Hello and welcome to the first-ever issue of “Roaming through the Gloaming”! I feel as though I’m supposed to write some sort of introduction here...but I’ve also never cared for introductions. I’d rather be tossed into the middle of the scene and get to know the characters along the way, which is perhaps why I’m a better novelist than I ever was essayist. If it’s all right with you, though, could we skip the introductions? Could we instead get to know each other little by little, one scene at a time?

The big news of the moment is that my debut novel, THE BONE BRIDES, can now be found on GoodReads! One of many silly metrics that publishing uses to determine how much support a book or author will receive is GR adds, so if you are a GR user, I’d deeply appreciate being added to your TBR: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/240507049-the-bone-brides

The book is currently in copy-edits, which is more or less my last chance to make any small changes. (A terrifying prospect for my perfectionist soul!) Meanwhile, Page Street is working on the book’s cover—I’ve seen a draft of the art, and it is simply FABULOUS. I cannot wait to share it with you all!

In other words: things are getting real. Tomorrow—egad!—is 2026, the year that the dream I’ve harbored since I was 7 years old comes true. Mark your calendars, all! THE BONE BRIDES comes out October 6th!

I love the end of December because it’s a time of pattern-making, when we look at what we’ve done and what we’re hoping to do and we make stories out of the constellations we see. There’s inevitably a simplification, a quantification. I read this many books. I wrote this many stories. I traveled here or there or nowhere or many places but all in my head. I learned a thing. I rediscovered a thing I’d already learned. Just like no book tells the reader every single moment of its main character’s life, no memory holds every detail of our past year, but we look for the patterns, and those become our self-stories. I’ve always loved this storyification of life. Yes, let me find the symbolism. Let me tease out the themes and the motifs—and then let me make plans for the sequel.

One of the patterns of my life has always been a wonderful and steady set of friends. What can I say? I got lucky, found my people early, and have held onto them like ink onto paper. Thus I have rung in every new year since I was 12 with more or less the same brilliant and nerdy group of friends. Of course, a big part of pattern-making is in traditions and the power we ascribe to them...so let me now share with you our favorite New Year’s Eve tradition, conducted with both glee and a certain amount of superstitious piety for the past decade:

In the world of Sharon Shinn’s Elemental Blessings series (yes, this is a nerdy, bookish tradition—were you expecting otherwise?), when a child is born, their non-birthing parent finds three strangers to pull blessings from barrels of stamped coins. Each blessing has both an elemental and a physical affiliation (air/mind; fire/heart; water/blood; earth/flesh; wood/bone), and there are 8 blessings per element, plus three “extraordinary” blessings, for a grand total of 43 possible blessings. In Shinn’s books, the blessings given at birth are meant to guide the child throughout life, but people also can pull blessings for themselves whenever they are in need of guidance, big or small.

As soon as the first book came out, my friends and I fell in love with the idea of blessings that can be both deeply tied to who you are (characters often use birth blessings to introduce themselves, an easy shorthand) and also flexible: you can always get new blessings. There is no shortage. There is no “being stuck” with a blessing you dislike. Sorting systems come up again and again in popular fiction (people, after all, love sorting themselves), but rarely do they allow this kind of flexibility or an understanding that people can be many things at once, as well as different things at different times. (Looking at you, Divergent.)

Long story long, my friends and I made our own sets of blessings using Sharpie and those pretty half-flat glass beads you see in fish tanks, and every NYE, we pull for each other for the upcoming year.

There have been some pretty prescient pulls. For example, the couple who pulled Fertility when, unbeknownst to the rest of us, they were discussing having a child. And then there was the year one friend received Health as two of her three blessings, asked if she could have something else to replace one of them, and got Power. That was 2020; we had no idea what the world was about to look like nor how desperately we’d all be wishing for good health for our loved ones and ourselves. Lesson learned. Never trade Health!

She didn’t need to trade it, though. That’s the thing: we would’ve pulled more. We often pull more. What I love so much about Shinn’s series is that blessings are abundant. We can have as many as we want. That’s the lesson I want to take with me into 2026, too. Debut years are notoriously hard on writers, so I intend to remind myself again and again:

Blessings are abundant. We can have as many as we want.

(And yes, in case you were curious, when my child was born this past June, I did ask three friends to pull birth blessings for him. My little boy received Joy, Wealth, and Serenity, a fabulous trio.)

PS. If anyone would like me to pull a blessing for them for the new year, feel free to leave a comment on this newsletter, and I will do so!

I often think of winter as a time for sustainability: for using all the bits and bobs that go unappreciated during the abundance of spring. I’m a big believer in saving and using everything possible, and this is the time of year I find myself throwing together soups and stews out of things I’ve cached away in the freezer, so I thought I would dedicate this issue’s “In the Kitchen” section to all the wonderful things you may not realize you can freeze! For example...

*Celery. Soup recipes always seem to call for just one or two stalks, so what are you to do with the rest of the head? Simple. Separate the pieces and freeze them! Then you can easily grab one or two stalks from your freezer for your next soup recipe.

*Hot peppers. When I say I love spicy food, what I mean is that I eat habaneros whole and apply a liberal snowfall of ghost pepper flakes to any and all bowls of stew. A true game changer for me, though, was learning that I can freeze peppers. Those beautiful bird’s eye chiles that you can buy by the pound at summertime farmers’ markets? Into Ziplock baggies in the freezer they go, and then I always have peppers on hand! More special still are the peppers from my parents’ garden, lovingly labeled things like “2024 ghosties.”

*Parmesan rinds. Add them to stocks to make your soup sing!

*Apple cores and peels. Once you’ve stashed away enough, you can turn them into cider!

*Turkey carcasses. I’m a vegetarian, but part of my vegetarianism is the belief that if an animal has been killed for food, none of it should go to waste—which is why I always save my meat-eating family’s holiday turkey carcasses from the trash. Usually I use them to make stock, but this year, I’m eyeing a Turkey Congee with Crispy Shiitake Mushrooms recipe I saw in Bon Appetit. Here’s a(n unfortunately paywalled) link: https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/turkey-congee-with-crispy-shiitake-mushrooms

*The last half-cup or so of sauce left at the bottom of any stew. You know when you’ve pretty much served out all the STUFF in your stew, but there’s still liquid left at the bottom of the pot? You could drink it, sure—but I like to freeze mine and then use it as an easy flavor base later for when I’m just throwing a bunch of things into the crock pot.

Continuing my sustainability theme... December is a month of gift-giving, and I’ve been wanting to find a more sustainable way to giftwrap. Granted, reusing gift bags given to me by friends who then reuse them to give gifts back to me in an endless cycle of gift bag hot potato is also pretty sustainable...but I have to admit that I like the aesthetic of wrapped gifts. I get a thrill from making a gift into a pretty thing, even if the prettiness will only last until opening. There’s something special about putting effort into something so temporary. (One of the same reasons I love live theatre...but more on that in a different issue.)

Well, the answer came to me—as so many answers do—while browsing my local library’s displays. There I saw Wrapping with Fabric: Your Complete Guide to Furoshiki, by Etsuko Yamada and Kanji Okamoto. I used to live in Japan, so furoshiki cloth wrapping was a familiar concept, but not one I had ever particularly explored for gift-giving. Suddenly it struck me: you know what I have lots of? Fabric. Baskets and baskets and baskets of leftover fabric from a lifetime of cosplay sewing. What better way to wrap my gifts lovingly yet sustainably than in fabric that already carries its own memories? I’ll admit, I had grand ambitions of fancy furoshiki styles like “hana tsutsumi” (flower wrap) but quickly discovered both that the fabrics I’d chosen from my stash weren’t necessarily the easiest to wrap with (hint: you’re better off forgoing the stretch velvet in favor of a sturdy cotton) and that, oh yeah, I’m not great at arts that require measuring and precision. Whoops. I ended up mostly using what’s known as “otsukai tsutsumi” (errand wrap), the most basic of furoshiki styles.

They look pretty though, don’t they? I particularly enjoyed getting to use fabrics whose original purposes were tied into the recipient of each gift. (My brother’s gift, for example, got wrapped in leftover fabric from the ascot I made for him when he was my Best Man. A friend’s was wrapped in fabric from a cosplay I made for a series she and I both love.)

If you’re interested in trying out furoshiki wrapping, definitely check out Wrapping with Fabric—or, if you’re looking for something on the web, this page has excellent step-by-step photo instructions: https://chatelaine.com/living/furoshiki-gift-wrapping-how-to/

This month’s rabbit hole features Margaret Murray: Egyptologist (the first woman ever to publicly unwrap a mummy!), archaeologist, folklorist....and accidental creator of Wicca!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Murray

...And that’s all, folks! I’ll see you all in the new year!

Always,
Marley