Bitchcraft Fair happened! I signed 20 books (18 of them for new readers) and handed out over 200 bookmarks. If you’re here from one of those things, welcome! It was so lovely to have the opportunity to talk about my book and meet some awesome people. My table partner, Brooke, did some great Tarot readings and sold quite a few of her beautiful cards. Here is her link.
Tomorrow, I’ll have a new chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door up on Patreon. We’ll be back to the usual posting schedule next week, and I appreciate your patience.
As always, thanks for being here, and have an excellent week.
Come see us at the Wisconsin Center, third floor, Hall B! Brooke of the Figuratively Speaking Tarot and I will be in Booth #116! There will also be trick-or-treating, costume photos, and concessions, as well as a TON of other makers and mystics for you to meet! More info, directions, and parking can be found here.
A tiny clockwork timer chimes with the high, broken tone of a porcelain bell, and Selen removes her new arm from its shallow basin of water. Beneath its dripping, articulated ceramic plates, two roots of living green wood stretch out with a blind will. They find the scar where Selen’s flesh ends, two inches below her elbow on the left side. It doesn’t hurt when they constrict around the stump—some laboratorial sorcery of botanical drugs and interstellar dust—but Selen’s stomach still churns with sudden vertigo, and her nerves prickle as the roots find them and connect. Two more plates snap closed around them, hiding both roots and scars from view.
With the terrible book in my hands, I retraced my steps through the neglected garden and returned to the palace. A cold wind had come in from the sea as the sun set, and the strange warmth of the book’s leather binding cooled until it felt like the skin of a dead man. I considered throwing it from the ship as soon as I reached open water. I could only guess at its contents, but I was filled with the grim certainty that it was an evil book, and I would find no help in its pages that did not cost me my very soul.
So, last week, we had a very large, very sickly tree removed from our yard. Unfortunately, while doing so, the tree service completely destroyed the majority of our garden. I was devastated and spent the week doing emotional yard work to clean up the damage and prepare for next spring (the fall harvest was ruined). This, and the resultant blisters and sore muscles, cut into my writing time last week, so there’s been a minor disruption to the posting schedule.
The latest chapter of Journey to the Water will be up here on Wednesday. There won’t be a new chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door until next week, and the upcoming episode of The Well Below the Valley has been pushed to November. For a while, I thought that I could get it out October 1 along with getting ready for Bitchcraft Fair and releasing the first chapter of The Tarot of the Gates at the same time, but I think that was too ambitious even before all this happened.
Speaking of Bitchcraft Fair, it is happening LESS THAN ONE WEEK FROM NOW. Here is a link where you can get tickets and find out more!
Also, the exciting preview of The Tarot of the Gates will be available October 1 as planned. You can go to my Instagram to find out about the setting and the accompanying deck!
I think that’s it for this week. Thank you for being patient with me, and if you’ll be in the Milwaukee area, I hope I’ll see you on Sunday!
Berend stands under a sky filled with blinking, staring eyes, surrounded on all sides by the restless dead. A red star shoots overhead like a firework, disappearing below a distant horizon in a blaze of ruby light. The world shakes with a terrible shriek, and Berend falls into it, the sound tearing him apart from within, his vision turning black at the edges and a burning pain spreading from his heart to his fingertips.
The god beneath the island had returned to its endless sleep, leaving the mortals who walked under the sun to fend for themselves.
Chapter XXI: Calm Seas
Eske is continuing his quest at last! The island is safe, but new perils arise in the latest chapter of Journey to the Water, now available on Patreon.
Happy Monday! It is now less than TWO WEEKS until Bitchcraft Fair Milwaukee! My friend Brooke, her Figuratively Speaking Tarot, and I will be at booth #116 in the Wisconsin Center. You can find more information (and tickets) here.
I am doing my level best to maintain my posting schedule as I prepare for this event. The next chapter of Journey to the Water will go up on Patreon tomorrow, and the latest chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door will be up here on Wednesday. I am working on The Well Below the Valley also, but that may be the proverbial spinning plate that drops or gets postponed.
I did finish the first chapter of The Tarot of the Gates! Please appreciate my efforts at something resembling time management. That will be up here on October 1. There’s more information here, plus a picture of Shepard the kitten, if you haven’t seen it yet.
Thanks for being here! I promise I’m not scary, and I welcome comments. I’d like to get to know my readers! Please tell me your favorite book that you’ve read recently, or the music that’s making your ears happy these days, or whatever you’d like to talk about.
Like most of the people of Salmacha, the priest Chanjask was tall and long-limbed, and his age was difficult to tell. His skin lacked the rough, oaken quality of his superior, Ucasta, so I guessed him to have lived forty or fifty years. He possessed bright, dark eyes that darted quickly from face to face in the crowded throne room. He was a clever man, if not a wise one; he knew which way the winds were turning, and he would set the sails of his life and career accordingly.
He finished his recitation of the law as Mara had asked, and he bent to kneel on the floor, touching his brow to the marble tile and raising his hands in supplication—to the princesses, it would appear, though Mara still held the power to decide his fate. She dismissed him with a wave of her hand, and he stood, more quickly than his apparent age might allow. He backed away, holding his empty hands palms-up as though he were offering a gift. He let the gathered mass of noblemen envelop him, and I was certain he intended to disappear.
If he has to, Berend will kill Arden Geray a second time. There’s probably someone in the Church of Ondir who knows how. That man should not be allowed to walk the earth, even as a ghost.
The Book of the New Moon Door
Good morning! There’s a new chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door available on Patreon. You can find all the previous chapters at the Stories tab above (under the Menu if you’re on mobile).
Space Whales Press 