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The Nocturne Symphony has been officially contracted for publication through 4 Horsemen Publications. I am so excited about this new adventure. At the moment, we are contracted to publish the entire four book series, with additional novellas to be released between each full-length novel.
Stay tuned for official release dates, cover announcements, and pre-order information for Lyra R. Saenz’s debut novel Prelude, coming to a bookstore near you Summer/Fall 2021.
About the Author:
Lyra R. Saenz is a writer of Science Fiction/Fantasy. A romantic at heart with a love for supernatural horror, she believes that while happy endings don’t come easily, they do come, even if it means excising your ex into a glass jar. Born and raised in South Texas, Lyra is a multicultural, eyeliner-wielding member of the LGBTQ+ community, an animal-lover, and a cynic of all things political. She presently haunts the Houston area with her gorgeous partner and her feline-shaped void, Violet.
Lyra grew up bouncing between her Chicano and Scandinavian heritages never feeling like she really fit in one world or the other. Despite growing up on enchiladas and lefsa, she’ll never turn down an offering of sushi or pho. And while her friends were getting boyfriends and girlfriends, she was too busy crushing on dreamy anime and manhwa characters to bother with real people. So with one foot on either side of the border and her head full of East-Asian pop culture, she started creating her own worlds.
A lover of all things witchy, paranormal, and ghostly with a side of Victorian-futurism, cyberpunk, and posthumanism, Lyra imagines worlds where the IT tech is a werewolf and the coffee machine has a fairy living inside it but the androids love to take walks down the forest trail and host the occasional bonfire.
When she isn’t lost somewhere between an inkwell and a notebook, she can be found acting as a throne for the real queen of the household -her cat, and her royal majesty demands snuggles constantly. Or sitting and listening to her spouse play video games while she unsuccessfully knits and/or binges her latest international tv show.
Tarot and The Nocturne Symphony
I am a huge lover of tarot and collect different sets whenever I travel. When find myself confronted by a beautiful set that I haven’t seen before, I just have to buy it. While they are commonly associated with fortune telling and divination, tarot cards started out as just another deck of playing cards. In fact, the divination aspect of the tarot cards stems from parlor games people would play with one another, writing poems and stories about their friends in relation to a card drawn from the deck.
Originating in Italy in the 1430s, the tarot we know today arose after a fifth suite of cards was added to the typical four suit playing card deck commonly used to play poker. The fifth suite has since become known as the major arcana. The major arcana consists of 22 character and/or “trump” cards that are allegorical in nature and includes cards like: The Emperor, The Lovers, The World, The Sun, etc. Most people have a set idea of what these cards mean just based on the caricature portrayed on the card, but I thought I would use this blog as a way to give a bit more information on the representations of the major and minor arcana since throughout the book series, you’ll see Wren use tarot cards for spells, and the chapter titles are named after a specific cards.
The Fool
So let’s talk about the first card of the major arcana: The Fool. A appropriate card for embarking on a new journey.
It’s numerical value is a 0 which, if you study numerology can mean a lot of things, but we’ll take it as a 'before' when nothing exists waiting to be molded into something. Stories begin as an idea. A thought forged from nothing. Pulled from the void by a muse and planted in the head of an artist who hasn’t any idea yet on how to give that thought shape and structure.
This is the Fool. The seeker of knowledge. This is the person starting out on a new venture into the unknown. A person who doesn’t know the ins and outs of their situation but is determined to figure it out, much like the protagonist of many stories. They are given a problem to solve and not much information on how to solve it, so the adventure begins.
When the Fool comes up in a reading, it means that now is the time to open ourselves to learning new things, braving unexpected hurdles, and riding fearlessly into the unknown. It is a reassurance that we will come out on the other side unscathed even if we have to walk through fire to get there.
Internet Sources:
● Encyclopedia Britannica “Tarot” https://www.britannica.com/topic/tarot
● “Tarot Mythology: The Surprising Origins of the World’s Most Misunderstood Cards” https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/the-surprising-origins-of-tarot-most-misunderstood-cards/
Book Sources:
● Tarot Decoder By Kathleen McCormack
● “The Steampunk Tarot: Wisdom From The Gods of the Machine” by John and Caitlin Matthews
● “Mystical Cats Tarot” by Lunaea Weatherstone
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