Interview with KT Fanning

September 16th, 2009

This is the first in a series of interviews conducted by Gehenna here on Beyond Within. In this blog I’m asking Kathy Fanning, author of Atlantean Knights
(aff.) a few questions. Having gotten to know each other through use of spiritual, psychic and doomer forums, I feel she has a unique insight which our readers will appreciate.

1. So, Kathy, what’s your take on spirituality? How has this changed as you have gone through life?

I came in knowing I was eternal and part of it all. This has never changed. Rather, my connection to wholeness runs like a subterranean river beneath the wellspring from which I have had to draw strength all through the dark times in my life. Even in deepest despair, that well has never run dry.

I knew by the time I reached 7, the traditional “age of reason”, that religion was just a play on a stage. Useful for those who don’t know any better, but merely an interesting diversion for me, like watching people on the bus. I observed long ago that religion, while attempting to be spiritual, seldom is. Rather, it is a device to control the masses made up mostly of bullshit. That said, I always loved the concept of angels and the role modeling of saints and still do.

2. What spiritual path is the one you least “get”?

Well I “get” them all - and that may be the problem. lol. The one I most loathe is fundamental born again “Christianity”. As far from the teachings of the Christ as you can get. I detest hypocrisy.

3. Give our readers your best piece of advice!

Life is a banquet so live!

Take responsibility for your choices. There are no victims, only bad choices.

It’s not what happens to you but how you choose to respond that counts. This determines the quality of life.
Attitude is everything. Nothing is ever hopeless. If the light hurts your eyes, wear sunglasses, but don’t turn away.

4. If you could go back, what point in your life would you revisit, and what would you tell yourself?

I’ve thought about this many times over the years. While I wish several things in my life had gone differently, I would change nothing because every experience leads to the sum of who and what I am and will become.

That said, I would look at the young man I married and tell myself, “RUN!” I would have stolen the money to take my SATs which my mother wouldn’t give me (because my brother went to college and he’s a bum) so I could go to the Latin American Institute and become an interpreter at the UN and move into that brownstone with the red door down on Second Avenue.

I would have told myself to go to the prom with Johnny Jones instead of Frank Liebhauser. And maybe a couple three other things.

Mostly I would tell the young me that I was beautiful and worthy and wonderful and loved and talented. Because I didn’t know.

5. Share a moment in your life when you realised that existence was more than random coincidence?

There was never a single moment in my life that I ever thought existence was random coincidence.

6. We here at Beyond Within love to spout off on some pretty polarized subjects.. can our readers have your best rant on a subject that really gets you going?

Oh jeez. Can we go back to the forums and pull out one of my raging fuges? I have to be set off. I can say the subject of domestic violence gets me going. Women who don’t prosecute their abusers but go back for more. Four words can make me rant for days - “but I love him.”

Racial or religious or national or economic bigotry can get me raging.

My sister’s lunacy - could fill the Library of Congress with my rants. But I just can’t go off on one for no reason - I have to be provoked.

Abusive bosses and women in offices who abuse their power is another subject which pains me greatly since I am so often on the other end of their tyranny.

Injustice. Big one.

Political ignorance and lack of compassion.

Disrespect of differing opinions.

And oh yeah, if you don’t like my opinion then shut the fuck up. I’ve had it with people who ask my opinion and then attack my answer. Fuck you. (…well said! -Gehenna)

7. Metaphysics has it’s share of wackos, what’s the nuttiest theory you have heard?

Most of the conspiracy theories are wacky. The wackiest metaphysical claim, however, would have to be from my brother’s common law wife, a professed psychic who claims she goes into the mind of an oarfish, connects with dolphin-sonar, and that’s how she gets her readings. She “mind surfs”. Psychic as an acorn.

8. Many believe we are here to learn.. what have you learnt so far?

Shakespeare, Aldous Huxley, Socrates, Louisa May Alcott, L. Frank Baum, Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Kipling, Dickens, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Lao Tsu, Gautama Buddha, Wayne Dyer, Francis of Assisi, Therese of Lisieux, Confucius, John, Paul, George and Ringo, Oscar Hammerstein, and a host of others have already written down what I’ve learned much more profoundly than I could ever hope to.

9. I loved your book Atlantean Knights, and I’d love a little insight into it’s conception

Atlantean Knights came straight out of a dream. A dream so vivid and visionary that I wrote it down as soon as I woke up. I believe most of that book, although meticulously researched, was a product of karmic memory and channeling. And the dream became Chapter 4. In my writer’s workshop someone might remark that something seemed a bit over the top and I would knee-jerk respond, “But that’s how it WAS!” They often looked at me as if I was a lunatic. Sometimes the guy sharing the couch might move a little away.

Some years later I was grieving the loss of what I had foolishly thought was a relationship. My daughter challenged me to get my head out of my ass, stand up and be who I was, and take a night school course. She reminded me that I was always saying how I wanted to write a book, so prove it. I took her wise teenage advice. It was a read/critique novel writing workshop and I had to have something to read for critiquing so I pulled the memory of the dream out and jotted down a rough first chapter. That was the beginning.

10. Please tell us more about your writing?

Then came Once Over Lightly
(aff). 1973 New Jersey and New York. A book filled with humor as well as some heavy subject matter (shell shock, drug abuse, domestic violence, death, reincarnation). An angel, a talking dog, two ghosts, and some cousins with messed up lives. The soul of a child who could become the first female president of the US and achieve world peace in the name of the world’s children - but who needs a specific couple who are divorcing to conceive her. Can the ghost of her possible grandfather help her seize this destiny? Her prospective mother is his daughter. He has one month, until midnight Halloween night, with only his faithful dog to see and hear him. The ghost of Lincoln Lightly is based on my father, who died when I was 8. The setting is where I lived the first 25 years of my life.

Battle Fox - an historical fantasy in which a Civil War soldier meets a fox spirit woman who changes his life. She marries his best friend, disguises herself as a drummer boy, and joins the regiment. When in her fox form she takes Adam and his two friends to magical worlds woven in the fabric of time.

This one came from a dream also. And that dream is also a chapter in the book. The hero is based on my great grandfather. I walked every battlefield he fought in and followed the trail of his regiment, weaving all I learned about the Billy Yanks, the battles they fought in, and the terrible moment in history called the Civil War into the plot. Battle Fox made the semi finals of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel of the Year contest for 2009. If only an agent would represent it!

The White Ship is an historical novel which tells the story of the 12th Century Titanic. I’m still working on this one. Fleshing it out and polishing it up. Turns out the dark ages were not so dark after all, for this was a time of a wonderful cultural renaissance for the fledgling British Empire, full of color and rich achievement. I discovered a fascinating subject in the character of Henry I. The White Ship was the worst maritime disaster of the Middle Ages. Its sinking changed the course of English history. Its parallel circumstances to the Titanic are bizarre and amazing.

Please visit Kathy’s author page, where more information resides about all these books, along with pictures pertaining to each work.

–Gehenna
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