erin

magic & pennies

I love how magical the internet is sometimes.

I met the artist known as Clovia over on the Absolute Write Forums. Then she found me over on Etsy, and she liked my art and I liked hers and we arranged a trade.

I traded her a print for these earrings, which are marvelous.

And I mentioned that I loved the Ganesha design in her galleries and she said she’d make me up a little ornamental piece with one of them as well.

I was expecting something very simple, so I kind of flailed around like a crazy person when I saw this.

ganesha ornament

Photos don’t do it justice, there are too many lovely shiny parts and the actual Ganesha design is beautiful and intricate. I have it hanging above my desk and I love it to bits.

Please go check out her Etsy store to see more of her gorgeous work. She does magical things with pennies. (Pennies!)

All spare change should aspire to such lovely destinies.

By erin, ago

flax-golden tales: in tandem

in tandem

in tandem

Shall we sail then, you and I? Upon a glass-still sea with no land in sight? With you in your boat and me in mine, waiting for the wind to take us where it wishes?

If we are separated I will send up flares and write you messages in bottles until we are reunited.

If there are vikings or sea monsters we shall evade them, for we are clever and resourceful. We will resist the honey-sweet songs of beautiful sirens. We will steal rum from pirates.

Should there be tempests we will ride them out on glorious waves. Or if the storms are too strong we shall wash up on some distant shore together to drink from coconuts and tie seashells in our hair.

And when the storms have passed we will sail once more, with you in your boat and me in mine.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

By erin, ago

nine nine nine

I spent a large portion of the weekend re-imagining Beauty & the Beast for my writing group. We have a Summer/Fall project of fairy tale rewrites and this was mine, I wanted to get it done before I get to full-time revisions.

My version has a vaguely steampunk castle with a mechanical garden. I do have a bit of a thing for settings.

It is supposed to be a short story. I finally forced myself to stop around 8k and it desperately wants to be at least twice that if not longer, and so far the feedback I’ve received on it agrees. So I will probably go back and expand it after my revisions are finished but before NaNoWriMo, if I have time in between.

Am wondering when I became the kind of occasional writer who is constantly writing. Somewhere in there I need to paint the kings for the tarot deck, too, and I have this shadowbox-esque thing on my worktable at the moment that needs many more layers of paint and buttons.

Maybe it’s just the uber-productiveness of autumn or some such, now that it’s arrived in all its crisp glory. I keep looking at it askance because it seems too early, even Hallowe’en last year was warmer than this. But I’m not complaining! I have tea! And tons of things to work on while wearing socks! Including knitting a fuzzy red scarf. And, of course, revision-o-rama.

I keep trying to come up with something to say about it being 09.09.09 today and all my brain can manage is “nines! lots!” so I think I will give it some more tea and get back to revising.

(P.S. Catching Fire was made of win and wonderful and I love Peeta and want him to bake me cookies and I cannot wait for book three. Except that I have to. Boo. Working on that patience-virtue thing.)

By erin, ago

flax-golden tales: unexpected architecture

unexpected architecture

unexpected architecture

They build the castles everywhere. They sneak out at night and in the morning there’s a castle sitting in an empty lot or on someone’s lawn, and no one can say exactly where it came from or how it got there.

They are guerrilla castles, elaborate three-dimensional graffiti.

Sometimes they’re torn down. Once in awhile the owner of the property a castle has sprung up upon will leave it standing for a reasonable period of time before taking it down, but they are always taken down.

The castles are temporary things.

No one has figured out who the unseen architects are. People assume it is a group. No single person could build such things in only a matter of hours and be gone before their work is discovered by the rest of the world.

Whoever they are, they haven’t been caught yet.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

By erin, ago

reading is fundamental

Did I babble here about how The Hunger Games is one of the best books I’ve read in ages and I loved it to little bits? I can’t remember. I babbled about it a lot, though, and forced it upon a great many people. Have you read it? Get off the internet and go read it if you haven’t yet. Seriously. Go. Now. Shoo.

Back? Wasn’t it good? Book two, Catching Fire, came out yesterday and I ran out to get it at the bookstore, something I haven’t done with a book on its release day since the last Harry Potter came out.

I am trying to pace myself. I’m about a third of the way through right now and I’m going to try to get to the halfway point before the husband gets home and I have to hand it over. We’re sharing, and being pretty good at it. He started it last night, I started it today.

It’s actually very good timing, since I figured out the last of my revisions yesterday and wanted to take a break before tackling the actual writing. I’ve still been jotting down notes and such but mostly I’ve just been curled up reading with pushy kittens who want to sit in my lap.

I am trying not to think about how long I’ll have to wait for the third book. Once, probably post-Harry Potter, I considered having a rule about not reading series until all the volumes were published.

That hasn’t really worked. Excuse me, I have to go read more now.

By erin, ago

flax-golden tales: mystery street

mystery street

mystery street

Mystery Street is a good place to find what you’re looking for, if you can find Mystery Street itself.

There’s a sign, of course. And it is somewhat near Illusion Square, which you can see only if you face it from the east. (From other directions Illusion Square appears to be a park full of small dogs catching large frisbees.) Once you cross Illusion Square, you take two left turns and two right ones (not necessarily in that order) and then you should be able to see the sign.

If you get hopelessly lost you can ask a cat for directions. Blue-eyed cats will only speak in half-truths, but half-true directions are better than no directions at all.

You’ll know you’ve found Mystery Street when you see the sign. After that, well, you should be able to find whatever it is you’re looking for. You can find pretty much anything on Mystery Street, once you get there.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

By erin, ago