Author: moirafowley

love letter to pathetic fallacy

moirafowley

Dear friend, I’m writing a thing about pathetic fallacy which isn’t any of the things I’m supposed to be writing but is the only thing I’m able to write right now, which would be stressful except we’re smack bang in the middle of Storm Emma & the snow’s piled up outside my door, all sprinkled with cat pawprints & rose petals & it’s so different & dramatic it’s almost okay that my work’s all messed up because of it.

My work’s messed up for a lot of reasons, but I’m happy to blame the snow — powdery, deep & beautiful. Pathetic fallacy & all that.

It’s March now, suddenly spring. The eclipse season of the past two months dragged me through the dirt, not gonna lie, but here’s this moon in Virgo, first of two full moons this calendar month. Here’s the start of spring comin in on a snowstorm bringing the entire country to a halt. Here’s pathetic fallacy, bright snow nights, the street lamps all reflected & that moon just thrown right back up at the sky.

Every year on New Years Eve I spread out my cards in a wheel with one card for every month & one for the year as a whole. I pick a word for the year to return to over & over. I write my resolutions. From the start of the new year I knew that March would be the queen of swords, my guiding card, the one I write poems about, the one I have conversations with by lakesides. Get to know your cards, have deep chats by bodies of water. They’ll work with you better that way.

Here’s a spell for a full Virgo moon when the Sun’s stuck in all the feels of Pisces:

Pick a queen. Any queen. Queen of swords, queen of cups, queen of wands, queen of coins. Queen of hearts, queen of diamonds, queen of clubs, queen of spades. Pirate queens or fairy queens, witch queens or warrior queens, drag queens or queen bees, queens in constellations, queens of the underworld. Pick a queen to guide you.

Set up an altar to your queen (here’s a hint, the queen is you, doesn’t matter your gender, doesn’t matter the gender of the queen you choose). Put up a picture of her — a tarot card, a photograph, a painting, a doll, a crayon stick figure. Light candles. Scatter rose petals. Cut out hearts. Place down rose quartz. Massage your hands & neck with rose oil. Unclench your jaw. Breathe deep into the scent of it, the warmth.

Consider how you can embody your queen in the coming month. Stretch your spine. Imagine your crown, whatever that means to you — a symbol, a garland, a witch’s hat. Consider how you can wear it until the next full moon. Consider what that means to you. Feel the weight of it around your forehead, pressing against your third eye. Listen to what that weight tells you. Listen for clarity.

Draw whatever symbol comes to you. It could be a heart, a word, a picture, a number. Drawing it seals it: it’s now your sigil. Breathe into it.

When you’re ready, take your rose petals & open a door or a window. Throw them out into the snow. On the threshold carve your sigil into the snow. Invite knowledge, invite clarity. Breathe the cold air. Bring some of that clear, cold energy to bed with you. When you wake up in the morning, first thing, feel for your crown.

love letter to the new moon

moirafowley

I wanted to start writing a newsletter but I’m bad enough at being consistent on social media without adding another format to the list. I haven’t posted here in months. How would I write this if it was a letter? A missive straight into your inbox, quiet and private?

Dear friend,

I’ve been writing a book, but I’ve been writing a book for about as long as I can remember. This one’s wild and authentic, rough around the edges. This one’s an avalanche of old stone. I’m crazy about it. The second draft is starting to crack open and there’s light everywhere, like a Leonard Cohen song. There’s this one scene that makes me cry every time I read it. I don’t think that one will change much in the edits.

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I’ve been writing a story, too, at the same time, that’s different to most of the stories I write – fewer ghosts, notably; less psychological trauma, more self-affirmation. Before starting to play with it (because that’s how stories begin, as a small and haphazardly-curated selection of snippets and half-ideas that you play with until they grow into something you could love), I took four giant crates of old notebooks down from the topmost corner of the wardrobe. Dust and spiders and secrets live there. So do the one hundred and fifty diaries that I’ve kept since the age of six.

Sorting through them was a gargantuan task — not just because the crates were heavy & stored several feet above my head, but because teenage Moïra did not believe in dating her diary entries. There are entire notebooks without mention of a year & even a whole diary without a single date. Not the day, not the month, no indication that a day has passed except for a small dash between paragraphs.

This is probably metaphorical. I had a difficult adolescence.

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I didn’t set out looking for inspiration but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised if some of these diary snippets end up making their way sneakily into my story.

The story’s for Proud, an LGBTQ+ YA anthology for Stripes Books that’s being curated by Juno Dawson. The illustrated collection will include short stories & poetry from eight established authors & will also include four stories from new talent so if you are or know of an unpublished & unagented writer who falls under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, there’s a link to submission guidelines in the Bookseller press release.

It’s a thing of awe and honour to be part of a book I’d’ve loved & needed as a teenager – the proof is in these diaries. I said it already on Twitter but in an attic bedroom in a suburb of Dublin in 2001, 15-year-old Moïra is using an antiquated internet to look for a book like this that doesn’t yet exist & couldn’t possibly imagine she’d ever be writing a story for one. My heart’s huge with it.

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It’s Thursday and the moon is new. Here is a spell for dark moon days, just before the moon is new, when your past is gathered up in your bedroom in one hundred and fifty notebooks and even though you know you are strong enough to carry them (both metaphorically and back into the top of the wardrobe), you don’t have to keep it all strapped to your back. You can put some of it down, sometimes. Makes it easier to move around.

You’ll need:

A red candle, or several (the more the brighter the burn)
Fresh, dried sage
Old words: diary entries you can afford to lose, scraps from another life, photos, letters, clippings, or even just a piece of paper on which you’ve written things from the past you’re ready to put to rest
A fireplace, stove or otherwise flame-proof space in which to safely burn what you’ve come to move past

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The spell:

Light your candles. Sit comfortably. Take deep, cleansing breaths. If you have a daily meditation or affirmation, breathe through it now. Ground yourself. Centre. Concentrate on feeling who you are now & why you are strong.

Light your papers, scraps and secrets with the candle. Drop them into the fireplace & watch them burn. Whisper, chant or say I love you, I love you, I love you to your past self with every flame.

Watch the fire until it’s only embers. Close your eyes. Burn the sage. Listen to the last of the heat crackle the cinders. Don’t open your eyes until you can’t hear it any more, until the past you’re ready to move on from is only ashes. When you’re finished, blow out your candles with one more I love you for the road.

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Spellbook UK & Ireland launch week: a roundup

moirafowley

It’s Monday. My second novel, Spellbook of the Lost & Found, is published in the UK & Ireland on Thursday. Over the last week I’ve slipped from nervousness to mild terror to high anxiety to bright excitement & that last one’s where I’ve landed. Here we are. Spellbook hits the shelves this week.

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On Friday (June 2nd) I’m launching Spellbook in Dublin. It’s in Easons O’Connell Street from 6 to 8pm, at Dept51, the YA section on the lower ground floor. (There’s a Facebook event for it & everything.) It’s free & open to all so if you’re around, do come along and say hi!

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I was interviewed by Eithne Shortall for yesterday’s Sunday Times Culture section & chatted about writing routines & magic realism, tarot cards & coffee. The link is in my interviews page.


I’ll also be chatting about various & sundry things on at least one of the YALC weekend days. I can’t wait & I’m over the moon to have been asked back. Check out my events page or Twitter for updates when I have them.

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I’ll be hosting a couple of giveaways over social media this week so keep an eye on my Twitter, Instagram & Facebook page for more details.

I’m also setting up a crossword competition for people who have read Spellbook of the Lost and Found & who feel up to trying to crack my dad’s cryptic crossword at the end of the book. All of the details are here but you can also drop me a line if you have any questions.

Happy end of May, happy start of summer, happy Gemini season. x

things i read

moirafowley

I read The Miseducation of Cameron Post & tasted love & frustration & sunburnt shoulders. I wrote out my favourite passages because they remind me of what it’s like to live as somebody who believes in narrative above almost all else.

I read We Come Apart & thought in/
line breaks/
for days.

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I read Wing Jones & teared up with the heartbreak but also with the uplifting magic of power & optimism & girls owning their bodies & their stories & the complicated feelings for their families.


I read Teeth & for days after everything was salty.


I read Bone Gap & it was like reading a familiar fairy tale set in a different forest.

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Right now I’m reading What is Not Yours is Not Yours & I’m in deep navy blue & lovesick, barely coming up for air. Nobody writes like Helen Oyeyemi. Reading her is always a specific kind of longing.

What are you reading?

(Works cited:
The Miseducation of Cameron Post by emily m. danforth
We Come Apart by Sarah Crossan & Brian Conaghan
Wing Jones by Katherine Webber
Teeth by Hannah Moskovitz
Bone Gap by Laura Ruby
What is Not Yours is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi)

in which rapunzel chops off all her hair

moirafowley

My mum takes my author pictures. I figured it was about time I changed them because the official photo – the one on the inside flap of The Accident Season – was taken in 2012. Also my hair is about four shades darker & sixty centimetres shorter now than it was then.

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This summer I got my hair cut. This is particularly noteworthy because prior to that my hair was long enough to sit on.

I’d had long hair for a really long time. I liked that it was the longest. I liked that small children could climb up my plaits. I liked that seaweed tangled in it when I swam, that small birds set up nest in my perfectly messy bun, that when I shook my head it rained hairpins.

When people saw it they assumed I’d always had long hair. Those who knew me as a child recognised me by it. They remembered how at the age of eight I’d have panic attacks before getting routine trims at the hairdressers. They remembered how after I read the book Strongbow: The Story of Richard and Aoife by Morgan Llewellyn, I started threading stones through my plaits like the Celtic princess so I could fight my enemies. (Mostly I just gave my own arms bruises.) They could picture me at eleven, hair a long brown blanket down my back.

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But I didn’t always have long hair. I got it all chopped off – the whole blanket – just after I turned fourteen. For years I kept slicing it shorter & shorter, dying it darker or bleaching it lighter, until one day at seventeen I got my mum to buzz it all off with a razor.

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My hair grows fast. Like that character in A.S. King’s I Crawl Through It, it Pinocchios whenever I tell a lie or a story – & I tell a lot of stories. When I went to university at nineteen it wasn’t so much that I grew my hair out than I just stopped cutting it. Within days it touched my shoulders. Within weeks it reached my waist. By the age of twenty it’d passed my tailbone. I snaked it into braids that developed a life of their own, stroking friends’ cheeks and strangling my enemies.

When my hair grows it forgets. It forgets its ends ever belonged to a teenage girl who wore mismatched boots and denim dungarees with poetry books in the pockets. It forgets its roots grew from the same scalp as the girl with bitten fingernails and kohl-rimmed eyes. It forgets each follicle also belonged to the girl who climbed abandoned buildings in the middle of the night, who jumped off piers fully-clothed, who snarled at strangers, who sang sad songs in hospital beds.

You could argue that hair can’t remember in the first place, so it couldn’t possibly forget. But look at the two-inch curl I just grew telling you that story.

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So I got it all cut off. Fifty centimetres donated to a charity for children going through chemotherapy & another ten, later, to my bedroom floor.

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These days I cut my own hair, alone in front of my bedroom mirror, with just a couple of clips and a very sharp scissors. I don’t have a plan or a pattern. I just sort of hack at it until it looks the way I want it to. But I’ve learned that my hair is forgiving. If I amn’t trying to tame it, it looks good. It remembers. It doesn’t want perfection. It gives fewer fucks. It’s choppy and uneven and thick and unpredictable but it’s also the perfect metaphor. I used to spend so long straightening and pulling, plaiting and pinning, chasing perfection. Now I just put a bit of curl cream on my palms, fluff my hair up and go. Magic.

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novels in november

moirafowley

It’s November, it’s the end of the accident season, we’re safe for another year.

I wrote the first words of The Accident Season on the first of November five years ago. It wasn’t my first year participating in NaNoWriMo, but it was the first year I got this funny half-a-thought somewhere part of the way through. A thought that said: I have a good feeling about this.

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I fell so fast in love with writing it I barely had time to breathe – and there’s not a lot of room for deep breathing during NaNoWriMo in the rush of a thousand and a half words a day every day for thirty days – I raced from start to finish in six weeks and finished, dizzy, lovestruck and hopeful, halfway through December. I spent six months revising it before I sent the manuscript to agents. I revised it three more times before I signed the publishing deal. I revised the whole thing nine times in total (including copyedits and US-specific edits) before it went to print.

It’s a good thing I was so in love with it.

Usually, this is how I write: I have an idea, a thought, a kernel of story. I have a couple characters, maybe, floating around in my head from things I wrote when I was younger. I have some images I want to include, an energy, a mood. I have nothing else but my fingers on the keys.

When I sat down to write The Accident Season I had Elsie. I had mousetraps and butterfly nets, flypaper on the trees. I had a main character who was in love with someone she wasn’t supposed to be in love with. I had tarot cards in the school canteen. I had a bonfire in an abandoned house. I had an idea of the dreamy darkness I wanted to write, the magic realism, the slipperiness of reality and fantasy. I had no idea how I was going to thread it all together to make a story.

But I think writing is somewhere between a kind of magic and a kind of madness. When I sat down on the first of November to make a story about all of the little images and thoughts above, the first thing that came out was, It’s the accident season, the same time every year. And it kind of all just went from there.

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Usually, this is how I write: the first draft is chaos. There’s no other way to word it. The first draft is a mess of thoughts and ideas that go nowhere, half-formed moments and too many characters. It’s a storm of metaphors. It has no plot. It exists only to get gutted.

NaNoWriMo is perfect for writers like me. But it’s also perfect, I imagine, for writers who over-plan, who over-edit, who never get to the end because they want everything to be perfect the first time around. Nothing is ever perfect the first time around. If you’re anything like me, the first time around is absolute rubbish. But it’s supposed to be. I love NaNoWriMo because it’s a fantastic first step to making a book out of a story.

When I wrote the first draft of Spellbook of the Lost and Found it wasn’t November and I was on deadline. Actually, I was several months past deadline. (Having a baby six weeks before a book tour will do that to you.) But I used the basic principles of NaNoWriMo to blurt out the first draft. I didn’t fall in love with this one. It was a rough, rocky scramble to write those words down. I didn’t fall in love with this one until several difficult drafts later. I’m telling you this because I used to think you had to fall in love with your writing, that it was the only way you’d stick with it. I’m telling you this so that if you happen to come across this post midway through November and the book you started to write is a lead weight around your ankles and you just want to sink down with it – don’t. Stick with it. You might not have fallen in love with it yet, but you will. After the relief of getting to the end of the story, and of carving the whole mess of a mouthful into something you can stand to look at, you’ll fall in love with it. I did. If it’s meant to be your story it’ll bloody well mould itself into one. Mine did.

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I’m not participating in NaNoWriMo this year, and it’s not because I amn’t writing a book. It’s because I’m writing my third book in a very different way to my first two. I’m planning. I’m plotting. I’m doing research. I’m taking notes. I’m trying something new. I don’t know that it’ll work. I don’t know that the story will follow the plan. But this is a slightly different kind of book that needs a slightly different approach, I think. I’m interested in this process. I’m interested in documenting how it goes. So: for now, I’m plotting. I’m planning. I’m fifteen thousand words in and I’m crying every morning over the research I’m reading and I’ve fallen fast in love with my story and I’m really excited about how I’m going to tell it. Slowly. With more time to breathe.

But to everybody taking part in NaNoWriMo this November, I salute you. Breathe deep, drink tea, roll out your wrists. Light candles when it gets dark. Dream of your characters. Don’t look back, just keep telling your story. If you aren’t in love with it now, you will be.

let me tell you about my new book

moirafowley

So my second novel, Spellbook of the Lost and Found, has a cover, which means it’s another step closer to being a real book. The cover was revealed earlier this week on Sugarscape (UK) & Bustle (USA) & it’s stunning – dangerous & sexy & dark & burning bright at the same time – & fits the story perfectly.

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Here’s what it’s about:

Olive, Rose, Laurel, Ivy, Hazel, Rowan.
Six teenagers, connected in ways they could never have imagined.

After the town’s summer bonfire party, Olive and her best friend, Rose, begin to lose things. It starts with simple items like hairclips and jewellery, but soon it’s clear that Rose has lost something much bigger, something she won’t talk about, and Olive can’t stop feeling that her best friend is slipping away.

Then lost things start appearing. Fields are filled with odd treasures; the lake sparkles with trinkets; seductive diary pages written by a girl named Laurel show up all over town. And Olive finds Ivy, Hazel, and her brother, Rowan, secretly squatting in the nearby abandoned housing estate. Hazel and Rowan are wild and alluring, but they seem lost too, and like Rose, are holding tight to their secrets. 

It’s the damp, tattered spellbook that changes everything. Full of mysterious hand-inked charms to make things go missing and to conjure back others, it might be their chance to find what they need to set everything back to rights. Unless it’s leading them toward secrets that were never meant to be found . . .

It has tattoos & rusty keys, poteen & patron saints, two silver lighters & a lot of cycling down country lanes. It’ll be published in May 2017 & if that seems like too long to wait (I know it does for me, despite the fact that the book’s not actually, y’know, finished yet), I’ll be periodically updating my Spellbook Pinterest board in the meantime. You can also add it on Goodreads or pre-order it on Amazon.

YA Pride, bi-visibility & representation

moirafowley

We’re coming up to the end of Pride month & I’ve been delighted (& proud!) to find The Accident Season on some readers’ lists of recommended LGBT YA.

The Accident Season is magic realism: a sort of contemporary, sort of mystery, sort of strange little book about teenage girls with predilections for fortune-telling who drink too much & break into abandoned places. It isn’t about coming out or coming of age or about sexual orientation at all, but three of its main characters happen to be bisexual, so it makes me really happy to see it on these kinds of lists, because while coming out & coming of age & figuring out your sexuality is undeniably important, I like that there is also space left open for stories with LGBT characters in which their sexuality is almost incidental.

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I wrote 3 of the 4 main characters of The Accident Season as bisexual. They were all bisexual from the beginning & it was never going to be A Big Thing & none of them were ever going to question their sexuality or even really mention it, because it was what it was. Because sexual orientation doesn’t always have to be the driving point of the narrative. Because there doesn’t need to be a big deal made of a girl kissing her best (female) friend even though they’re both in love with different people, of a girl falling in love with a girl after having been with a boy for years.

There are no labels in The Accident Season because the story is narrated by Cara, & not only are labels unimportant to Cara, but it was important throughout the book that she narrate through a sort of shroud. Cara doesn’t name things, doesn’t pin experiences or thoughts down long enough to label them because she’s too busy deflecting from all her secrets.

A lot of young people don’t like or want or need labels. A lot of young people exist within a group of friends in which everybody kisses everyone irrespective of gender (my teenage friends group was very much like that!) & for many people on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum, life & love & kisses & relationships are organic and labelless.

Having said that, I am not Cara, & I think that labels can be really important. I did originally want to name the characters in The Accident Season as bisexual, but it never sounded right, never fit into the narrative. Because doing that would have been me (the author) making a statement, as opposed to me letting Cara (the narrator) tell her story. And Cara doesn’t really work that way.

But Cara is still bisexual. She’s bisexual even if she feels ambivalent about having kissed one particular girl. She’s bisexual even though her main romantic interest in the book is a boy. In the same way, Bea is bisexual even though she feels ambivalent about having kissed one particular boy. She’s bisexual even though her main romantic interest in the book is a girl. Alice is maybe the most obviously bisexual character because she has relationships with a boy & a girl during the course of the story, but readers very often read her as gay. Which I don’t understand. But I suspect it has something to do with bi visibility. We’re so used to the narrative of girl dates boy, girl realises she likes girls, girl goes out with girl. Alice had very good reasons for ending her relationship in The Accident Season & none of those reasons were her sexuality. She was bi when she was with a boy & she was bi when she was with a girl & she’d be bi if she were dating nobody at all because that’s kind of just how bisexuality works.

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Two out of four of the main characters in my next book, Spellbook of the Lost and Found, are bisexual & one is gay. There’s a lot I want to say about them that I can’t at this still-early stage (it’s due to be published in May 2017, so quite a while to wait), but in this book the narrator is a lot more matter-of-fact – she’s observant & little-to-no-nonsense & likes to call a spade a spade – & describes herself as openly out (except maybe to her grandmother) bisexual. This fact has absolutely no bearing in any way on the plot of the story, except that it is part of her history & identity.

So labels or no labels, I like to write books with bisexual main characters in which their sexuality has little to no impact on the story. Because that’s what I’m interested in writing, & because representation & visibility are important, both in theory & personally.

I’m bisexual but I came out as gay when I was 15. It was only in university that I realised I wasn’t. There were a couple of reasons for this, but one of the major ones was that I didn’t have a working framework for bisexuality. In 2000, when I was 14 & figuring this all out, the only representations of bisexuality in popular culture I had come across was the film Velvet Goldmine & the common harmful stereotypes we all know & hate: you’re just being greedy/ it’s just a phase/ you haven’t decided yet.

If I’d had a book or film or TV show with a character who happily identified as bi in either a same- or opposite-sex relationship, or a character who was maybe 80% gay & 20% straight who didn’t identify as gay but as bi, or characters who, like Cara, didn’t need or want any labels but kissed whoever they felt like kissing, with no sexual-orientation-related drama, then maybe I would have figured it all out sooner. But that’s what happens, sometimes, when you can’t find yourself in fiction*. So you just figure, “Hey, they must be right, maybe all lesbians are also somewhat attracted to boys. Maybe I haven’t made up my mind.” Sometimes you need examples to help back up your own instincts, especially when you’re young. And that’s where representation & visibility come in.

It’s getting better, especially in YA fiction, especially in the last few years. I’m not denying that there’s still a long way to go, especially when it comes to intersectionality, but right now I’m going to focus on the positives & share a bunch of lists posted this month of really excellent LGBTQ+ fiction. I’ve probably missed loads of roundups so if you have one or there’s one you’d like me to include, please let me know. And of course I’m always looking to expand my already-ridiculous to-be-read pile.

*I realise that being white, cisgender & able-bodied I obviously see myself in fiction all the time, but you know what I mean.

Penguin Pride: Coming of Age LGBT Fiction
Book Riot: Coming Out & Coming of Age
Adventures with Words: LGBTQ Library
Scholastic: Finding Me: LGBT Books for Kids
Buzzfeed: 26 LGBT Books Everyone Should Read
Claire Hennessy: YA LGBTQ Recs
Malinda Lo: Favourite YA About Lesbian, Bisexual & Queer Girls
Book Riot: Cotton Candy Queer Books

Most of my favourite books are on the above lists, but here are some that aren’t on any of them but definitely should be:

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About a Girl by Sarah McCarry

Eighteen-year-old Tally is absolutely sure of everything: her genius, the love of her adoptive family, the loyalty of her best friend, Shane, and her future career as a Nobel prize-winning astronomer. There’s no room in her tidy world for heartbreak or uncertainty―or the charismatic, troubled mother who abandoned her soon after she was born. But when a sudden discovery upends her fiercely ordered world, Tally sets out on an unexpected quest to seek out the reclusive musician who may hold the key to her past―and instead finds Maddy, an enigmatic and beautiful girl who will unlock the door to her future. The deeper she falls in love with Maddy, the more Tally begins to realize that the universe is bigger―and more complicated―than she ever imagined. Can Tally face the truth about her family―and find her way home in time to save herself from its consequences?

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Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson

Lighthousekeeping tells the tale of Silver (“My mother called me Silver. I was born part precious metal, part pirate.”), an orphaned girl who is taken in by blind Mr. Pew, the mysterious and miraculously old keeper of a lighthouse on the Scottish coast. Pew tells Silver stories of Babel Dark, a nineteenth-century clergyman. Dark lived two lives: a public one mired in darkness and deceit and a private one bathed in the light of passionate love. For Silver, Dark’s life becomes a map through her own darkness, into her own story, and, finally, into love.

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Mermaid in Chelsea Creek by Michelle Tea

Everyone in the broken-down town of Chelsea, Massachussetts, has a story too worn to repeat—from the girls who play the pass-out game just to feel like they’re somewhere else, to the packs of aimless teenage boys, to the old women from far away who left everything behind. But there’s one story they all still tell: the oldest and saddest but most hopeful story, the one about the girl who will be able to take their twisted world and straighten it out. The girl who will bring the magic. Could Sophie Swankowski be that girl? With her tangled hair and grubby clothes, her weird habits and her visions of a filthy, swearing mermaid who comes to her when she’s unconscious, Sophie could be the one to uncover the power flowing beneath Chelsea’s potholed streets and sludge-filled rivers, and the one to fight the evil that flows there, too. Sophie might discover her destiny, and maybe even in time to save them all.

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A History of Glitter & Blood by Hannah Moskovitz

Sixteen-year-old Beckan and her friends are the only fairies brave enough to stay in Ferrum when war breaks out. Now there is tension between the immortal fairies, the subterranean gnomes, and the mysterious tightropers who arrived to liberate the fairies. But when Beckan’s clan is forced to venture into the gnome underworld to survive, they find themselves tentatively forming unlikely friendships and making sacrifices they couldn’t have imagined. As danger mounts, Beckan finds herself caught between her loyalty to her friends, her desire for peace, and a love she never expected.

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The Cure for Death by Lightning by Gail Anderson Dargatz

The Cure for Death by Lightning is the story of Beth Weeks, a young girl whose life is thrown into turmoil by her abusive father, a mysterious stalker, and her own awakening sexuality. But friendship with a girl from the nearby Indian reservation connects her to an enriching mythology, and an unexpected protector ultimately shores up her world. The novel is sprinkled throughout with recipes and remedies from the scrapbook Beth’s mother keeps, a boon to Beth as she faces down her demons and discovers what she is made of — and one of many elements that gives The Cure for Death by Lightning its enchanting vitality.

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The Last Beginning by Lauren James

Sixteen years ago, after a scandal that rocked the world, teenagers Katherine and Matthew vanished without a trace. Now Clove Sutcliffe is determined to find her long lost relatives. But where do you start looking for a couple who seem to have been reincarnated at every key moment in history? Who were Kate and Matt? Why were they born again and again? And who is the mysterious Ella, who keeps appearing at every turn in Clove’s investigation? For Clove, there is a mystery to solve in the past and a love to find in the future.

the new book

moirafowley

I posted the title reveal of my second book on Twitter & Facebook last week, but in case you missed it, here’s what it’s called:

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It’ll be published in a year, which is a long time but also very little, considering The Accident Season was published less than a year ago itself. Spellbook of the Lost & Found will be similar in feel: a magic realism standalone set in the West of Ireland. It has poteen & tattoos & diaries & rusty keys & a lot of cycling down country lanes & writing it has been a wild ride so far. It took me a long time to fall in love with it but I’m in deep now & I can hardly wait a whole year for it to be out in the world.

In the meantime, though, there is this picture, which I took with my phone on my front room table with objects found around the house. A lot of them of narratively important, some are personal treasures & a couple are mysteries. (Bonus points for anyone who can name each item.) Scraps & objects. That’s what it’s all about.

objects, collections & possessions: some thoughts & three questions

moirafowley

So I’ve been thinking about objects a lot lately, mostly because of the new book, in which things & belongings are scattered about like the injuries in The Accident Season.

At the same time & not entirely unrelatedly I’ve been reading a lot about hoarding & collections, & theories of space & clutter, & Marie Kondo, & recycling & plastic consumption & household waste, & I’ve been thinking about the shrines my sister & I set up in our rooms when we were teenagers: the photos & flowers, the trinkets & treasures, the candles & fairylights reflected in mirrors giving the carefully curated chaos a low glow. So in the evening I declutter my house & sort through mess & memories, & in the morning I write about objects & all the while I think about the things we own & the things we keep & the things we let define us.

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So I have a few questions, & if you’re reading this & you’d like to answer I’d love to hear what you have to say.

What’s your favourite object?
What object would you say defines you? (Are they the same thing?)
What is the object you use most often?

I haven’t been able to narrow down my favourite object but once I do I’ll post it in the comments. As for my defining object, maybe a notebook? My current notebook is pink & says this on the cover:

trouvaille
(noun)
something lucky,
found by chance

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It’s perfectly fitting for a book about lost things written by a half-French person made mostly of love & luck.

The object I use most often is a pair of thick, black, cat-eye glasses, because I put them on first thing in the morning & take them off last thing at night, & I can hardly see without them.

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Other contenders were my phone, my notebook, my Paperchase pens, the floral mugs I drink endless cups of tea out of & leave in random places around the house, the GHD I straighten my fringe with every morning (& I am particularly interested, for this book, in beauty routines & beauty objects as talismans, so if you have any thoughts about this please please leave me a comment, it’s fascinating stuff).

Here are some of the things I’ve been reading, in case you’re interested:

Glamorous Hoarding by Arabelle Sicardi
The Story of Stuff
Lego Lost at Sea & the Plastic Pollution Coalition
Teenage Bedroom Decor via Apartment Therapy
A shrine of shrines via Rookie

If you’ve any similar links or books you think I should check out let me know!