About CELESTE
hi, I’m Celeste.
Welcome! I hope you like it here and want to come back to get to know yourself more deeply as a writer. But most of all, I want you to be happy and fulfilled in your writing practice. Because I believe that happy storytellers have the power to make this world a better place just by being.
That’s right. Just by BEING.
A few things you will notice as you hang out with me here:
*I like to maintain a positive vibe and optimistic outlook. I have a pretty wicked sense of humor. I mind the line between positivity and spiritual bypass in myself and I expect others to do the same for themselves.
*I’m somewhat apolitical, and I don’t identify with many -isms. I respect your identity, so please respect mine.
*I cast a wide spiritual net. If this bothers you, my offerings are perhaps not for you. (Or maybe they are.) I was raised Episcopalian, and I maintain a deep respect for that part of my life. My spiritual path has taken me toward a view of Oneness. And magic. I’m interested in the realm of higher consciousness and the common threads between us. This is a frequent theme in my fiction.
*I’m a work-in-progress, and I welcome you to be a work-in-progress.
The “Official” BIO, I GUESS
Celeste Loring Gleason began writing as a small child. She won a writing contest in third grade with a poem about an environmental apocalypse. In the eighth grade, when she had read all the books in the age-appropriate section of the school library, her mom was a good mom and signed her up for an adult library card. That year, she devoured everything she could get her hands on by Stephen King, V.C. Andrews, and Danielle Steele. But she also discovered Solzhenitsyn and attempted Tolstoy, so all in all, she felt well-rounded about the whole thing.
That year, she also wrote her first novel-length manuscript—a 400-page teen vampire romance handwritten in purple ink—from which she gave dramatic readings to a circle of friends at recess.
She had no idea she was going to keep writing, but her English teachers all knew. Her circle of friends knew. Her mom knew.
Celeste went to the University of Maine at Augusta and the University of Maine at Orono and when she graduated in 1999 with degrees in Criminal Justice and English Literature, she still had no idea what she wanted to be when she grew up. So she started a little family and began sneaking romance novels into her cart each week at the grocery store. When her partner joked that she ought to write a book of her own, she took it as a dare and began writing fiction again.
Several years and manuscripts later, she signed with an agent and things looked bright for awhile. She felt like she was almost there. Wherever “there” was. But she never arrived. As all heroines do, she took a wrong turn into the dark forest, met some wolves, and got lost for awhile.
In 2017, she emerged from the thicket with a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine.
Since then, she has completed the following coaching certifications:
Empowerment Coaching Certification from the SWAT Institute
Breath Coaching Certification from Yoga Teachers College
Integrated Attachment Theory Certification from the Personal Development School
She is now the owner and founder of The Arachne Project, LLC, a coaching business devoted to helping writers finish their manuscripts and find their way out of the dark woods.
A new manuscript for young adults is currently underway.
Learn more about her essays, poetry, and fiction at her author site: www.celesteloring.com.