Q & A with Emma Magenta

The title of this book can apply to many people: to the character, to your readers, to yourself. Who receives the greatest "sense of hope" from reading this book?

I hope this book assists people who feel that they are at the mercy of a pre-destined reality. I wanted to relay to people that you have a choice in any situation, be it relationships, work, etc. You have a choice in how you respond. The situation may be dire; do you react from a place of love or fear? This is, I guess, what I hoped to convey to people who may feel they are stuck in a situation...take time away from it and get a different mental angle on it and decide how you want to be in the situation. Take responsibility for your role in something, regardless of how it transpires, and you can only feel good.

I guess I hoped that people who have known nothing but failure in relationships might be reassured that they can always create a new future for themselves in a relationship by refusing to view it by their history.

You mentioned that your own life was the inspiration for writing The Peril of Magnificent Love. Did events in your life compel you to write this volume?

I can only really draw from personal experience when I create, so yes, this volume is also autobiographical. I thankfully took a risk on feelings I had for someone who defied my long held blueprint for relationships, and I have been gorgeously in love since. Having said that, I mean that I have located someone who is worth going through all the challenges to joy that can surface between two people when they admit their love. This book is about that experience.

I must also admit that I spend a lot of time observing other people and listening to their scenarios, too, and I realize that our experiences are not entirely unique...

How much of finding true love depends upon fate, and how much is up to a person to create for him or herself?

I guess it depends on whether you believe in fate or the power of personal choice.

For me, I always believed that I was only capable of having relationships that were filled with long, drawn-out dramas. Although they would make great dinner conversation at a later date, they left me feeling emotionally numb and cynical. However, I felt incapable of breaking this cycle because I was addicted to the drama and the intensity of feeling and kept finding myself attracted to people who had an air of emotional chaos.

Then one day I realized I was actually an emotional coward...afraid of being with someone without the drama, afraid to be humble enough to love someone even when they are less than perfect 100% of the time...once I admitted that I just wanted to love someone and have it be reciprocated...life presented me with the golden opportunity...so fate met me in a gorgeous marriage of my decision making and its spontaneity.

The motto for Peril seemed to be "It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." What would you say that the motto of Gorgeous is?

I guess the underlying motto of Gorgeous is "It is up to you to actively create the relationship you want."

There is something so joyous about your writing and art. Even when the girl finds herself in despair, she manages to find happiness from the lessons she learns. What advice can you give your readers so that they might find this?

When you are despairing in life, you have two paths. Both of them have to do with your imagination. You can imagine a room full of locked doors or a room full of windows. I try (as does the character in the book) to make a choice to have faith. It is extremely hard at times, especially when you are in the throes of your emotional responses to a gruesome situation. There is almost an addiction to imagining negative outcomes...that is why it is important to take time away from the problem to connect with whatever it is that reassures you that you don't have to go through suffering alone. For some people it is religion, others nature, or perhaps just calling a friend or maybe writing to hear what your intuition says. The key is to find YOUR thing, whatever enables you to relinquish complete control over external problems and just respond from a place of clarity and trust.

Your books are so relatable. Will you write more books that investigate all the important times in a woman's life?

I have just completed a new book that deals with another theme outside of love relationships, which I thoroughly enjoyed creating. I enjoy collecting a broad spectrum of ideas without stressing too much on themes for books, and just waiting to see what emerges when I bring my drawings and ideas together at the time of conception. I try to just write and draw from spontaneous feelings, to be as honest as possible, and then later, once I begin to see what the theme is, I can flesh it out more.

You have so many interests beyond writing and creating art. If you had to choose another profession, what would you most like to be?

I have always had a deep desire to be an explorer/adventurer/archeologist like Indiana Jones. In an ideal world I would be him but as a her, and I would do all my own stunts.

I would also love to live in the Amazon jungle and be like David Attenborough and just watch nature do its thing. Apart from that, I would love to be someone who had a lot of land and let neglected animals run free on it and I would live there and run a huge house to accommodate children and people that nobody wanted.

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Return to A Gorgeous Sense of Hope press release

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — Contact: Christina Martin, (800) 851-8923, ext. 6685, cmartin@amuniversal.com

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