Or not, as the case may be …
After all these weeks of ‘lock-down’ I’ve come to a stand-still on the writing front. Initially the weather was good and so I could break the day by interspersing the hours with gardening and reading outside in the sunshine. But with the easing of the restrictions and the on-set of rain, the spark’s gone out and the Muse is having to lie down in a darkened room with a damp flannel …
That’s not to say there’s nothing in the pipeline, because that’s just not the case. The CoS limited edition – Round About the Cauldron Go … is doing the rounds of contributors and this is taking its time for everyone to agree before it goes off to the printers. This is a ‘first’ for Ignotus Books because its readership will be restricted to the members of Coven of the Scales who have reached a certain stage on their magical journey and will be put out in a hardback edition.
The Witch’s Book of Simples – the simple art of herbal healing is in its first draft and currently being given the once over by a qualified medical herbalist to make sure I’ve remembered grandmother’s Simples in the right context! It’s been a long time since those days of being sent to fetch a ‘bit o’ summat’ from the garden and I needed to make sure the brain hasn’t let me down. Once upon a time, everyone used Simples for minor domestic ailments and that was why they were rarely recorded. So I thought I’d better set down my own recollections before they, too, disappeared.
The rough notes for the next Temple House Archive are forming nicely into the first draft of 50,000 words on the subject of pacts, demons and curses – which isn’t conducive to summer creative writing and might have to go on the back-burner until the evenings start to get darker. I’ve decided to kill off one of my main characters and it’s not easy!
I’ll probably leave everything to ferment if the promised hot weather is about to return and concentrate on the marketing of books already published, especially with the new Ignotus Books Blog now up and running. The Coven of the Scales Blog is being expanded to include the ‘Life-Style’ idea that was mooted at the beginning of the year and offer more varied reading. The Melusine Draco Blog includes this sort of stuff, book extracts, book news and mini-articles.
I just heard that Pagan Dawn has accepted a piece on the Sacredness of Landscape to coincide with the publication of Sacred Landscape: Caves & Mountains by Moon Books on 28th August. Can’t get excited about it as the publisher pulled the plug on the planned trilogy, which has left the overall concept incomplete with Groves & Forests and Lakes & Waterfalls needing to go elsewhere; suggested they cancel the contract for the first book so that the three could be published as one volume but that wasn’t deemed to be a good idea.
The (Inner-City) Path is due for publication on 25th September with Moon Books and this is a sort of life-style approach to finding Nature in the urban areas that most pagans call home. Sexual Dynamics in the Circle: Magic, Man & Woman also published by Moon Books won’t see daylight until 26th March 2021 and it does what it says on the cover. To date, there are no further titles under contract to Moon Books and who knows what the future will bring …
Melusine Draco 