Mist

As winter approaches in the Adelaide Hills, R is n Clare finds herself swept up in a new cycle of energy and purpose. On the cusp of turning forty-two, she is stepping out with her first solo art exhibition after years of deep inner work healing from trauma and grief. At her Exhibition Opening and in the presence of a loving community of friends and wise elder women, R is n meets the young musician, Adam Wrenshaw, a Culann of the Pictish Spirit Tradition of which she is Priestess. Despite the difference in age between them, Adam demonstrates an unwavering interest in her and R is n realises that in the space of a heartbeat, everything can change. 'Mist' is an adventure in love and intimacy. As an expression of hope amidst a climate of cultural sadism and the continuing forces of Dominator ideology in the modern world, 'Mist' is a journey of erotic and therefore personal healing beyond the emptiness of 'all's fair in love and war'. Painting a vision of an ordinary life lived in the presence of Goddess and the responsibility that invokes, 'Mist' offers a possibility for life released from the entrenched patterns of domination and submission, violence, and the eroticisation of violence.

Louise M Hewett was born in Camden, New South Wales on April 8, 1966. Her childhood was spent moving from place to place, and attending a total of eleven schools: from Canberra and the suburbs of Sydney in her home state, to Victoria, and Papua New Guinea where she spent two years living near Port Moresby; and in South Australia where she finished school in 1983. She worked for seven years in Adelaide and Melbourne, and then took an eight month working holiday in the UK and Ireland to get back to her roots, searching for a sense of who she was and where she, and her ancestors, had come from. Motherhood arrived in 1993 and brought with it a transformative spiritual crisis, enriching her long held interests in mysticism, women’s spirituality, Paganism, and Goddess Feminism. Since then she’s been a regular traveller between worlds, nurturing her creative passions as well as her four children, and publishing her books. Louise lives in Strathalbyn in South Australia, with three of her four children among books, crystals, and a growing collection of antlers. ＂I began to write at the age of 11 and produced a 400 page novel at the age of 14 entitled ’The Neon Gods’ (after a lyric from Simon and Garfunkel’s ’The Sound of Silence’). At 19 I followed up with another novel called ’Austere Music’ and then at 22 with ’Echo’, the first story in which the character of Adam Wrenshaw appeared. ’Wildewood’ grew out of ’Echo’, which morphed into ’That Wild Country’ until the idea was laid aside for some ten years or so. In 2011, at the Spring Equinox, I began to write ’Mist’, the first book in the Pictish Spirit series. The time was clearly ripe and within five years I had written three of the four books in the series, and in 2016 published both ’Mist’ and ’Wind’ (volumes 1 & 2), fulfilling the long-time dream of self-publishing. The Pictish Spirit series is an adventure in love and intimacy.＂