The Bright Lady and the Astral Wind by James Dunning (03.05.12 by Pieter Collier) - Comments

James Dunning of Dolmen Tree Art, who illustrated Mark T. Hooker’s Mathomium and Hobbitonian, released a novel The Bright Lady and the Astral Wind on 23 Jul 2011. It can be succinctly portrayed using parapsychological metaphors that impassioned readers of Tolkien will immediately recognize.

Tolkien has the Eldar capable of communicating without the spoken word, speaking mind-to-mind. What if one day in modern-day Middle-earth, walking down the sidewalk, you met a Galadriel with large, bottomless eyes, and became as entranced in her presence as was Sam or Gimli the Dwarf? She would on occasion display light as a brilliant aura or as a flash of white light like the Faërie star on the forehead of Smith of Wooten Major. And then one day, what if her mindstarted speaking to you?

A man’s amazed diary chronicles as two remarkable women weave a paranormal thread of telepathy, Light and strange revelation in and out of the New World, Wales and Ireland: a ghostly tale of human aura, flashes of light, and vivid lucid and prophetic dreams clustered around the Turn of the Millennium, on the threshold of the twenty-first century. This edition features an author’s afterword, commentary and reference annotations of background material: literary, historical, cultural, psychological and paranormal (270 pages).

About the author James Dunning

James Dunning, an itinerant military brat of old Southern stock, later settled and grew up largely in Georgia, but has lived also in the five other states, and in Europe. He acquired university background in psychology, languages and linguistics, later receiving a doctorate in pharmaceutical research. He separated from military service in West Germany, remaining in Europe for years. He started work at age 12, and worked subsequently as a soldier, teacher, translator / interpreter, pharma researcher, archivist, administrator, editor, and a consultant.

He speaks German, Russian, some Welsh, Modern Greek and Armenian, and odd fragments of other languages. The author has contributed Tolkien commentary to Beyond Bree (USA), Lembas (NL), Walking Tree Press (CH), and Parma Nolë. As an illustrator he operated the website Dolmen Tree Art (www.dolmentree.com) and was awarded the 2006 - 2007 Heren Istarion Imperishable Flame Award of the NE Tolkien Society for tolkien-inspired creation.

His art was featured in Beyond Bree’s 2011 Tolkien Calendar. He provided illustrations for Mark T. Hooker’s books A Tolkienian Mathomium and The Hobbitonian. He also plays Irish / Celtic music for passion, fun and profit. His 1980’s Irish band was immortalized by the late, great fantasy writer Tom Deitz in Fireshaper’s Doom.

The Bright Lady is his first original imaginative fable and he also illustrated its cover. Today he lives a few miles outside Atlanta in a labyrinthine library cleverly disguised as a small house.

Back in 2007 we had a chance to interview James Dunning, you can read this interview here.

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