My latest short story, “The Wishing Thorn,” is now available in the Once Upon a Wish anthology! Anthea Sharp put together this wonderful collection. And I love the cover, which was designed by Christine Pope.
I based my story on the folklore of the blackthorn, the tree known as the “wishing thorn.” There are many tales about wishing trees around the world—from Scotland, to Hong Kong, to Argentina. After doing more research than I probably should have, I decided to focus on the Ogham trees in Irish mythology. I know what you’re thinking: what on earth is an Ogham tree?!? I didn’t know either, until I spent hours reading about mythology. 🙂
Ogham is an ancient Irish alphabet where the letters are named after trees or shrubs. The more I read about this topic, the more I realize there is to learn—so I’m definitely not an Ogham expert. But I’ve really enjoyed reading about how the different trees are assigned different days/months on the moon calendar, or which are associated with the solstices and equinoxes.
One of the folk names for the blackthorn is ‘the wishing thorn.’ The Lunantisidhe, thin, wizened fairies with pointed ears and teeth, inhabit blackthorn trees and are bound to protect them. These fairies do not like people at all, and will curse anyone who disturbs their trees at Samhain or Beltaine.
The blackthorn is associated with warfare, death, and malevolence…but also with protection, purification, and hope. I love the complexity in the mythology, and incorporated that in my story. And yes, the Lunantisidhe are in my story as well. 🙂 Here’s a snippet
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At first it just looked like a bundle of twigs, but as it grew closer I realized it was a thin, wizened, human-like creature maybe a foot and a half tall. Its skin looked as if it were made from bark. Tiny spikes, like miniature versions of the thorns on the tree in front of me, jutted out from its head. Its ears were long and pointed, and its arms and legs were narrow and looked more like branches than limbs. Black, beady eyes were framed with eyebrows that looked almost like they were made of very small leaves.
It was one of the Lunantisidhe, the moon fairies who guarded the blackthorn.
Gram’s stories had been real after all.
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Between my day job (where I’m averaging about 10 meetings/day…seriously) and catching up on anthology projects, I haven’t done any writing in the past month…but that’s all about to change! I’m finally caught up from 2020 (or at least “caught up enough”), and am about to start editing my third novel. I finished the first draft in the summer, and the first draft is always the hardest part for me…so this should be fun!
I’ve been so busy lately that my brain has been extra full, so I’ve been working on a steady stream of jigsaw puzzles. Here’s the latest puzzle, with my two puzzle assistants. 🙂 Notice the lovely illustrations—both images in this puzzle were illustrated by Kay Nielson in the 1914 book East of the Sun & West of the Moon.
Rosie and Jasper helping with the latest jigsaw puzzle.
Like most of humanity, I am beyond thrilled to see 2020 coming to an end. Plenty of good things happened this year: I switched to a new team at work, and love my job; my sisters and I got our parents moved to an independent living place (their brand-new apartment is larger than my entire house); I had my most productive writing day ever (17,732 words in one day…I still can’t believe I did that!); and I got back in touch with my two college roommates! But wow, am I looking forward to 2021. 🙂
This year I learned that I can spend the entire work day in my office, then continue to stay in the same room in the evening while I’m writing or on a video call. It’s like I’m an astronaut, and have adapted to being stuck in a tiny space—although it’s not nearly as fun as being an astronaut. I also learned that just because I spend most of my waking hours in my office, that doesn’t mean I’m going to spend much (if any) of that time going through the piles of papers and boxes stacked (mostly) off-camera. And boy am I glad I stopped coloring my hair two years ago, and didn’t have to deal with growing it out on top of everything else 2020 brought.
I realize that the end of the year is an arbitrary spot in time to pin one’s hopes on. The other day I was talking about this with a friend of mine who she pointed out that the Chinese New Year is in February, and other cultures celebrate their new years at various times throughout the year. I’m going to stick with my excitement for 2021. Even if this is an arbitrary date, it still feels like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I think. 🙂
Lately I’ve been doing a LOT of editing, and not much writing. My thoroughly thought-out plans for 2020, which included a writing and publishing schedule that even had time added in for unforeseen events, were of course completely derailed. I ended up with a bunch of anthologies stacked on each other this fall: The Wild Hunt, Hauntings, the first ever Pikes Peak Writers anthology (which I’m working on with three other trusty volunteers), a magicky/witchy anthology that is almost ready to publish, the sixth faerie anthology, and the next issue of Amazing Monster Tales (which also got hammered by my co-editor’s unplanned life events). I’m finally almost caught up on all of these projects. I have to do edits for the last anthology, but I’m not going to start those for another week or two because I’m focusing on a few writing projects. I am off from the day job until next week, and set aside this time to write.
And speaking of writing, I am happy to report that my short story “Gilroy and the Kitten” is in a new collection called A Cat of Heroic Heart! This is book 7 of The Year of Cat, a series edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith. I have been catless for over a decade now, and will remain so until we built a utility room, since there is no good place for a litterbox in our house. I can’t make that happen any faster—we have a lot of remodeling projects that have to happen before we get to this one. So for now I have to make do with writing about cats. This particular story is about Gilroy, whose person is a witch, and the witch’s niece, who accidentally turns herself into a kitten.
The book I’m working on also has a cat…and a witch. 🙂 It feels kind of weird to be getting back to this project after so long, but it also feels really good. I’ve got first drafts of 1.5 books, and plan to write at least three books in this series (probably more, I just haven’t thought past book 3 yet). It’s a little intimidating to be working on a series of novels, but I know once I actually write multiple books in this series I’ll feel comfortable with the concept, just like once I wrote my first novel I realized I could write more novels. The first time I do something new writing-wise seems to be the hardest—which doesn’t mean subsequent projects are always easy. 🙂 But once I’ve done a thing, I know I’m capable of doing that thing again. Let’s see how much I can get written before the end of my week off!!!
Rosie and Jasper playing with their Christmas toys
Once upon a time, I went to college and had two wonderful roommates. Also one horrible roommate, and a couple who were nice but who I didn’t really become friends with. But the two wonderful roommates and I became very good friends, and we had a lot of fun together.
And then, as often happened back in the days where there was no internet, and where people’s phone numbers changed every time they moved, the three of us lost touch. 🙁
A couple of weeks ago I was thinking about both of them. I was pretty sure I could track down roommate #1, but had no idea how to contact roommate #2. I’d tried to look for her several times over the years, with no success. I decided to try to find them later, since I was super busy with edits and the day job (that was the week I had 50 meetings at work…yes, 50).
Two days later, roommate #1 sent me a message! We set up a Zoom call, and before we met I poked around and to my tremendous surprise I found roommate #2! We hadn’t talked in over 30 years, so it felt weird to call her out of the blue, even though I really, really wanted to. I decided to talk with roommate #1 about this, since we already had a Zoom session scheduled. While we were on Zoom we sent a message to roommate #2, who jumped on the call with us and said she had just been thinking about trying to find us too! It was SO great to see them both!
I am so very, very happy that we’ve reconnected! It’s really funny that we all were thinking about each other around the same time. 🙂
Me, right before I started college. Isn’t my hair awesome?!?
This has made me think about all the things we did back in college. I was only at that school (the University of Colorado, in Boulder) for two years before moving to Florida, but we packed a lot into those two years!
My life now is significantly less interesting, which in some ways may be for the best. 🙂 Back in the spring I thought I’d have a ton more time to do things since I’d be working from home for the foreseeable future. I was going to exercise every day, clean and organize everything in my house, learn a language (or two!), write a bunch of short stories and several novels, take up painting, work in the yard, read, knit/crochet/sew lots of things…it was a long list.
I’ve done some of what I planned. I reorganized part of my office. I listened to about 10 Spanish lessons. I wrote first drafts of one-and-a-half novels. I pulled weeds. I read one book, and started many others. I got out my basket of yarn and moved it around my house for a few months. But it turned out that I didn’t really have that much more time than I used to, and I didn’t realize that living through a pandemic would affect me in weird ways. Like: there was a stretch in the summer where I didn’t want to work on any of my writing projects. I didn’t feel down, but now I realize I was sulking about the pandemic. I didn’t know how much I’d hate running with a mask on. I didn’t realize that getting rid of my 6-minute commute and whatever errands I’d normally run really didn’t add up to that much more extra time.
Now that I’m eight (!!!) months into spending most of my time at home, I’m more used to all of this, and appear to have accepted the lack of excitement in my life. But it’s made me look at things a little differently. After this is all over, I’m planning on going on lots and lots of vacations. 🙂 But I’ve also been thinking about what’s important to me, and giving thought to how I can make my life better, both in larger ways (more vacations!) and in smaller ones.
Jasper helped with this puzzle!For example, for the past couple of months I’ve made myself do something around the house every weekend—but it has to be something I wouldn’t normally do. One weekend I cleaned the radiator covers in the living room. Another time I cleaned and reorganized some of the kitchen cabinets. My goal is to make this a habit that I keep even after the pandemic, since this is the kind of thing I would normally put off. Doing everything all at once feels overwhelming, but doing a little bit each week is totally manageable. Plus now it’s easier to find (some) things since the house is (somewhat) more organized. 🙂
I’ve also tried to make myself take time every once in a while to do something fun. I realize this seems pretty obvious 🙂 but I tend to fill my time with work. Even if the work is fun (like taking a writing workshop, or editing an anthology, or whatever), it’s not good to fill up all of my time. I’ve been trying to read more, which you’d think would be easy to do, but it’s hard for me to sit down and read without feeling like there’s some task I should be doing. I’ve had better luck with jigsaw puzzles, although with those there’s always the danger that I’ll get sucked in and not stop for a couple of hours. Maybe I’ll eventually get to the basket of yarn I keep moving around…
I have been doing more editing than writing for the past few months. Hauntings is the latest anthology I’ve edited—completely by coincidence, it was published on my birthday. 🙂 It’s the first issue in The Haunted Anthology, which is a new series—the plan is to release an issue every fall. Next year’s issue will be about haunted places—I originally planned to make the theme about haunted houses, then decided to make that a bit broader and see what the authors come up with.
I’m planning on wrapping up edits for a few more collections in the next few weeks, and have a couple of short stories that are due this month. After I get all that out of the way I’ll get back to the next novel (which doesn’t have a title yet). I finished the first draft in June, but haven’t looked at it since then—this is the manuscript where I wrote 17,732 words in one day. Seriously. I still can’t believe I did that, and I never, ever want to write that much in one day again. 🙂
I’m looking forward to getting back to this project, but am even more excited about my next get-together with my two long-lost college roommates!!! ❤️❤️❤️
