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Aria and her husband swore. But death came much too soon. When tragedy strikes
one summer night, every- thing is taken from Aria: her family, her future. Desperate to find meaning in life after loss, she and her beloved mare leave
their home in search of something—anything. It feels like the end of her life. It is the beginning. If she can find her way through the forest of grief,
she will discover an incredible adventure waiting on the other side. Hers is no ordinary journey—it is a journey into the nature of the soul. Each step takes her further into uncharted lands. The cave of darkness. The lake of time. The human heart. Each place she goes and each person she meets has a new lesson to teach her, and soon she comes to learn the most astounding one of all: her loved ones have never left her. They are with her throughout the lifetimes. They are eternal and immortal.
What is your novel Crescendo about? Crescendo is a spiritual parable about a woman who
experiences a terrible tragedy. She feels like her life is over, but in actuality it’s just beginning, as the loss propels her on an incredible mystical adventure in which she learns all about herself and life in general. It’s written as a guidebook for any soul seeking to understand the universe and her place within it. What are some of the subjects that you explore in
the book? Grief, and coping with the loss of our loved ones, is one
of the primary subjects. Another is the understanding that we are souls, temporarily encased in these human bodies, who never really die. Other subjects include: the power of kindness; soul mates; animals and their souls; near-death experiences; past and future lives; parallel universes; lucid dreaming; astral projection; creating your own reality; soul contracts; time; and music therapy. What do you hope that your reader gets out of
reading it? One of my motivations for writing this book was to
teach. I wanted to explore and illustrate my favorite meta- physical subjects in a unique, artistic way, and to show that we are all souls that are far greater than just this personality and this lifetime. My other motivation was to help others heal. For any of us suffering from grief, the understanding that our loved ones never die, and that we are all eternal souls being reunited with each lifetime, can be tremendous- ly healing. When we realize that we, too, never die—our bodies do, but our souls live on and on—we lose some of the fear that we may feel about what happens to us at the end of our life.
Crescendo An inspirational tale of
a love across lifetimes “Til death do us part,”
How did you come up for the idea for the book? Before writing this book, I had been writing primarily
nonfiction, as with Miracles Happen, the book I co-wrote with my father in 2012. I knew I wanted to write more, and that I wanted to write about spirituality. I kept waiting for the thing to happen tome that I was going to write about: the near-death experience that forever altered my perspective, or the client that walked into my office and the fascinating discoveries that we made together. The only problem was— nothing ever happened! One day, I was telling someone how I wanted to write but had nothing to write about, and he said, “You’re a fiction
writer.Make it up.” It wasn’t the first time that thought had ever occurred to me—I had gone to gradu- ate school for fiction writing—but for some reason I heard that statement as a kind of fun challenge or puzzle. I thought to myself, “What would it look like if I took all my favorite spiritual subjects and made them into a story? How would that even work?” Crescendo took shape as I tried to answer those questions. You include a reader’s guide in your book.Why was
this important for you to include? The reader’s guides found at the end of novels com-
monly examine the author’s or the characters’ motivations and choices. Instead of focusing on the author or the char- acters, I wanted to focus on the reader. I asked my editor if we could turn the reader’s guide into a mini-course for self- reflection and exploration, and she was supportive and enthusiastic. My reasons for writing Crescendo were to teach and to heal, and the guide offers an additional avenue to do so. Just as my main character,Aria, goes on a journey, now the readers can go on their own along with her. There are 12 questions in the book itself, but I wrote an extended version for any readers who are interested in a more thor- ough reading experience. It includes many more questions; guided visualizations; recommendations for other authors, teachers, and musicians; and other informational material, and it’s available for free frommy web site,
amy-weiss.com. What happens after we die? Death is not an end. It is a change in form. We leave
behind the shell of our bodies when we die, but we—the souls inside the bodies—go on. Immediately after we die, typically there is a joyous reunion with our loved ones who have also passed, and a kind of “coming home.” We also experience a life review, in which we review the life that has just ended and feel firsthand howour actions, behaviors, and words affected others. This is not done in the spirit of pun- ishment, but rather in the spirit of learning. Eventually, we plan the next life we will lead, and once this is complete, we are born into a new body. This is called reincarnation. Do animals have souls? Animals absolutely have souls, and just like us, they
reincarnate. We can share many lifetimes with our beloved pets, and they can also come back to us more than once within our own lifetime. They may be a different breed or even a different species, but there is often a recognition or “knowing” that it is the same soul as the departed pet. Animals are here learning their own lessons, but they are also some of our greatest teachers, particularly when it comes to unconditional love. Animals constantly teach us
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