For the proper adherence to ritual we had shaved our hair ultra-close, and smeared on a square of silver zinc that morning. We shone in the pale light, our glittering scalps catching the last rays of sun.

The dark spools forward and I grip the branch. I lunge into the deep mud and my holy communion dress is ratted at the hem. In the tunnel velvet leaks down in ugly heaps. I crawl until I come to a clearing in the forest.

We record this by leaving the work unfinished and unresolved. The absence is a space for grief.

Anna and Melissa ate with some ceremony, taking tiny bites and washing them down with tea. They had a stomach ache all the time from eating nothing but trees.

Her body is a miracle in the house. Copper sulphite leaks from her. The sink blooms with a little mould, a little sparkle.

THE GREEN HEAT BLEW OVER GRACE AS SHE CLIMBED THE HILL SHE HADN’T FELT THE COLOUR OF THE SKY FOR SO LONG. PALE FLAVOURS SKIMMED HER TONGUE, HEMP, LICORICE, APPLE, SOAKING HER THIRST. THERE WAS NO END TO THE LIGHT.

Violence is intrinsically linked to location, and the shrines, quinceañera parties, holy communions, and seances of this book are all stained luminescent blue.

When human blood reacts with luminol, it lights up a ghostly blue.

On Christmas night, a small girl is crowned at a pageant, before stumbling into the snowy darkness, alone, to meet her greatest fan

I remember picking up book after book and just not being able to get into any of these books just thinking, What's intriguing about this book that I'm reading and there's nothing in it for me. And really feeling like I want something to represent me and my background and there isn't anything, there wasn't anything.

Hard- boiled fiction is also really afflicted with this twisted, and very American, casual bigotry. And it makes me so mad because there are so many great lines and so much extensive writing that Chandler did, and these movies just have so much beautiful writing in them but just have these big problems.

Perhaps, as the sun goes down, a paper lantern catches fire and the sky fills with flames, calling the attention of the adults away. 

This is the ceremony at the heart of a potential story; from these few elements, a world can be dreamed into being. 

Some of my recent oblique research has involved: coloratura sopranos, lichens, and Scheele’s Green: the story of arsenic-laced wallpaper and the most gorgeous colour ever to exist.

Like the experience of being on a psychedelic trip, whether you perceive bliss or horror is down to your state of mind.

Weird landscapes tell us so much about making the hidden aspects of life visible, and, about our interconnectedness with the natural world. But, I think there is another aspect that can be important to all writers: they can help us to create BIG MOOD.

Rachel Pollock writes that “in divinatory readings the moon indicates an excitement of the unconscious. We begin to experience strange emotions, dreams, fears, even hallucinations. We find ourselves more intuitive, more psychic.”

The bare tree still looks pretty.

The reindeer glow.

A creative block is so often about being in the liminal space where something new is waiting to emerge.

In Catholicism there is endless creativity in the naming of patron saints. Some of the more obscure ones include St. Julian the patron saint of murderers, and St. Lidwina, the patron saint of ice skaters…

When you have been inhabiting a world so deeply, it can feel like a loss to turn it into something that other people can perceive. In some ways, the more fully-realised your imaginative space, the more difficult to let go of your vision.