Thru Times Looking Glass Publications Volume 1 Kingdom of Mists is an illustrated collection of tales and prose about the people and families that lived in the hamlets of the Kingdom of Mists and its neighboring duchies on the planet Pegasus. Even the poorest and least educated family was richly blessed with special gifts. Throughout the ages, tales of the exploits of these citizens of Pegasus have taken on a life of their own, framed in ballads, prose, and etchings. These tales are offshoots of reality. Many of the characters actually lived or are still living and the illustrations are digitally enhanced collages of mixed media and ancestral photographs or portraits taken of them at various states in their lives. Their special gifts are exaggerated but based on their real gifts. And some of their experiences are based on family stories shared around a crackling fire late in the eve. Others are purely figments of my over active imagination. Each story also features mystical beings called shadow myphits that, though resembling toys or real creatures such as birds, take on a secret magic of their own, living deep in the hidden corridors of your imagination. These mystical beings accompany you along your path. But only you can see their magical powers unless you choose to uncloak their tones so others can experience them also. Come now with me, slipping quietly and quickly through the hidden crystal portal of Time's Looking Glass into the hammock corridors of water cypress and oaks clothed in minute algae, lichen, and moss and draped in scarfs of Spanish bromeliad, to take lay of land, to meet these special people and discover their gifts and perhaps you will find you also have a myphit echoing in your dreams clamoring to be let out.
About the Author: Milancie has worked as a children's missionary for Cuban Airlift, an elementary educator, a house parent at Florida Methodist Children's, a child art and recreational therapist, a children's education minister at St. Gabriel's Episcopal Church and a Lay Eucharistic Minister for the central Florida Episcopal Diocese. Life for Milancie began as she prefaced in her first book "Life for me began in the ocean with my Mother where she baptized me a water spirit at one month immersing me in the waves and when I took my first steps it was barefoot on that beach braving the wet foam and salty spray blowing off the waves crests as the tides deposited glittering fragile treasures in pools just beyond where I stood transformed as I squished cool wet sand with my toes. I had found my element! The four of us, my grandmother, my mother, my sister and I lived in a large rambling craftsman bungalow built in 1903 and its guesthouse over looking the Halifax River in the early 50's in a small sleepy Florida beach village." As a friend put it they made their own fun in that day" lording over their neighborhood woods, fishing with bamboo poles off the ledge that ran along the river and zipping over the wooden bridge to the beach on their bicycles. Milancie is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. As a child she was encouraged to explore her creative side by her Aunt Minnie, an award winning poet and artist. Milancie began her career as an children's illustrator after completing several courses in drawing and painting and being selected to show her work at Daytona Beach Museum of Arts and Science. Milancie then expanded into writing as a genealogist and the editor for the Owsley Family Historical Society's internationally acclaimed newsletter. Her first published children's piece was an award winning poem about returning to Florida as she knew it in the early 1950's. The poem also served as final paper for a graduate course she completed on coral reefs and mangrove island ecology. One interesting side note was Milancie attended post graduate courses in London in European Government and Modern Sociology where she actually attended classes in Parliament and was taught by members of. She spoke of a sunset dinner river cruise on the river Thames with parliament members and a subsequent trip later in her life to retrace her heritage. She says her most memorable life experience was swimming and interacting with wild dolphins.