The Epistle
A ROBBERGIRL flash sale, my journaling practice, and the gentle comforts of horror.
Welcome back to The Epistle, all ye faithful. Light up a candle, breathe in the incense smoke, and find a comfortable seat. I’ve got a killer book deal lined up for you this week, as well some thoughts about Anais Nin and beauty and the grotesque
News
In honor of bisexual awareness week, my sapphic Snow Queen retelling, ROBBERGIRL, is on sale for 99 cents! The flash sale only runs through Friday September 24, so grab it before the price climbs back up.
In a Sweden wracked by war and haunted by folk stories so dark they can only be spoken of in whispers, Helvig has been raised by her brigand father to steal whatever treasure catches her eye. When her men ambush a girl on the road with hair pale as death and a raven perched on her shoulder, Helvig cannot resist bringing home a truly unique prize: a genuine witch.
Drawn irresistibly into the other woman’s web, Helvig soon learns of Gerda’s reason for walking the icy border roads alone: to find the Queen who lives at the top of the world and kill her. Anyone else would be smart enough not to believe a children’s story, but Helvig is plagued by enchantments of her own, and she struggles to guard the sins of her past while growing closer to Gerda.
As Christmastide gives way to the thin-veiled days when ghosts are at their most vengeful, the two women find themselves on a journey to a final confrontation that will either redeem them or destroy them entirely.
This book is perfect for you if you like:
only one bed
kidnapping trope
a femme witch with secrets
a disaster knife bisexual
haunted churches
found family
swedish folklore
mutual pining
tilting your love interest’s chin up with a knife
What I’m Loving Lately
Media has done the heavy lifting of getting me through 2020. At the start of lockdown, I marathoned foreign language musicals, and now I’m taking great, if unexpected comfort in:
My Hannibal Re-Watch
Yes, a psychological horror television drama is my comfort watch right now. Hannibal is twisting enough to get lost in with enough melodrama to transport the viewer beyond the mundane and into a liminal space somewhere between reality and fantasy. It’s also arrestingly, unapologetically beautiful, even in its brutality. Murder scenes are laid out like tableaus from a painting, the costumes and meals are served up in florid color, and the characters speak of God and fate in dialogue that reads like poetry. Its obsession with the juxtaposition of beauty and the grotesque is quintessentially gothic, even operatic.
One of the larger themes of Hannibal is how human beings respond to trauma, and the ways in which we try to seize agency or find connection in light of brutality. While I wouldn’t exactly call the show uplifting, it is euphoric to watch in so many ways. As our characters walk the thin line between good and evil, sanity and madness, they construct their own meaning out of tragedies that should have broken them. The find refuge in each other, or bring each other into heightened contrast as perfect narrative foils.
Hannibal invites us into the darkness of the human psyche by a velvet-gloved hand, but affirms that we’re resilient enough to find a way to survive in the dark. Right now, in a horrifying year, that’s the sort of media I need.
Real Love Song by Nothing But Thieves
God, this one makes me yearn. The lyrics get my broody, obsessive little Scorpio heart fluttering, and then you add the soaring strings and thrumming woodwinds of the Bucharest Symphony Orchestra and I’m a total sucker for every second. I guarantee you this is your new favorite character playlist track.
Journaling
For years, I wasn’t able to journal. I would scribble a few entries, then feel a wave of embarrassment over how self-indulgent the whole activity was. How could I think my mundane thoughts were worth putting down in ink, and what if I changed my mind about something I had written about in a few days? I ripped out a lot of pages to hide my own feelings from the cold eye of time and reflection, and I discarded a lot of journals before I was even ten percent through them.
And then I found the diaries of Anais Nin. I can’t even tell you what it meant to me to see a woman THAT devoted to feeling and documenting her own inner world without a single drop of shame. I needed to see another woman entirely devoted to the pursuit of her own artistic authenticity and the deepest social entanglements, a woman unapologetically in pursuit of intensity and pleasure and transcendent meaning. She documented her life with the love of a hagiographer, but she allowed herself to be sinner and saint and a hundred other contradictions all at once. If she could live that way, why not me?
About a year ago, I started journaling regularly and now my little mauve diary is almost full. I’ve committed to being shamelessly authentic with myself. I’ve decided that the petty melodramas and quiet hopes of my life are worth my time, care, and reflection, and I’ve forbidden myself from regretting a single feeling after I’ve felt it. I am the main character of this story, after all. If you’ve been too embarrassed to journal in the past, you have my explicit permission to forge ahead with your luxurious self-examination.
I hope you’re holding fast to little pleasures and tiny moments of sweetness this week, and that you and yours are healthy and safe. Be so well until we two meet again!
-Saint