The title Story Alchemy isn’t a metaphor. It’s the real deal. Ideas for stories, the prima materia of the story alchemist, are gifts. They are provocations from the unconscious, lures. The unconscious lies in wait, stalking you with a story aimed directly at your heart. Even when you get an idea from the outside world, it has resonated with something locked away inside your Unconscious. A story has its own ego. It wants to be told. Once the idea has come to you, and it comes of its own volition, you must consciously establish contact with the psychic energy that contains the story. It takes a collaboration between Consciousness and the Unconscious to bring the words across. We know certain things about stories that will aid us in the telling. Story is a particular form of psychic energy to which details cling, a unity of psychic energy. That energy has the same shape, the same form, but the details are different, so different that we hardly recognize the form from one story to another. Cinderella is such a story that has been told many times under different guises throughout the centuries. You must find your stories, those meant for you alone. To tell them, your awareness must cross the psychic threshold, the Iris of Time, and enter the Imaginarium. Story Alchemy unveils the alchemical processes involved in that divine art, the Philosopher’s Stone of storytelling. David Sheppard's Novelsmithing saved my last novel; his Story Alchemy may well save my work-in-progress. This is the most unusual book on craft I have ever read. My head is popping with new insights on the nature of storytelling, dream and memory, and the blurred line between everyday life and the world of myth. Story Alchemy gives you tools for bringing the stories up from your own psyche. This involves forays through the Iris of Time to meet your narrator, the invasion of your dreams by your characters, and the mental construction of something called a Memory Palace. For all this, the book is surprisingly practical, containing helpful templates for building a theme-based plot, step-by-step meditation techniques designed to deepen understanding of characters, and methods for visualizing scenes while writing them. However, Story Alchemy is not for the faint of heart. It will take you to the threshold of your secret self and challenge you to cross. Only you can decide whether this is a good idea. I have to say: my mind is blown. Katherine Grace Bond, author, The Summer of No Regrets Director, Teen Write workshopsWriting Instructor, Sky Valley Education Center David Sheppard is a graduate of Stanford University and an author of both fiction and non-fiction. His poetry has appeared in The Paris Review and in England (The 1987 Arvon International Poetry Competition Anthology judged by Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney). While living in Colorado he was a member of the Rocky Mountain Writers Guild for seven years, participated in its Live Poets Society and Advanced Novel Workshop, and chaired its Literary Society. He founded a novel critique group that lasted ten years. He has attended the Aspen Writers Conference in Colorado and the Sierra Writing Camp in California. He has taught Novel Writing and Greek Mythology at New Mexico State University at Carlsbad in the Continuing Education Department. He has traveled throughout Western Europe and is an amateur photographer and astronomer.