Here is the fierce predator Onion in her natural environment. She’s stalked and killed a roll of toilet paper, having started the morning by taking down a votive candle.
I’m sad to tell you Onion is an only child now. Her sister Potato was lost a while ago on a grand adventure, begun by popping out a window screen. Potato started her quest at night, or I might have stopped it. She’s now with Bast, or wherever cats go when they take off. I miss her.
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.
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.
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.
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 came back from a family trip to find my orchid blooming, after several years when it hasn’t.
Also waiting for me, I found the line edit from my publisher.
Book two, The Deer Stalker, is close to ready! We’re aiming at an early August release—Lughnasadh, first fruits.
Outdoors, it’s celebrating spring. The dogwood is in bloom, and I’m editing book two to my publisher’s comments.
It’s a bit odd that it’s so springy out, when one timeline in the book is set in autumn. Another is set in spring, but spring in England. That timeline shares the bluebells and the blue skies but not the dogwood.
It had been over for a while, the relationship, really.
Toward the turn of the year, I started feeling bored. We’d been fighting a lot, but I kept hanging in there. And then part of me said, I’m done.
It’s rarely me who ends a relationship, although we all know that the first one out wins. Perhaps there’s a small thrill of victory.
I’m sad, though.
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:
