The Spiral Path

Morphing in the Vale

Photo by Bogomil Mihaylov on Unsplash

Hi, friends. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

Last year, I knew I wanted The Purple Vale to morph in 2026. I knew changes were coming, and like many oncoming changes, I wasn’t sure what they would look like or bring.

The name of this newsletter has always served as a reflecting pool for my internal world.

My love for folklore? It stalked this valley, a potent yet ephemeral spirit. Poetry? I’d scribble it in the mossy floor of the vale and let the wind carry my words. How about my latest fiction writing venture? I’d fashion tales out of twigs and stones to scatter for anyone who cared to read. And the seasons themselves would write their own stories in the purple twilights and pearl-pink dawns.

And meanwhile, oh, the journey my own internal path has led me on.

A portal if I ever saw one

In December, the phrase, “I will hold myself gently on the spiral path” came to me as I was journaling. And that phrase has been a touchstone throughout the past three months.

I have dreams and visions and things I’m working towards, full of hopes and possibilities. There have been times of connection and unexpected joys and many steps taken in the dark. There have been times I felt I was falling, wondering when I’d find the ground. Would it catch me softly or break me beyond repair? It turns out that even in the breaking, new things eventually grow.

The spiral path, it seems, is like that.

tiny buttercups

What does this mean for this corner of the internet?

The honest answer is, I’m not entirely sure.

I haven’t worked on Lucent Memory since January. Responsibilities and following that spiral path have required my attention. Revisions take up a corner of my brain that I can’t really access right now, and that’s ok.

Folklore, poetry, writing in general have all gone to sleep in a kind of winter. I haven’t forgotten them. But as the trees turn green and the sun shines bright, these beloved interests are resting just beneath the soil, waiting for their own resurrection.

Hawthorn, my beloved

They’ll keep until that time, whenever it might be.

If you’ve stuck around, thank you. I’m really so glad you’re here. I can’t say what the rest of 2026 will look like in the Vale, but I can tell you this.

There’s more magic to be found and shared. There’s still beauty in the world. There are stories waiting to be written, told, shared, wept and laughed over.

And in some capacity or another, The Purple Vale will be a tiny part of that.

If you’d like to receive handmade zines in the mail featuring folkloric flash fiction and/or poetry (such as those pictured above), you can sign up for zine mail.

This quarter’s zines will go out within the next week.

You can also buy my books.

These little things go a long way in supporting me and in helping me to create, especially in these weird, uncertain times (gestures at self in flux and the world on fire).

Meet you over the orchard wall, friends.*

*One of my wonderful early readers for The Secret Heart of Maeve MacGowan started signing her emails like this. I like it.

Thanks for being here. My AuDHD brain is a bit scattered and prone to change things last minute, but here in The Purple Vale you can count on reflections on folklore, fairy tales, and the seasons from my little corner of East Tennessee–which is unceded Cherokee and Muscogee land.