erin's emporium of discount dreams & well-worn wonders

Happy Hallowe’en! Blessed Samhain! Merry NaNo Eve!
All that good autumnal stuff.

doll parts
A limb goes first. The joint will come loose, or the threads will weaken and snap. Arms and legs are easily lost.
Torsos are fragile things. Once the limbs are gone the torso will soon follow.
The heads last longer. The heads remain for quite some time.
Sometimes the eyes will linger.
In other cases the eyes will [...]

I think this is the first year that NaNoWriMo has pretty much snuck up on me. It’s October 28th, you say? Seriously?
It likely doesn’t help that we’ve had a lousy rainy sort of October around here, so it hasn’t felt as festive as usual. I have had my Pumpkinfest beer at the Salem Beer Works [...]

invasion advice
As a general rule, is better to appear friendly. Apparent friendliness yields a higher rate of success.
Split into small groups as not to be overwhelming. Three to five is best.
Do not approach your prey. Let it come to you.
Patience is key. There is plenty of time.
Keep your mouth shut until they are too close [...]

I’m in revisionland again, in case the radio silence hadn’t made that terrible obvious.
I would like to take a moment to say that I have fabulous beta readers. They found the elusive things that were missing instantly, because they are brilliant. Everyone needs extra pairs of eyes to look at things from different angles, and [...]

boo.
Ghosts are everywhere.
They dwell in cabinets and old shoes and shrubberies, waiting to sneak up on you when you least expect them.
They hide in the scent of crisp leaves on windy days. They curl around your feet and pull you back into autumns past with unanticipated force.
They do not wait for you to be prepared.
You [...]

Yesterday was wedding anniversary number three. Three years already! Doesn’t really seem like it. Did you know that the traditional third anniversary giftage is leather? Yeah, we weren’t about to pass that opportunity up. The boy got me these. His present is going to be slightly belated because I had to custom order it, but [...]

cobweb
It is lovely in its simple complexity.
A methodical tangle of string.
Airy and weightless. Fragile.
Until you touch it and it won’t let go.
They call it a web, but it is more than that.
It is a boundary. It is a cage.
To keep things in.
To keep things out.
About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

I am so close to the end of revisionland I could throw rocks at whatever land it is that lies beyond revisionland from here.
Technically, I don’t have any more writing-writing left. But there is ordering and formatting and fun stuff like that between here and the point of done-done so it doesn’t feel finished yet.
It [...]