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Mary Trepanier Posts

Ch-ch-changes

Blooming flowering plum tree

In this book, my incubus-succubus changes gender nearly every short section. A copy editor’s nightmare! Oh well.

Early spring

Path with trees and power lines, early morning, springtime

There’s ice on the puddles, but still it’s early spring.

It’s been a long winter for most of us. I haven’t had the plague hit my family, thank the gods, but I think everyone’s been touched by that and the US political upheavals of the turn of the year.

But I’m halfway through a draft of the fourth book of my series, and this one’s going to have an angel in it.

Starting a new book

Two oracle cards, a snake and a rose garden

You know the old adage that you need to get your characters in trouble as fast as possible, in a book? Since I identify with my characters, it often feels as if I’m getting in trouble as fast as I can. Luckily writing a book is good trouble to be in.

Yesterday I sat down with a dear friend who is vastly knowledgeable in cosmologies and got a brain dump, and the Garden of Eden (as seen through a gnostic lens) came up. Emphasis on snake.

This is the reading from two of my favorite decks this morning. (The decks are Laura Tempest Zakroff’s Liminal Spirits Oracle and the Secret Dakini Oracle.)

Trouble is brewing…

Hope

Sculpted stone face set into a stump

Things are complicated and troubling now, in many ways, but still I wandered in my neighborhood and found this.

I have a lot of fear but a lot of hope too. My own plan stays the same—grow veggies, support my friends, march in the streets as needed.

Presently I can offer you all some sales on my books, too! We all need a little distraction.

Toward a healed world.

Samhain blessings

An altar with a black cloth, two candles, a resin skull, and some glittery faux bones

It’s out today, my lovely book, the third of the Tales of the End Times series: The Way to Witch Farm.

To order it, you can go to Amazon here (and you can get it free with Kindle Unlimited): https://amzn.to/3mIDBWT

To get the series, you can go here: https://amzn.to/3jL2gIm

Today is Samhain, the Witches New Year, and a full moon besides that. My coven and I will scry tonight, looking forward to a future that may yet be bright. In honor of the holiday, here’s a Samhain excerpt from the book.


“Now we will make offerings to Hekate, Dea, and the ancestors, asking for their help.”

The line started forward. Along the altar, the attendees moved from one incense burner to the next. Hekate received a blend containing mint and aconite, Dea patchouli with rose, the spirits mugwort and sandalwood.

Red sun

Red sun rising in fir trees

The red sun rose like a portent this morning.

On the West Coast, California, Oregon, parts of Washington are burning. My country is falling apart.

May cooling rains contain this fire.

And if my country can change this much this fast—maybe it can change this fast for the good.

Another world is possible.

Another book is on the way, possibly as early as Samhain.

Finishing the harvest

An apple tree with apples

I’m finishing the line-edit for the third book in the series today. This part is one of my favorite things about writing, refining line by line: mostly cutting and moving punctuation, sometimes moving words.

The picture of the apples is from a few days ago. A bear came and ate nearly all of them the other morning, climbing through the tree to get them. I’m okay with my neighbors getting most of my apple harvest.

I’ve named the third book The Way to Witch Farm.

Nearly apple harvest

Apples on a tree

I haven’t had a lot to say—what’s to say about the political world, in essays and social media, is being said by other folks.

I’m on the third draft of the next book, which will feature some impassioned Antifa folks and some protests, as well as Hekate and everyone else. In the meantime, this day of the new moon, I watch my apples ripen.

Distancing

Trees and azalea by my house I’m starting week six of my personal pandemic lockdown. For my day job, I’ve been working from home since early March, and I went into full social distancing mode mid-March.

I feel lucky I live in Washington, where the COVID-19 response has been relatively sane. And, honestly, for me as a writer, social distancing hasn’t been as hard as for some of my friends.

I’m an ambivert and thrive on getting a large chunk of time alone. I have to be self-disciplined, or I’d never get any writing done, so after a few days I’m not the person who stays in bed all day. (I’m also lucky my neurochemistry supports me here.) In normal times, the need to write means I have to sit on my social butterfly tendencies. Now, in this new, weird, loose time, it’s easier. Also my editor slipped one of my deadlines. A lot has been slipping lately. That feels good in some ways (I tend to be stressed; it’s good if I can relax and slow down) and bad in others.