Magic Appreciation blog tour Guest post: Something New-Old by Cynthia Ravinski

Lingering in the Woods http://amzn.to/HsxZWE is not your average fantasy story. Yes it has a witch, a demon and trolls, and even the ubiquitous pre-industrial European setting. So what pushes Lingering in the Woods into the “not average” category? Simple, the main character is a shaman of Finnish discipline, and it’s an emotobook. You won’t come across either of these things every day (unless you are lucky).

What’s up with these Finns, you say? Well, all Scandinavians did not follow the same pantheon. Even the Norse, according to the sagas, considered all Finns to be “sorcerers.” This might have something to do with the fact that the Finns did not fight for Thor or pray to Odin for wisdom.

When you think of a culture that developed half in the Arctic Circle with many dark days and months of subzero temperatures, you may not be surprised that their pre-Christian equivalent of the devil, Lempo, was also their god of love. Perhaps that makes a certain kind of sense.

Another one, Loviatar, is the goddess of illness. She had a few sisters, but her nine offspring were the personification of the most miserable diseases known to the ancient Finns. Human suffering frequently seems to be blamed on interfering spirits.

Okay, that one was a bit geeky.

If the unusual Finnish motifs in Lingering in the Woods don’t strike your fancy, maybe this will. It’s an Emotobook: A new medium of fiction, the first designed to be tablet friendly.

Emotobooks employ abstract art, inserted into a fast story at emotional high points. Reading an emotobook, no matter if it is on your computer or you smartphone, will simultaneously engage multiple parts of your brain for a saturating reading experience. How about a sneak peak?

Grit City Publications http://bit.ly/HbwqKR publishes Emotobooks on Smashwords http://bit.ly/H3sBbW so you can download them directly to your computer as a PDF or in html so you can read it like a web page. But they’re also available in the iBookstore http://bit.ly/K7ioxP on Amazon http://amzn.to/HsxZWE and at all major ebook retailors (Emotobooks look great on my new Samsung Galaxy S III).

If you try an emotobook and love it, visit the Grit City page http://bit.ly/OHSXHe and request an autograph card for the creators of the emotobook.

This post continues my September Magic Appreciation Blog Tour. My last stop was at the Active Voice. http://the-active-voice.com/

Bio:

Cynthia Ravinski writes Emotobooks, among other things. From her coastal northern setting she finagles language into stories. She’s been an athlete, a co-pilot, and a world traveler. She’s basked in the light of great poets, and has been educated to high degrees at UMaine Farmington and Seton Hill University. To say she is obsessed with drinking tea is an understatement.

Find Cynthia Ravinski at her Blog www.cynthiaravinski.com

On facebook: http://www.facebook.com/CynthiaRavinskiAuthor

And twitter @CynthiaRavinski