Practically Pagan: An Alternative Guide to Gardening

Practically Pagan - An Alternative Guide to Gardening takes the spooky out of alternative and keeps the magic. Elen Sentier brings together, and expands on, recent scientific discoveries, and shows how close they are to the old ways that were labelled as superstition in the 20th century. Sentier's writing is accessible and opens up the down-to-earth practicalism of pagans as people of the land to all, for that's what the word pagan means, 'of the land'. Sentier doesn't preach or proselytise folk to become pagan but brings to light how you've been thinking this way for years.

Elen Sentier is a best-selling author of British native shamanism. She also writes paranormal mystery-suspense novels. She’s a wilderness woman, born on Dartmoor and grew up on Exmoor in a family who had practised the old British magic for hundreds of years. Her books include Pagan Portals - Merlin: Once and Future Wizard (Moon Books, 2016), and Gardening with the Moon & Stars (Moon Books, 2015).

Elen Sentier

Best-selling author of British native shamanism, Elen also writes paranormal mystery-suspense novels. She’s a wilderness woman, born on Dartmoor and grew up on Exmoor in a family who had practiced the old British magic for hundreds of years. She’s a quirky, unconventional person with an intensely strong connection to nature, a wilderness woman deeply into ecology and the environment. Elen is also active on Twitter and Facebook fighting for wildlife and rewilding as well as for real compassion in politics.

She’s been writing professionally for the Moon Books imprint of John Hunt Publishing since 2011, and currently has 8 books with them, 3 of which are best-sellers. Moon Books also published her second novel, Moon Song. Before taking up her writing career, Elen spent 20 years working for the Ministry of Defence as systems analyst and project manager. Then, when she became crippled with rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis, she retired from the MOD to become a Transpersonal Psychotherapist. In 1999 she couldn't stand living in London any longer so ran away to the dark, still depths of Wales. The need to write was eating her up.

Her 20 years as a practicing Transpersonal psychotherapist gives her a deep understanding of how people tick, so her characters are rounded and believable. When she’s not writing you might find her walking and wild-camping in the Highlands of Scotland, the Welsh mountains, Exmoor, Dartmoor, Brittany or the Pyrenees. She’s knows them all intimately so they add colour and realism to the story settings.

All this life-experience enables her to weave magic and mystery together, and still keep a sharp grip on characters and places; the stories flow effortlessly and believably to gripping conclusions. Add in that her husband is particle physicist so she’s been absorbing cutting-edge science with the cornflakes for 45 years, and you have an interesting mix.

Elen is currently deep in the final throes of birthing her third novel, The Talisman, a supernatural mystery, suspense story. Its tagline is “Behind every gifted woman there is often a rather talented cat”. The protagonist is a young contemporary dancer who grew up in a family of cunning folk. The talisman is a small obsidian cat; it’s also a real black cat too. It empowers people, or sometimes takes them over and its guardian is an artist whose family have protected it since the middle ages. The dancer meets the artist and they fall in love. The dancer’s previous lover, a beautiful biker-girl who has strong psychic powers, is jealous and steals the talisman. She is determined acquire its power to get the dancer back, and to punish the artist. The artist goes after it but fails and is captured. The dancer meets the real black cat who becomes her ally and persuades her to go after the talisman. The biker-girl sends paranormal creatures to attack the dancer but she makes it through. In the final confrontation, the dancer knows if she fails the talisman will be lost to the dark, and the artist will die.

Her bragging rights include dancing for Arlene Philips; taking contemporary dance class with Robert Cohen; flying in Jaguar fighter aircraft; doing plasma-physics at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy; and being kissed by Mick Jagger! She loves cats, and eats paleo, and her tag-line is “If the cat and the boyfriend disagree, get rid of the boyfriend!”