Snow day! This is like a Michigan snow down here in Southern Illinois today. And a great change from the ice storm we had just a few days ago that knocked out our power for 75 hours. Just pure snow joy!
I’ve been waiting for a snowy day to make this reading video. The first take was good—but a snowflake on the lens made it blurry. It took me another half a dozen takes to get it right. As good as I can do, anyway.
The bit in this story about the vehicle crash is mostly true. It’s a story I heard in a town where I lived for a couple years. I wanted to write it into a bigger story but every attempt failed. And then one day I was enjoying a solo lunch at a café, half-heartedly eavesdropping as writers tend to do in such environments, and I heard a woman giving her friend several reasons she was reluctant to break up with her boyfriend even though she knew the relationship wasn’t working. Bingo.
This is filmed in a section of the Shawnee National Forest near my house.
As a kid, I received a wall calendar illustrated by Rich Rudish and depicting famous horses in history. I loved that calendar—Alexander the Great’s Bucephalus, the famous Arabian Witez II, Joan of Arc’s charger that only she could tame…. I can conjure those images almost without trying. That calendar set a high standard for future wall calendars. The only wall calendar to come close to it, in fact, was a fine art calendar of unicorn art, featuring Susan Seddon-Boulet and others.
I don’t hang a wall calendar anymore—or, rarely. I still use a weekly planner, even though I also use the calendar function on my phone. Mostly it’s practical. I prefer to use one with witchy holidays, or illustrated pages, or sassy stickers. Or horses on facing pages.
My favorite part now isn’t revealing next month’s illustration. It’s that first moment of writing in perennial dates—anniversaries, birthdays. I love that moment of adding the first plans of the new year, especially the fun ones, like travel dates.
Inevitably, I make a mistake. I have to add a pen scribble or Sharpie line to my new calendar! It’s almost a relief when it happens. Whew! Got that over with. It’s a good reminder at the year’s inception that no plans, no matter how well laid, are immutable.
See you in the new year! Share your favorite calendar, if you’re dorky enough!
1. I will be more strategic in my fiction writing.
This means writing for specific open calls and target venues. My strategy in the past has been simply to write regularly. That, of course, is important. But now I’ll sharpen my focus. And keep a better writing calendar.
2. I will put my energy where it belongs, and strive not to waste it where it ultimately matters less.
I’m re-defining my perception of who I want to be—and though it may not appear so, it’s a big change.
Specifically, I am going to worry less about my day job. It will be a tremendous challenge for me. I’ve long defined myself by what I do for a living, in large part because I’ve been a professional writer (though not of fiction) for about 25 years and counting. 2024 was a rough year at work in some ways. I’ve fretted, fumed and ranted, felt overwhelmed by anxiety and struggled with resentment. I’ve lost sleep. I’ve worried myself sick. I need to shift my focus. I have plenty of professional pride wrapped up in my job, and that won’t change. But it’s my job, not my life.
Putting it another way: I wouldn’t give up having a horse for my job—but I have in order to pursue being an author. It’s time to make that sacrifice count. I need to focus my energy on what’s important to my career long-term, and stop flinging myself at brick walls, however tempting they may be.
3. Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum
Walk more. Stretch more. Do yoga. Be present.
4. Keep up my dang website better! See ya here more often. 🙂
At the end of September, my husband Tim and I traveled to my home state of Michigan to visit my siblings on my mother’s side, and to meet cousins on my father’s side. From there, we took a two-day jaunt to the Upper Peninsula for my first look at Lake Superior. And then home through Wisconsin, where I visited my sister and nieces on my father’s side.
These are long-lost family. I’m adopted. This is birth family I’ve found and been getting to know over the past several years. I’ll have plenty more to say on this subject!
For now, though, here’s a trail reading of my story Crossing Over, from Ghost Parachute magazine.
This story is one of those that went quickly once I started writing it. Though this story took a tragic turn, writing fast as I did with this story is a blast! The narrator’s voice came through loud and clear, and I followed along.
The reading is alongside the Cedar River near the Cedar River Natural Area, Bellaire, Michigan. We stayed at a phenomenal Air BnB near there. I hope to stay there again my next visit north.
Additional footage is from, in order: 12 Oaks Vineyard (Carlyle, Illinois); foot bridges over the Kaskaskia River in central Illinois; Rocky Bluff trail near Devil’s Kitchen Lake in Southern Illinois; Falls of Rough, Kentucky.
I don’t know how I missed posting this reading here! It hit social media in June…
Doodles is an old one. It appeared in a journal called Cooper Street Journal, which is gone now, I think. It was a journal out of Rutgers University.
I filmed this in segments during our train trip home from Tucson, Arizona. So, you’ll see train stations in Temple, Fort Worth, and Dallas, Texas, and footage during the train trip, and in Sabino Canyon, Arizona. It was very windy at some of the locations!
Overnight train travel is an experience! I’m glad we did it, and I’d do it again. But it ain’t the cheapest way to go. We got a sleeper car, which I highly recommend if you will be over night. Also, since your dinner’s are included—and access to the first class dining car—that helps a whole lot.
I’m not sure where the story came from. It’s about going home when you aren’t sure you belong there and have been away a long time. And it’s about how much things change. And how some memories we cherish are simply forgotten by others.
I’ve got a story in The Horror Zine Magazine! The Horror Zine has plenty of street cred in the horror world. It’s got longevity and quality on its side, and editor Jeani Rector is well known for her contributions to the community, including encouraging new horror writers.
I’m continually enchanted by the idea of the veil between the worlds stretching, growing thin, allowing crossover from one world to the next. It’s the essence of fairy stories. For me, it’s part of what moves me to awe in the natural world. And it’s often something I weave into stories.
The idea for Like Furies came while I was waiting for my husband’s trio gig to start in Centralia, Illinois. They play in a courtyard between two older brick buildings. I was restless, and was walking around this block, then that one. We were on the edge of town, near railroad tracks. Within the same two block square, there was an abandoned building with tall grass and vine in the alley like a jungle, and also store fronts, a bank, park benches along the sidewalk, and a couple traffic lights. As I wandered around, I noticed a few feathers on the sidewalk. I almost always pick up feathers. A few feet further, more feathers, different kind, in good shape. As I walked, I picked up half a dozen nice feathers, and left quite a few on the sidewalk that were in poor shape, or clumped together as if torn out in a bunch.
And that got me thinking: Why are there so many feathers? A resident peregrine? Some larger cities have them to control the pigeon population. What if it was something else? Something sinister? That, in the way of small towns everywhere, no one would talk about? What if that person watching me pick up a feather didn’t think I was merely weird, but that I was breaking tabu?
I scribbled a few notes, and began writing the story the next day.
I thought about having someone send Tori to Black Creek as vengeance for an imagined slight. But as I wrote her character, it became clear she wouldn’t fall for that. She wouldn’t be a victim— she’d be more susceptible to grief. But not over a man.
Though I didn’t describe what she looks like in the story, I have a clear picture of her in my mind.
That’s the way it works for me. Sometimes characters are fully formed in my mind and they tell me what to do, being rather bossy about it. Other times, I have to tease it out. And sometimes I only know what they are all about until I’ve gotten it wrong a few times.
The story’s ending was a bit of a surprise for me. I had it in my mind up until Tori’s encounter with the source of the feathers in town. The rest was spontaneous. I love when that happens.
Print copy, with that outstanding cover art, here.
I’m still processing our recent road / train trip out west and back. In mid-April, Tim and I rented a car and drove to the Denver, Colorado area to visit a friend, then to Tucson, Arizona by way of Santa Fe, New Mexico to visit our son. We returned home on the Amtrak train, the Texas Eagle.
The road trip remains my favorite way to travel. Train is second. Flying a distant—and preferably avoided—third.
I know, sometimes flying is necessary. It’s often faster and cheaper, particularly if the road-driving alternative is more than two days. But for me, getting there really is half the fun. And flying is not as fun.
Here are my Top 15 Reasons Why This Road Trip Was Better Than Flying.
In almost chronological order
1. Pizza at a fancier-than-anticipated Italian restaurant in Hannibal, Missouri, hometown of Mark Twain.
2. Visiting the Pony Express memorial in Julesburg, Colorado. Check out how I used a cloud to enhance the image! What’s even better? It was so bright and sunshiney, I didn’t realize what I’d caught until looking at the photos later.
A close-up of the horse and rider with a cloud enhancing the image.
3. Conifer Café in Conifer, Colorado. What a cool little café! It has the best indoor décor. And swings! And super nice and friendly customers.
4. Colorado coffee shops generally. Coloradoans brew a good cup of coffee!
5. Being able to stop the car and get out to play in a mountain stream that ran by the road in the Rockies.
6. Holding a snowball at Kenosha Pass in the Rockies.
7. Seeing wild pronghorn antelope roadside! And elk! I’d never seen wild pronghorns before, thrilling experience for me.
10. Salt River Canyon! And Corduroy Canyon and Cedar Canyon. I was thoroughly unprepared for this. We’re driving along and all of a sudden there’s a beautiful canyon roadside. For miles. Followed by another. And then another!
11. Roadside fry bread. We took US 60, which included the Salt River Canyon and the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests and the Fort Apache Reservation. Somewhere along that route, while still marveling over the canyons, we stopped at a roadside vendor for some Native frybread—which I’d been eager to try. It tastes better when you are eating it canyon-side. If only I’d taken a picture!
12. Trying a regional fastfood chain—Runzas. German sandwiches. (Think Michigan pasty and you are close to what we had.)
Epiphany Ferrell 