Posts filed under ‘Sandra's Comments’
Neon hieroglyphs and giants with mystical crowns in the Temple of Dendur

Color the Temple: Scene I
The light projection project at the New York Metropolitan Museum Temple of Dendura
When I wrote The Red Mirror, I held an image in my mind of the interior of an Egyptian temple far different than anything I’d ever seen in photos or real life. The walls pulsed with a color palette so vivid that the strange giants with human bodies and animal heads with mystical crowns leapt from the stone to dance in the still air.
Here’s a quick excerpt from Chapter Three – The Temple:
Simmering hieroglyphs in colors bright as neon exploded from every surface. Giants with mystical crowns or the heads of animals performed strange rituals in soaring murals painted in vibrant red, yellow and blue.
I resisted leaning my head back to take in the vast ceiling with its elaborate geometric designs, absorbing as much as possible without being obvious. But I couldn’t stop my eyes from traveling everywhere at once.
As if in answer to my imagination begging for manifestation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York recreated by magic of light projection what archaeologists believe are the original colors of one vignette in the Temple of Dendur. The scene couldn’t be closer to what I saw in my mind’s eye when my character, for the first time, walks back in time through the shadowy incense-fogged chambers of a temple on the Nile. Of course, in my vision, every square inch of the walls and ceiling throbbed with the same bold colors as you see in the photo.
Although the beautiful Egypto-Roman Dendur Temple relocated from Egypt is about 500 years “younger” than my temple in The Red Mirror, it reflects the stature and majesty of the setting in my novel. There, among the polychromatic neon gods and goddesses, Isenkhebe Nefrusobek (Isis) experiences her first encounter with Egyptian mysticism and sacred sexuality.
See the New York Times article here: NY Times article on Metropolitan Museum of Art Color the Temple Scene I
Red Sun Halo in Ivory Coast Africa
I took this photo many many years ago when living in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire (the Ivory Coast), West Africa. We were upcountry in the “bush” when a halo formed around the sun. Such a mystical experience. I’ve only seen it once in my life.
From under one of those giant, tropical Africa trees that reach for the sky, I captured the shot using a red filter on my Nikon and Kodak slide film. Much later, I took a photography course in New Jersey to learn to print paper positives from color slides. This photo is the result. I love it still.
Three Reasons Why We Need The Oxford Comma
Being a fan of the Oxford comma, and having been corrected by editors when using it, I am especially fond of this superb example of why we sometimes need it.
BTW, the Oxford comma may also be called the Harvard comma. The term refers to the comma placed immediately before the coordinating conjunction (usually and, or, or nor) in a series of three or more terms.
Thank you to Alexander MacDonald @alex_macdonald for sharing this on twitter and Indira Lakshmanan
@Indira_L for RTing.
“If it is to be, it is up to me.” 10 Easy Steps to Creative Solutions
If you’ve hit a wall and your void, infertile mind refuses to sprout new ideas, then I’ve got a few tips that will break the barrier. Click below to link to my creativity article, If it is to be, it is up to me, just published in the winter 2015 edition of Choices Magazine.
10 easy steps to creative solutions that open your subconscious and allow you to connect with your inner genius.
10 easy steps that only you can take. If it is to be, it is up to you.
http://issuu.com/judimoreo/docs/choicesmagazine-winter2015/56
Relax your mind. Let your muses sing freely in your ear!

The Nine Muses (Mousai) – Greek Goddesses of music, song, and dance and source of inspiration to poets. Also Goddesses of Knowledge, they remembered all things that had come to pass. Calliope (Epic Song), Clio (History), Euterpe (Lyric Song), Melpomene (Tragedy), Terpsichore (Dance), Erato (Erotic Poetry), Polyhymnia (Sacred Song), Urania (Astronomy) and Thalia (Comedy & Bucolic Poetry)
The Black Scroll and Libya
At long last I’m getting the courage to tell the world I finished my trilogy and that The Black Scroll is out there to read.
Maybe it’s the meltdown in Libya that urged me on. The revolution in 2011 certainly inspired the book. Part One is set in Roman and modern Libya with explicit scenes from ancient Leptis Magna followed by Isis’ revisit in modern times where she comes face to face with the militias.
Completing my saga of Isis and her reincarnations in ancient Egypt, The Black Scroll is set in Roman North Africa during the reign of Emperor Hadrian. If you’re familiar with the other two books, you’ll know that the first novel, The Red Mirror, takes place in the days of the last Egyptian Pharaoh on the dawn of the Persian invasion. Book Two, The Emerald Tablet, explores Greek Egypt, especially Alexandria, under the rule of Ptolemy.
As always, the story of modern Isis continues through all three books. I confess to being easily bored; I hunger for travel and adventure. The Red Mirror Series is my chance to share my rich life experience of languages, food, art, religion and history. I’m excited to take you back to the past, but I’m equally thrilled to take you to Las Vegas, New York, Copenhagen, Malta and London – all places I know well and love.
My books don’t fit into one genre. They reflect my eclectic mind and life. Adventure, romance, intrigue, mystery, mysticism, sex, time travel, history, thriller…these are all hastags I could use. You won’t be able to put the Red Mirror Series into a category. But I believe you’ll have a wild ride.
Happy New Year 2014 from me to you!
Sweet Season to You!
One Life can never be enough!
Happy Soltice from California to You

Winter Soltice Sunset greetings from my home in California. Please accept our fondest and most sincere hopes and wishes for a Wonderful New Year for you and all whom you love!
The Black Scroll has entered edit phase
June 24 was the day I “finished” The Black Scroll. I put ‘finished’ in quotation marks because I’m starting the edit.
But the story is told. It is out of my imagination and now exists in the concrete world of words down on paper. Paper in this case is a digital format, but you get what I mean.
Whew! What a mind-bending experience. I had to pinch myself this morning. I did it! I wrote the trilogy that I’ve envisioned since 2010. The stories of Isis, Athena and Elektra.
There’s been months of hiatus here and there. The Arab Spring starting with Egypt and continuing through Libya. The remix of Isis to Isis Erotica and Isis BeachRead. Family trials and tribulations of late. You know – life getting in the way.
More intricate and involved with a much wider scope than The Red Mirror and The Emerald Tablet, The Black Scroll took a tremendous expenditure of psychic energy to tell. The Romans weren’t nice people. I was juggling memories of four lifetimes with recurring characters. I wanted to wrap everything up – cross all the t’s, dot all the i’s, tie up loose ends.
It’s a longer book, which may or may not remain so after the editing. But I have a feeling it will. The story is complex and action-filled. At least I hope so. It is in my mind, anyway. A fellow author said satisfyingly, “The monumental third volume.” I like the sound of that.
I’ve promised a couple of people to be first readers, and I haven’t forgotten that pledge. I’ll do an edit and then print a few draft copies for distribution.
In the meantime, I’m gonna savor my thrill. There’s not many moments in a lifetime like this.
Standing up to write The Black Scroll
Doesn’t look very glamorous, and not my greatest photography, but here’s a shot of my workstation for writing The Black Scroll.
Hope you’ll notice the height and no chair. After some back problems from sitting in front of a computer all day, I elected to write standing up.
I’ll admit it took a little getting used to, but I seem to have come over the hump. My brain’s working; the Muses are singing.
The screen on the left is the book itself as I write in InDesign. The laptop screen has my Excel spreadsheet with research including the 500+ quotes I’ve collected. I also do frequent Google searches to research details and fact check.
The eyes of the woman on the screen are Elektra, protagonist of Book Three. The pink towel between the two banker boxes is for my cat who sometimes sleeps there while I write.
Stack of books? Hadrian, The Roman Cavalry, Atlas of Classical Archaeology (for city plan of Leptis Magna) and Sex and Society in Greco-Roman Egypt. Under it all is a binder containing pages of notes.
Hanging above the work station is a photo I took on the Nile, a movie poster from ‘The Eagle’, a map of the Ancient Nile Delta and a map of the Mediterranean. To the left is a printout of an email from my friend Ann Calhoun with much appreciated (and always needed) words of encouragement.
On the far left, taped to a book shelf, is a printout of my favorite cover – but one I’m not using. It’s the Red Mirror with Isis’ eye. I opted for another cover to make the series more identifiable and the covers more cohesive. Could never repeat, no matter how hard I tried, the power of that Eye.
In case you have trouble making out details, standing on the shelf above my head are two sailing ship models, a bust of Aphrodite, Nefertiti’s head, a statuette of Athena my daughter brought me from Greece, a sitting Japanese sage, a carved wooden “Old Salt,” and a bronze figure of Shiva. Oh! don’t want to forget the brass falcon head of a shoehorn.
On the desk always my cup of black tea with milk – or my snifter of brandy or scotch depending on time of day.
The Black Scroll – 84,433 words as of yesterday. 38 Chapters. 261 pages.
Chapter by chapter the story reveals itself
People ask me how I write. The mechanics of it. Some authors apparently work 8 hours. Some work with the goal of 1,000 words a day. A chapter a day is my goal. That’s an average of 1500-2000 words, although a long chapter can be 3,000 words. New material.
I can do it in 2-3 hours if it’s action and dialogue. If there’s a lot of detail, special terminology, or facts I want to present in a way that’s not lecturing, it takes me longer. Of course, I usually spend time editing the new material the day I write. That’s on top.
But before I take The Black Scroll into the next part of the story, I go back over the chapter from the day before, beefing up certain parts, sucking as much emotion and eliciting as much drama as I can from every scene. Sometimes I have to do more research, like what kind of weapon would a young Libyan thuwar use – or what handgun would the General gift to Isis?
Then, when I think I’ve got a tight chapter that I’m pretty happy with, I go to my new blank page.
It’s not blank though. It says Chapter 29, for example, followed by XXXXX. On the next line is xxxxx which is a holder for the appropriate Roman quote I’ll plug in. Following that is a new paragraph ‘XXXX.’ This is where the new material begins. The story continues.
I seldom know the title of the chapter until I’ve written a while. Maybe halfway, maybe even to the end. Many authors don’t title their chapters, but I do. I think of each as mini-stories with their own lives. It seems fitting that they should be named, given their own identities.
Sometimes I know right away what quote I’ll use. When that happens, the quote guides the story. If not, from the list of 550 quotes I’ve collected, I find the one that communicates the theme of the chapter I’ve just written. But more often than not, the quote guides me, perhaps acting as a conduit to my sub conscience.
For it is my belief that the sub conscience is the source – the ever-flowing well-spring – of my stories. Where does the sub conscious get the stories? My past? A collective past? Or is fantasy the result of a kind of cosmic alchemy that blends everything I’ve ever read or heard or experienced into my own personal Akashic records? I can’t say with certainty. But almost any writer should say something similar. If they’re honest. If they write original material.
So I have more questions than answers. Pretty typical for me. But so far, it’s working. O Muses! Continue to sing!
BTW, I’m at about 72K words and ready to start page 220, Chapter 33.
And at last I arrive in Egypt
For those of you interested in my progress with The Black Scroll, let me say that I’m advancing at a rapid clip. 59,967 words. 185 pages. Ready to start Chapter 29. Ready to visit Alexandria, 130 AD, 15 years after the Great Jewish Revolt that almost burnt the city to the ground.
You might ask how I know the page numbers with such precision.
I gather that I’m an odd duck among writers, as my preferred technique for channeling the story is to manifest the visual form as I create. I write directly into Adobe InDesign. As the words flow onto the page, they look exactly as they will look in final published form. That’s the print version I’m talking about.
Before putting the first word on the first page, I set up the layout, which in the case of The Black Scroll is the same as The Red Mirror and The Emerald Tablet – the first two novels of the Red Mirror Series. I’ve got the header at the top of the 6×9 facing pages with my name or title, book-specific Egyptian hieroglyph, and page number. The margins are there. The title page has been created.
note: As a reminder – or for those who haven’t seen the print versions – the glyph for The Red Mirror is a snake, typically Pharaonic Egyptian to my mind. The glyph for The Emerald Tablet is the owl – for Athena, the wisest of Greek Goddesses. The one I have chosen for The Black Scroll is the lion – Rome – Africa.
The print version must be re-formatted for export into Kindle, so thinking logically, I decided to write The Black Scroll directly into the layout I use for the ebook version. It’s the biggest market, after all.
It didn’t work for me. All those lovely graphic details of layout disappear. The process is no longer visual.
After a chapter or two, I gave up and allowed myself the crutch. Didn’t authors of old write with a favorite pen? Or typewriter? I need my print version InDesign layout for the Muses to sing. And so be it.
I’ve got an art degree. What’s wrong with painting with words?
February 11 was the Monday I started – day after Chinese New Year. Today is March 12. Three days from the Ides. Five days from St. Patrick’s Day. Eight days from my 38th wedding anniversary and the spring equinox.
Goodbye Libya. It was quite a ride. Hello Egypt. I can’t wait to see what happens.
How the Arab Spring has influenced my third book, The Black Scroll
It occurred to me that I’m supposed to be writing here about writing. I haven’t done a very good job with that, so am striving to make some course corrections.
At long last, I got the courage to start writing Elektra’s story. I’ve thought a lot about why it’s taken me so long. Was it fear of writing itself? Of not having any more ideas? Or was it fear of the story that Elektra has to tell? Now that I have begun, I know that this is a story I couldn’t have told without going through the experience of Arab Spring.
You may ask what the Arab Revolution has to do with ancient Roman Egypt? Well, for starters, I wouldn’t have thought to begin the book in Leptis Magna, which is outside of Tripoli, Libya. At least, I don’t think I would have. I will never know, of course, because I chose the path I am on. No one can say where another path would have lead me.
I don’t think Elektra would go off to the Nafusa Mountains to learn the Sacred Arts (magic – or black magic, if you prefer to use its power in that way) if I hadn’t followed battles there during the Libyan Revolution via twitter. I wouldn’t have realized how ancient the Imazighen people are. That’s “Berbers” to those who don’t know that the truly native (non-Arab) North African prefers to be called an Amazigh (singular). Their language is properly known as Tamazight and remarkably close to the language spoken in ancient Egypt.
But I have diverged. There’s more to the Arab Spring influence on my writing than geography. Until I lived the stories coming out of Libya, Egypt and Syria, I had no real understanding of brutality. I knew about it intellectually. I’ve done extensive research on the Roman Empire. I studied Latin years ago. I’ve seen almost every film made on ancient Rome. But there was something about the modern brutality I experienced through twitter that simply brought ancient horrors to life.
When I was writing a couple of scenes, which I believe I portrayed with just enough detail that you can use your imagination to make more graphic if you please, I reminded myself that things much worse happen every day, right now. “No,” I tell myself. “It’s not over the top.” It happened. Far worse things happened. And it was institutionalized – an accepted part of culture and life.
The Black Scroll, after 27,000 words, deals so far with slavery, the power of magic – perceived or real – and of course, Elektra. Isis has gone back through the Red Mirror to her incarnation in 130 AD, the time of Hadrian. If the book evolves as the other two, I’m not quite a third of the way into the story.
It’s been intense. This book is very different from The Red Mirror and The Emerald Tablet, which are actually different from each other. I think that a trilogy is usually a continuing story with very similar drama. So perhaps it is appropriate, after all, that I have re-titled the group as Red Mirror Series. The modern story is the continuing thread that binds them together. And the characters, of course. The reincarnating circle of souls.
I’d like to think that each book can be read separately. I tried to write them that way. I’ve had some feedback from readers who started with The Emerald Tablet and report enjoying it very much with no issues of ‘feeling lost.’
Elektra‘s story has begun with new characters in key roles. That’s just the way she’s telling it. My impression as I leave ancient Libya to make for Egypt, is that Hektor, the General, Antinous and River God will soon take center stage.
BTW, you’ll notice that I don’t have a new name for River God, aka Black Falcon. I’m waiting for him to reveal himself.
New titles and new covers for the Red Mirror Series
If you’ve ever wanted to follow the twists and turns of a crazy author’s mind, you can scroll through my blog and see for yourself the evolution of my Isis story. After working with a marketing person, I decided that the series needed re-titling. As fond as I am of my three women, their eyes and their names, I never felt I achieved the sense of romantic adventure that I wished to convey. I never created a cover for Athena (now The Emerald Tablet) that quite matched the power of Isis (now The Red Mirror.)
It was a hard decision to dump the eyes, harder than changing the title. But I am content now with the change and hope you are, too.

Ancient Greek gold bracelet showing snakes, first half of the 2nd century BC, Profzheim, Schmuckmuseum
And, as if the Universe wished to convey its pleasure at my decision, I immediately found this marvelous image of a 2nd century BC Greek snake bracelet from Pforzheim, Schmuckmuseum – more or less the time period of Athena and The Emerald Tablet.
What is truly extraordinary, I had never seen the image before, yet I described it exactly as the bracelet Hektor gives Athena the morning after the symposion in Korinth. I even placed the garnet in the Herakles knot where the tails of the two snakes entwine.
Now I am the first to admit that this is a common enough motif, and that I most probably have seen something quite similar elsewhere. But I’d like to imagine that Athena spoke to me as I wrote, describing the details as she was telling me her story.
raiannon rages and paces for Elektra
At the risk of being too personal and exposing to the world how pathetically needy I am, I want to share a really delectable moment. Quite out of the blue – or should I say cyberspace? – came an email alert of a comment to this site.
“Do we have any sort of ETA on Elektra?” – raiannon
My first reaction was “Wow. Somebody cares!”
I gave a gushy response asking if she/he would like to be a First Reader for Elektra and ending with “I guess it depends on why you are asking, doesn’t it?”
What I got back was a “review” for which I would gladly have paid. Yes, I’ve heard lots of rumors about that sort of thing…
“I’m asking because I loved the first two whole books, with their unique twist on a typical time travel novel. I was absolutely thrilled with the tie-ins between the past life found in the mirror and the current one. But the worst part of reading a series is always waiting for the next book! A good series novel has something that leaves you wanting at the end…wanting the next book. A great series novel (for a series in progress) leaves you pacing your apartment, raging at the author for not writing faster! I would be greatly honored to be a First Reader for you.”
Now I don’t know who raiannon is – at least, I don’t think I do. I actually asked my husband, “Do you think this is one of my friends trying to cheer me up?”
Thank you, raianoon, whoever you are. Rage on! I’ll do my best to make Elektra worth the pacing.
It took a while for Sex and Zen of Shopping to get discovered
It took a while to for my shopping book to get discovered, but my spam folder is filling up fast! Lots of links to handbags and other shopping stuff – and of course sex. Should be no surprise there. That’s what you get when you title a book “Sex and the Zen of Shopping.”
Funny I’m not getting any links or offers or comments about Zen. Guess the more highly evolved spiritual creatures in our universe aren’t trolling the internet.
Maybe I should have stuck with “Shop Smart in a Dumb Economy” which was the original working title. But I had an agent tell me in quite a serious advice letter that I should drop that title because “this whole recession thing will be over in a year.” That was in…let me see now…2009?
It just goes to show how wrong agents can be. So cheer up authors. Those guys are not always right. What do they know anyway? Wonder if he’s still in business?
Ancient Egyptian novels in Red Mirror Series 4 Kindle & iPad
After a several month hiatus from writing as I helped fight the Libyan Revolution through twitter, I’ve finally gotten back to editing my ancient Egyptian novels for the Red Mirror Series. Isis has been shortened and made tighter and more fast-paced. I changed some characters names to make it easier to follow in the past life and the present, dropped a character or two, and refer to Amasis, Psamtik and Setne as Pharaoh, Crown Prince and the Scribe.
I also shifted my focus from educating to entertaining. There will still plenty of meat for history buffs in the Red Mirror Series, but I’ve tried to avoid reader anxiety that there might be a test. 😉
I’ve got Isis ready for Kindle and iPad and have been working on the promotion copy, which I find more challenging than writing novels. Is it because we authors don’t have enough distance from our story? Or is it because it’s another style of writing that takes different skills? Probably a mix of both.
Next I tackle Athena of Korinth. I’ll be doing some simplifying in that novel as well, but I’ll especially be working on making it “stand alone.” My goal is for the reader to be able to pick up Athena – or any future novels in the Red Mirror Series – and enjoy reading the ancient Egyptian novels for themselves without having to have read Isis first.
Of course, I would love for the reader to want to go back to the beginning to understand fully the evolution of party girl to powerhouse that takes place over the three novels.
Don’t want to forget to mention that I redesigned the covers of the Red Mirror Series for better viewing on Kindle and iPad. You see those above. Also have to confess that Elektra is not written yet, but she is playing out scenes in my mind. My goal is to get Athena edited and then get to work on bringing Elektra to life!
Sunflowers make me happy
I took this photo on my living room in the morning about 9 am.
Don’t know why I was so drawn to the sunflowers at Trader Joe’s – maybe it was the price (cheap -$4.99) that gave the most drama for the buck. Or maybe I just needed the yellow power.
The Chinese vase I bought at Marshalls for nothing, probably $10-20 – I can’t remember now; it was years ago. The brass candlesticks I bought in a second hand store in Copenhagen for about $20.
Radio Interview about my life and travels in North Africa
That’s me in 1976 outside Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Not North Africa but Middle East.
For more than three remarkable years of my life I lived in North Africa and the Middle East — specifically Morocco, Algeria and Saudi Arabia. Those adventures, both wonderful and not so wonderful, formed the person that I am today, and most especially, the woman who wrote Isis Trilogy. Drawn from my own personal experiences hitchhiking across the Sahara, surviving sandstorms, sleeping under vast desert skies, wandering from oasis to oasis, my books are a fanciful retelling of my life in settings right out of 1001 Nights.
Isis Trilogy: The Red Mirror, The Emerald Tablet, The Black Scroll.
Click Here for the March 18 2016 KVEC am radio podcast that retraces some of those adventures in an interview conducted by Deborah Bayles. My reminiscing lasts about 40 minutes. Commercial breaks have blessedly been removed.
That’s me in 1971 photo for Algerian visa to start my journey south across the Sahara.
Mark Rankin, the very brave American who traveled with me on our hitchhiking adventure. Yes, sometimes on trucks and sometimes on camels.
Highlighted towns from my Sahara Odyssey.
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May 26, 2016 at 11:53 pm Leave a comment