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The Current Contest

Our current contest is

Name the 'Nasty Lawyer' in the second Ariel Quigley mystery,
"The Lawyer Who Died Trying"!
(This is NOT the lawyer who dies in this novel!)

Check it out on the Contest page.

Buy The Books!

If you don't yet have a copy of  The Chef Who Died Sautéing, or the Companion Cookbook,
and would like one:

Click here for Purchase Options

A Variety of Links

Honora Finkelstein and Susan Smily are the proud "parents"
of several other webs and subwebs.
Click below to visit these sites.

A Chance of a Ghost

Ariel Quigley - the heroine of the Ariel Quigley Mystery Series -
talks to ghosts, and she’d like to meet yours!

New-Wisdom

This is a site developed to accompany Honora's college level classes
in World Cultures and Humanities.

ScienceWorks

Elementary Science Units
& Instructional Resources for Teachers and Parents

Hemi-Sync Products and Programs

Hemi-Sync is a state-of-the-art audio technology
that enables us to mobilize and direct the power of our mind.

Visit these authors' websites!

Just For Fun...

Of Interest...

What We've Been Up To (Our Madcap Adventures)

Malice Domestic 2006

Wow! What a conference that was! We're still recuperating two weeks later!

It was a fantastic way to launch our first book in the Ariel Quigley Mystery series, and we just hope we can keep up the pace as the year progresses.

A Ribbon Cutting
As we mentioned to some of you at the conference, we've established an excellent rapport with the police in Alexandria, VA, where the mysteries are set. Early Friday morning, before the conference, we had a ribbon cutting with a sergeant and a patrol officer at the foot of King Street near the Potomac River, where our fictional restaurant is set in  'The Chef Who Died Sautéing'. We've also posted a couple of pictures of that event.

Winning Smiles
For all of you that we met at Malice-go-Round, the pictures that Susan took have been posted on the website - http://www.arielquigleymysteries.com . Just click on the 'Photo Gallery' tab.

Please come and take a look at the pictures, and if you'd like your name below the picture, let us know exactly where you are. (e.g. Malice-Go-Round Page 1, Picture No. 2, first on left.) You can send us the information via the Contact link at the top of the website.

Winning Hats
We've also posted some pictures of our 'Sunday Tea Party' hats - what a thrill it was to win for both the most beautiful AND the most creative hats!

Getting Ready for Malice 2007
We're already planning our costumes for next year, to go with the 2nd book in the Ariel Quigley series. And we're trying to decide what artifacts to put into the Silent Auction gift basket. There will be another limited edition T-shirt and more exciting goodies. The real challenge is to devise 2 more prize-winning hats!

Travel Plans

On the Road

Where We've Been...

Newport, RI
This newsletter comes to you from Newport, RI, where we're trying to fit in a little R&R. We have done lots of the tourist stuff, and now know where to get the best clam chowder, and the best muffins! There's a great evening of Irish music at Celtica on Long Wharf, Saturdays from 5-8 pm, if you like that kind of music, with friendly people and Guinness on tap. The mansions are the ultimate in ostentation, but we found it very interesting to look in on how people such as the Vanderbilts spent their 6-8 week summer holidays in their little 138,000 square foot cottage, with only 33 staff to tend their needs.

But our heroine Ariel is always first and foremost on our minds, so we did a book-talk and signing at Fairfield Newport at Long Wharf on Tuesday evening.

Where We're Going...
Home again, home again, jiggity jog! We'll be leaving Rhode Island on Friday, and stopping overnight in Reading, PA, for a Cinco do Mayo party with one of Honora's daughters. Then we'll be back in the mid-west (Grayville, IL - it's almost exactly halfway between St. Louis and Louisville) for a month before we make a short trip to Austin, TX (more about that in the next newsletter!)

From Grayville, we plan to make day trips out to a variety of places, with the following events already lined up.

May 20, 2-4 pm - Book Signing - Barnes and Noble - Evansville, IN 
June 3, 2-4 pm - Book Signing - Carmi Public Library - Carmi, IL
June 4, 1-3 pm - Book Signing - Borders Book Store - Evansville, IN 

Check our Tour and Events pages to see where we're heading for the rest of the year - we will update it regularly as we figure out just where we're going to be. And if you'd like us to head to your area, let us know where you live, and what bookstores or libraries we could do a signing in, and we'll try to get there at some point. Nowhere on the continent is totally out of the realm of possibility, even though some places may be a bit hard to reach!

Ariel's Metaphysics Corner

Ariel is a psychic detective, and there are several references in the novel to metaphysical concepts. It is our plan to examine some of these areas in detail through the newsletter.

Tarot

Part 1 - An Introduction
© 2006 Honora Finkelstein

Tarot cards have an uncertain origin. Most researchers will agree that they first appeared as symbols on pieces of cardboard or sturdy paper in about the 14^th century in Europe. But the symbols themselves go back at least as far as the temples of the ancient Egyptians, where similar images appeared. Some researchers believe they were created in the town of Fez in Egypt after the Library of Alexandria burned for the last time; their origin as a “game” is said to have been a ruse to hide the wisdom teachings they contained. There’s also a tradition that they were brought to the West by the Gypsies—hence, the connection with Gypsy fortunetellers. But there’s a whole school of thought suggesting that their true significance is to teach a mystical path to spiritual awakening—this school also ties the cards to the Hebrew mystical tradition of Kabbalah. 

Sometimes called “The Book of Books,” the cards are believed by many to be the symbolic keys to deep wisdom. There are two parts to a Tarot deck, what are called the Greater Arcana, which are 22 pictures or “paths of wisdom,” and the Lesser Arcana, which are 56 cards numbered into four suits. These are actually the basis for the 52 cards of modern playing card decks. 

The famous father of modern psychology, Carl Jung, believed the 22 pictures of the Greater Arcana were what he called archetypes, or universal roles that all humans in all cultures in all ages have played or must play in order to become psychologically whole. 

The Lesser Arcana cards are in four suits that represent the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of human life. The coins are the physical, since metal is dug out of the earth, and also perhaps because money makes the physical world go round. The swords are the mental, since the way we think is often a two-edged sword. The cups are our emotional side, since water is often interpreted as our emotional nature. And the wands, or wooden staffs, are our spiritual nature—wood burns, and fire represents the spirit. The Lesser Arcana cards also use numerology or number symbolism to look at life’s events. Each suit has 10 numbered cards plus 4 court cards, a page, a knight, a queen, and a king. Each of these cards has numerological significance or, in the case of the court cards, personality significance for the individual. Coins and cups are considered to be feminine suits; swords and wands are considered to be masculine suits. 

In the modern playing deck, there are 10 numbered cards, plus three face cards in each suit: a jack, a queen, and a king. The knights are what dropped out. In the modern deck, the suit of coins has become the suit of diamonds, another valuable item of exchange from the earth. Swords have become spades. Cups have become hearts. And wands have become clubs. All the Greater Arcana cards have dropped away except the Fool or Jester, which became the Joker of the modern pack. 

As a Jungian reader, I like to think that the cards have a “psychodynamic” quality about them. I ask the people I read for to pull a certain number of cards, and I believe their psyches or subconscious minds will be more aware than their conscious minds of what they need to know and hear from me as their “reader.” So they'll pull those cards that most reflect what is going on in their own psyches. And it is my job to tell them, based on what they’ve drawn, what I think is going on within. In other words, a $25.00 card reading is a really inexpensive way to get a psychotherapy session! 

Other more gifted psychic readers may use the cards simply as a way of accessing their own psychic abilities—sort of as a psychic springboard to internal vision. Either way, the person being read will probably get some therapeutic insights. 

Ariel Quigley does a lot of Tarot readings for other characters in The Chef Who Died Sautéing. And she ties the cards to the study of Kabbalah in several places in the book. We will be looking more deeply at both Tarot and Kabbalah in the next several issues of our newsletter.

Fan Corner

Please sign our GUESTBOOK and let us know what you think of the book, our website, this newsletter - what ever!

We're hoping more people will try out our little "survey" - so we'll run it for a few more issues. Click on the link to vote on some truly momentous issues.

Also, please feel free to chat with us regarding anything at all. We'll reply to all our email, and try to answer all your questions, share some adventures, have some fun.

Contact us by email: authors [at] arielquigleymysteries.com
Contact us by web form: Contact Link

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