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Magic in Motion: Jill Wellington and Her Mother, Edna Mae Holm Explore the Art of Synchronicity By Robert E. Martin "An idea is a feat of association." - Robert Frost Jill Wellington and Edna Mae Holm As a journalist for WNEM-TV5 for more than fourteen years, Jill Wellington is closely familiar with tracking the terrain of clues, personalities and components that converge to comprise a good news story. The recipient of two Michigan Emmy nominations and numerous reporting awards, Wellington has teamed up with her mother, Edna Mae Holm, who also happened to write a humorous newspaper column for three local publications, to fashion together their first collaborative mystery novel entitled Fireworks. Tracking the steps of their fictional homicide detective, Webb Hannis, an officer who 'lives for the hunt' as he investigates the murder of the president of a fireworks empire found among the mortar tubes with half his head blown off on the 4th of July, Fireworks spins a tapestry of twists, sleuthing, and surprises that works magically as a mystery novel. However, this freshman effort is also much more than a mere mystery, adopting a fascinating premise of 'synchronicity' and meaningful coincidences into the subtext that gives this pot-boiler a new-age makeover as it explores the deeper quest for personal understanding common to all of us. "My Mom and I were writing this mystery novel," explains Jill, "and struggling with how to introduce this concept of synchronicity into the text; the idea that things happen in life that you can't really explain, but nonetheless keep you on your life's path and show you which direction to follow." "We wrote the mystery but wanted to include synchronicity and didn't know how to explain it," continues Edna Mae. "Then Jill started having experiences and would dream the end of the book and we had a feeling we needed to work it into the story." The venue employed to work these ideas into the structure comes in the form of a character named Samuel, a 'spirit guide' or 'Good Samaritan, if you will, that rescues the protagonist after he suffers a head injury and serves to advise him on how to open himself to the embedded clues essential to understand in order to solve the crime. "In essence what we are trying to do is teach people synchronicity in the story by making it part of the story," states Edna. "It's not like reading a bunch of facts. You see it happening. When the detective finally discovers the power of his 'intuition' and what he is capable of accomplishing, he realizes that we all get different hints in our lives. The challenge is to hear and recognize what they are." "It took so long to get the subject of synchronicity into the book because we had to live it," adds Jill. "Something would happen to me or my Mom and then we would say, 'That's what needs to happen to the cop in our book.' So basically we lived the lessons in this story and then incorporated it into our fiction." "I had so many things happen to me at TV-5 that form good examples of synchronicity," she continues. "Once I was told to do a story on Leap Year Day and had to find someone to interview. It was a Sunday and I had to get some video up north, so my cameraman and I stopped at this gas station and a guy was pumping gas next to me. I said, 'Hey', we're doing a story on Leap Year Day. Do you know anyone we could interview? He replied, 'I'm just going to my nephew's birthday party. He was born on Leap Year. So we went with this guy and Mom couldn't believe how I found him." "Stuff like that would happen to me all the time," notes Jill. "My colleagues would chide me and say 'Get out of here!' but it started happening to me so much they started calling it 'Wellington Luck'. When I left the station they gave me a gold horseshoe engraved with that saying. But it's funny, because it took me awhile to learn that there are no coincidences in life. Everybody has this power and we want people to tap into it because once you do it's like magic." When asked for another example of synchronicity in her life, Jill relates the story of how once she was in a shoe store looking for a new pair of shoes that she had always loved because they fit her so well. The clerk replied that all they had were a new style that cost $85.00. "I didn't want to spend that much and was holding the shoes feeling really sad," relates Jill, "and then it came to me - these are not my shoes. I'm going to go and find my shoes. I put the new ones back and was walking out of the store and suddenly I saw a table full of shoeboxes. Nothing was on display, so I opened one of the boxes and there were my shoes - the ones I wanted - on sale for $19.95. I started crying and the clerk thought I was nuts. But it was the only pair left in the store. That kind of stuff happens to my Mother and I all the time." "It has nothing to do with being psychic," emphasizes Edna. "This is something that everybody has and can tap into. In fact, at book signings people usually tell us the mystery novel portion is very good, but they all have to tell us their own stories of synchronicity." "Synchronicity is a matter of physics," reflects Jill, "but we think of it as a spiritual basis that God governs. We have 'guides', if you will, on the other side that help carry out our instinct." So how do people tap into solving the mystery of their own inherent gift for synchronicity? "You need to start paying attention," states Jill. "Who do you run into? When you run into a person you haven't seen in a long time, it may seem like coincidence, but you need to stop and really listen to what that person tells you. They may not know at that moment the impact of whatever they say to you, but perhaps two weeks down the line you'll go, 'Oh my God, I just ran into Bob and he told me that! There are no coincidences and once you start tapping into it you realize this." In essence, the entire plot line of Fireworks explores these concepts in greater detail that affords the reader the opportunity of seeing it in action, but as Edna succinctly notes, "All you have to do is state a need and plant a seed." In writing their first novel, Jill and Edna researched the Internet and discovered that mysteries are the easiest books to break into publication with. Indeed, the duo worked at this novel for six years. "I worked for another year while we wrote our first book and decided that fiction is much more fun than journalism," notes Jill. "I love making up characters, so I quit work and enjoy the fact that you can control both the outcome of the story and the characters." They decided to self-publish the book because doing so allowed Jill & Edna greater latitude of control over the message and the marketing. "Publishers were always asking us what genre the book was," notes Jill, "because they said it had to be either a Mystery or a New Age book and couldn't be both." Currently Fireworks is available at the majority of bookstores in the area all over Flint, Midland, Bay City, and Saginaw, as well on their website at www.stargatepress.com. "The website will tell you more about synchronicity and how we got into it," adds Jill. Although they are starting the marketing of their work locally, they intend to go national with it and have secured a national publicist. "The story takes place in Detroit on the 4th of July, so we'll be going down to Detroit in June for signings," notes Edna. Fireworks is the first in a series of book the mother/daughter team intend to author together. "We already have three books written of the five part series," comments Jill. "We'll introduce a new spiritual concept in each book following the same character." Curiosity compels one to ask what the pair of authors' feel the biggest roadblocks are to people discovering their own 'synchronicity'. "You must have total belief or it won't work," answers Edna. "The main character in our book is constantly goofing up and doesn't know what he's supposed to do. Our concept isn't new and it isn't against any religion or belief system. In fact, it shows the universal generic tenants of many faiths, including lessons in the Bible." "People often don't catch on or dismiss it because it seems too easy. People think that in order for something to be good that it has to be hard, whereas it's so much easier the other way." "My daughter and I used to be worriers, but not anymore. There's nothing to worry about. We're totally guided and find yourself thinking you have to make things happen, but you also need to follow what you're shown." "When it appears things are going badly for a person, or if you are experiencing a string of bad luck, you need to sit back and say to yourself that you don't have to worry - you need to get the bad out of the way for the good to come through." "It took me six years to understand it," adds Jill. "Our thoughts bring on a lot of misfortune - illness, turmoil, divorce. But through all of this you are learning and will find another situation that's 100 percent better." So do our actions bring about the bad luck we seem to experience? "We think that we've written our life story before we're born on Earth and we are here to learn life lessons," answers Jill. "So many people get in the way of our own life pathway because they are looking at us on the outside." "For example, so many people are unhappy in their jobs. They need to say, 'Thank you, God, for showing me the perfect job through the lessons of this bad job. Once you do that, things will start happening if you trust the power of instinct." "Some people make themselves miserable because they love misery and keep it going with their thoughts. Before you know it, it does create the reality. You can make synchronicity happen and get so much happiness out of life if you want, but some people don't even want that happiness." Picking up on this theme, Edna offers her own perspective. "It's like with race problems and even war - if you pursue destructive paths, they will propagate and create a mass consciousness." "We understand this because we've lived it," underscores Jill. "We've lived through the same pitfalls our main character did only to discover that it's so very easy not to get bogged down in the negative spiral." "We were at the end of our rope with our publisher, and then we decided to self-publish everything came together. A designer e-mailed us and said if you need a logo for your company, we can do it. Then we had another company that offered to do our website and set up our business, so rather than encountering pitfalls we became more productive." "It's the people that feel they've never experienced synchronicity that don't believe it, but millions of people that have experienced it can't be wrong," concludes Jill. "It all comes from the 'highest power' and you can call it whatever you want - God, intelligence, Buddah - but there is a power out there that is huge that so many people are wasting. We don't debate religion. We want people to think for themselves. It's what you think about in life that is important. What matters in your own life? "If a person is unhappy, this is a way to expand their personal happiness. We aren't out to change anybody's mind. Our aim is to tell a good story and show people a way to find fulfillment."
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