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.
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.
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.
Today on my apple tree I noticed a blossom, completely out of season—apple trees bloom in May. The tree’s trying to make up for bears eating all the apples early.
It seems like we have a lot of bears this year. The bears themselves are out of their usual place, perhaps, pushed by a couple of fire seasons destroying habitat east of me. (I’m crossing my fingers that there’ll be no fires this year.)
The world is off-balance now, to say the least. I’m coming into writing book three, which will have a future thread in it. In some ways, it’s been the easiest book yet to start—I have some settings and characters established. In others, it’s been the hardest, because I’m facing the future. Our future, our human future, and the future of the planet.
Not everyone feels this way, but I still have hope.
For Seattle-area folks, a reminder: There’s a Deer Stalker book-signing party September 14. Check my Facebook page for details!
This overcast August day, it feels like early fall. I’ve been taking a break in my backyard. Behind the toolshed, it looks very Northwest, with Doug fir and here a baby cedar.
I’ve been relatively quiet lately. It’s been a hard time, a time of reorganization, separating things out as my ex-partner moves on. We’re still friendly, even in a way still partners. He’s still my emergency contact. And yet, as lovers we’re done.
I’m waiting for my publisher to get comments back to me, from her initial structural-edit pass on book two. (Next pass is line-editing.) She does a great job, and I look forward … oh, who am I kidding? I look forward to her finding no problems whatsoever. But I hardly expect that.
In the meantime, I’m living life, and ignoring an essay I’m supposed to write. I had to go look at my astrology for the past couple of days, though, because what I’ve done is this:
In the foothills of the Cascades, outside Seattle, we’re having the snowiest February of the last fifty years. I’ve been able to do my dayjob from home. I’m very lucky for that.
I have a bit of a religion about snow.
Even when I moved to Seattle, years ago, snow was rarer here than in the Midwest. I wrote three short stories in a row about snow. I’ve written a couple of stories about (not quite) freezing to death in the snow since. The second book in the septet, The Deer Stalker, has a significant set of scenes set near Snoqualmie Pass, in the snow.
This year, my neighborhood has gotten nearly no snow.
But this evening, it’s snowing.
It had to wait to Imbolc, but it’s snowing.
The stuff in the air in the photo is flying snowflakes.
A nearly full moon hangs above the trees, and leaves skitter across the road like little animals as I drive, so much so I keep half-stopping.
