Brazen Folk Horror

Writers on vacation?

My girl is in the mountains; I picture her standing high, overlooking the land in a circlet of evergreens painted in autumnal splendour. Lungs expanding with pure oxygen from ancient trees. They gift us life, our ancestors; above and below. They filter the poisons that we pollute the air with. Correcting our apathy, soaking it into themselves, our mother-lungs. I worry for my brazen sister and am in awe of her strength, her tenacity. I see her, the red-headed warrior commanding those mountains with her engaging sharp eye—a seeer. Ruthann is on holiday (vacation).

I am surrounded by the dreich landscape of my island home. The skies are weeping with the ocean. My daughters frolic gayly barefoot within the gloom; their effervescence is captivating. They are the key to immortality and illumination. I breathe in the rain, droplets that have travelled the world and will continue to do so long after my lungs have crumbled to less than dust. Perhaps our great great grandchildren will inhale the same air that once nourished our lungs. A little bit of spirit bumping up with those interlocked molecules. We’re all profoundly connected in unseen ways. Science. Magic. Deeper than the most creative of imaginations.

We’ve been blending ours (creative imaginations) for our house, Delevan House. The world that has spawned around its grandeur has taken some unexpected and thrilling pathways. Characters that have rapped at the windows of dreams when the subconscious is most free. We joke about the ‘shared brain’, the twin-headed Gemini—creating art together is much like creating life. Some things are spontaneous and spiral in their own direction; the writer must bend to the will of the muse. Our muse never ceases with this project. Ruthann will message me about a character that’s wedged a little something in her head, and I bounce back! No way, I’ve been riding this idea, and it interlocks with this very thing! We share photographs, articles, studies, threads or a tapestry in creation. We pull them together, and the pieces fit. The shared brain. This world could not have been written without the other creative side. The detail of those pieces, even a hint, is under close guard. We adore you, but we’re aware of circling overhead—insidious vultures of an unwelcome kind.