Truth, AI, and the Wild: The World of Raven’s Daughter
This is Wendy Halley and you're listening to Lucid Cafe. Alright. Here we go. Thanks for joining me for another episode of Lucid Cafe. Today's a day I've been preparing for for years.
Wendy:So dramatic sounding, but it's true. It's the official publication date for my new book, Raven's Daughter. All the behind the scenes work is done. Now it's time to put it out there and hope it finds readers. So in today's episode, my brilliant and funny friend, Claire Wheeler, joins me to help me talk about my book.
Wendy:Please keep in mind that this is really the first time I'm talking about my book in detail out loud to another human being. So you'll have to forgive me if I meander a bit here and there, especially since the themes of this book even though it's fiction are broad reaching and touch on current challenges we're facing like deception and artificial intelligence. My goal with Raven's Daughter was to create an imaginative and engaging way to look at our collective and personal relationships with deception and its devastating impact particularly as it relates to our disconnection from the natural world. Claire was the absolute perfect person to have this conversation with and I'm grateful to her for joining me. So please enjoy our conversation.
Wendy:Before we get going? You mean, like, to each other?
Claire:Yeah. Like, I love you. And no matter what happens, I'm gonna still love you.
Wendy:No matter how this conversation goes...
Claire:We're gonna be different after this. And I want you to know that I'm okay with that. Okay. Is that helpful?
Wendy:Yeah, it's really helpful. Yeah. Yeah. It's really helpful. As always, I mean you always say the things that make me feel really good.
Wendy:Yeah. Especially when I'm talking about something like Yeah. What we're about to talk about. Good. Yeah.
Wendy:So I feel completely at ease and comfortable. Yeah. And Yeah. This is actually gonna be a great intro. Yeah.
Wendy:Because I've been recording all of this.
Claire:You have not. Oh god. Oh god.
Wendy:Perfect. Perfect. So my dear friend Claire
Claire:Hi.
Wendy:Is here with me to help me talk about my new book.
Claire:Yes. I am.
Wendy:Claire is the perfect choice to help me talk about this book, and I'm hoping that you'll see that too in a little bit here. But if you don't know of Claire before today, you should know about Claire. Because we we we happened to do a podcast, the two of us Yeah. Back in twenty nineteen, nineteen, I believe.
Claire:The before times.
Wendy:The before times,
Wendy:yeah. But it was kind of like the intro to the now times.
Claire:That's right.
Wendy:Like we got a little glimpse during that period.
Claire:We did.
Claire:Of, yeah. When I think back on it, it was an exercise in absurdity, and that is very helpful preparation for what we're in now.
Wendy:Yeah, exactly.
Claire:How wise of us.
Wendy:I know. We didn't even realize how wise we were.
Claire:That's right. I think that's how wise people operate.
Wendy:Right. Right. Exactly.
Claire:You don't want to know how wise you are otherwise you come off as a little arrogant.
Wendy:Yeah, exactly.
Claire:And unlikable. Which is definitely not us.
Wendy:The question is are we faking what we're saying right now to make it look as though we're being intentionally humble when we're really not?
Claire:The other question is, is it possible for two Leos to be humble?
Wendy:That's a great fucking question.
Wendy:So our the Claire and Wendy podcast is called Inside the Box with Claire and Wendy and we give really amazing advice. True advice. It's a true advice podcast and there are nine exciting episodes that we recorded answering life's most important questions. The tagline is: Because life isn't absurd enough. So we answer the questions for you to make your life easier and talk about wisdom.
Claire:Chock full.
Claire:Mhmm.
Wendy:Yep. So just to give you an example some of the topics that we cover. How not to die. Mhmm. How to win a fight.
Claire:That's right.
Wendy:How to not be an asshole. Right.
Claire:Yep. How to be professional.
Wendy:Yep. That's actually the most popular episode we have, believe it or not. Yeah. How to be a parent.
Claire:That's right, how to parent a child, which neither of us do. Exactly.
Wendy:But we know how to do it really, really well. Absolutely. Which is why you should listen to it.
Claire:Yeah,
Wendy:so there's that. Yeah, give it a listen. Yeah, yeah. Hopefully, you'll get a charge out of it. But that's not the reason why we're here, is it?
Claire:I mean, we could just promote our other podcast on this podcast for a while longer, but maybe we should.
Wendy:We should just do other things. Moving on. Because am I trying to avoid talking about my book, maybe, a little?
Claire:Well, in that case, let me take the reins. Wendy, I'm so excited to talk to you about this book that I'm holding in my hands. She actually is.
Wendy:It's a galley copy she's got.
Claire:It's really, really beautiful to see. There's some gorgeous cover art. There are pages with words on them.
Wendy:Really? Yeah. I didn't mean for that to happen.
Claire:And I had the privilege of reading an early version of the book. And I have to admit, and this is vulnerable because I really want people to think highly of me, but I'm not a big reader.
Wendy:Oh, I thought you were gonna talk shit about my book. No.
Claire:I'm gonna talk shit about myself. I'm not a big reader. She's not. I do enjoy reading when I read, but it's not my go to. And I was thrilled when you asked me to read this book.
Wendy:You actually, because I know you're not a big fan of reading. Yeah. You actually asked me if you could read it.
Claire:That's right.
Wendy:Which I was shocked by and I'm also thrilled.
Claire:Yeah. Well, I like you a lot. I have been hearing about this book it's been taking shape and as you've been working on it. It just talks on and on. Following and on.
Claire:Along with the plot and I just have to say, as not a big reader, this was very hard to put down. I was immediately engaged with it and had a total blast reading it. Not only is it, in my opinion, incredibly relevant for the times that we're in now, but also very irreverent and funny. It's very lighthearted in a way that I need and provides very helpful guidance, I think, or inspiration for being a human in 2025. So thank you for the gift of writing this book.
Wendy:Wow. Well, thank you for that feedback. Holy shit. Yeah. Just for the record, I did not pay Claire to say any of that.
Wendy:And I'm just as surprised as you are hearing it. I mean, said sweet things about it before, but not in that way. So maybe she was saving that for this conversation, which she didn't know we were gonna be having until, like, a couple weeks ago when I asked her if she'd be willing to help me talk about it. I'm so willing
Claire:because I'm a big fan.
Wendy:Yeah. I was thrilled that you enjoyed the story. I cast a pretty wide beta reader net because the story is important to me and I also wanted to make sure because it was a beast to write. I wanted to make sure that people other than me would understand what I was trying to convey. So I had a I mean not everybody was able to to get through it which I totally understand.
Wendy:That's why I cast a pretty wide net because it's a big ask to ask somebody to read a book and give feedback. But yeah, thank you.
Claire:You're welcome. All
Wendy:right. So we should end right there.
Claire:That's we're done. We did it. Just kidding. We are just beginning. So yeah, let's start with a quick synopsis, whatever you care to share about what this book is about.
Claire:Okay. Well, in a very brief nutshell, it is first of all,
Wendy:I should say, the genre is considered speculative fiction. And so it's a combination of fantasy and a bit of near future sci fi. And so I wanted to write this book in the most mainstream form I could think of, and fiction seemed like a really good way to go as opposed to non fiction which to me can come across as preachy on occasion. Non fiction is typically directive in some way and I just wanted it to be an entertaining and engaging story that hopefully is thought provoking. Anyway, so it's about a mind virus of deception.
Wendy:And the protagonist, her name is Charlie, she is and she doesn't know this, she's just living an unassuming life as a receptionist and she starts having these intense dreams and eventually waking dreams that pull her into this other reality that I refer to as the dreaming realm where she learns that she's much more than just Charlie, that she's actually an ancient member of the Ravenclan. And the book is called Raven's Daughter, the Storykeeper. And she finds out that she is the storykeeper and that she has this destiny that she is on earth to fulfill. And so the story is about her journey to seeing if she can fulfill her destiny because she also has this really tragic past that she has to heal because she she's not ready for this really precarious journey she has to take until she heals that. Because she can't access this ancient part of herself until she heals that part of herself that's wounded.
Wendy:And so at first we go through her journey of healing herself and then as that's happening these visions are deepening and she's getting acquainted with this ancient part of herself and then some of the characters who are in the dreaming realm. Yeah, I mean she meets some really colorful at least I tried to write them as colorful characters in this book in the dreaming realm and in the physical realm. It's a not too distant in our future timeline on earth.
Claire:Yeah. Yeah. And I wanna focus on that at first because our heroine's challenge here is working with that mind virus of deception. And to me, deception is such a specific human experience. You know, it's such a specific thing that we can do to ourselves and do to others.
Claire:And I'm curious about why you chose that as the virus.
Wendy:Deception itself?
Claire:Mhmm.
Wendy:You know, I was really debating as I was thinking about having this conversation with you and then any potential other conversations I would have and how I would talk to potential readers about how much I should reveal about where the story came from. Fair. Fair.
Claire:Challenge by choice.
Wendy:And so I kind of landed in the place of if someone asks me, I will tell them where it came from. And I can't answer your question without telling you where it came from. So this story has been in the works in my psyche. It's been emerging for probably since 02/2008 is when it started to emerge and it has to do with my personal shamanic experiences over a vast period of time and having experiences that seem completely unrelated and then I wasn't able to like I started writing the story back in 2012 and I opened the wellness center in 2014 but 2013 I started focusing on my energy and trying to open the wellness center and I had to put the book down but I also didn't have the full story yet. I only had an idea.
Wendy:I knew it was called Raven's Daughter and I knew that the protagonist was Charlie and that I knew she had this tragic past. But I didn't have anything in my head yet about a mind virus. But I had a curiosity where I just had this thought one day. Is there a mental realm? Because there's the dreaming realm and there's the physical realm and there's the energetic realm.
Wendy:And then as part of the energetic realm because our thoughts have a frequency to them. Wondered if there was a place that our human minds live in a collective and I asked if there is a place like this and I was shown this place but it was really really hard to perceive because it's not three-dimensional. It's at least the way the best way I could describe it is like I had to be at a certain angle to perceive it. Otherwise you would miss it. So the best way I can describe it is it's more two dimensional.
Wendy:Almost like
Claire:a plane that you're looking at.
Wendy:Exactly.
Claire:Yeah. P L A n e.
Wendy:It's yeah.
Claire:That you could walk past and not notice, but if you catch the catch it, you can see that it's a whole it's a whole reality.
Wendy:And then slipping into that well, I actually once I got the right angle from the external view of it I didn't enter it. I just saw the external view and I saw that it was corrupted. I saw that there was all of this darkness in it. It didn't look healthy and then I asked to understand what that was that I was seeing and I just had the word deception in my head. And I was like, Oh, oh, oh.
Wendy:And so I didn't connect that to the the story until later, like years later.
Claire:And tell us how deception kind of plays out in the story. Know, give us some examples maybe of what you mean as the author as deception. To me, it's, you think about the nature of
Wendy:a virus, right? Its whole goal is to stay alive and to do that it needs a host to stay alive. And so when we deceive ourselves, which like you were saying before is a really common thing, we all do it. And how that translates when we talk to others we deceive each other as well but because of the nature of our psyches is that we can talk ourselves into or out of anything so a deception can become a form of truth for us even though it's you can tell yourself it's true even though it's bullshit. So I thought about how that would play out and I was thinking about how someone will share something and the shape shifting nature of deception is that it becomes what the receiver wants it to become.
Wendy:It's sort of like it needs to find a home within that person's psyche and so I wrote the deception in the mental realm and how it's perceived by Charlie as a protagonist is like liquid mercury that's reflective and so she sees it in people's eyes like a sheen of silver in their eyes at a certain point when she's open enough to be able to see it after she's done enough healing where she can actually now see a bigger truth and that you can see yourself in someone else when they're telling you a deception. And so then you adopt the deception as your own and that spreads the virus. Does that make sense? Is it like, is an example of that maybe like taking something personally? Or just finding a connection with a lie.
Wendy:A lie. Yeah. It's confirmation bias or it's like, like you already have the shape of the deception. You just needed more information to feed it to say like, yeah, that's how it is.
Claire:Mhmm.
Wendy:And then it just takes on a life of its own. Right. And then you share that with someone else and then it finds a home in them.
Claire:Yeah, so there's a way in which we're seeing this play out on a national and global scale in terms of Maybe a little bit. Maybe just a tiny bit in terms of the media we consume and produce, right? Yeah. That perpetuates certain world views that may or may not be 100% accurate.
Wendy:Yeah, and that brings me to like when I was an undergraduate back in the late 80s and early nineties, I was studying media arts as a third of my degree, which is basically video and print journalism. And the journalism I studied is much different than the journalism. I wouldn't call it journalism now. So it's like hard to know what to believe Mhmm. Because it's more like editorial now Mhmm.
Wendy:Which is not journalism. Right. It's an opinion. Right. So that has become the source of information sharing is one opinion.
Wendy:And it's it's so fucking loaded. Yeah. Right? Yeah. How do you untangle that?
Wendy:And how do you
Claire:know it's true? Right. Right. And this is yeah. This is what this is what Charlie in the story is up against.
Claire:You know, it becomes clearer to her, as you said, as she heals that this is what so much of, so many people in the physical realm are suffering from or struggling with. But it's so a part of the norm that we don't even realize it. It's, you know what I
Wendy:mean? It's like, until you get outside of it, until after that journey I had and saw like, oh, we're corrupted. Our minds are corrupted. This mental realm is corrupted with deception. Now that I saw that, it was like I was seeing it everywhere.
Claire:Yeah, there's some commentary there on kind of the whenever I get overwhelmed being a human in the world, especially around this type of conversation that we're having, I try to remember that we're really very basic creatures. I just try to, you know, just really try to have a lot of compassion for how much simpler we are than we think we are. And there's a way in which being deceived is alluring. It's exciting, right? Like you're saying, we can get into this habit of believing what we wanna believe if that belief is more convenient, if it's more comfortable, if it projects a better image of ourselves.
Claire:And I think the way that that escalates in the story is through, at first, what seems to be, you know, artificial intelligence, and then we actually get to work our way into understanding and experiencing through the book augmented reality, virtual reality and augmented reality. And I'm curious, obviously that is also something that's very up right now. Yeah, a little bit. AI and virtual reality and augmented reality all play a role in this book, and it seems to me that it's possibly a cautionary tale. So, I'm just kind of curious about, yeah, the connection between deception and artificial intelligence, and if there's anything you're wanting readers to take away or to consider through the book.
Claire:Those are
Wendy:actually two big questions. So I'll start with my interpretation of AI and the role it because AI plays a role in the book in that it exponentially spreads the virus. And so who or what creates AI? People. Right.
Wendy:Ideas. And if they're corrupted, if they have a virus, what's gonna happen to anything that they create? It's gonna get more corrupted real fast. Yeah. Right.
Wendy:And proliferate, set a Yeah, exactly. Like AI didn't create itself. Right. Humans programmed it. Right.
Wendy:So we program it in our image. Right. Because we want a smarter version of ourselves. Something that's gonna make our lives easier which in some cases it's doing that and in other cases, I mean that's what the big controversy is, Right. With artificial intelligence and the idea of artificial general intelligence is that it's gonna start acting independently of us.
Wendy:And then what does that mean? So it's an interesting time in that we don't know how it's gonna play out. And there's, I mean, it's probably gonna be a mixture of the whole spectrum of outcomes.
Claire:Right, and there's an acknowledgement there that because artificial intelligence is based on people and our imperfect brains, it could be good and noble if we were purely good and noble and, you know, had positive intent, but we're not. We absolutely aren't.
Wendy:Yeah, and as you're saying that, I'm thinking about, well, where is artificial intelligence garnering its information?
Claire:People.
Wendy:The internet, right?
Claire:The internet,
Wendy:That's where
Claire:it's Right, a specific location where we all
Wendy:It's like the warehouse of all of our opinions and the books we've created throughout history, the entertainment we've created. I mean, it's, you name it. Everything that humans have done is being kind of filtered into this place we call the internet and artificial intelligence is basically intelligent based on this foundational information and so it's it's gonna have the whole spectrum of everything.
Claire:Mhmm.
Wendy:Like our accomplishments, innovations, and our fucked upness. And of course, the way we see the world, how we make sense of the world. Yeah. And so it really is a reflection of us. Right.
Wendy:Exponentially, though. Crazy, if you think about it.
Claire:It really is. And it's also making me think about the way that very important information on federal websites is being taken down at a rapid rate and how that alters the machine. But does it actually go away?
Wendy:Right. Or is it kind of in some sort of, don't, yeah, don't know how all that shit works. I don't either. I've heard that once you have something on the internet, it actually never goes away, that it can be accessed in some way.
Claire:Yeah, some good stuff.
Wendy:But I'm not smart enough to know how to do that. I don't even know if I wanna be.
Claire:So back to that kind of second question. So yeah, AI is a cautionary tale, sort of how AI functions in the book.
Wendy:And then The ultimate hope for my wish for readers to take away.
Claire:Exactly, yeah.
Wendy:Really? I think my deepest hope is that people will feel moved to look at their relationship with the truth and what that means to them. I think it's such a vital question. What is true? How do you know what's true?
Wendy:And how do you determine that? I mean there is physical reality and there are certain truths that we all abide by or know like about our experience as human beings on this planet in this solar system in this universe. And there are certain rules that we know on the material level that exist that are true. Right? Gravity, the sun is the center of our solar system, although we didn't always believe that.
Claire:That's
Wendy:right. And that we orbit the sun and all the planets in our solar system orbit the sun, that we live and then we physically die. And how you want to interpret what happens before and after that is up for debate. Life and death is part of physical reality but then is there something beyond that that can't be answered from the perspective of physical or materialist reality. Where was I going with all that?
Wendy:So Investigating the truth. Investigating the truth. And then there's your your subjective experience and what's true for you about you. Like who are you at any given moment? What is your truth at any given moment?
Wendy:It's not going to be the same truth as someone else's truth. I mean, there's always common threads. There's universal things, but but I think it's it's like, I smell patchouli. I will cut a motherfucker. I will some people
Wendy:love that. People love that.
Claire:Right. Shit. Can't even give them that.
Wendy:But that's not, yeah, it's not true for everybody. So that's like my personal truth. No patchouli. Right. Stay away.
Wendy:That's the most ridiculous example I can give. But it's kind of like that is true for me. That is very true. Right. So that's like an experiential truth.
Wendy:But then there's like the very personal truths, like what you believe in, what you put stock in, what your morals are, your values, that kind of thing. And that's not gonna be the same truth for everybody. Right. And I think that's such
Claire:an interesting way to think about this because if the goal is for all of us to investigate our truths, then inevitably we have different truths that we're subscribing to, different beliefs that we each follow. And, you know, your truth might differ from mine and therefore, I might perceive you to be deceptive. An asshole. Or, yeah, deceptive.
Wendy:Or, asshole. Or, deceived.
Claire:Yeah. Or deceived, right? And so, there's also, I think, a message in here around kind of no truth surpassing another truth, in a way, or how do we coexist as human beings with our differences rather than sort of
Wendy:going to battle theologically or psychologically with ideas that are different from ours, right? Exactly. It reminds me of a theory that really stayed with me that I learned as an undergrad. I think it was an intro to sociology course that I took and it was called the terror management theory. Have you ever heard of it?
Wendy:No. Okay, it's a really interesting theory where here's my my best attempt at explaining it. It may not be completely accurate, but the idea of it is hopefully a good recollection. That the only thing we know that is true is that we are all going to die. But then each culture comes up with an explanation for what happens when you die.
Wendy:And historically before cultures bumped into one another they would be content with their understanding of what happens when but when people started migrating and bumping into each other culture A would have one explanation for what happens when you die and then culture B would have a completely different or maybe similar, but some different ways to explain what happens after you die. And it's like, who's who's right? And so they would go to war because it would be very threatening to hear an opposing truth. Especially when it's about the thing we're terrified of the most. Right.
Wendy:And that also begs the question of what is true about these more kind of esoteric metaphysical questions. And we see that happening in our culture with these clashes of ideas and there's the this is my truth and then there's this group that believes this other truth and it's not going well. Right. Because it's threatening. Yeah.
Wendy:And there's a degree of certainty about, well, my truth is the truth. It's the actual truth. Capital t truth. Right.
Claire:And the very existence of your truth is threatening enough to go to war, cause harm. And I think there's a way in which we're seeing the current wealth hoarding and power hoarding happening, you know I hadn't noticed. In our country as almost a religious, you know, religious cult. Yeah, like fervor. Fervor, right, that is ultimately can be boiled down to probably a fear and a resistance to mortality, ultimately.
Claire:It's a really destructive one, but it's, at least we can acknowledge or relate to it at very basic level that those men are having a hard time with the fact that they will die.
Wendy:It could boil down to all that. You know, I was just thinking too as we were talking that when I had that shamanic experience, that visionary experience of the mental realm and seeing it corrupted with deception and how that how that just stayed with me in such a pronounced way and I think it was intentional. Like I was supposed to that was just part of this big orchestration towards writing this book. Back then I remember going to my it was my final advanced training in shamanism. And we're sitting in this group of, what is it, like 35 people and reintroducing ourselves to everybody, letting everybody know where we're at at that particular time.
Wendy:And I think I said when it was my turn, yeah because I think we're supposed to talk about what we had learned since our last gathering or what we're up to and I said I've come to the conclusion that we're all full of shit. Yes. And it did not go
Claire:over well.
Wendy:No? No, the looks I got when I'm like, oh. Oh. Okay, I guess. Wrong audience.
Wendy:Yeah. But that was my takeaway from that visionary experience like, oh, we're all full of shit. Right. Like we're all of us. All of us are full of shit.
Wendy:We're telling ourselves stories and then what is the truth? Yeah. And that is such an intimate personal thing and that's what really my ultimate hope for this book is is to explore that for yourself. Yeah. What does that even mean?
Claire:Yeah, and I think one way you encourage readers to explore that is actually through traveling to these different realms, and I wanna talk about those realms for just a second. You mentioned them already as the physical realm. This is where Charlie is a receptionist. She has a real dirtbag of a fiance. She's trying to figure out her life, right?
Claire:And I love the description on the back of the book, which is, at the center of this crisis is Charlie Hanover, an ordinary receptionist burdened by a tragic past who longs to live a safe, mundane life. I love that idea of longing to live a safe, mundane life, and of course, sometimes that's what we all long for, but in a way, that's Charlie's own deception, right,
Wendy:that that's Exactly.
Claire:But, as we were saying, there's the physical realm where Charlie's life is playing out and where she wants to live that safe, mundane life. But we also have the dreaming realm in this book and the mental realm, as you just described, the mental realm is a place that you visited in your own journey.
Wendy:And it's the archive of human thought.
Claire:Okay, yeah. So, yeah, tell us a little bit more about these realms. I think a lot of listeners know and you just mentioned earlier that you're trained as a shaman, so maybe a little bit of shamanistic 101 on the existence of multiple realms, but I'm curious about your choice to use realms in the story and why it's important that multiple realms exist at once. Why it's important that we are able to access different realms in one existence.
Wendy:Okay. Well, I will do my best to answer that huge question. And I I don't even think I considered why I should. I just did. Mhmm.
Wendy:Yeah. Separate the realms because it just it's like the story played out that way
Claire:Yeah.
Wendy:In my mind. And I did not I just wanna say for the record, I did not write this as a shamanic story. It is I wanted it to be a mainstream story but it's very shamanic.
Claire:Mhmm.
Wendy:I used the word shamanism in there one time, I think, and just as a quick reference between two characters. But the dreaming realm, it that begs the question of what's real Mhmm. And what's true. Right? And so from the indigenous perspective, what I was taught and what my experience has shown me is that the dreaming realm is the real world.
Wendy:Okay. And that the physical realm is the dream.
Claire:So let's, yeah, let's just say that again. Because everybody's about to get their socks knocked off here.
Wendy:You think so?
Claire:I think so.
Wendy:Well, I mean it's an ancient concept that's kind of universal, and we've gotten really far away from it in the Western world. Not that I feel like we need to go back in time and live like native people. I think we don't need to romanticize the past, but there's a lot of wisdom in how people lived before Western culture kind of took over. In that Colonized everything. Yeah.
Wendy:Yeah. Exactly. The idea was was that the dreaming realm, the dream time, the spirit world, whatever you wanna call it, is the real world, which is an interesting thing. Like, that's home, which means that there's an aspect of us that maybe is living there. Mhmm.
Wendy:Or it resides there. All the time. Living through eternity. Okay. And there's no time in this place.
Claire:Just to say too, the way that this plays out in the book is that there's sort of different sets of characters in each of the realms, all of which work together to tell the story and are necessary in the arc of the story and the hero's journey that Charlie goes on. In the dreaming realm, there are kind of, you know, almost feels kind of like fantastical mythical characters. I have to say, the dreaming realm is certainly the most comfortable and the most soothing of all the realms. Is it? Yeah.
Claire:I would say the mental realm, from a reader perspective, is pretty Not,
Wendy:yeah.
Claire:And then the physical realm is just what we know to be, our It's familiar. It's familiar. There's good stuff, there's bad stuff. Is it safe to say that the truth in the terms of this conversation we're having about understanding truth or seeking truth or getting to know truth, is it safe to say that truth lives in the dreaming realm?
Wendy:Well, I would invite people to try to figure that out. Yeah. What does that mean for you? Right? What really?
Wendy:To me, that's a very intimate personal thing how we come to that non physical truth. Mhmm. Like what is, are we more than just our humanness? And the dreaming realm also I'm talking about a a specific part of the the dreaming realm in this book. I don't go into it.
Wendy:I don't make it completely fully shamanic. I just I make it a place. And there are sort of archetypal characters and it's very it's like a fantastical, magical, natural world.
Claire:It's lovely. It's beautiful. I mean, it's described beautifully. I love, as I was saying when I was setting up this question, I love where we get to travel in this book. I wanna talk about some of the other locations we get to go to within the realms, but I love being able to move in and out of these realms and as the reader, the time you get to spend in the dreaming realm is so soothing.
Claire:Oh, good, And so beautiful visually, so colorful, so comforting. Yeah. And so, you mentioned exploring this question about whether or not we're more than human, and so, I would also say that the book asks us to question whether we're more than human, and then also, are we more than our minds, right? Because more than human, humans referring here to the physical realm, right, where part of the story takes place, and then more than our minds, because the story also takes place in the mental realm, is where the virus lives. And the dreaming realm, I think invites us to consider what else is there.
Claire:Where I think a lot of day to day life for us as humans on this planet is very physical and also very mental.
Wendy:Yeah, that's a great point. And yeah, and the dreaming realm is the non physical realm. And as I wrote it in the intro, put a little, there's a page that describes the three realms and the dreaming realm is what dreams the physical world into existence. Which is
Claire:why it's the real world.
Wendy:It's sort of where things originate. Which suggests what about us? That we're dreamt into Yeah. What we're on this And so, that means that is an ancient concept that this is the dream, that this physical reality is the dream. And so I went with that as a premise in this book because I like that and it seems to be in my direct experience once I've adopted that kind of perspective to make sense of things, it seems to have a degree of truth to it.
Wendy:When I start interacting in the dreaming and changing things in the dreaming, it transforms me in the physical. Right. Like that's the cool thing about my shamanic practice is that having those direct experiences lead to direct transformation. As opposed to reading a self help book which has ideas, someone's ideas about how to transform yourself. It's a little removed.
Wendy:Whereas if you have a direct experience that invites you to see yourself from this other angle, you can't, as I've said before in maybe other episodes, you can't have a conversation with a tree and be the same after that. But then from our Western viewpoint, that sounds batshit. What do you mean have a conversation with a tree? Trees are trees. But what if they have their own intelligence, their own kind of consciousness?
Wendy:Animism. Right? And you can be in relationship with that. I mean, yeah, it sounds batshit, but when you do it and then you can't look at a treat the same way after you've developed a relationship with it. You just can't.
Wendy:So when you think about, I'm gonna cut this tree down. It's like, oh, this tree is, why would I need to think about this.
Claire:Right, right.
Wendy:Well, that's a weird thing, but that's where my head went.
Claire:No, I think it's, I mean, yeah, no, I think you said it beautifully, and it's this whole Cartesian model, like science model of humans being at the center of everything as opposed to, and the mind and the heart being separate, all, you know, all of these ways that, all these ideas that we've come up with that separates us from the rest of the natural world.
Wendy:I'm so glad you brought that up because that is a major premise of this story Yeah. That you're hitting on is there's a a strong tie in with the mental realm as it gets more corrupted and it starts expanding. The mental realm exists in between the dreaming realm and the physical realm. It's like in between and it emerged when humans started having their first thoughts. When they first started having cognition and thoughts and beliefs it started to grow in response to that and so as it's growing and getting more and more corrupt it's taking over the dreaming realm and this is a threat because if the dreaming realm goes away so does the physical world because that's what dreams the physical world into existence.
Wendy:That's why this the pressure on Charlie is immense because if she fails and this is her fifth attempt to try to do this because 's so freaking hard to get into the mental realm and deliver the remedy which she has inside of her. She has to deliver the remedy to this place of entropy. It's complete chaos in the mental realm and it's riddled with deception. How is she gonna do that? How is she gonna do that and not lose her mind and not so anyway, there's that.
Wendy:But if it goes away, then everything goes away. And so we're seeing this reflected in the natural world in the physical realm. And to me, that's like a really interesting metaphor for our relationship with the natural world as well. Human's relationship with the natural world, which gets into the bigger kind of cultural worldview that dominates most of the planet right now which is and I've talked about this on the podcast before, but colonial mind, this cultural worldview of dominating our environment and changing it and making it the way we want it to be. It's just a worldview.
Claire:Mhmm.
Wendy:Is it the truth? No. Is this how it's supposed to be that the American version of colonialism is particularly special. Yeah, like every man for himself, the American dream. If you follow these rules, you'll have riches and success and power, status.
Wendy:All of that is emphasized but it leaves out so much stuff and it's so individualistic. Humanity in and of itself is very dependent. Humans are a very dependent creature. Meaning we need each other. We need community and that's the opposite of what's really emphasized in our culture.
Wendy:Not to mention throughout history, Western history, contemporary history, these concepts that form our cultural worldview. For example, materialism Mhmm. Which is very like, I'm gonna use the environment for its resources to better my life. Mhmm. Not thinking about the impact because we don't have a relationship with the natural world.
Wendy:And if you don't have a relationship with the natural world, then you can do whatever the fuck you want to it. Mhmm. Because it it doesn't matter. It has no value other than how it can make my life better. Right.
Wendy:Does that make sense? Yeah. Just think about things that have influenced the way we think now in contemporary life. Like, I think about the theory of evolution. What's the phrase that comes to your mind when you think about Darwin?
Wendy:Survival of the fittest. Right. That's that's how we live. Yep. But then there's this really compelling alternative theory of evolution that was proposed by this guy Hamilton that focuses on the role cooperation and altruism plays in survival.
Claire:Why didn't we go with that one?
Wendy:Well, it it's both. Right?
Claire:Yeah.
Wendy:That that's a more honest look. It's like it's both cooperation and Self preservation. Self preservation. Yeah.
Claire:Yeah.
Wendy:It's not an easy planet to live on, but it's just so interesting how we gravitate towards what serves us based on our values. Right. Well, it's interesting how a dominant worldview becomes a dominant worldview, right, which of course is based on who has power and who is being oppressed. So And it becomes the norm and it's almost like a religion in and of itself. And that's why I come to the conclusion that we're all full of shit.
Claire:Back to that. Back to that. Yeah, look at
Wendy:our It's buy this as kind of gospel. Yeah. That this is how we have to live, but there are other humans that lived in this other way and now I have these shamanic experiences and I'm like, actually I get a different perspective, non physical perspective that can't help but broaden your view of what the nature of reality is. It's a lot more complicated at least from my experience than just the materialist physical realm.
Claire:Yeah.
Wendy:That's part of it but that's not all of it from what I concluded. Yeah. And I tried to capture that in the book. Totally. Not in an intentional way, but it just, I think it's just part of my nature now, so it came out.
Wendy:Can't help it.
Claire:Yeah, and so clearly there are a lot of very deep and big and interesting and super relevant themes in this book that have a lot to do with what we're experiencing as human beings in our physical realm today, in 2025, in this day and age. And this book is really fucking funny. Is it? Yeah. It's very funny, and it's really, really fun, and there are so many parts of this book that are a real real pleasure.
Claire:I mean, there's a playlist that goes along with this book. Of course, we have a really a couple of really fun romantic plot lines. There is, as we have alluded to, a saving the world level quest that we get to go on, and then a lot of really fun and colorful locations that we get to travel to. Again, you know, not only the three realms, then specific locations within the realm. I have to say that the Eleventh Floor Clubhouse, when you all get there, readers, was my favorite landscape to be in.
Claire:Oh, for real? Yeah, you really, it just painted a very clear picture of, the way that you described the Eleventh Floor Clubhouse was sort of visceral in my mind. I felt like I was there and maybe because it itself was a virtual or augmented reality location. But no, you really bring in a lot of humor, a lot of kind of flavorful descriptions, and a lot of different places that we get to travel to to go along the journey with Charlie in her ultimate quest and I have kind of another twofer for you because I guess asking one question at a time is too simple for That's
Wendy:how you roll, yeah.
Claire:I wanna know about your choice to use humor, which I'm guessing partially for you was just impossible not to, knowing who you are. But, tell me a little bit about the kind of strategic choice around humor and I'm also curious about which parts you had the most fun depicting or describing in terms of the sort of the physical locations that you take us to.
Wendy:Okay. Well, the humor part is, I think it's innate to my irreverent side. I am such a classic Gen Xer in that yeah that kind of questioning authority and breaking the rules. So that's
Claire:just
Wendy:kind of kind of part of who I am. But I also because it's such a heavy theme Mhmm. And I tend to write about heavy themes, I think it's it's important to balance out the heaviness with some absurdity and some irreverence. And it just it's just kind of like a little detour for a moment. It's a relevant detour, but it's a different it's just a I don't know.
Claire:There's a character in the book named Todd who just really provides, and it's just interspersed every so often exactly when you need it, that level of absurdity. His character is really fun and also kind of helping to tell the story of how the virus is taking
Wendy:Yeah, there's two characters that are sort of subsidiary character chapters dedicated to showing how the mind virus is playing out. And so Todd is a vlogger and so you're just getting like his audio.
Claire:Bombastic, outrageous, really fun and
Wendy:funny. A character.
Claire:He lightens the load I think considerably.
Wendy:And his chapters were the funnest ones to write.
Claire:Okay. So that answers the question? Yeah.
Wendy:They were they were the funnest ones to write. The mental realm was the absolute most challenging to write because of the nature of it. And it's so chaotic. It's so two dimensional. Experientially, it's you imagine being in a place with 8,000,000,000 people's thoughts, just what that would be like.
Wendy:And then trying to maintain your own, this is why I can't meditate, Claire. Here it is. That's my excuse. It's the real truth. Yeah.
Wendy:I'm a shitty meditator.
Claire:Right, because that's the challenge is navigating everybody's thoughts while also holding onto your your own
Wendy:Mhmm.
Claire:Your own goal or your own truth or your own reality.
Wendy:And then having to be like, Charlie has to be in there. Not just her mind but her whole essence has to be in there in order to make this happen. So how do you not lose yourself not just in the entropy of all of these humans thoughts and then the echoes of of humans who are no longer there anymore, their thoughts. Just all the thoughts. Yeah.
Wendy:The catalog of human thoughts is all there. Just imagine what that would be like. And then to not lose herself in the midst of all of that and then have her own thoughts that she's wrestling with. And then there's the deception that she has to kind of navigate through that's trying to distract her from her goal. Right.
Wendy:Because it doesn't wanna die. Yeah.
Claire:Viruses don't like that very much. Mm-mm.
Wendy:Yeah. They're very clever in that Did you
Claire:have to do any kind of self care when you had to get into the mental realm writing?
Wendy:I think I remember clenching my jaw a lot when I was like trying to
Claire:That's not self care though. That's just coping. That's just
Wendy:what comes to mind, my recollection of it. But just trying to find ways to describe such a nonphysical place that's just mental was really, really challenging. It was, yeah, it was a really not an easy story to write. There were sections that were easier than others, but there was so much information that I was trying to translate about the story that I was receiving as I was
Claire:That was, yeah, that's maybe a good question to close with. I was so curious about your writing process. How, you told us a little bit about how the idea for the story initially arrived. And then, how did it unfold from there?
Wendy:Well, it came in pieces or chunks. I had like my bit. Charlie's life, there's a lot of Wendy in Charlie's life. I'm not exactly her, but there's like we have the same exact taste in music. Imagine that.
Claire:We're like
Wendy:adolescent boys when it comes to music.
Claire:Oh I know, I've been in your car.
Wendy:I've heard what's on. Yeah. And music plays a really important role in the story. So that helped a lot. But that didn't come into it until I just started writing and like Charlie used music as a way to express the emotions that she was repressing, which I don't think is an uncommon thing for any of us to do.
Wendy:But she does it in a very pronounced way. So the type of music she's drawn to helps to express some really repressed shit, which I can relate to. Because Charlie's story is borrowed from aspects of my life that I've experienced myself or have witnessed. As well as the people she encounters, the people she's in relationships with. They're kind of like amalgams of different people.
Wendy:Like her asshole fiance is an amalgam of different relationships I've had Mhmm. In my earlier days. I'm sorry. Well, it's it's I mean, yeah. I would say that his name is Dan, her fiance.
Wendy:He's like an exaggeration Yeah. Of of these, but he's an amalgam of all of these characters. And then the dreaming realm storyline is one that I was translating as I was I was getting information about like, I would ask the question, how does this go? And then I would start getting the information. And then I would have to translate it and then make it work in the story.
Wendy:Wow. So that was hard to And I know a lot of writers say that they they feel like the words just come to them. And that was the case in in some instances for me, which I think is true. Like, oh, all of a sudden the character is doing this. Where did that come from?
Wendy:That's actually kinda cool. I like that the character's doing this but I never would have thought of that. But this was it felt like a traditional shamanic experience for me where I was getting like when I'm doing healing work and I'm receiving information and I have to find a way to translate it for the client in a way that makes sense to them but it's all symbolic or it's it's like a package of thoughts that I have to put into into words that tell a story.
Claire:So you would get it downloaded and then you'd have to translate it into the story itself.
Wendy:Yeah, then make it work in the story. Specifically with the dreaming realm. Really cool things would happen as I was writing it though. I'd get to a point where I'm really stuck and I'm like, oh I didn't even think of like how is this gonna work out? How is this gonna
Claire:oh shoot. Where are we gonna go? We're in a pickle for
Wendy:Yeah exactly. What am I gonna do? There's a band that I'm a fan of that's called Killing Joke and my husband John introduced me to Killing Joke a long time ago when we first met and I'm like yeah. It's like angry, gritty, very political commentary on the state of the world like yeah. Like I was just loving Killing Joke.
Wendy:A little more than halfway through writing the the manuscript, the first version, my shitty first draft, I had this impulse to look for some Killing Joke and I discovered a record of theirs that I'd never known about that came out in 02/2003. And I saw this song called the death and resurrection show. As soon as I heard it, I was like, fuck yeah. Yeah. This song this song It was a very I'm a lyric girl.
Wendy:I don't usually pay attention to lyrics. I just pay attention to how the music makes me feel. But there's something about Killing Jokes lyrics that are always so poignant. And then I looked at what the lyrics were and I'm like, shit. This is Charlie's journey.
Claire:Yeah.
Wendy:This is her song. And so that became like once that was in place, once I kind of stumbled upon that, then it was
Claire:like, oh. This is how it's gonna go.
Wendy:This is how it's gonna go.
Claire:Yeah. Oh, I love that. I love knowing that having read the book and the song plays Mhmm. An important role in a certain scene. That's a really poignant scene.
Claire:I love knowing that the song came first for you. Well, it came in the middle. Well, yeah.
Wendy:Then Yeah. Like, that's I didn't plan it.
Claire:It
Wendy:just sort of fell into place at the perfect time. And then I knew, oh, that's where I'm headed Yeah. To that song.
Claire:Yeah.
Wendy:It not only explains what she's going through. She's going through death and resurrection Mhmm. In her personal life. That's the healing journey she's been on, which is very shamanic. But it also really kind of beautifully tells about her quest Because music plays such an important role, what I did with this book, which I think is on the unique side, is that I actually created a playlist on YouTube through the publisher, which is three worlds press which is my press and three worlds media is the YouTube channel and that you can see Charlie's playlist on there so if you want to check out the actual music because I I don't have the rights I can only mention the titles and the artists But they're all referenced in the book.
Wendy:So if you wanna kinda take the journey with her musically, you can go on YouTube and listen to the music and get a taste for my taste in music. For good or for bad.
Claire:And get a real, you know, get to experience the book, I think, in a different way. That said, thank you for telling us about the press. What can we tell listeners about for the timeline, where to look out for the book, how to get a copy?
Wendy:Well, by the time this will be published, this episode will be out there. The book will be out. Awesome. Or just being released. So that's May twenty seventh of twenty twenty five.
Wendy:And it will be available wherever you want to buy books. At independent bookstores you'd have to probably ask for it to be ordered because I'm not a fancy author so you would have to they're not gonna just carry it on the shelves because Wendy Halle wrote a book. If I had a bookstore,
Claire:we would carry it on the shelves. Yeah, it
Wendy:would be the only book, right?
Claire:That's right, I would have a book.
Wendy:Just this book.
Claire:It would be called Raven's Daughter Bookstore. Yeah, thank you.
Wendy:Thank you, yeah. So, yeah, it'll be available in all the places and eventually, I will so it'll be available hardback, paperback, ebook, and then I'm working on the audiobook too, I don't know where I'll be with that. That's a bigger that's a bigger thing.
Claire:Undertaking.
Wendy:Yeah. Yeah. I hope people will be drawn to the idea and wanna read it. And it's not apocalyptic. I mean, it hints.
Wendy:It's not like a there's hope in this story. Absolutely. Yeah, I totally agree. It's an invitation. It's an invitation,
Claire:and it's, yeah, for reflection, for understanding the times we're in now, and for giving us ways out and beyond the situations we find ourselves in today. And it's a whole lot of fun. I just want to emphasize that again. It deals with these realities in very thoughtful, creative ways and it also is super entertaining and a fun ride. Oh, cool, thanks for
Wendy:saying I'm glad you feel that way. Yeah. I hope other people do too. I do That would be my dream come true.
Claire:Yeah. Thank you so much, Wendy, for inviting me to talk to you about this.
Wendy:I'm again that you came on and talked to me about this precious book. This book that I wrote.
Claire:You wrote a book. From That I'm holding in my hands.
Wendy:Right now. Came from my
Claire:my loins. And just really quickly, the cover art, which is gorgeous. Also, work work of yours. Is that right? Yeah.
Claire:Yeah. No big deal. Yeah.
Wendy:I used some watercolor pens to create the art on there. And
Claire:you gotta see it to believe it. Yeah. Get your copy today. Thank you. Thanks, Wendy.
Wendy:Alright. So there you have it. If you're intrigued, Raven's Daughter is pretty much available anywhere in the world through the usual online retailers, or you can order a copy through your local bookstore. You can find links in the show notes. The audiobook is not finished yet, but will hopefully be available early summer.
Wendy:I'll let you know. Thank you so much for listening to this special episode of Lucid Cafe. And if you do read my book and end up liking it, I'd be deeply grateful if you could help me spread the word. Let your friends know, your book club, your UPS driver, your hairstylist, write a review. Unless you're Stephen King, getting the word out about a book in a world flooded with so many books can be mighty challenging.
Wendy:So any help is deeply appreciated. Thank you. Thank you. I'll be back in a few weeks with another inspiring episode introducing ways you can change your relationship with money. Until next time.
