International
Best-selling Author Maggie Shayne
It
was a sleepless night spent caring for a sick baby that jump-started
New York Times Bestselling Author Maggie Shayne’s writing career.
A voracious reader
and prolific writer from childhood, Maggie found herself without a book
to read while coddling the colicky child. So instead she began spinning
a tale of her own, creating a plotline that evolved in her thoughts
until, a few days later, she sat down and wrote the story in longhand.
Now the author of
more than forty novels, ranging from stories about Witches, vampires,
psychics and ghosts, to bone chilling, edge-of-your-seat romantic
suspense and beyond. The genres she has mastered include women’s
fiction, category romance, romantic suspense, and paranormal fiction.
Maggie has honed her lyrical prose and made a name for herself on the
New York Times, USA Today, Amazon.com, B.Dalton, Booksense, Ingram’s,
Barnes and Noble, and Waldenbooks (where she reached #1) bestseller
lists.
Maggie is the winner
of numerous awards, including two Romantic Times Bookclub Career
Achievement Awards, the National Readers Choice Award, and the coveted
RITA Award, for which she was nominated twelve times before finally
winning.
She has also written
for CBS daytime dramas, Guiding Light and As the World Turns.
One of Maggie’s novels, Eternity, has been optioned for film.
Today, Maggie finds
empowerment and solace in her spirituality and often believes her strong
background in Wicca into her novels, creating intriguing characters and
involving stories that sometimes (more often than not, in fact) take a
walk on the mystical side.
Her exploration of
Witchcraft began some 13 years ago, when she developed an interest in
the Tarot. Soon thereafter, she discovered that the four suits of the
Tarot were also the four basic elements of Witchcraft; Earth, Air, Fire
and Water.
“I’ve always been
interested in the ‘esoteric,’ and the more I studied Wicca, the more I
realized that the principles that I had always believed in, had their
roots in Witchcraft,” says the author. “I’d been a spiritual seeker,
reading and studying many belief systems and gradually building my own
understanding; ‘building a mystery,’ as Sara Mclaughlin puts it in the
song. When I found Wicca, it was astounding to me to learn that those
things I thought were uniquely my own, were actually beliefs shared by
an entire subculture. There were all these people whose spirituality
was an echo of my own; people who called themselves Witches.”
Now an Elder in the
Wiccan faith, Maggie has studied the Craft for many years. She took
more than three years of formal training in the widely known Black
Forest Clan Circle and Seminary, led by author Silver RavenWolf, where
she learned about divination, astrology, herbalism, theology, natural
magick and much more. She earned her way to the level of Third Degree
High Priestess, making her legal clergy. But the learning never stops,
and she is currently studying Shamanism, pastoral Counseling, and Reiki.
After leaving Black
Forest in 2001 in order to forge a new path, Maggie became one of the
founders of a new tradition (or denomination) if Wicca, known as
RavenMyst Circle, which trains its own students and is incorporated as a
nonprofit organization.
What would she be
doing if she wasn’t so accomplished a writer? Maggie maintains she’d be
equally happy as a rock star. “I have a karaoke machine, and I’m
actually damn good,” she says. “Furthermore, Sheryl Crow and I are the
same age, so I figure if this writing thing doesn’t work out, there’s
still time.”
Maggie resides in
Otselic, a small town in southern central New York where there are more
cattle than people, with her faithful English bulldog Wrinkles, her
spoiled stray cat, Glorificus, and a pair of sibling Labrador
retrievers. Abigail, the chocolate, female was the runt of the litter
and has remained small and graceful. Her brother, Buddy (William the
Buddy to be precise) was the largest in the litter, and has grown to a
whopping 160 pounds. He’s a big klutz. Interestingly enough although
Wrinkles can walk underneath him without touching, she can also back him
into a corner with a single look. Don’t they say dogs and owners are a
lot alike?
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