And our Sue's Clues Mystery Author is:

Our Mystery Author this round is Traci L. Slatton. I think you will agree when I say she is one very interesting lady who surely has many stories waiting to be told. She is off to a great start with her first book, IMMORTAL, which is already being published in several countries.

After reading her interview below, be sure to check her website for more about herself, her family and her books. http://www.tracilslatton.com/

Thanks, Traci!

1. Your website mentions that you come from a long line of spiritual healers and psychics. You are also a graduate of a healing school. So, a couple of questions about this.

What was it like growing up with family members who were psychics? I guess having mom say, 'Watch crossing the street.' could take on a whole new meaning! Many of us have heard of healers, but what exactly does that mean? What can a healer do? And do you still practice?

My mother Jo will state categorically, “I don’t believe in ooey-ooey stuff.” An hour later, she’ll frown ferociously and say, “I have this witchy feeling….” And her “witchy feeling” is usually worth taking into consideration. She tends to just know stuff about people, like when I was pregnant with my third daughter and wasn’t telling anyone. My mother was in a different state and hadn’t seen me. She still knew.

If I’m worried about a certain matter that my mother has a good feeling about, she says, “It’ll be fine. I’ll bet you 17 cents.” I don’t know that she’s ever been wrong when she bet me 17 cents. On the other hand, if I’m worried and she’s not offering to wager, then I get a bit alarmed. It usually means that I’m not indulging in a fear fantasy, but that there are grounds for my concern.

A healer is someone who attunes herself to the unity of spiritual, mental, physical and psychological energies in order to bring about wholeness in herself and others. That’s the broadest definition I can come up with. It looks like me putting my hands on someone who is ill. The person receiving the healing usually starts to feel relaxed and peaceful. Sometimes they feel warmth or a tingly flowing sensation like water streaming into the place where the healer’s hands lay. There are also long distance healings, when the healers meditates to achieve the unitive state in herself and the recipient, who may be located on another continent.

The unitive state, that state of wholeness and openness and love, allows healing to occur. Sometimes the healing is curing: the migraines stop coming, the cold vanishes overnight, the cancer goes into remission. But sometimes the healing isn’t about fixing, it’s about being present with the disease. What is this disease trying to communicate about your life, your relationships, your feelings about yourself and your place in the world? For a healer, everything is alive and meaningful, and one aspect of disease is that it is saying something. I can’t say how often I’ve seen breast cancer in women who give all of themselves away to other people. We can’t blame ourselves for doing that, and it’s crucial to understand that the message in illness can not, must not, be used for self-flagellation. The underlying message is always about compassion for the self.

I still practice informally. Having been through an intensive, soul-transforming 4 year training, I can not imagine that healing in some form or another wouldn’t be in my life. My intention is that my novels offer healing to people. In IMMORTAL, I am asking the question, among others, “How do you survive intact when the worst happens?” That’s one of the reasons Luca experiences so much tragedy. There are so many heart-aches in this world, from the small personal ones: sickness, infidelity, betrayal, divorce, loss of a beloved through death or alienation, loss of a job or income, and so forth, to the huge, transpersonal heart-aches: war, famine, poverty, plague, ecological devastation, cataclysm. We are all suffering here on this little planet in the back-of-beyond of the Milky Way. So how do we find love, faith in the divine, and meaning in our lives? Answering this question is part of the human journey to wholeness.

And I still lay hands on my kids when they have a sprain or a boo-boo, or on my husband when he has a sinus infection!

2. You graduated high school and were accepted to Yale at age 16. Wow - that is quite impressive. Was it difficult being younger than the average college student? How did the other kids in the dorm relate to you?

The year I went to Yale, something like 20% of the class was young. That’s the figure that sticks in my head two decades later, anyway. I was often uncomfortable at Yale, but that was less about my age than about my background. I came from a Navy family, my father was an enlisted man; my mother dropped out of high school and went back for her GED; my maternal grandmother had a 3rd grade education and was an itinerant farm worker, traveling to pick crops in the South. I was the first person in my family to go to college. I had a huge culture shock, encountering enormously wealthy people who move at elite levels of society. For instance, the whole concept of a trust fund was bizarre to me: some people get money for just being born! Nice work if you can get it. The set of assumptions and expectations that I had grown up with were very different from almost everyone else’s at college.

But Yale was and is very diverse, and there were all kinds of people there. Mostly the people were brilliant and intense, that’s what they shared. Even the very wealthiest kids were distinguished; no one at Yale coasts solely on privilege and connection. I think the other kids found me odd and different, which is how I experienced myself. I didn’t really find myself until graduate school, or really until healing school, or maybe not even until I had children of my own and started getting books published. Every year I find myself more, and I like that. My dharma is coming to fruition slowly, and later in life. Maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be for me.

3. Tell us about your family. Your daughters, your husband, who is a very talented sculptor.

My kids are feisty, opinionated, creative, passionate, intelligent, and completely present when you speak with them. Even my step-daughter is like that. My oldest daughter, who at 17 is going to college next year, is very involved with Operation Smile, a charity that sends medical teams to repair cleft palates and facial deformities in children in developing nations. She went to Kolkata, India on a mission and blogged about the experience on a computer that Microsoft donated for that purpose. I say sometimes that she’s out to save the world, but when I do, she yells at me. “Mom, stop romanticizing me!” Can a mother say anything right, to, or about, a 17 year old daughter?

My 17 year old step-daughter is a serious, thoughtful young woman who is going to Johns Hopkins next year. I think she’ll be a doctor or psychologist; she’s compassionate and sweet. She brings a lot of balance to our home with her calm groundedness and wry sense of humor.

My 13 year old is a dancer, involved with ballet and the Isadora Duncan Foundation here in New York city. And boys. She has a rollicking sense of laughter and she likes vampires, Buffy, boys, the X Files, boys, her friends, and boys. Did I mention she likes boys?

My 3 year old is athletic, mischievous, funny, self-reliant, and possessed of no small amount of self-esteem. She’s been raised by 4 mommies, and it’s had the effect of leading her to believe that everyone in the world is her friend. We all watch her carefully when we’re outdoors because she’s convinced that somehow or another, everyone she meets is either a relative or close pal.

My husband Sabin Howard is the foremost proponent of the notion that the Italian Renaissance is alive and well and Michelangelo lives among us. Sabin is the world’s finest living classical figurative sculptor—in my opinion, though increasingly art critics say that, too. My husband is very attractive and he has a Greek God-like body better than that of most of his models—his tushie is grade A prime!—but his most salient quality is his uncompromising artistic integrity. Sabin always does what the piece of sculpture demands, with ruthless efficiency. If that means taking a powersaw to a figure and hacking off its arm, rewelding the armature, and redoing 6 months of work because the pose and gesture aren’t right: that’s what Sabin does. His commitment to his art is absolute. It’s terrifying and wonderful and inspiring at the same time.

4. Tell our readers about your book, IMMORTAL. From what I've seen online it looks to be an amazing read.

IMMORTAL is a rags-to-riches-to-burnt-at-the-stake story. It’s a journey of faith, an education of the heart, and a quest for love and the mystery of Luca’s origins.

Luca Bastardo, the main character, starts out life as a foundling boy on the streets, fending for himself any way he can. He’s cruelly indentured, but frees himself when the Black Plague sweeps through Florence. A family takes him in, and he begins to find his way into wholeness, love, connection, into his unfolding evolution as a physician and a warrior, a teacher and an alchemist. Along the way he encounters figures from Giotto to Botticelli. He tutors the young Leonardo and reluctantly works for Lorenzo de Medici. He meets his great love only to lose her as Savonarola scourges Florence.

The novel is called IMMORTAL but no one is left standing! Even Luca, with his mysterious, ageless longevity, dies at the hands of the Inquisition. This novel says that Love is the only immortality we can have.

And it is already being published in several languages! That is quite a feat for a first novel. You must be very happy about that.

I am thrilled and delighted that IMMORTAL is being published in other languages! So far it’s been bought in Poland, Russia, Spain, Greece, Brazil, and Serbia. With the US, that makes four continents! (Russia extends into Asia….) I think the Italian Renaissance translates well to other cultures; Florence between 1320 and 1500 was a unique context, a special and encapsulated place fermenting art and thought and literature and philosophy, sort of like Paris between the wars. 

5. Like many authors, you love to read. Who are your favorite authors? Are there any in particular who have influenced your own writing?

I read widely and I try to read as much popular fiction as possible. My favorites: Sue Grafton, Richard North Patterson, Daniel Silva, and Janet Evanovich. Sue Grafton’s prose is extraordinary, line for line some of the best prose being written today. She has a sure, masterful hand with character development, plot, and suspense, too. Richard North Patterson is an able writer who is addressing some of the most important questions of our time, such as: Can an honest man be elected President? His character portrayals are just brilliant, take a look at CAROLINE MASTERS. Daniel Silva is an elegant writer with a great character in his wounded but capable art restorer/Israeli superspy Gabriel Allon. And for sheer fun: Janet Evanovich. I laugh out loud reading her books! And who doesn’t enjoy a good, frisky love triangle??

I also read a lot of spiritual stuff. Right now I’m reading Thich Naht Hahn’s THE ART OF POWER and re-reading AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOGI. I love Ram Dass’ book on the Bhagavad Gita, PATHS TO GOD.

6. What is next? Are you working on anything new you can share with us?

I am playing around with a vampire novel, thanks to the urging of my middle daughter…. And Luca has two sons he didn’t know about….. Stay tuned for the sequel to IMMORTAL!