The soft murmurings of thousands of leaves carry the secrets of the Tree Spirits, rippling through the forest and gathering pace until they reach far beyond the land of the Dark Kingdom.

The Word on Wing card seems appropriate as it represents news and messages coming in... and we received word from the publisher that the shipment arrived and is, as we speak, winging its way to suppliers!

We've also received messages from people telling us they'd received an email from Amazon some time ago, to inform them of the delay, but some of the emails had a link that you needed to click to keep your order open whilst waiting for the shipment to arrive. If you didn't reconfirm through that link then it may have been cancelled. 

We'd hate for you to be disappointed at this stage, so here's the link for Chronicles on Amazon; you can double check your basket in your account and should be able to tell whether your order still stands or if you need to place it again.

Any day now the long wait will be over and The Chronicles of Destiny Fortune Cards will be in your hands.  Don't miss the adventure... we hope you enjoy it!

“You’re late, you know.”
The Seeker turns to the sound of the woman’s voice, “I’m sorry?”
“Well, it’s ticking you see . . . the clock.” She points behind her. “Can you hear that?”
“I don’t hear anything,” the Seeker whispers.
“Exactly! That’s the sound of time disappearing. The clock never stops ticking, always ticking . . .”
She trails off dreamily, her gaze caught in the hypnotic sway of the pendulum, as the clock works toward the quarterly chime.
The woman stares at the Seeker as though coming from a trance. “But now you hear it, don’t you?” she asks urgently. “The haunting rhythm of time marking passages of life disappearing.”
The Seeker nods warily, uncertain of her changing moods.
“I waited too long, but how quickly time flies and now here I am, Keeper of the Clock.” She sighs before suddenly brightening. “But it’s not too late for you! Make haste for the harbor before the ship sails.”

Whilst we were writing The Chronicles of Destiny we became quite attached to our characters, and one in particular stands out: The Keeper of the Clock, who appears in Chapter 13 - Time Flies, is one of our kookier creations. (Another unintentional quirk that the card depicting time landed on number 13 . . .) Although she passes on some words of wisdom to the Seeker, she’s a little bit of an oddball, and if you’d spent as long as she has listening intently to an endlessly ticking clock you’d probably be a tad strange too!

We had a lot of fun writing her fictional passage; reading her dialogue aloud in a dreamy voice and trying to decide which actress could portray her if this were a movie (we’re still contemplating that one).

The card is one of our timing indicators in the deck, whilst Chapter 49 – Calendar shows a lengthy period for a situation to manifest, Time Flies was named quite literally – things will happen quickly! As we all anxiously wait for The Chronicles of Destiny to arrive on our doorstep this card sits in our thoughts.

Ems  x

After we decided on the book theme for our deck we focused on how to structure it.
We already had certain cards in mind, so what was the best way to order them?

Having studied Literature at university I was aware of a system called The Monomyth, or more commonly known as “The Hero’s Journey”.  

The monomyth is a narrative pattern, discovered by Joseph Campbell, that can be found in many stories and myths from all around the world at different times in history. It can be broken down into different stages, with some narratives focusing on certain points or reshuffling the order slightly. We felt that this was a good place to start in structuring our deck, whilst tailoring the ordering to suit our needs. 

Those of you familiar with the monomyth will notice how it influenced The Chronicles of Destiny, for those who have never come across it before – we highly recommend Joseph Campbell’s book “The Hero of a Thousand Faces” if you would like to know more about this journey. It comes up in a few surprising places, Star Wars and Harry Potter, for example, even if the writers had no prior knowledge of this pattern, it finds its way  into the story and keeps the balance

To provide as much flexibility as possible there are also alternative Hero and Heroine cards in the deck, that you can swap, leave in or take out, as suits your purpose for different case scenarios or personal circumstances. Which one are you?