Dear Friends,

I thought you'd be interested to know that Scott Blum's new book, Summer's Path, is now officially available for download starting today! If you haven't downloaded it yet, I'd love to formally invite you to do so. You can also enter to win a free Kindle!

scottblum (dot) net

You might also be interested in a recent article that was written about the book series (see below), and feel free to share any portion of the article with your friends.

Thanks!

Julia
DailyOM
[email protected]


Every once in a while we meet someone who inspires us to new possibilities for ourselves simply by the way they approach their own lives. Scott Blum is one of those people. After many successful years as a technological innovator, a critically acclaimed multi-media artist, and the co-founder of the hugely successful inspirational website DailyOM, Blum is now sharing magic and wisdom through the written word.

Blum's new books, Summer's Path and Waiting for Autumn, are written as a series of parables, similar in style to The Alchemist, Way of the Peaceful Warrior, and The Celestine Prophecy. Through a semi-fictional sequence of events and an archetypal cast of characters, his stories awaken us to new ideas, invite us to explore powerful spiritual and healing practices, and draw us into a mystical world where nothing happens by mere coincidence.


The first book in the series, Summer's Path, is devoted entirely to the experience of being human. In it, Blum offers an honest glimpse into the trials and concerns of living in an earthly body, faced with the realities of money, work, relationships and mortality. By approaching these topics with equal measures of courage and compassion, he welcomes our own personal judgments of the characters and their actions to color and shape our experience throughout the book. Reading it a second time, years later, might prove to be a very different journey. Blum understands this concept and uses it to stir us up and encourage self-inquiry.

Summer's Path centers around Don Newport, an engineer who, after losing his job and his health insurance, learns he has a terminal disease and only a few months left to live. In order to spare his beloved wife the burden of exorbitant medical fees, Don begins to seek a way to end his life that won't further traumatize his wife or cause her undue pain.

His answer comes when he meets Robert, a brazen angel of death who offers him a rare and unexpected option. As the story unfolds, Robert assists Don with his final preparations and guides him through the physical, emotional and spiritual matters involved in completing a life.

Through the journey Don takes, we are reminded that it's never too late to learn important life lessons about ourselves and our loved ones. We are also called upon to reconsider the complexities involved in healing. As Don discovers, honoring true feelings are a vital component, yet we must also come to terms with our soul's destiny and the entanglements we carry from our family in order for full healing to occur.

In the final chapters of Summer's Path, Blum leaves us in Ashland, Oregon, a small, fairytale-like town just above the California border. Here, we find ourselves as observers in a seemingly everyday interaction between our main characters and Scott, a town newcomer. With masterful handling and an illuminating change of perspective, Blum ushers us into the second book in his series, Waiting for Autumn, with a description of this exact same scene from Scott's point of view.

Waiting for Autumn tells a semiautobiographical tale as it follows Scott on a deep and adventurous spiritual odyssey. While Summer's Path explores the condition of corporeality, this second book addresses the fundamental dilemma between body and soul. There is a reconciliation we all must make between our human selves and our higher spiritual calling; and, Blum exposes this in a way that touches our deepest yearnings.

Scott's story in Waiting for Autumn begins with a chance meeting at the local food Co-op where he encounters Robert, who to him first appears as a mysterious and intriguing homeless man. Soon, the two men forge a bond, and with Robert acting as a guide, Scott sets out on a heroic quest to heal the past and reclaim his wholeness. This is no light task. The first step Scott must take is to confront the spirit of his dead fiancee and let go of the guilt that keeps them both from moving forward.

With each turn of the page, Scott progresses further into unfamiliar territory. He encounters spirited new friends, discovers the freedom of ancestral healing and accesses the restorative powers of nature. And when a dream-inspired mission goes awry, Scott gains a hard-won lesson about the importance of self-protection.

Without sparing us any details of the emotional anguish or physical distress, Blum makes us privy to the sacred, ever-shifting inner world of a human being on the path of enlightenment. With each step Scott takes, we become more and more invested in his success. And soon, we begin to see that more and more of his light (and our own) is shining through.

The book continues with a mixture of hope and sadness, the kind of bittersweet acceptance that comes with acknowledging that everything has its place and its season. As with the end of one day and the dawning of the next, Waiting for Autumn leaves us at peace with all that has come before, and opens our hearts to the beauty and excitement of the many blessings still yet to be.

All in all, both stories in this series have a powerful impact that continues affecting us long after we have put the books down. Through his life and now his writing, Blum succeeds in reminding us that there is more to reality than what we can see with our own eyes; that each of us endures trials requiring untold valiance; and that some day we all must resolve what it means to be a spiritual being in an earthly body.

Waiting for Autumn and Summer's Path are scheduled for release in 2009. But for a limited time, those eager to embark on Blum's transformative trek can download Summer's Path now for free, either as an e-book or audio book from Blum's website. Thanks to Blum's pioneering spirit and a heartfelt desire to reach as many people as possible, Summer's Path makes history as the first time a major self-help publisher has used a free e-book to launch a new series of books. Publisher Hay House is even offering a chance to win a free Kindle to anyone who downloads the story. Those ready to continue on with the series will have to wait till April 7th when Waiting for Autumn comes out in hardcover.

When asked whether the stories of our favorite characters here will continue, Blum intimates that indeed they will. He says, "Both Summer's Path and Waiting for Autumn leave profound questions unanswered for good reason; the journey of the spirit seldom has an obvious destination. When my journey brings me back to a place where it can be expressed with words, I will share once again."

Scott Blum and his wife and soul mate, Madisyn Taylor, live in the mountains of Ashland, Oregon.