The Imaginary Word #3

The most interesting history is never taught

Hello Again!

This month has been a bit of a whirlwind. The ends of summer always tend to be that way - the minutes pass like hours but the days pass like minutes. This is why time is so difficult to trust.

If you came out to either of my events this month - thanks so much!

I was able to give my new book display a proper trial. It’s a little unwieldy to pack into my car with all the other things but I really love it. And it spins! My best yard sale purchase in a while for sure. I think it was a department store jewelry display in it’s first life.

I’m still working on figuring out audio but I have some things earmarked to share in that way when I have it figured out and when I find my little mixer board that I have apparently put somewhere “safe”.

New For September!

I have put together a short collection of short stories set in the same universe as my Guardian of the Gods book. Some of the stories were published in a variety of publications like Flashing Swords and Lorelei Signal and others are seeing their first publication. $0.99 on Kindle! You can find it on Amazon.

Fascinating History

I am a bit of a learning fan - I honestly just love to know things. New things, old things, borrowed and stolen things. I was doing research for the next Wandering Witch book (That would be Maeve’s stories) and I found out something I never knew. I knew that the US had internment camps in WWII, it never occurred to me that they were further subdivided and that the diplomats were treated differently but of course they were!

Apparently the diplomats from Axis countries were kept in luxury resorts. As I was researching some things that happened in West Virginia, it happened that I came across an article on the luxury resort, The Greenbrier, in White Sulphur Springs, WV and it’s use as a very fancy internment camp for the upper echelon of political prisoners.

While the town I’m setting this book in doesn’t exist in the real world, it’s definitely inspired by some real life small towns in West Virginia. While I’ll be reshaping things to fit how I need them to, I think I’ll totally be mentioning this somewhere in it. There’s an awful lot of history that gets overlooked in our schooling and it’s a shame because there are some incredibly interesting stories out there full of interesting, amazing, infuriating, horrible, wonderful things that most people will just never know.

Bailey Sarian’s Dark History podcast is a great place to catch up on some of the things we should have learned in school but there are so many more neat things than there is time to learn it.

Processing Emotion via Fiction

I was discussing Christmas in Bear Ridge at one of this month’s market and it got me to thinking. Christmas in Bear Ridge is actually a bit of an outlier for my long fiction. It is sweet for one with no violence to speak of. It’s an outlier also in that it’s my first book since my first book that my Dad didn’t read first.

There are small nods to both of my late parents in the pages of the story. Andy drives an International Harvester which is basically the camper ready version of the car my parents had when they got married - they had a Scout and camping was their favorite method of vacationing - my mother because she loved it, my father because he was cheap and camping is the best low cost travel. Even the mythology created for this book is full of nods to my parents that no one would probably notice but me.

When I wrote the story, I was still processing through my father’s passing and the fact that I’d lost both of my parents now. I was a functional mess. The journey of the main character mimics my own in many ways, though she got all the journeys at once rather than split up the way mine worked out. I have to say, it was probably much healthier to work my way through this part of my journey with a book than some of the ways I’ve processed (or avoided working through at all) my own grief and commitments and understandings. It many ways, it was the cheapest therapy I’ve ever had.

Upcoming Events:

So far, I only have one market in September but I’m definitely on the lookout for more.

September 9 - Cove Community Market at Cove Valley Park 1686 Kings Creek Road, Weirton. 12-4

October 7 - Details TBA - Author night

October 21 - Folklore Festival. Hancock County Parks and Rec 715 Gas Valley Road, New Cumberland, WV 12-5

November 18 - Christmas on Main - Weirton, WV 3420 Main Street, Weirton, WV 1-7