The Unicorn Gate - the first book in the Legends of Lumenor trilogy of teen and tween books - is now available to download free on Amazon Kindle for five days only. The magical tales of Toby Malone and Daisy Evans do not just entertain but also encourage 10 to 14-year-olds to develop self-esteem, confidence, a connection with nature, and a sense of belonging, respect for others, personal responsibility and positive cooperation. Download your free copy by clicking the Amazon button. ​

The Legends of Lumenor trilogy of tween and teen fiction will be free on Amazon Kindle over the coming weeks, starting with the first adventure - The Unicorn Gate.  The magical tales of Toby Malone and Daisy Evans do not just entertain but also encourage 10 to 14-year-olds to develop self-esteem, confidence, a connection with nature, and a sense of belonging, respect for others, personal responsibility and positive cooperation. 

This year, the summer solstice has blessed us with two glorious days of brilliant sunshine. Now in the late afternoon of the 22nd June, I am relaxing on my balcony after a trip to the annual Victorian Fayre in Llantwit Major. I have enjoyed the bustle of the crowds and the street entertainment but now, around 5pm, I have entered a peaceful haven, where the air is totally still, where a strange silence hangs over the ocean and the garden at the back of this apartment block. Even the gulls sail by without a sound and everyone seems to have gone out with the tide. This solstice has an extraordinary quality of light which invokes that feeling I sometimes experience of sitting in a painting, like a figure on a sunlit canvas with an artist painting the sky and the sea in several delicate shades of blue and grey, with clouds as downy and motionless as sleeping swans. This masterpiece has an atmosphere of rare calm that brings contentment. The days will gradually get shorter now but even so there is still the promise of a whole summer ahead of us and time outside.

The wheel of the year has turned through the spring equinox, the clocks have been put forward and the light has changed. The World is renewed and we have a chance to move on if we are so inclined.
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I open up my senses to warmer air, increased birdsong, the feeling of growth beneath my feet, as our mother the Earth gives birth to a bright abundance of flowers like light bursting skyward back towards the sun that first warmed their seeds. It’s a time of renewed hope, of creative and personal possibility, responsibility towards the planet that sustains us, a time to begin new projects and to look forward to the promise of  celebration that summer brings. I for one, have been inspired to write several poems and to write down headings for a new creative writing project that is neither fiction nor poetry and which I hope will be a quick flowing stream by the time of the summer solstice. More about this later if everything goes to plan and the muse is good to me.

Sometimes inspiration comes out of the blue and takes me into a land of story. When this happens, then characters also begin to appear. Some writers develop their characters from people-watching but when I was writing my Lumenor trilogy, because it was fantasy, the characters often arose from the effect of particular landscapes working on my imagination, or sometimes originated from the magic of myths and legends, which brought their own inspiration.

​The lives and personalities of characters develop as a story unfolds and though I always know how the tale begins and ends, the middle is like fertile ground that influences the possibilities. When the soil in the garden of my imagination gives birth to new characters, they will usually name themselves quite spontaneously and because I am also a very visual creature, they will often appear on the canvas of my mind as bright images, painted from an artist’s palette of colour – height, build, colouring, etc.  The characters, begin to develop their own individual voices in which I can relate their stories. Often they take over, so that their dialogue and the scenarios they play out surprise me, since the content may be composed of ideas I didn’t know I had. They fit together then, in ways I had not expected, creating equally surprising conclusions as I begin to live in their world, listening to the stream of dialogue flowing through me.
 
Of course, I live in South Wales and not in Lumenor, though the boundaries between legend and reality can blur whilst I am writing. Closing the file at the end of a session is like closing a Unicorn Gate and re-entering the everyday world.
 
Writing poetry and reflections, I connect to the ever-flowing stream of inspiration as it flows through me connecting my imagination and life experience to the living breathing universe we all live in. The Welsh Bards referred to the stream of inspiration as AWEN. In one of my Italian poems, much inspired by the art in Rome as well as the landscape, I described it as the Language of Angels.
 
I am taking a break right now from the Legends of Lumenor, though I still have a set of keys to re-open the Unicorn Gate should I want to return to this mystic magical world later. Meanwhile, I continue to produce poetry and reflections for a possible future collection as I wait for the angels to sing or the stream of Awen to flow with ideas for a new writing project.
 
May the Harp of Creation sing for you.
 
Iona