I’ve been working from home for a few days now. I like it…but then I always suspected I would. I love people. (Hello, people!) but I also hoard peace like Smaug hoards gold.

I did manage to get another video done. This time I am in a tee shirt…when I used to imagine my author aesthetic, it was somewhere between Holyclothing and Modcloth — lovely black swing dresses and bright red heels, or soft laces and flowing fabrics. BUT, apparently my actual aesthetic is cute (or soft) tee shirts and fuzzy jammy bottoms. Who knew?

Anyway. Allow me to present my video. “Every Word I Speak” is a story that came at a weird time in my life. Going through a divorce, just discovering Neil Gaiman and realizing that there is someone out there who was writing the sort of things I loved and wanted to create, buying fairy tale books and reading them along with my comfort copies of Angels and Visitations and Smoke and Mirrors. I was reading a cheap copy of Perrault’s Fairy Tales and it all came together, all the voices, whispering, merging, becoming mine. It was the first short story I’d written in a few years, and it helped me realize that I could write. That I’d not destroyed that part of myself, after all. I hope you all enjoy it, and I hope that you stay safe out there.