vintagewitch | Recent Entries

Edit to Announce: A's lab test came back negative! It was, in fact, just the flu

Well it looks like whatever A got is not, in fact, COVID. Rapid tests keep coming back negative and we won't know the lab results until maybe Tuesday. We're still operating under the assumption that it was COVID, just because neither of us wants to be a vector, but at this point it feels very unlikely.

I'm working on my next book proposal today, as well as my bullet journal set up for September. I can't believe it's already September! I mean, I *can*, but it means that my first book is out in one month! I'm really, really hoping that this coming week I'll get my author copies. I can't wait to hold her in my hands!

Yesterday I took the day to chat with friends on the phone and zoom. I think I had a solid 4 hours of social time? That wasn't A? What is the world coming to. Land's sakes.

I think that's all for now - I just wanted to update and say it is very likely NOT COVID.

I got a new temp job today!

I'm currently working at a call center and we're ... too efficient, so my last day on this assignment is next week. So the temp agency dutifully decided that they were going to set me up with interviews for my next gig. Well, today I accepted a new thing! I'll be starting the day after Labor Day. It's fully remote, with the option to go in to the office. I'm gonna opt to train in-office just to get out of my house. But I think it's gonna be really good for me - it's with a great healthcare related nonprofit agency.

I started a new knitting project tonight! I've started making another shawl - this one striped. Here it the link to the design on Ravelry. I'm doing it in much the same color scheme - the yarn isn't exactly the same, but I did my best with Cascade 220. The original pattern uses the designer's own yarn brand, but there is currently nothing in her online yarn shop, so I couldn't figure out exactly what weight. I figured worsted would be good - I was debating between worsted weight and fingering. I tend to knit really tightly, so a slightly thicker weight isn't the worst thing.

I don't know how comfortable I would have been dropping ... $100 ... on yarn if I didn't have another gig lined up, but honestly I'd rather have enough skeins so that I won't run out. I might have some leftover, but that's ok. I'm dutifully saving stashbuster projects.

In other news, I'm at a weird reading standstill. I don't know why - I am obsessed with the novel I'm reading and I have plenty of other books going - but I think I just need something fast. In a discord server the other day a bunch of people and I were talking about cozy mysteries, and it kind of feels like a genre I would like to try out both as a writer and a reader. So I just bought a really cheap e-book tonight. I'm also sort of in the mood for fanfic, but I feel like "cozy mystery romance" is a lot of what I seek in fanfic anyway, so there's that.

It is far too late if I'm going to get up early to do audio editing before I go to work. Blech.

HI I HAVE RETURNED

I don't know why I fell off the habit of being here, but I guess I'm back! My presence on Dreamwidth is highly cyclical and I have decided that's ok. To everyone I friended right before dropping off the grid: I am so sorry! I'm back for a bit.

It's not even September yet and fall is starting to happen here. It's been cooler the last several days, and some of the leaves have started to turn. I hope this means that we're in for a long fall, and not a fast and early one. It has all the feeling of a long fall.

This summer saw a really intense career crisis on my end as well as a horrible time financially. I freaked out about moving to New Jersey and everything. I think I'm finally on the other side of that one though.

I have suddenly lost all sense of what I was going to say, so I'm going to go back to reading my friends list. Drop me a comment! What's new with you?

It's been a hell of a week. I haven't been able to process much of what's going on in the news because I'm going through a lot of personal changes.

However! I don't want to think about it right now!

Instead, I want to talk about capsule wardrobes and how I want to downsize my entire life so that it's easier to move not only to New Jersey, but to Europe after that. I'm so so annoyed with all the clutter in my life right now and I am feeling the need to get rid of all the excess shit.

The goal: Get my entire wardrobe to fit into a suitcase and a half.

But I don't want my wardrobe to lose personality. I kind of hate the super basic normcore minimalist capsule wardrobes. I want something unique! But that is super easily packed and portable!

Here's what I think I need:

Clothing:

2-3 t-shirts
1-2 tank tops
2 pairs of jeans
1-2 pairs of slacks
1 patterned playsuit
3-4 skirts
3-4 tops
2-3 dresses
3-4 sweaters
3 pairs

Outerwear:

1 leather jacket
1 jean jacket
1 winter coat
1 cape (I already have a cape and I adore it! I will not get rid of it!)

Shoes:

1 pair of sandals
2 pairs of sneakers (one for the gym, one for taking long walks in New Jersey/NYC)
1 pair brown doc martens
1 pair black Chelsea booties

Socks and underwear don't count. Neither does jewelry.

For whatever reason, a lot of people who do capsule wardrobes say that 37 items is kind of the sweet spot. So far, if I have the *most* amount of items, this makes 37. I'm trying to remember that extra bottoms (jeans, skirts, etc.) means way more outfit combinations. I tend to gravitate towards interesting tops when I'm out shopping, but I also ADORE leggings. I have this great pair of dark burgundy leopard print leggings that I love pairing with interesting tops.

15 Item Challenge:

This is basically a wardrobe challenge where you pull out 15 items that you're going to wear/cycle through over the course of two weeks. I think this would be a great way of figuring out what I actually want to wear over the course of a season, to help narrow things down.

So I don't want to just get rid of things to get rid of them at this point, but I'm not sure how else to approach this. I need to downsize A LOT before next year anyway, so I'm taking this as an opportunity to do just that.

I started a TikTok to follow my downsizing and capsule journey - if you're intrigued, you can follow me there. It's a lot easier to be visual there than it is to be visual on Dreamwidth. My account is: @maximalcapsule

So ... I signed up for Rusty Quill Big Bang, and have FINALLY been writing Murder Grandma.

One of the Magnus Archives discord servers I'm in is doing a Spring Cleaning word count challenge which is kind of a nice way to find writing community as well.

Today I wrote 1243 words and got into a good rhythm. I felt a little guilty about avoiding some actual work I had to do today, but none of my stuff was on an important deadline. I needed to do some podcast editing today, but my GarageBand shit the bed so ... fanfic! Yay

Current Music: Raspberry Swirl b. Tori Amos

hiiiii. I'm alive.

I keep thinking of things I want to post about, and then not doing it, so this post is going to be a mishmash of all of those things. I've also been terribly behind on my Reading page. I have this ... completionist thing? IDK how to explain it, but I feel bad when I haven't read everything up until the last time I read stuff, and then it gets overwhelming if it's been a while. So today I just let myself read the first page of my reading page and left it at that.

Writing stuff:

I finished the page edits for the book yesterday! It's ... really happening. It's really a book book. They're actually going to publish it. Because that book is so much about creativity, it has also inspired me to get back to work on my novel. I've been doing Rachael Stephen's Story Magic Academy and it is such a lovely and supportive community, and going through her videos is an incredible process for getting really deep into the planning for a fictional work.

She's actually moved away from writing novels herself, but honestly the Story Magic Academy works for any kind of storytelling in my opinion. Theatre, YouTube videos, tabletop games, etc. can all benefit from Story Magic Academy. It only opens for enrollment twice a year, and they just started a new session, but it will open back up in the fall.

Fandom:

Rusty Quill Big Bang is happening again and I am Sorely Tempted. I have this epic idea for a TMA fic set in Somewhere Else that focuses on the potential working relationship between Gertrude and Jon. And of course there will be an exploration of Jon and Martin's relationship, and some Evil Threats to be Slayed. I just don't know if I have the time to commit. My friend moon suggested that I could chop up the epic plot into a series and just do the first of the series for RQ Big Bang so I'm not horrendously overwhelmed, and I might do that. The RQ Big Bang is only 20k words, but I know that this story will be far longer than 20k - but regardless of the length of the story, it needs to be a first draft done by July 9th. Two months gives me some time, but I have Significant Life Stuff that I need to take into consideration.

I think what I need to do is go through some Story Magic Academy exercises with this particular story, flesh it out, and see if I think it's feasible to finish by July 9th. moon also reminded me that I can back out if I need to. I hate being the person who always backs out of fests, but that's kind of where I'm at. I feel awful for backing out of HP Triad Fest, but I was feeling particularly icky about participating in HP fandom around that time because of ... well ... JKR's toxicity.

Speaking of HP fandom tho ... I am getting more inspiration to work on my HP fics lately too. I think it's honestly reading all of these super epic fics that is getting me in the mood to write. That and going through the SMA. But I need to prioritize my original fiction over my fanfic at this time! I am genuinely really excited about this novel and need to make space for it. It's just so much more work to write original fiction because you have to create everything from scratch. Fanfic is so easy to just ... go go go.

Life Outside of Work:

AE got their wisdom teeth out yesterday, so I've been nursing them. Not much really to say there - AE is a trooper.

I'm going to get to see a bunch of family from my dad's side in a couple of weeks. My Uncle Dan will be in town. He lives in the Seattle area and so people don't really see him all that often - whenever he comes to town they make a huge party of it. Chuck is flying into town, and apparently a bunch of the cousins are coming over to our side of the state as well. It will be AE's first time meeting any of my extended family. Which is weird to think about! But honestly I don't see my extendeds that much and then right when I was getting to the point of wanting to introduce them, COVID hit and we haven't been doing much.

I will say, I'm getting really excited to see folks. It's been way too long. It's so easy for me to get into the habit of daily life, and since my dad had such strained relationships with his side of the family (and still does, frankly), we never saw them much when I was a kid. Having extended family that you see often is a pretty foreign concept to me.

Folk Magic Stuff:

My friend is teaching a yearlong class on Glamour Magic and invited me to audit it. While I'm definitely not new to magic, I am very new to glamour magic! I'm honestly honored they invited me to audit it - they said that since they're pairing people up, they needed another person. I'm a bit behind, but am hoping to catch up today in time for tomorrow's live class.

Not much else to report. I've been feeling so burned out that I've decided to take a bit of a break from doing a bunch of magic. I know - I just talked about being in a new magic class - but I'm giving myself full permission to just ... not do much outside of it. I also decided to go on a Patreon sabbatical, which is honestly fantastic. I feel so free - which is probably a sign that I need to change things dramatically.

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: home
Current Music: Spouse listening to MST3K in the background

When I posted the other day and mentioned this fanfic, a bunch of people were interested, so I figured I'd post a rec!

I just finished this and hooooly shit. All that angst and stuff is so worth it! To be honest, I feel like this could have been split up into two fics, but considering I just immediately started reading the sequel ... probably not necessary.

Title: Tit for Tat
Author: mintaminta
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Drarry
Rating: Explicit (and boy does it earn it)
Wordcount: 388,817
Warnings: Alcohol abuse/alcoholism, Past Abuse, Angst, Depression, Anxiety, Eating Disorders, PTSD (check the tags for other stuff - this is just the trigger warnings)
Summary: Our story picks up five years post-war. Harry's ready to come out and leave the public life behind; Draco's looking for quiet reintegration into magical society in London. True angst! Emotional vulnerability! Romance of the star-crossed lover variety! If you're looking for a plot-driven fic with all the smut and all the feels, here it is folks.

Read Tit for Tat on AO3

Current Mood: peaceful
Current Location: work - on my lunch break
Current Music: work radio playing

Well, today Elon Musk bought Twitter so ... continuing to hang on to my Dreamwidth account because this is my favorite form of social media and doesn't have ads, an alogrithm, or problematic owners.

Now if only my real life friends would get on here XD

I felt completely at a standstill today regarding work stuff. One of those "holy shit I have so much to do but I can't figure out what it all is" things. I've reached a level of burnout where I've realized that ... witchcraft and folk magic aren't even all that interesting to me anymore. I've done it for work for so goddamn long, and for so many unpaid hours, that I'm really losing sight of whether or not I want to continue doing it at all.

I mean, I won't stop. When I have a really good client session or when I have a good reading for myself, when I'm in the flow and actually doing magic, it's incredible.

But reading about it and studying it and writing about it and everything is just so exhausting for me these days.

I need a vacation desperately, but in order for that to happen I need to make a lot more money and in order for me to make a lot more money I need to work a lot more and ... you get the point. I really want to travel internationally soon, but it's so expensive. We have a trip out to New Jersey planned for June, but that isn't really a vacation as much as it is prepping move stuff and seeing the in-laws.

I'm almost done reading a monster fanfic (aka 100k+ words). I started reading it so that I could read the SECOND in the series, in which Draco is Trans and I neeeeeeeeed to read it. But the author basically said "this will not make sense unless you read the first one" so I read the first one. There are some hints at a Big Secret that Draco is keeping and there are definitely some instances where Draco seems very in-the-closet trans, but I think it's only noticeable to me because I'm trans.

Hopefully tonight we'll watch more Our Flag Means Death. If Anais doesn't want to watch it tonight, I might just ask for permission to finish it on my own XD I need a funny thing tonight. For the healing burnout purposes.

Howdy!

Welcome to this here Dreamwidth blog! This is where I can be completely not a professional at all and just journal about my day, writing, fandom thoughts, whatever. I write publicly/professionally elsewhere, but I really love the pseudo-anonymity of Dreamwidth. I also really don't want to talk too much about work in a way that folks from my real life could find me on here to protect some of that anonymity. Oh, being a semi-public person on the internet!

Basic info about me:

Pronouns and Gender Identity: I'm non-binary! I am fairly femme so I use she/they pronouns.

Sexuality: QUEER. Just really queer.

Relationship Status: Married - when I talk about Anais in posts, I'm referring to my spouse (who is also non-binary).

Why follow me?: I post a lot of everyday stuff, but I like to think my life is interesting. I'm a witch, I work from home. I'm also a writer - I write both fiction and non-fiction about occult stuff. I love researching folklore and will likely share some of that here as well. I'm active in the Magnus Archives fandom and the Harry Potter fandom (love Drarry, fuck JKR). Fandom tends to be an escape for me when life is difficult. I'm also chronically ill - I have fibromyalgia. I do also have chronic mental illness (anxiety, depression, in recovery from an eating disorder), though I'm feeling pretty well supported around my mental illnesses recently.

Here's my current policy on what is access-listed and what is a public entry:

Anything that talks about personal details, especially personal health or relationship details, is behind an access filter. Anything that would identify me or where I live is behind an access-only filter. I like that Dreamwidth is a semi-anonymous space, especially because I run an online business and host a podcast.

To break it down more specifically:

Fandom posts are all public. When I post a link to a fic, or other fannish thoughts, those are public.

Reading + Writing updates are all public! When I post a writing log, or talk about the books I'm reading, those are all public.

Generic daily blogs are all public. This is kind of hard to explain, but basically those daily blogs that aren't about anything terribly serious or about anything that I'm struggling with internally are public.

Writing about personal identity stuff and/or deep relationship things are all private. For example: if I'm writing my way through something that is going on in my relationship, or there is a health crisis, or I'm working through something I'm not ready to "come out" about (like sexuality and identity stuff), those will all be access-locked.

Anything that could connect DW readers to my IRL business, or podcast, or public online persona will be access-locked. Obviously I can't avoid those things - they're such a big part of my life - but I want to be able to talk to stuff frankly here and not "spill the beans" in other aspects of my life.

Generally speaking, I don't give access to just anyone. I want to follow you for a while, get to know you a bit before opening up about those things. I still post a LOT of public posts, so you'll still have the chance to get to know me a bit before I give you access. If you decide to follow me, drop me a line! I like meeting new people online.

Before I get into my writing log for the day, I wanted to share this NYT article:

How Barnes & Noble Went From Villain To Hero

B&N used to be a maaaajor villain in the publishing industry, choking out smaller independent bookstores. But this article makes a really good case for the necessity of B&N in the industry. They are the biggest competitor to Amazon, and are one of the major ways that people discover new authors and books. They are also absolutely essential to small town Americans. Often, the B&N is the only option - and it is precisely because they are a massive chain that they're able to survive.

On to the writing log -

This is an update from yesterday (Sunday). I'm working on the sample pages for my book proposal, and I finally revisited my introduction. I'm adapting it from a workbook that I wrote, which means that I need to greatly expand the introduction.

I'm hoping to write more today, since I got in the groove yesterday.

Duration: Two Hours
Wordcount: I ended up cutting almost as much as I wrote, so it doesn't really make sense to report
Notes for next time: Do some big picture thinking about how you want the book to start, and then rearrange what you already have. Do you want to start on a personal note? Do you want to leave yourself out of it a bit? Also, for the chapter exposing white supremacy, revisit your notes and research and figure out where you want to expand. Probably need to talk a bit more about how 19th Century European Romanticism played a role in fostering Nazism. Maybe that's a good place to start.

I realize that I never updated y'all about how my Father-in-Law is doing.

He's home from the hospital. ( CW: medical diagnosis )

We also decided against trying to move out there sooner than 2023. It would be too much financially, and I don't think we're actually ready to go quite yet.

I think we're both pretty emotionally burned out at the moment, and it seems like our wires keep getting crossed. I'm trying not to stress out about it too badly.

As is my usual with stressful times, I'm retreating into fanfic and books. So why not post an update on my reading progress here?

Fiction:

Anatomy: A love story by Dana Schwartz

So far I'm enjoying this one! I love the Noble Blood podcast, but the writing of this novel is a little too YA for my tastes. Not that there's anything with YA! I just tend to avoid it.

Non-fiction:

All About Love b bell hooks

I've been reading this one for forever. I don't know why it's taking me so long to finish. Might sit down and sit with this one tonight. bell hooks usually isn't a struggle for me to get through - she's not purposefully obscure like other theorists.

The Way of the Rose b Clark Strand and Perdita Finn

This one is a bit unusual - it's a discussion of how to use the rosary as a way of connecting with the goddess (any goddess, not just Mary). I'm enjoying this one, but it's taking me a while to get through. I think I struggle with focus for this one.

Non-fiction: Witchy and pagan

Under the Witching Tree by Corinne Boyer

I actually have an excuse for how long this is taking me! I'm reading it by "season." It starts in the fall, then goes to winter, and now we're in spring. Though I might just read through summer. This is a really delightful look at the folklore and healing properties of trees - and not just in a Celtic way, as most tree magic books I've found have been.

New World Witchery by Corey Thomas Hutcheson

This one is great! It's a fast read once I pick it up. Unfortunately, because I'm experiencing quite a bit of burn-out, I haven't been wanting to read much occult stuff. It's a whole thing - basically because witchcraft is my job, I've been reaching for these titles less.

Loki and Sigyn: Lessons on Chaos, Laughter, and Loyalty from the Norse Gods

This one is a suuuuper fast read! I read half of it in one sitting on Saturday. The author has a very playful, snarky voice, which makes sense as this is about Loki. He's one of those gods in the Norse pantheon that I'm like "weeeeell ... I probably should be working with him" but haven't been. So we'll see what practical things I walk away with.

Fanfic:

Now, of course, when I'm SUPER burned out I tend to lose myself a bit in fandom. And if I'm being perfectly honest, this is where most of my reading has been lately. Here's what I finished that I loved:

Title: and springþ þe wde nu
Author: escherzo
Fandom: the Magnus Archives
Rating: Explicit
Wordcount: 76,414
Summary: Martin helps him tip his head back, his back to Martin's front. The two of them look up to the sky in frozen silence, not even breathing, the sound of the wind whistling through the trees the only sound in the clearing. The stars are wrong. Jon knows the stars, Knows the shape and age of each one, and there is not a single constellation above him that he recognizes.

“Oh, god,” Jon says, his eyes gone wide. The weight of everything crushing down upon him at once. They are in another universe, and they have brought hell with them. Jonah Magnus is dead, and will never find them again. Everyone they have ever known is gone, and will never find them again.

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30334737/chapters/74776185

**

That'll have to be it for now; gotta get back to work.

Current Location: work
Current Music: portishead

Feels like it's been forever since I posted, but that is not true in the slightest.

We were driving home from the grocery store when we got the call that Anais's dad is in the hospital. It could be a diabetic shock, it could be a stroke, we don't know. If it is a stroke, we're going to try to figure out how to get to New Jersey later this week. We both definitely panicked.

Fuck.

It's funny - my spiritual teacher said that she thought we'd have to move sooner. And I've felt that intuitively as well. But we just ... can't afford it. I hate this.

Ok, I need to go to bed. I thought I'd have more to say/more to process, but I really just need to fall asleep.

Edit: I was misspelling

addme *facepalm*

Woah I just noticed that

add_me was deleted and purged. Does anyone have an idea why?

Of course, as SOON as I posted an intro in

addme my computer battery died for good. So when I logged into DW in the last hour of work today, imagine my shock at seeing 28 messages!

I can't really be on here long for now, but just wanted to say "hi-hello-welcome" and note that I'll be responding to people's comments on my post in

addme later. Ideally when I'm home tonight, but it honestly might be until I can get logged back in to a computer because DW is notoriously difficult to manage on mobile. I should also probably put together a sticky post on here that is a more permanent sort of introduction, but again that will likely have to wait.

Wish my computer a speedy recovery, please. They always shit the bed at the worst possible time.

Anais and I went on a lovely date day.

We went to the Supernatural America exhibit at Mia, and then we went to get coffee. It was so so nice to be out in person. I don't really have the energy at this point to write much about the exhibit, which was extensive and fantastic. Perhaps more on that soon.

It just ... felt so nice to have a day off with Anais. I haven't had a day off at the same time as Anais in a long, long time, and this was lovely. I feel much more connected to hir than I have in a really long time.

When we got home, I sat down and finished "The City We Became." It was incredible, breathtaking. It was especially fun as we get ready to move to the area - there are so many little magical touches that I would have totally missed if I had never been to the city, or hadn't been there with the eye of moving there. And Jersey City ... just gotta say, love it. If you've read the book you know what I mean.

All in all, it has been a very good day.

Currently sitting on the couch, listening to lofi music radio, and relaxing for the night. It's a fibro fog-ish day for me and I've already had a lot happening, so I'm attempting to relax now.

Copyediting for the book has officially started! I'm being a bit more picky with this round of edits than the previous round of edits, but I also just realized this is the last time I'll be able to make changes before we go to print. That and I'm reading it again and I'm like "oh fuck that is the worst sentence ever." My technical writing brain kind of took over while we were racing to finish the draft and now that I'm working on fiction projects again I'm like "... oh yeah. Clarity and brevity aren't the only things I need to pay attention to."

In other news: I got a job this week!

I was offered a position as a 1099 Virtual Assistant through the company I interviewed with last week! The hours can be kind of what I want them to be (as in I can take on exactly as many clients as I want) and the pay per hour is VERY good. I don't have clients yet, but I've been enjoying getting things set up. I genuinely like tasks like creating virtual business cards and prepping social media posts. Which honestly bodes well for me as a Virtual Assistant. There's something really nice and soothing about creating systems that make things easier.

I'm especially excited about this because I will be able to keep the job/clients once we move to New Jersey, if I like it. I've pretty much only been looking at virtual/remote work this job hunt because I don't want to get a job only to have to start the job search process all over again in a year. When I was younger, that was ok, but now I feel like what I really want is some consistency. I can save the inconsistency for my own business - because lord knows that is always up and down.

It might be a rough couple of months until I get my client roster filled, since I will still need to keep my day jobs in retail as well as maintaining my own business, but I can taste the sweet, sweet knowledge that I'll soon have Saturdays off with Anais. Fingers crossed the transition goes better than I think. I'm working some new client energy spells - both for tarot clients and for virtual assistance clients. Since tarot readings pay well and are something I love to provide, I would love to fill those books up.

All right, that's all for today. I have updated the most important things. Now, to keep listening to LoFi and read more of "The City We Became."

Current Music: 24/7 lofi hip hop radio

Hi. Wow. It has been almost exactly a year since I posted here.

I'm alive! Hooray!

I logged in today because I was chatting with

zabira about how I want to start a blog or a vlog for when we move to New Jersey (yes! Hi! I am moving to New Jersey! More on that in a moment). She asked if I like making videos of myself and ... honestly I've never done it, so it might feel like way too much work. But you know what DOESN'T feel like work to me? Blogging.

So I'm resurrecting this blog and will likely cross-post links to public posts on Facebook or something. Because dammit I miss keeping in touch with people like this and if I just share links directly to my blog maybe it will convince other people to get on here.

I may yet start a vlog, but I'm going through kind of a lot right now. So I don't want to add anything extra at the moment in terms of learning a new skill.

As a part of this, I may or may not decide to change my username here. We'll see!

Anyway for the whole blog/vlog to keep in touch with people in the Midwest after we move, I was thinking a vlog would be really cool because then people could like ... see inside our apartment, hear my voice, that kind of thing. I am also vaguely concerned about taking on something that will be like ... hours of editing footage. I don't really want to do that. But there are a couple of vloggers that I really like that do super chill videos that are really comforting. Rachael Stephen is of course my all-time fave vlogger, but I also have been really digging Fran Meneses. Something about watching creative people be creative is really great. I also have a nice camera now that I got for work purposes, so that's one major piece of the puzzle done.

I do not have energy to do a big catch up so I won't. And that's that.

Current Mood: amused

Reading Wednesday is apparently a thing that other people here on dreamwidth do, and I've been reading so much that I would like to do it too.

I've realized that reading is a really important form of escapism for my mental health lately, and so I've been reading voraciously. Also discovered that reading nonfiction that is related to my work is not actually escapism, so I'm setting aside research reading time and pleasure reading time.

So here's my week in reading:

1. Reading "Ghosts: A Natural History" by Roger Clarke for the Gothic Book Club. I'm really enjoying it! But my spouse keeps taking it to work during the day so I haven't had much reading time. I need to finish it by the 20th, we'll see how I do.

2. Decided not to force myself to finish "Night's Master" by Tanith Lee. The prose is stunning, and it feels like reading a very dark fairy tale, but my brain is really struggling to pay attention to it at the moment. So I'll be returning it to the library and letting other people read it.

3. Started listening to the audiobook of "The Girl Who Played With Fire" by Stieg Larsson. I've decided that I like having an audiobook that is really easy to listen to/that I don't need to pay too much attention to - very nice for falling asleep, migraine days, housework, etc. I need to be careful not to fall asleep listening to this one - it is a mystery, after all - but I have read most of it before, so it's really just jogging my memory. Or I could be a chaotic reader demon and let myself not follow every twist of the mystery.

4. Tomorrow, I'm going to the library to pick up "The Power of Myth" by Joseph Campbell. As much as I reference the Hero's Journey when I'm writing about tarot, I've never actually read Campbell, so I figure now is a good time to change that.

In other reading news, I have rediscovered my absolute love of libraries! I'm going to try really hard not to buy books from here on out. I will only buy books if I need them for a reference, or if they are too popular so I won't be able to rent them from the library any time terribly soon. That's actually the reason I bought "Priory of the Orange Tree" - it's like, 800 pages and immensely popular. I was hold number 35. It would take probably at least a year to get my hands on a copy via the library, so I just decided to buy it.

In place of the Tanith Lee, I'm going to start a reread of "The Subtle Knife," since I read "The Golden Compass" last month. I will also probably crack into "Priory of the Orange Tree" while I'm on work sabbatical, because I want the escape and I also have the time to tackle/fall into something massive.

What are you reading right now?

This month for Gothic and Horror Book Club, we read "Powers of Darkness: A Lost Translation of Dracula" by Bram Stoker/Valdimar Ásmundsson.

Rather than a pure translation of the finished work, this is instead a translation of what is believed to be an early draft. As it's a draft, it's far from finished. The whole structure seems to fall apart after Harker escapes from Dracula's castle. After that, there are some scenes that have been written out, and the epistolary/journal structure has been completely dropped. It's almost like reading a beat sheet in a lot of ways.

Of course, as someone who is a total nerd for Scandinavian culture and literature, there were a lot of really interesting little Easter eggs for me. They reference the Huldufolk, the Christmas Witch, and some other figures from folklore. And the way that Ásmundsson writes about supernatural things is incredibly Nordic.

It's been a long time since I read Dracula, so it's hard for me to compare the two.

The biggest differences are that in Transylvania there's just one Hot Blonde Vampire, and that Harker is very nearly taken in by her. This is opposed to scattered scenes with some nameless lady vampires. She also follows Dracula to England. Dracula meets Lucy and Mina in person, and then starts to host these kind of ... Bohemian swinger parties? It's all very horny. The Count is generally more evil and there is a whole host of cult followers that we meet that I don't remember from Dracula.

The book starts with a lot of front matter about the differences, and the potential relationship between Ásmundsson and Stoker. There is an introduction to the whole thing that is written by Stoker, and among the curiosities of that, there is a reference to the Jack the Ripper murders, saying that "what follows is just as bad as the Ripper murders." But we don't actually see what Dracula does once he gets to London - it's all in sketches here and there.

My rating is a 3/5 stars. This is fascinating as a relic, but I am not particularly a scholar of Dracula or Stoker. The read is fast once you get into it, so it's not too much time spent away from other books if you're interested.

I've fallen very behind on reading people's blogs on here. I'm so sorry! I think I need to just be less of a completionist - I don't need to read *every single entry*, it's enough to show up and read what I can/what I'm able.

I'm at my parents' farm again. We're taking a calculated risk and having a nice visit this weekend.

Dad has his first shot from the vaccine. Anais and I have been quarantining intensely, and my parents even moreso. Or at least, we're quarantining as much as we can, considering Anais's work. But xe got a job that won't be public facing,so we're going to be a lot safer. We're being as responsible as we can seeing one another.

The farm is really nice. I like the quiet.

I debated bringing my fic journal with me out here, and then realized that no, I probably wouldn't need it since I haven't worked on the fic since November. Sure enough, what have I been doing since this morning? Writing away on my fic. I've realized that when I get back home, I need to work on getting my plot embryos into an outline form. The fic doc is already 24,000 words and I'm only halfway through chapter 3. "slow burn" will definitely be one of the tags on this project. XD

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: the farm
Current Music: Left Handed Kisses by Andrew Bird feat. Fiona Apple

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kraeftwerker

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