Dayna Hubenthal

Print, Digital Media and Event Production

Persephone's Seeds

EXCERPT:  At age 36 I wanted to take a bite out of life. I wanted to chew it, eat its heart; be it. Instead, on May fifteenth, I died - and not for the first time.

This story is about choices - Persephone's seeds - and seasons of the heart. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning.

306 pages - Fiction › Fantasy › Dark Fantasy - Fiction / Literary - Fiction / Magical Realism - Fiction / Psychological - Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense

TESTIMONIAL - Reviewer Kassandra Juanebe (Amazon)

5.0 out of 5 stars for the uplifting message of this outrageously creative book "Persephone's Seeds is a very powerful book that could help people reduce the force of the oppressive conditioning of the church. The messages: You can find love and meaning in hell.... You can get your guts torn out and live.... We need to love our monsters and demons.... This is a book with many not so deeply hidden layers that people can discover as they let the story line resonate over time. Maybe the people who need to read the uplifting message of this outrageously creative book would tend to reject it as its essential message is liberation from the outmoded cultural ties that still bind many too tightly. Who is brave enough to read a book where one of the major characters is a pubic hair? My old friend Dan used to say.... "I have finally done enough spiritual work that I don't get led around by my penis...." So being dragged around by a magic pubic hair which is essentially acting like a magic carpet.... WOW..... Isn't it sex though that drives all of us or pulls us, one way or the other.... This reviewer has given up on the idea of writing a "classical" book review for this artwork. Maybe that is ok, since the book hardly follows many classical rules of how to craft a story. As Douglas Adams said about "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," it's a bad idea to destroy the universe in the first chapter. Dayna H doesn't quite do that. She just kills her main character a few times in the first few chapters. This book should become a cult classic among people who are trying to live a more spiritual and less religious life."

Focus Group Reader

Fierce, dark, agitated, imaginative, symbolic, psychologically intense read – this book is a real scream of consciousness …

Focus Group Reviewer

This book is a different kind of ride. Circumstances are extreme. The point of view is inside the mind of a neurotic person fighting to become whole in spite of betrayals and manipulations.

Judge of the 10th Annual Writer’s Digest Book Awards

he otherworldly feeling smacks the reader immediately upon starting the book. The prose can be very beautiful. You [Dayna] take a lot of chances with your writing, which pays off for the reader with sudden little stabs of emotion or surprise. I like the May 15 motif; using that as a device is quite clever and the little beasts for which the narrator must care are such an interesting and unexpected turn. The idea of this particular, relatable narrator being on an epic quest works very well. The heroism and ability to make choices in difficult times can inspire readers.”

JAKI FEY , author of Wolf in Her Pocket, Last Goose Concert, and Roloc

“The hero of Persephone’s Seeds searches for complex truths about life, death, love, and hate. The search come at a relentless pace and take the reader on a rollercoaster ride. Some of the characters are almost a perversion of the pleasure-pain principle. We are drawn to them even as they incite fear, get our hearts racing, turn our knuckles white, and toss us around mercilessly.”

Focus Group Reader

“Dear Reader, expect to be made anxious and have issues brought up. You’ll read part of the book, put it down, pace, have a nightmare or two, then pick it up again and go on.”

Focus Group Reader

“I’m impressed. You’ve done something original and daring. The way you portray your narrator’s dysfunction through reactions to the world and also by the way you use the dysfunctional view to show the reader the dysfunctional world, too. The real pathos, of course comes when the hero realizes the dysfunction within and out – but the hero doesn’t even fit into it, in any case… I found my thoughts wandering back to the book while I was doing other things, which is a compliment, and I continue to think you are strongest when your hero is trying to reconcile what’s happening in the real world. Waking up in the morgue after being left three days on a dump heap is far more dreadful than any scenario your imaginary dream world provides… and you make us believe it.”