EMBRACING RADIANCE BLOG

I begin this blog with a review of Embracing Radiance to explain why it was written and what it is. This review appeared in Booklife a publication of Publishers Weekly, the bible of the publishing industry.

Embracing Radiance

Alan McKee

Myth, memory, and longing converge in McKee’s interconnected short stories, a visionary collection of fables about anguish, liberation, and the embrace of inner radiance. Each story revolves around a character on the brink of despondency, who encounters visions, voices, or uncanny figures that steer them toward a harrowing, revelatory path to wholeness. Bound together by the Lady of Eternity, a multidimensional being who represents the Divine Feminine, McKee’s narratives draw on archetypes of despair, innocence, and resilience. These modern parables present pain as a necessary rite for transformation; it also functions as a portal for his characters to glimpse transcendence.

Themes of silence, suffering, and redemption recur throughout Embracing Radiance, and McKee’s invocation of the Divine Feminine, who offers healing and compassion, serves as an intuitive, maternal source of comfort and radiance. In “The Burning Child,” a knight must accept a wound that never heals; the abused child in “The Boy Who Loved Rain” finds emotional release during storms by controlling lightning; and “The Tree of Silence” describes a child’s withdrawal into self-imposed deafness following his mother’s death. Meanwhile, “A Radiance of the Past” details a writer’s life-changing encounter with a cryptic piece of graffiti, one that invites a feminine Presence to fill him with devotion and renewed purpose.

McKee’s prose is lush, incantatory, and imbued with fantastical imagery: children who long to be fawns, houses that reveal enchantments, mothers who transform into wolves. These stories have a mythopoetic resonance, with characters serving as vessels for universal concerns rather than individuals with interior lives. McKee heads each story with his own evocative illustrations that serve as visual echoes of the dream states his characters inhabit, drawing readers into his mindset without providing easy interpretations. Contemplative and haunting, Embracing Radiance offers an archetypal vision of human tribulation and the forces that guide us forward into profound understanding.

Takeaway: Symbolic narratives tap into emotional reservoirs of trauma and deliverance.

Comparable Titles: Ramona Ausubel’s Awayland, Urszula Honek’s White Nights.

Production grades

Cover: B-

Design and typography: A

Illustrations: A

Editing: A-

Marketing copy: B+

Embracing Radiance, the book that my site is based on was written over a space of nearly sixty years. It is made up of 13 very short stories which are about different people and different settings yet, they are actually parts of the same whole, they are aspects of the same kind of multi-dimensional entity I believe we are all parts of. You can think of it as a kind of reincarnation. We are all here to learn how to express our many aspects and talents, and in order to do that we take on different personalities, settings and circumstances. Unfortunately, we often forget why we are here since, we have to learn new lessons in each character we become. The result is that we become so involved with the current character we incarnated, we lose our true selves, our most complete and best expressions of who we really are. I believe that I was given the task of writing something that would help remind people who they are and what they really are. That does not make me special or important; it's a job I was given because I have the necessary make-up to do it. Nothing more.
I want to try to use this blog to talk about things from the point of view described above. If you'll drop by once in a while I'll do my best to make it interesting. If you'd like to purchase a copy of Embracing Radiance, go here: bit.ly/3JpyH1O

The Power of Art

Do you believe that these 11 brushstrokes can change a man’s life?

They changed mine. This image sent me on a pilgrimage that has lasted nearly sixty years. Can you believe that?

In my novel, Embracing Radiance, a dying man’s final painting shatters another man’s life and sparks a pilgrimage across time, space, and even death itself.

What actually happened, though, is, in some ways, even stranger. One morning I woke up and saw this painted on a brick shed in the alley where I lived in Montréal. I felt such an energy in this casual painting, that I wanted to know how this image had gotten created. The thought possessed me but no one could tell me.

I was so struck by this image that nearly sixty years ago, with no previous experience, I actually learned how to use a completely manual camera (Nikon FE) in order to photograph the image at night. (The image here was taken in the morning and was one of thirty or forty I took around the clock for weeks on end.) I kept a diary of each shot with exact exposure notes.) As a result, I eventually became a digital photographic artist with shows in Toronto and New York: www.alanmckee.com. I also doubled my income when I moved from being a copywriter who wrote for international clients to being a creative who produced every aspect of the work I did for clients, everything from words to images to layout. Eventually, I produced final printing films for print runs in the millions of pieces.

Though I searched learn more about this image, I finally realized that I had to tell the story of the radiant painting in the alley as I believed it might have happened. But I had no idea where to start until I had a dream that gave me the creation story I had sought.

After that, years went by and all I had was a four page short story. Then, more than ten years later, I had another dream about a young girl in a mental asylum. And this is the way that all 13 parts of Embracing Radiance was written: years apart and each short story seemingly disconnected from the other. But

NOW, after almost six decades I have the complete story, only realizing that the twelve short stories were actually part of a single story that told the story of a man’s life from youth to death. In the most real way, Embracing Radiance, is my story, a story of a search for meaning a story that really happened.

So remember, Art is never just art—it’s a portal. What art has transformed your life?

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Ignite Trust in Your Creativity: My Story for Every Professional

I believe the journey from anguish to illumination isn't just for artists—it's the core of every profound creative and professional breakthrough. It certainly was for me.

In my collection, Embracing Radiance, I offer my powerful perspective on how suffering can not only be transformed into light but also offer a blueprint for embracing risk and trusting that inner, guiding voice.

If you're a creative professional or focused on innovation, this book is an essential read. It speaks directly to the creative process, showing that the deepest challenges we face can be the very catalyst for our greatest awakening and best ideas.

What Reviewers Are Saying

I'm incredibly honored that Publishers Weekly’s BookLife hails the collection as:

“visionary… a lush, incantatory journey into anguish, liberation, and the embrace of inner radiance.”

They also praised the book's “mythopoetic resonance” and “fantastical imagery,” concluding:

“Contemplative and haunting, Embracing Radiance offers an archetypal vision of human tribulation and the forces that guide us forward into profound understanding.”

At the Heart of the Narrative

Central to the collection is Our Lady of Eternity, a multidimensional figure representing the Divine Feminine—a compassionate force guiding wounded souls toward healing and illumination.

My goal was for each story to turn pain into powerful revelation, weaving together myth, spirituality, and visual art. A few highlights include:

A knight learning to accept a wound that won't heal in “The Burning Child.”

A child finding freedom by controlling lightning in “The Boy Who Loved Rain.”

A writer discovering renewed purpose through a cryptic piece of graffiti in “A Radiance of the Past.”

If you think Embracing Radiance could shed light on some of your life questions and help resolve some of your own challenges, I urge you to return to home page and get your copy now. At least, think about how some new ideas could bring new light (radiance) into your life right now.

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The Most Valuable Thing I Know

Today I am going to post about the most valuable thing I know. When I was very young I used to have dreams where I would walk around my home, fast asleep and repeat over and over: "There's a key to everything. All you've got to do is find the key." Even as a six year old I felt deeply convinced that my words were true. And I have never changed my mind.The habit I am going to write about now comes as close to fulfilling that statement as anything I have ever read or thought. This brings me to my second qualification for writing about this subject: for about a decade I was the chief copywriter and often editor for Nightingale-Conant Coporation, publishers of the most extensive library of self-development training courses in the world. I encountered everyone from Napoleon Hill to Tony Robbins to Wayne Dyer. And I didn't just read them, I had to know their ideas well enough to re-write parts of it to make a better presentation without doing wrong to their bedrock material.

So what is this amazing, incredible habit I'm talking about that can provide such wonders? The man who wrote about this habit, first, a great pioneering psychologist and philosopher was William James. He called it, "The Habit of Effort," and this is what he said,"Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test."

My own life experience has taught me that James was right. Not in a small way but in a way that does provide absolute life mastery as nothing else I've ever encountered (sorry, Tony). Unfortunately for most of us in the 'developed' world, we have been running in the opposite direction for the last two centuries, continually trying to 'get more for less time, money or effort'. Think of the phrase, "labour saving," and the society we have built upon the universally accepted desireability of 'getting more for less".

I don't overtly mention the habit of effort in my own recently published book, Embracing Radiance. But the idea is there, built into the thirteen stories, if you look for it. But the habit of effort is so important, I decided that I should point it out in this post so that no reader could miss it.

I profoundly believe we all badly need an antidote to the constantly repeated idea that reducing effort is what we should all aim at, especially with technologies like artificial intelligence and our increasingly computerized world. I see that road as leading to complete ruin and emptiness for us all.