A bit ago, I decided I was going to actually publish the work and research I have spent the last ten years doing on Sekhmet. Right now, I am in the final editing process. I am tweaking the formatting and images, getting the cover to look more professional.
As for the work itself, it will be a combination of both scholarly and what I ever-so-affectionately term as “Mystic Woo-Woo”. You see, Kemetic religion draws two distinct groups of people. Those who are into the strictly scholarly and reconstructionist aspects of it, and those who are a little more eclectic and far less precise in the ways which they choose to honour the Netjeru. While it is impossible to be all things to all people, especially when you are a writer, I have divided the book into two sections. There will be citations of ancient work, and the other portion will contain hymns, invocations, rituals etc. that are based off of those in antiquity but are clearly either my creation or those which have come from others.
Sekhmet: The Beauty and the Terror is a labor of love. It is rooted in both ancient and modern practices of both myself and of others who count themselves as Sekhmet’s children. If this labor of love can help someone or give them insight to what Sekhmet is all about, then I am happy. If it does what many other books and projects within the Kemetic community do and sparks dialogue, incites debate or even ignites jealousy – all of which have this wonderful tendency to place a flame thrower to the arse of others who believes they can do it better, then I will definitely have done my job!
I am publishing this book myself as an independent publisher with my own publishing company. Ma’at Publishing, which was officially founded in 1994, but I had been using the name long before that. This work will be exclusive to Amazon for the first 90 days, after which I will release in other forms including on sites such as Barnes and Noble’s Nook, Smashwords, Kobo, and the like. The cover price is projected to be $9.99 USD regardless of platform.
Life Belongs to Sekhmet 
I’m really looking forward to your book, Fanny. I’ve recently felt Sekhmet around me, and have found it hard to get good books and reliable information on Her. I want to get to know Her, and your book is going to be invaluable to me. Please let me know when it comes out on Amazon. I will do my best to wait patiently! 🙂
The biggest part of editing, other than the maddening formatting errors that Word has a tendency to create, is stringing it all together in some sort of coherent order! I am glad you are looking forward to it. It gives me the needed confidence to release it out into the world. I have to confess, it probably would have been out sooner had I not been a little daunted by it all! 😉
I’m currently writing a fiction novel myself, and the biggest factor I’m up against is confidence in myself. I have had excellent feedback on short stories that have been published, but I still doubt myself. I totally understand how daunting it is, Fanny, but I don’t think you have anything to worry about. I have your e-book, ‘Knowledge From the Sacred Tree: Runes’, and I love it. It’s beautifully written. I know how frusrating Word is when trying to edit! Pain in the neck is an apt description! 😀
Knowledge from the Sacred Tree is my partner’s book. Would you believe I sat on that book for over a year in eBook form because I, too, was daunted by the editing and formatting process? I spent far too much time listening to the naysayers and people who want you to believe that all self published work is slipshod, poorly edited and the coding and formatting eludes the layperson. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you have MS Word, especially the later versions, you can put together an eBook. If you have programs such as Scrivener or Callibre, you can also do it with relative ease.
We never know unless we try and I have seen the numbers that folks are making, and I definitely want some of that. It means that I can work for me and not for someone else. 😉
Ooh, sounds awesome! I’ll definitely be looking forward to this. ^_^
Wonderful! Thank you. 🙂
I’m looking forward to your book as well, I think it will be a great addition to my collection 🙂