are ever more pronounced, I’m convinced this amazing volume will stir the writer’s imagination and help to get their work noticed. Unique and memorable.
Sally Spedding | Acclaimed author of eight paranormal, historical and psychological thrillers and ‘How To Write a Chiller Thriller’ 

for CI Compass Books.  She is also an experienced creative writing tutor who has helped many of her students achieve publishing success.edit | delete

 

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