SeaHeart

Jenn and I arrived home very late Wednesday night--home from the 21st annual Spoutwood Fairie Festival, and a few day visit afterwards with the amazing Kat and Corey. <3 We returned home rejuvenated, brimming with magic, and just so happy and grateful to be alive~ (Hint: spending time with some of your favorite people in the world, in one of the most magical places on earth tends to do that to you. <3)

This was one of the oddest festival experiences we've had yet, with a lot of mirth from the Universe folded into the cavorting. Nothing turned out as we planned it, and in a lot of ways, that was a good thing, because of all of the festival experiences in recent years, this may have been the oddest, but--for me--it was also the most surprisingly magic-filled, in ways I could never have expected.

So, let me tell you a story...it begins, as all good stories do, with faeries...


( Chapter One: Friday... )

( Chapter Two: Saturday... )

( Chapter Three: Sunday... )

Our visit to Kat and Corey (including pictures of my nose piercing that I FINALLY have that I have waited for since I was SIXTEEN, the Universe MAY implode since it has finally happened, DEAR GODS XD) will be regaled in another post! <3 Thanks for reading and sharing in the sparkle~

<3 <3 <3

*All of the photos in this post were taken by either us, or Shel and Ryan. <3

Throughout the month, I create on a very lunar schedule. It shifts throughout the year--sometimes, near the full moon, sometimes near the new moon, I'm filled with ideas and I must create or I'll burst, and it's not just one medium. I make Glamourkins in my sleep, write so many thousands of words each day that my hands ache and ache, and I scribble down more story ideas than my brain can hold. And then, like a natural ebb, the creative, passionate surge dies down gently, slowly, and I incubate and nurture myself and stay very still and quiet, listening to the hum of the Goddess and the Universe, listening, listening...waiting. And it begins again.

This month, we begin the waxing moon today, and the surge is intense. There is no room in my brain for all of the things I want to do/make/create/bring-to-life, so I settle for scribbling and making and writing, and my hands ache and ache, and my heart is so full and joyous, and I do not believe I could live any other way but this one, creating, creating, on fire, passionate, jubilant.

I'm working on a few novellas and novels right now, but the one I'm most excited to start (after I finish with Crumbs, the flagship of our Sappho's Fables series), is Silvered (arguably, I'm most excited about this. I'm also working on the sequel to One Solstice Night WHICH IS SO SPARKLY and makes me have little shivers of delight. JUST WAIT UNTIL YOU SEE IT, JUST WAIT), and I'm setting in on Sapphira, the same world that One Solstice Night and Cage the Darlings is on, and it centers around this group of courageous women that I'm just so excited to share, and it involves SO MANY SWASHBUCKLING THEME SONGS, and I can't really articulate it until it's all written, but all I can think about ever, all the time is ladies falling in love with other ladies and having the most ridiculous, wonderful adventures, and, and...

I'm so fucking grateful that people want these stories, and that they're excited about these stories, I have no words. I have a purpose to my writing, I have a reason, I have a passion, I have a set calling. It's marvelous and amazing, all rolled up into one, when I think that a few years ago, I was so upset and so unhappy because I was writing my little lesbian books and thinking to myself "no one in the world is going to want these because they're gay."

We've come a fucking long way, baby.

I was born at the perfect time to be able to bring my stories to a world where people wanted them, and wanted them fiercely. I know how lucky I am, and though I've worked tirelessly and endlessly to end up here, now, I also understand all of the beautiful synchronicities that brought me here, all of the moments that the Goddess pushed me gently (sometimes! Hah!) in the right direction, helped me figure out what I needed to do. So much faith has been put into these endeavors, an equal dose of courage, but also an equal dose of closing my eyes and leaping, hoping, hoping, hoping gravity wouldn't catch me.

This past year of the publishing process has been an extraordinary time for me. Everything has moved at lightning speeds, I have been in a vortex of creative magic and mojo for so long, I don't know what not being in it feels like, and I can't imagine ever not being in it again.

I just keep coming back to gratitude. Gratitude for the people who supported (and support) me endlessly, in all endeavors, who tell me that I can do it, who remind me what I'm capable of when I'm in a muck of disbelief in myself. Gratitude for the people who clamor for my stories, the fans who write me telling how much I've touched them, how much they love my stories, the people who are so endlessly supportive in spreading the word.

This has been a year of courage and faith, but it has also been a year of community. Never before have I been so aware of how connected we all are, how precious that connection is, those friendships, that creation of Family.

Over a year ago, I decided to do something crazy. I decided to publish a lesbian, YA book by myself. But it was never by "myself." Jenn edited every word and listened and aided and was divine in every sense of that word, every single friend told other friends and other friends or shouted it from the rooftops that I was doing this, bought copies, spread the word ceaselessly. I have met new people in this year who have proved to be amazing, I have made connections in this year that have spread beyond anything I'd ever dreamed.

My stories were born and came into this world and were accepted and loved not in spite of what they were but because of what they were.

I can't believe I'm here, I'm now.

I'm so fucking grateful for everything. And for YOU, my beloved lords and ladies. <3 <3 <3

In gratitude, I take each step.

2012 is going to change everything. Just like 2011 did.

And there is a whole world of support and amazing beauty and love and connection and community and friendship and family, and I have never been more grateful, and I learn, each new day, how to reach for even more gratitude, ever expanding, ever spiraling outward, this world of possibility that is, all at once, brilliant, beautiful, whole.

We're both so excited--two of our dearest friends, Bill and Rene, are coming over to our home tomorrow for a high tea. <3

Bill and Rene are so special and important to us. It was Bill who--it now seems so long ago!--showed us the church as the place we could have our wedding (that ended up being the church that became our home <3 <3 <3), we outed ourselves to him--he outed himself to us, and then magic was born, and the deepest connection was shared, and we've all said, countless times, we've known each other in other lives and other places and other dreams. <3 There's no other explanation for how close we are in such a remarkably short time when you think about the breadth of lives. They are so insightful, we can talk to them for eleventy billion hours about gay issues (they've been together now...twenty something years, I can't remember the exact number. They've gone through so much of the gay rights battle, and they've been such a support system for us here), we got antiquing together (and we all even love the same eras!). I'm telling you, gay couple soulmates. ;D <3 We love them dearly and are so grateful for their presence in our time here on this planet. <33333

Anyway, I shall try to STOP WITH THE MUSH, and tell you about the TEA. ;D <3 We had to make an emergency run, because we THOUGHT we had a secret dash of sugar cubes, but ALASS AND ALACK, we did NOT, and you can NOT have an English high tea without sugar cubes. So we dashed to our local tea shop, the English Rose, and got the sugar cubes, so now we're entirely set for tomorrow. I was joking with Jenn on the way back: emergency sugar cube run? Yeah, that's not even first world problems. That's Sparkle World Problems. ;D

Our menu for tomorrow is AS FOLLOWS~ <3

Savories
- butternut squash soup
- cucumber finger sandwiches
- cashew butter and pear sandwiches on dainty pumpernickel bread
- brie and apple and honey sandwiches on light multigrain

Sweets
- homemade scones <3
- tea biscuits (oat and "rich tea" varieties)
- Jaffa Cakes
- dainty (tiny!) heart cookies dusted with powdered sugar
- strawberries and grapes

Teas
- Cherie Anne's Bumblefruit
apple, rose hips, orange, cornflower, rose petals & blackberry leaves
- Tazo's Vanilla Rooibos
rooibos, Tahitian vanilla, cinnamon, apples & peaches

SO! EXCITED! <333333

It's dark out. The sun trips across the sky for only a few hours every day. The earth doesn't know what it wants to do, is half cold, half warm, thoroughly confused. It is past the Solstice, and yet we have not had snow. I hear the reports that in 1889 in Buffalo, they didn't get any snow in December, too. I wonder if they worried about the end of the world, if 1900 would bring about Armageddon, or if they were just really grateful that they didn't have to put on eighteen layers of coats and mufflers to go pee.

On the Winter Solstice, I performed my first ever Unitarian service. More people came to that service than the last three combined, curious to see what I was capable of...and they said they loved it. They warmed my heart with their joy for it, they made me feel like I had done what was needed, and they affirmed that little push in my heart that's been pushing for months. I'll...tell you about it later. <3

Afterward, we were taken out to dinner, we gave Bill his present...he shed and wiped away a single tear, and his voice shook when he thanked us. I cried when he gave us our present--my voice shook, too. Sometimes, the earth turns and magnificent things happen, and you meet the people you were meant to. And you can never predict exactly when that will be, or how long you have with them. So you're simply grateful.

I keep thinking about the people who changed my life, and the people I love. 'Tis the season for it. I keep thinking about my little goddess daughter, sending her love and light every day. I keep thinking about the women and men and boys and girls that fill my heart, and it is full, so full it might burst, and I really don't have words to convey the gratitude for the card with the sparkling glitter and heartfelt message, and the little package I retrieved from the mailbox on the worst day of the year that reminded me that I was loved, or how my wife wrapped me so close and tight beneath the Solstice tree, and how my kid sister gave me something I've been wanting since I was fourteen years old, her eyes twinkling, and how I got a phone call because "I was thinking about you, and I love you." Even in the season of darkness, of cold, of gestation and waiting and sleep, we remember one another, we reach out with warm hands to hold one another in the cold, dying light.

That's family. That's love. That's the holidays.

I'm so filled with gratitude, it's hard to articulate here. There are little things I'm grateful for: with the money we got from the holidays, and my royalties, I was able to pay off a little credit card. We haven't been able to make any headway on the cards in about nine or so months, and it was fucking exhilarating to write that check. (Normal people don't get this excited about paying off a credit card, I'm sure. ;D) We have a long way to go, but I feel hopeful about it again. My depression is--knock on every piece of wood in the world--gone. We are closing Glamourkin in a few days, and the coming creation that has been held secret is ready to burst through the doors, and Jenn and I are so filled with excitement and plans and lists and lists that we don't know how we're going to contain it until opening day. We've been to so many UU services these past few weeks, multiple services a week, but we still managed to--in the middle of Pennsylvania on the drive back up to NY on Christmas day--find one at a Pittsburgh church, randomly, and go. The pastor was so funny--he read one of my favorite stories, "The Gift of the Magi," and the sermon made me cry. <3 No matter where you are or who you are or when you go, any UU church welcomes you, a stranger, with smiling people, huge hugs, talk and coffee. It's one of the most comforting things in the world, knowing that. (And my hobby of visiting different UU churches when we travel grows by one more, putting us at...twelve, I think? I want to start a blog about it. ;D *laughing*)

The year opens up, a bright shining star of possibility. And we wait, hearts warm, hands clasped...together. <3

~*~

Below is the Winter Solstice Ceremony that I wrote for the Pullman Church--I'm sharing it here so people can read it if they wish (or, heck, you could do the meditation part, if the spirit moved you). <3 It is "Pagan lite," as this was the first service that ever introduced Pagan concepts to the church--as the months progress, I will be introducing more and more Pagan ideas, rituals, concepts to the congregation.

Lee (our pastor), Laura (my kid sister, who graciously sang for us <3) and Jenn all had parts, which I've included below.

I hope you enjoy. <3


image by uberfischer

( The Winter Solstice Ceremony at Pullman Memorial Universalist Church, 2011~ )

Author Naomi Clark (naomi_jay) is a KICK ASS author, and a very dear friend of mine. She writes the AMAZING series Urban Wolf about lesbian werewolves--her second book in said series, DARK HUNT, was just recently released, and I AM VERY EXCITED ABOUT IT. SO excited in fact, that we had Naomi give a guest blog on Muse Rising!

If you comment on the post on Muse Rising, you will get a FREE COPY of Naomi's first novel in the Urban Wolf series, SILVER KISS. IT IS EXQUISITELY GOOD, I PROMISE YOU WANT THIS BOOK.

Comments are absolute love--if you're moved to, please do so at the blog post! <3 <3 <3

This is the last time you'll see me before I get legally married.

In a matter of hours, some of my most favorite people in this entire world, my soul family, begins to trickle in to the western New York area from all parts of the country. There will be embraces and laughter and tears and glitter BAMs and love, love, love, love, love.

I am so overflowing with gratitude and joy and sparkle, I have no idea what to do with myself.

My beautiful, amazing, perfect, wondrous, sparkly bride and I will legally be married in two days.

SPARKLE WEDDING. TWO DAYS.

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There's a new post up at Muse Rising--Write ALL THE THINGS: Or, Why Writer's Retreats are the Greatest Invention Since Bees

This past weekend, some of my dearest friends, my wife/fiancee/lady-of-awesome-and-loooove and I sequestered ourselves away into a cottage on the shores of Lake Ontario, forgoing all MORTAL NEEDS for that most noble and true art which is known as the WRITINGS.

(The forgoing all MORTAL NEEDS things is actually a bit of a fib. There was lots of coffee and cake nommings involved.)



...continue reading

In celebration of Maddie (lathriel)'s new release, there's a new blog post up on Muse Rising: On Robot Ponies and Indie Publishing: An Interview with Author Madeline Claire Franklin~!



Madeline Claire Franklin is a feisty lady. The debut author of the exquisite original fairy tale novel, The Poppet and the Lune, you can find her most days at a coffee shop, surrounded by cups of espresso and notes for her upcoming release, The Hierophant. Maddie is my best friend, and--together--we released our first books on the same day back in May--May 17th, Maddie's birthday~ <3

I've known Maddie for many years, and have always been both humbled and inspired by her drive and passion surrounding the soul of Story. Today, she released a new short story entitled "Robot Pony," one that I fell completely and madly in love with. Here to celebrate that release, and to talk a little about indie publishing, the creative process, and robotic toys is an interview with Madeline Claire Franklin!

... Continue reading~

You guys are wonderful beyond belief. Because of your RTs on Twitter, mentions on Facebook and other various and sundry places, my novella Sugar Moon--released yesterday--rocketed from a really high number on Amazon to to number 56 on their Lesbian bestseller list.

So, today, I'm trying to do this CRAZY THING--will you help me? The Dark Wife ended up number two on Amazon.com's lesbian bestseller list for a day back in May. I would love, beyond belief, if Sugar Moon could break the top ten.

I'm not very certain about Amazon algorithms, but I know this--the day that The Dark Wife broke the top ten (to NUMBER TWO, WHICH IS INSANE AND AWESOME BEYOND MEASURE), I sold a little less than forty something copies in one day. That's--really not a lot in the grand scheme of things, and could TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY HAPPEN. Sugar Moon is only $.99, and really would only need 30 or so purchases to get there!

If Sugar Moon got up there, its visibility is then off the charts, and more people would buy it, and it would get on this happy little cycle. As an indie author, book sales happen by word of mouth alone until you can break the upper echelons of bestseller-dom!

I'm incredibly excited--I think this can happen. :D <3 <3 <3 Any mention or purchase or bringing-it-up to friends is so appreciated, I literally have no words for it. I don't have a fancy-shmancy marketing department...I have people who believe in me, in my novels, in my crazy ideas, in my "little books that could."

Which, you know, I think is far fucking better. <333333333333

Edited to add: My sister has provided me with a GIF to show my excitement and wow-ness about this whole thing:

Since we are faeries at heart, Jenn and I have been going to the Spoutwood Fairie Festival since 2004 (in 2004, after the first day at the festival together, I proposed to Jenn there--seven years ago Sunday!). It is the happiest, most magical time of our year, and we look forward to it more than I could ever say~ :) I recommend it to EVERY single person who has even a pinch of magic in their hearts. It is the most community driven, joy filled event in the world--it is a dream come true~ <3 (You can go back through my Fairie Festival tag and see our story of the festival through our years there~ <3333)

The 20th annual May Day Spoutwood Fairie Festival is this weekend--come out and have a fabulous, magical time! If you're going to be there, we'd love to meet you! <3 :) Please tell me here in the comments if you think you're coming,--and, if'n ye feel like it, introduce yourself to others who are coming, too, in the comments! :) <333

I am so blessed in the fact that so many people of my soul and heart families will be there this year. Sharing my most sacred space, the festival, with them is one of the most beautiful and wonderful things I've ever experienced. I am blessed beyond words at the magical, joy-and-love-filled weekend that awaits me--I have no words for my gratitude or my ecstaticness~ <3333333

Us, last year~


The 20th annual May Day Spoutwood Fairie Festival!

The May Day Fairie Festival is the brainchild of Rob and Lucy Wood, owners of Spoutwood Farm, an organic farm in the Community Supported Agriculture movement. It began as a party for about 100 friends, and has been celebrated by 16,000 “friends” of the little people from the local area, all across the US and across the Atlantic. Previously a one-day festival, a second and third day were added as a response to the festival’s rising popularity.

Me and a baby water fairy in 2004~


Once again, the festival will celebrate the beginning of spring and all of the nature spirits return to the warm world with 70 arts and crafts vendors (mostly featuring handmade art inspired by the little people), performances by musicians and dancers, storytellers, participatory maypole dancing, fairie craft activities such as wand and garland making (involves a small fee), food vendors, fairie and other nature spirit environments to explore, a Nature Place offering a place for environmental, health, animal interest and other groups to share their vision, fairie and gnome habitat tours, fairie tea parties, guest appearances by the Green Man, the Mossmen, Sweet Pea and others.

Jenn, 2009~


The fairie and May Day themes go back to ancient times in almost all cultures, especially to the Celts of the British Isles who had a festival on the first of May called Beltane. It was a time of great rejoicing at the return of the earth's abundance in spring and the impending bounty of summer. The Celts celebrated the spirits of nature by honoring not only the plants that they could see and smell but also the unseen beings of the fairie realm.

When: April 29th from 12:00 PM to 7:00 PM, and April 30th and May 1st from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM each day

Where: Spoutwood Farm Center 4255 Pierceville Rd Glen Rock PA 17327 717-235-6610

Admission: Admission is $15 for people over 12, $5 for people 12 and under, and free for those 2 and under. A three-day pass is available for a reduced price of $30...the three day pass can also be used to get through the gates quicker, even if you are only using it for two of the days. Those who decide to volunteer when they arrive at the festival can request a 2-hour job assignment; upon completion, the admission fee will be refunded.

Us, 2008~


About Spoutwood Farm: Nestled in the rolling landscape of York County is Spoutwood Farm - a family owned farm and part of the Community Supported Agriculture program, supports more than 100 families with organically grown food throughout the year. Spoutwood Farm supports sustainable living practices and offers workshops and classes in streamside ecology, mead making, medicinal herbalism and more. Spoutwood is a 501©(3) non-profit organization.



Kubiando is a Way of Living

Knowing that the Universe supports you
Understanding Life’s Lessons along the way
Believe in Yourself
Invent new ways of being and be an Inspiration
Always do your Best
Never, never, never, give up
Divine guidance surrounds you
One Love, One Circle of Life

(From Kubiando.com~)

I hope to see you there~ <3 <3 <3