I count my blessings to have had quite a smooth journey in finding a publisher for my book Into the Mountains : I’m very aware that finding a publisher is often not easy at all. Despite the seemingly endless cycle of editing, re-editing, then editing again to make the manuscript publication ready - and finding last minute really silly, obvious, errors - I’ve reached a stage where just this week, it all began to feel very, very real.
We’d decided on a front cover, (click on those underlined words) then suddenly, in the middle of last week, my publisher sent me a link. When I opened it - as you can too by clicking on the underlined word above) - Oh My Goddess!!!
My very own book, live, up there on Amazon!
My book is available for Kindle Pre-order, right now! It’s only $US2.99 - or whatever that translates to in your local currency. It will remain at the discounted price till publication date, July 8, so get your orders in now.
To celebrate, I decided I’d post some photos of my travels to the sacred Daoist peaks of China.
This is me at one of my visits to Taishan. I’m standing in front of a stele with a rather large turtle. The turtle has great significance in Daoist cosmology - it represents Xuanwu, the turtle-snake god that is also one of the four mega-constellations.
Taishan was the first sacred mountain I went to.
The mountain gate at Luofushan Dao De Men : the gate of Dao and its Virtue. Go down the stairs to rock pools where the alchemist Ge Hong once washed his minerals - go through the gate and up the stairs to the majestic Yellow Dragon Ancient Temple, built by 青松观 Qingsong Guan in Hongkong.
Walking up Qingchengshan, a Daoist mountain in Sichuan, in the rain.
All of these places and more appear in my book.
Each day I am grateful, and amazed, at the extraordinary opportunities I had whilst I lived in China. I was blessed beyond measure to have seen so many sacred sites of Dao.
I tell the tale here
I love this 3-D mockup of my book!
A big shoutout to the lovely people who noticed the fine print in my previous post, and pre-ordered already! Pre-ordering on Kindle allows you to get the discount price, and the epub will be delivered to your device on publication day (July8!)
You can preorder here
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F52YHFXD
Substack community, thank you for your support and your friendships! 🙏🏽🙏🙏🏼
Suswati you are a charm! Thanks for the repost! 🙏🏽
Darn it, no UK.