There isn’t really full-blown sweater weather backdropped with crimson and gold leaves where I am yet, but the summer heat has broken. The AC is off and the windows are thrown open for cooler days and, yes, you do need a sweater nights. I’ll take it. I often joke I am not a hot house flower, but a delicate tundra bloom who withers when it’s above 75 degrees Fahrenheit (24 for Celsius folks). Autumn is my season. It still has a nostalgic sheen of “back to school” with its accompanying newly sharpened pencil scent (though I am more of a fountain pen girl these days). It’s also the spooky season. All Hallows, Halloween, Samhain, whatever you call it, is my favorite holiday, followed almost immediately by my birthday.
Maybe it’s just true that we tend to love the season our birthday falls in, the season that welcomed us to the world. Whatever the reason, this fall is extra special. My son and his partner are getting married in October and I get to officiate. My niece is getting married on my birthday, so I’ll be home in Tennessee with my family to celebrate her big day. My new book is also coming out on my birthday (more on that later). In between all those things, keifel, my intrepid partner, and I are planning a quick adventure to L.A. to meet up with a writer friend for an event she’s involved with and another trip later to see family in San Diego. So after a heavy summer with a lot going on, things are looking up. I can’t wait to see friends and family I haven’t seen—between covid and the big move—in years.
On the writing front, things are going apace on the as yet unnamed nonfiction project. Verona Green is getting its final polish put on by my amazing editor (hi, Jennifer!) while keifel finishes the cover artwork. I’ve got the loose outline of the second Verity book done. Though when I say “loose outline,” know that outline for me means: the opening scene, this thing has to happen at some point, and the hook for the next book at the end. I am a discovery writer, a term I prefer to “pantser.” I kinda know where I’m going but I also know the story and especially the characters are going to have other ideas I hadn’t imagined. That probably also says something about my approach to life but this is a newsletter not a novel.
In autumnal celebration, I’ve included a little snippet of Verona Green for you as a teaser after the marketing bit. Let me know what you think and thanks as always for being on this journey with me.
That Marketing Bit at the End
1000Volt Press just released Conjuring the Commonplace: A guide to everyday enchantment & junk drawer magic by Laine Fuller and Cory Thomas Hutcheson, co-hosts of the long-running New World Witchery podcast. I am so excited to have this book out the world and proud of our small part in it. Laine and Cory walk you through your house to point out all the hidden magic and folklore hiding in the cupboards (and your junk drawer). We’ll have copies and signed book plates in our store soon but you can order electronic and print copies in all the usual places.
WitchLit is well into its fourth season. There is a bonus episode out now with Gemma Snow and Dr. Angela Sutton that we had entirely too much fun making talking about a Scholastic Teen Witch book from the 1980s involving a lot of Tangerine Ice lipgloss and love potions gone awry. You can listen anywhere fine podcasts are purveyed, or “wherever you listen to podcasts.”
Excerpt from Verona Green: a book of art & magic out November 4, 2023. Preorders beginning in October.
My jaw unclenched as soon as I pulled into the driveway of the farm. Calling it a farm was generous. It was more of a cottage tucked into five wooded acres at the foot of the Catskill mountains in the hamlet of West Kill. My parents hadn’t been keen gardeners in the time they’d lived there but I had planted several raised beds full of herbs, vegetables, and flowers—enough that there wasn’t a front lawn anymore. The perennials had died back for the winter but I loved the wild, brittle sculptures of their plant skeletons as much as the leafy green tangles of summer.
My stomach rumbled as I dug in my bag for my keys reminding me that there probably wasn’t much choice for lunch. I stopped rummaging. Something was off, didn’t smell right, didn’t feel right. Hilma was silent in her crate. When I grasped the knob to unlock the door, it moved open. I was certain I’d locked up when I’d left on Monday. I was obsessive about checking all the doors before I headed back to the city and I couldn’t decide if I was more angry that someone had broken into my house or that someone had been able to get past the the property and house wards.
I set Hilma’s carrier down and swung the door open the rest of the way. No one else’s presence registered, but the hair on the back of my neck stood at attention anyway. I inspected the brass lock and strike plate as if I knew what I was looking for exactly. There wasn’t any evidence of the door having been forced, no scratches or whatever it was Hercule Poirot looked for after he found a body in the study. I walked inside closing, not locking, the door behind us.
Hilma bounded out into the entryway when I unzipped the carrier and I relaxed a little. She wouldn’t have come out so quickly if there was even the slightest whiff of stranger. While the cat made her way to her litter box in the mudroom at the back of the cottage, I checked every room and closet to see what might be missing. Nothing. It didn’t even look like the place had been searched or that anyone else had been there. Maybe I had left the door open.
I went out the back door to check on the studio. That door was open too. There was no way I had flaked enough to leave the studio unlocked as well. Someone had been there and they either had lock and ward woo—a real possibility—or keys to the house and the studio—unlikely but possible. The house had the same locks it had when I was a kid. A few of the blinds were up in the small, airy space. I always closed them when I left. Again, nothing seemed to be missing, except my peace of mind, but my burglar had gone through the finished paintings leaning against the wall. Each of them had been turned outward where I kept them facing the wall to avoid light damage. The sketches on the cork board above my workstation had been taken down and lay in a neatened pile on the glass plate where I mixed pigments into mediums. I wanted a quiet weekend to paint, experiment with a new pigment idea, and breathe. As much as I loved my restoration work, and George, the city exhausted me. Too much noise, too many people. A more perfect life would have been one lived entirely in West Kill, painting, gardening, foraging. Unfortunately, West Kill didn’t offer much in the way of lucrative employment and though the farm was finally paid for, the state and county still wanted their taxes. And despite having been transformed into a witch’s paradise of herb gardens and greenhouses, no woodland creatures came by to do maintenance on the roof or magically supply electricity.
I put the paintings back in their proper places and locked up the studio. An unnerved wariness replaced my initial anger. I had planned to gather the last of the black walnuts from the trees behind the house. The hulls made a fine brown-black ink and wash and as much of it as I used, I was greedy about collecting all the ground fall. The thought of roaming around in the woods after finding the doors open wasn’t as inviting as it had been on the drive up. Maybe it was better to work on another project and go tomorrow afternoon.