Tag: music

Song of the Week

Joe Hisaishi, “The Dragon Boy” (from Spirited Away)

Good morning, happy Monday, and a pleasant spooky/harvest holiday to you!

The first order of business for this week is the newsletter! The inaugural October issue will go out at about noon today. If you would like to receive it, and haven’t signed up yet, you can put your email into the box at this link. It will send you a confirmation email. Once you’ve confirmed, you are on the mailing list!

Second order of business: the next chapter of Journey to the Water and Episode Seven of The Well Below the Valley will both be released on Patreon tomorrow!

Third and last: NaNoWriMo is coming. My goal is to write 50,000 words of The Book of the New Moon Door in the month of November, finishing Part Two and making some headway into Part Three (possibly finishing the entire thing, depending on how it goes). This will give me a nice backlog that will prevent future disruptions to the usual posting schedule and get me closer to being able to edit and prepare it for publishing!

I think that’s all for today. Thanks for being here, and have an excellent week.

Song of the Week

Beth Rowley, “Wretched Body”

Happy Monday! I hope you are well this morning.

This week, I’m working on getting the newsletter out, as well as the next episode of The Well Below the Valley. The latest chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door will be here on the blog on Wednesday, and my normal posting schedule will resume next week! Thank you for being patient with me.

Keep an eye out for a newsletter signup post later this week! A lot of you are already subscribed to this site via WordPress or email, which notifies you every time I post something. The newsletter will be monthly and have more of a general overview of what I’m working on, events I’ll be attending, and publishing news. You can subscribe to either or both! (Or neither, I’m not a cop.)

Thanks for being here, and have an excellent week.

Song of the Week

Black Lab, “This Night”

Good morning! There was a little snow outside my window this morning, and I glared at it until it stopped. Hopefully I have staved it off a little longer.

Nothing out of the ordinary this week, besides the weather: there will be a new chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door up on Patreon tomorrow, and the latest chapter of Journey to the Water will be here on the blog on Wednesday. If you need to catch up on either of those stories, all the previous chapters are collected under the Stories tab above (inside the Menu if you’re on mobile).

This is your semi-regular reminder that blog content will always be free! Also, the ad revenue goes to WordPress and not to me, so adblock away. If you’d like to support me, you can buy a copy of Beyond the Frost-Cold Sea, buy me a coffee on Ko-fi, or become a Patron, where you can read chapters a week early and get access to exclusive projects like The Well Below the Valley. You can also tell your friends about me! In any case, I appreciate you being here and being a reader. It means more than even I have the words to express.

Have an excellent week.

Song of the Week

Morphine, “You Look Like Rain”

Happy Monday! I hope you’re well this morning.

I’m back to my regular nonsense this week: a new chapter of Journey to the Water will be up on Patreon tomorrow, and the latest chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door will be up here on Wednesday. I’m considering making one of these my NaNoWriMo project, to get ahead and closer to the editing stage. If you have any thoughts about which one you’d like to see get done faster, let me know in the comments below!

I’m also working on a monthly newsletter (finally) and the next episode of The Well Below the Valley.

I appreciate you! Have an excellent week.

Song of the Week

Billie Marten, “Heavy Weather”

Good morning! It’s Monday again.

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.

Song of the Week

Barnaby Bright, “Highway 9”

Hello there! Happy Monday.

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!

Song of the Week

The Paul Schwartz Project, “How Many Fools”

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.

Song of the Week

Annie Eve, “Bedtime”

Hello again! It’s Monday. Autumn has arrived early here, bringing a full day of rain and some minor flooding. While I wait for my towels to dry so I can sop up more water in my basement, how about an update for the week?

First things first: I have a new chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door that will be up on Patreon tomorrow, and the latest chapter of Journey to the Water will be here on the blog on Wednesday. Both projects will continue until they are done!

However, if you’re looking for something new and exciting, I have good news! My friend Brooke has recently published her first tarot deck, and we’re working on a collaborative book-and-deck project. I am excited to announce that both the (first?) book and the deck will be called The Tarot of the Gates. For more details and some worldbuilding, you can read last week’s post here. The first chapter will release October 1!

Also, in case you missed it, we’re going to be at booth 116 at Bitchcraft Fair Milwaukee! It will be at the Wisconsin Center on Sunday, October 2. I hope to see you there! It’s my first event, and I am both excited and scared, as you can tell by all the exclamation points.

Take care and have an excellent week!

Song of the Week

Billie Eilish and Khalid, “lovely”

Happy Labor Day! In honor of workers past and present, I hope you find some rest today.

Because I don’t have enough projects (ignore the stacks of notes and half-finished drafts; those are my emotional support works in progress), I’m starting something new on Instagram (you can also see it on my Facebook page). My friend and collaborator Brooke started a project called #tarotember last year, wherein each day of September is focused on a different tarot card or suit. Last year, she painted the majority of her deck, the Figuratively Speaking Tarot, while I took some moody pictures and made a playlist.

#tarotember Aug. 31 Fool 1 Magician 2 High Priestess 3 Empress 4 Emperor 5 Hierophant 6 Lovers 7 Chariot 8 Strength 9 Hermit 10 Wheel 11 Justice 12 Hanged One 13 Death 14 Temperance 15 Devil 16 Tower 17 Star 18 Moon 19 SUn 20 Judgment 21 World 22 Page 23 Knight 24 Queen 25 King 26 Cups 27 Wands 28 Swords 29 Pentacls 30 Card Back
This year’s Tarotember prompts

This year, I am introducing the universe for a new and as-yet-untitled project, a space opera set in a galaxy of warring kingdoms and palace intrigue, psychic pilot-knights and lost alien civilizations, and also queer romance and tarot themes! The first chapter, titled “The Knight of Ships,” will release on October 1, after the challenge concludes (and one day before Bitchcraft Fair Milwaukee!). Eventually, this project will be both a book and an accompanying deck, currently titled the Tarot of the Gates. Brooke has painted a few cards for it already, and while she works on other projects, I’m creating placeholder graphics for the challenge. Each day reveals more about the setting, so follow me on Instagram and/or Facebook for some new sci-fi/fantasy goodness.

Don’t worry, I am not abandoning any of my other projects! A new chapter of Journey to the Water will release tomorrow on Patreon, and the latest chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door will appear here on the blog on Wednesday. Also, in case you missed it, Episode 6 of The Well Below the Valley is available on Patreon as of September 1, and you can read a free preview here.

As a final note, Shepard is six months old today, and just as cute as ever:

A gray and orange tabby/tortoiseshell kitten sleeps on a tan and blue striped pillow, her head raised and her paws folded politely underneath her.
A rare moment when she’s sitting still enough for a picture.

I think that’s all for this week! Thanks for being here.

Song of the Week

Loreena McKennitt, “Ce He Mise le Ulaingt?/The Two Trees” (poem by William Butler Yeats)

Happy Monday! I hope you’re well.

This week, I’ll have a new chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door on Patreon tomorrow, followed by the latest chapter of Journey to the Water here on Wednesday. It looks like Part Two of New Moon Door is going to finish ahead of schedule (to the extent that I even have a schedule), probably before the end of the year. I’ll take a short break after that, and then it will be on to Part Three and the exciting conclusion.

Also, the newest episode of The Well Below the Valley will release on Thursday! If you’ve been thinking of becoming a patron, now’s a good time to do it, since you’ll get access to all five previous episodes as well. Or you could wait until Friday, get all six episodes, and not start getting charged the $3 subscription until October 1 (when you will also receive Episode 7). I won’t tell anyone.

I think that’s it for now. Preparations continue for Bitchcraft Fair on October 2, and I’ll let you know when I have more information about that!

Have an excellent week! I appreciate you.