—A tale of dryads, for lovers of myth, fantasy, and the sacred feminine—
Forthcoming publication in Fall/Winter 2024, by Signum Press
Rewrites are underway now, and you can be involved in the creative process!
This is a tale of dryads, from a time long before human history began.
Lara, a young dryad, once had three hearts (as with all her kind). To recover them and bring them to life, she must set out on an unknown journey. Fearing the god of the land, who reportedly devours hearts, and inexplicably drawn to the lamia (who, stories say, revive hearts by an ominous method called guttings), she leaves her home, embarking on the heart-finding quest.
Initially released in podcast form, the first edition of The Flower of the Cedar is available for purchase in audiobook, e-book, and paperback formats. Especial gratitude goes out to Esther Hart, whose artwork you see as the project’s cover art and here on the website (hire her; she’s magnificent!)
I write, create story podcasts, and share my creative worlds as a largely self-funded labor of love. If you’d like to partner with me to make this work possible, please consider following me on Patreon, or even becoming a patron (for as little as $1 each month)!
I regularly interact with listeners and supporters on the Patreon platform, and patrons get first access to new creative material: poems, short stories, and even snippets of the new novel I’m crafting, The House of Healing: a found-family magical realism story full of humour and heart.
Come gather fireside with us!
In the autumn of 2022, The Flower of the Cedar was selected for revision and publication by Signum Press, whose Collaboratory is home to a number of passion projects in addition to my own. I’m honoured to be working with a passionate editing and publishing team to reimagine the story and characters of the original Flower of the Cedar, and I could use your help. Already I’ve drastically altered the first three quarters of the novel, writing entirely new scenes. By becoming a subscriber for this project (starting at $9/month), or by joining my Creator’s Circle ($29/month), you can have a hand in shaping the story as it transforms.
Subscribers receive e-book drafts and/or audio recordings each month during the revision process.
Those who join my Creator’s Circle will receive:
Access to text and audio chapters on release
Access to early drafts, notes, and updates each month during the writing process
Monthly meetings with me to discuss and give feedback on the most recent chapters
A mention in the book if you make a suggestion included in the final version
Personalized versions of the book at final publication
Guest Podcast Appearance
In May 2023, I was honoured to appear on Dr. Christopher Pipkin’s podcast, “The Inklings Variety Hour,” to discuss the second edition Flower of the Cedar book project. Like true nerds, we managed to touch on Narnia, Tolkien, and George MacDonald’s Lilith and Phantastes, all in one hour!
You can listen to the episode here.
Across the town’s span, the House stood quiet. The day prior had seen it the site of several booted contractors—one who stood a full minute by the listing banister and shook her incredulous head—but today, the doorways gaped empty. Two of its upstairs windows had been left with lifted sashes, at the end of projects involving fumes that needed the wide air of the outdoors to draw them out and disperse their acridity into the patient night.
And so, the House seemed now to breathe: softly in, effortlessly out, a gentle ebb and flow of merging the inner with what lies beyond, encompassing. Perhaps it waited; perhaps it knew, in the most gradual of wooden ways, that its fate was even now being decided by the strange, hasty creatures who brought it into being and determined what became of it. Perhaps it lingered over the irony inherent in interdependence: that these creatures in whose hands and hearts lay all shaping and deciding power over it were the very ones whose vulnerable bodies came returning to the shelter of its walls, needing, seeking, unable to withstand the world’s elements alone. Perhaps, as it breathed, the House knew itself to be a manifestation of these odd, powerful-and-assailable creatures: like a shell, an exoskeleton they had shed—a casting borne within them and projected outward to stand between them and the cold, the predators, and the storms that went cacophonously knocking about in the world.
Perhaps. Who can say? Who can read the thoughts of houses?
Flashlights winking on after bedtime greatly aided in the cultivation of my lifelong love affair with fantasy, with myth, and with fairy tale—indeed, with the written word writ large, if I may skirt the territory of the pun to such an extent. Predictably, I began penning my own (chiefly derivative) tales at a tender age, and so the habit took root far earlier and in hopelessly permanent fashion, long before some wise soul might have had a prayer of dissuading me. Now, of course, I’m a complete goner. You might as well give up. And, as if reading and writing weren’t bad enough, I’ve contracted the further malady of loving to read aloud, to any and all who will keep listening, too polite to back away, the fools—or the dears, I can’t quite decide which—and hence, why I keep turning my books into podcasts.
In addition to my writerly and read-alouderly pursuits (I can too invent words; I’m an English major; that power is vested in us upon graduation), I take professional editing clients through my business, For Want of a Nail, and I partner with the aforementioned Signum University, an online institution promoting the study of speculative fiction (which you should all check out, especially those Tolkien-lovers among you!), often giving creative readings at their conventions (a.k.a. Moots), and soon to publish through their newest venture, the Signum Collaboratory.
