flax-golden tales: coffeeshop magic

coffeeshop magic

coffeeshop magic

I don’t have the time to devote to circles or covens. I have to fit things in when and where I can, in stolen moments and cups of coffee.

Stirring clockwise to conjure.

Widdershins to banish.

There’s never enough time, and rarely enough caffeine, but I make do with what I have. Besides, cauldrons and pointy hats are overrated.

Sometimes I see other customers practicing. Pouring their cream and sugar with studied intent. Stirring with purpose.

I add an extra spoonful of sugar to my own coffee for them, to make all of our enchantments sweeter.

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

i dreamt i went to manderley again

At one point this past Sunday night I was standing alone in a dark room full of artfully illuminated bathtubs. One of them still had a bit of blood in it, but my attention was mostly focused on the tub half-full of water in which a live eel was swimming counter-clockwise circles around and around and around.

A man in a white mask entered from a door across the room and walked toward me. He peered in the tub to see what I was looking at, watched the eel with me for a bit, and then walked out another door, leaving me and the eel alone again.

I was at Sleep No More again, of course. How I missed the eel the first two times is beyond me, but it gives you an idea of how much there is to look at besides the actors. I’m so glad they extended the (now sold-out) run, we have tickets to go again next month before it closes. I will miss it terribly when it’s gone.

I’m in revisionland at the moment, and I’ll hopefully have something resembling a new draft by the time I get to return to Manderley again. I have new text and old text in bits and pieces and divided up into different Scrivener files at the moment, but I think it’s going well. It’s more like writing a new novel with bits of the old one in it, rather than adding new bits to the old version this time, but I think that’s likely a good thing at this point.

the to-read pile, 2010

to read 2010

This is not all of it, of course. This is mostly the recently acquired stuff. I should really re-organize all the shelves so I can actually see how huge the to-read pile is, but that might get scary.

flax-golden tales: property feature

property feature

property feature

The monster came with the house.

The realtor said they could get estimates from removal services but then there was some sort of confusion with determining ownership because of the property lines, because it spends so much time underground. And there was so much paperwork and expense involved that we figured it really wasn’t worth the effort and decided to just let it stay.

We liked the house too much to give it up over something as minor as a yard monster. Besides, it doesn’t really bother anyone. It stays in the yard. The first summer it accidentally destroyed the azaleas but I didn’t care for the azaleas anyway.

The monster prefers the winter. It likes the snow.

I’m not sure who gave it the scarf, but it seems to like that, too.

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