Magic Monday

Also: I will not be putting through or answering any more questions about practicing magic around children. I've answered those in simple declarative sentences in the FAQ. If you read the FAQ and don't think your question has been answered, read it again. If that doesn't help, consider remedial reading classes; yes, it really is as simple and straightforward as the FAQ says. And further: I've decided that questions about getting goodies from spirits are also permanently off topic here. The point of occultism is to develop your own capacities, not to try to bully or wheedle other beings into doing things for you. I've discussed this in a post on my blog.
The image? I field a lot of questions about my books these days, so I've decided to do little capsule summaries of them here, one per week. This is my seventy-fifth published book, the sequel to The Witch of Criswell and thus the second Ariel Moravec occult mystery. Once again, it's eighteen-year-old Ariel and her adept grandfather on the case, investigating the theft of a rare magical book and a trail of clues that might lead to a pirate treasure hidden somewhere in the odd old East Coast port town of Adocentyn. Ariel and Dr. Bernard Moravec aren't the only ones on the trail, though, and the others will stop at nothing to get there first...
In case you can't tell, yes, I'm having enormous fun with these. You can get a copy here if you're in the United States and here elsewhere.
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And don't forget to look up your Pangalactic New Age Soul Signature at CosmicOom.com.
***This Magic Monday is now closed, and no more comments will be put through. See you next week!***
Re: A query on particular accents/elocution
Trying to tweak these things consciously often runs into a lot of resistance - our voices tend to be wrapped up with our self-identity (just think of how much most of us hate hearing recordings of our voice, since it doesn't sound "right"!), but I like to point out that we subconsciously change our vocal tone by context all the time. Think of how folks talk in a high-pitched voice to babies, or listen to the difference in a man's tone when he's talking to his wife or girlfriend versus his coworkers (this was especially noticeable with me when I was in the Army, when my work voice was rather deeper than my normal voice).
If anyone wants to give it a shot at home, here's what I recommend: pick a way you'd like to consciously change your voice (higher-pitched, more tonal variation, lower-pitched, whatever), then record yourself trying to change your voice in that way and exaggerate it to the point of absurdity (if, say, trying to talk lower, talk in the lowest possible tone you can). Then listen to yourself and see how you did, and repeat. The goal isn't to learn to actually talk in such an exaggerated way, but to change things obviously enough that you can tell whether you're making the intended change or not, and then it's easier to "back off" to something more natural if, say, you want to speak in a slightly lower tone to convey a little more authority. Finding specific people to imitate (like Margaret Thatcher, as you mentioned) also is an effective way to practice, and again, recordings can be helpful to figure out if you were actually doing what you were trying to do.
Cheers,
Jeff
Re: A query on particular accents/elocution
Emily07