Technically, this newsletter is late. I’m trying to be okay with that. Everyone—including me—preaches softness this time of year. Rest. Sleep. The little animal heart beating in my chest knows this is true, for what else can be made of the dark days? Only recently have we been able to defy the night so readily. For the majority of our history, the most we could summon was a single fire, creating a circle of softness, of safety. But the night lingered on just beyond its glow.
Now I find myself reading on my phone at all hours of the evening when sleep escapes me. The light it casts spreads across my side of the bed. Its tone is blue instead of yellow. I don’t feel safe within its glow, but when pain awakens me and keeps me in its clutches, I make do.
Nearly all of our neighbors keep some lights on overnight. Some of them even have floodlights. Besides, there’s a major road just steps from my door, and when the ground is wet, I can hear the swoosh of travelers no matter the hour, their headlights brushing my windows.
When I was younger, I used to look for places and people that did not sleep, like the basement of a childhood friend, nearly windowless, equipped with a drop ceiling and an old couch and an even older TV. Night could not find me there.
But the night always waits and she always catches up to me—to us—in the end. And I am learning to enjoy that. It is in the darkness that I have found the most rest, the most softness, wrapped in a weighted blanket on my couch, bundled away in the living room of our 1910s home, which boasts no recessed lighting and three windows, two of which face the closely-situated neighbor’s house.
During these winter days, that room is dark enough that I find myself lighting a candle and turning on the lamp by 3 or 4 PM. I should hate it, I think. I’ve spent so long trying to outrun her, outwit her. But when the night closes in like a cocoon, the library floor lamp hardly managing to cast more than a two-foot diameter of light, I find myself surrendering. Sometimes I light a fire. Sometimes not. Sometimes I just let her—the nighttime, the darkness—have me entirely.
And when I invite her in, I always dream.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
if you’re in the mood for more unhinged stuff
“VERIFIED SIGHTING #33: PRAGUE, 1979” - a just-published short fiction piece out at Del Sol SFF Review. Fey kings, magic, rain-slick cobblestones.
STUFF THAT HAS MADE ME FEEL SOMETHING (ANYTHING) LATELY
“THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR” by AMAL EL-MOHTAR & MAX GLADSTONE: Just read it, okay? Time travel, science fiction, sapphic yearning, impossibly elegant prose. A slim, sky-blue book, this novel looks like a quick read when you pick it up for the first time. In a way, it is, because you’ll never be able to put it down. But the vast worlds it contains within just a few pages are mind-boggling to me.
THE WITCH’S YEARLY PLANNER by OPEN SEA DESIGN & MELISSA JAYNE MADARA: I have been disconnected from my practice for a long time. The witchcraft community is so full of charlatans, spiritual bypassers and abusers. For a few years now, it has made it nearly impossible for me to engage with my innate workings at all. When I saw that Open Sea, my favorite stationery maker, designed this stunning planner, I took the plunge. It’s only been a little while now, I recognize, but the way this planner has reconnected me with my magic is outstanding. Something about the bound paper format feels so far removed from the Instawitch bullshit. The practices listed here are sustainable, open practice folk magic, and yes, even a disabled chronic pain girlie like me doesn’t feel over-faced by what’s inside.
A NEW PROJECT from MITAMU: I had the pleasure of working with the artist behind this group, Tammy Huynh, a few years back and it was obvious to me from the get-go she was wildly talented in a number of ways. The concept of this album, which blends AI with Asian Futurism, is absolutely genius, and I can’t wait to see what Tammy creates. You can back the project on her Kickstarter, and I highly recommend you do!
“UNHOLY TERRORS” by LYDNALL CLIPSTONE: Lyndall kindly asked me to blurb her forthcoming YA standalone horror-romance and I am so honored she did! Slated for an October 2023 release, this book weaves religious trauma as world building. The ~vibes~ alone are outstanding and I cannot stress how much the young, questioning-Catholicism tween I once was would’ve loved this book. Adult me loves it too, but I adore it most for the younger kids, because they’re getting a story that I needed desperately at their age. My short pitch for this one is: remember the hot priest romance subplot in Fleabag? It’s like that, but everyone has swords. Swoon.
{That’s all for now. Until the dark moon returns & the next story blooms. Yours, V.}