Writing
Essays on the medicine hidden in the stories we're told to dismiss: romance novels read for what they're actually doing, astrology read for what it's asking, and the liminal ground between what was and what's becoming.
Every piece arrives on Substack first, where you can subscribe and have it land in your inbox, like a letter. The archive gathers here.
Desire and Doubt Are a Slow Burn
There's a story that's been niggling at me since last Fall, three characters who moved into my mind to live rent free until I write them down. This week I sat with them properly: a notebook, a couple of books on how to write a novel, and a card spread for each one to see past my own rational mind. What follows is the uncomfortable romance between desire and doubt, the way they sit on my shoulders like a pair of angels pulling in opposite directions. It's about wanting to write a novel and doubting I can, about the friction of prep and the temptation to stay there forever, and what a year of reading did to a woman finally reaching for the writer's chair.
The Anchor in the Storm Archetype
A chain pulled tight looks like the safer arrangement. It looks like the one that's really holding on. It's the one that rips the anchor out of the ground and can break the boat in half. What looks like looseness isn't a failure of holding. It's the thing that makes the holding work.
The chain is the part you can inspect. You can haul it up, check the links, know what it held last time and how it behaved. The ground is the part you never see. You drop into it and either it bites or it doesn't, and no amount of looking will tell you beforehand.
The chain is trust. The ground is faith.
Mr. Darcy was my first Threshold Lover
Eighteen years ago I wrote a thesis about romantic comedies as maps of the heroine's transformation, then set it down and went underground. This summer's solar eclipse brought it back up, along with the man who started all of it. Mr Darcy was the first character I couldn't explain my way out of, and following him led me somewhere I didn't expect: to a husband, back to making art, back to astrology, and eventually to eight figures I now call Threshold Lovers. What we return to isn't random.
Meeting my Threshold Lover
At every crossing there is a companion who carries an erotic charge. Not necessarily because it will lead to a romantic encounter. Because desire is a potent compass, and more than that, desire is what moves the body toward making things take shape in the physical world. When a crossing is genuinely hard, the thing missing is almost never information. Most of us know exactly what we should do. We have the map, the advice, the framework, the three good reasons, and we sit in the chair another year anyway, fully informed and completely immobile. What is missing is appetite.
Romance Novels Know Something About This Moment That Our Doomscrolling Doesn't
Romance novels are trojan horses—teaching sovereignty and transformation disguised as guilty pleasures. In a world drowning in doom, they're training us to recognize joy like our lives depend on it.
The Mafioso at the Threshold
Our internal resistance studied at the university of You—weaponizing your own values to keep you from changes that part of you knows are inevitable. The exhausting truth: it takes more energy to refuse transformation than to surrender to it.
Romancing Pluto: The Werewolf at the Threshold
It is not in fleeing the monster, but in honoring our hybrid desires — body, soul, and ego — that we find our way through endings and into the uncanny rebirth to come.
The Enchanter of the Deep – Courting Neptune
To romance Neptune is to drift into the depths, where longing dissolves certainty and dreams undress us. He is the lover who enchants through mystery, leaving us bare before the ineffable.
The Monster’s Grief and the Feminine Wound
A descent into erotic healing, mythic encounter, and the scar that wants to reweave the story.
The Monstrous Beloved and the Sovereign Feminine
A mythic descent into feminine power, shadow desire, and the ritual of being chosen whole—where reverence breaks curses and the grotesque becomes sacred.
Seeing Red: Honoring Mars in a Time of Courage*
A guide to working with Mars as ally and teacher, shaping courage into a daily practice. By channeling Mars’s raw energy into creativity, integrity, and drive, we let its fire fuel us rather than consume us.
The Monster at the Door
The Gaze That Sees You Whole — and the Five Forbidden Doors It Dares You to Open. Step closer… they’ve been waiting for you.
Sleeping With the Enemy (and Other Planetary Affairs)
Your birth chart is an epic rom‑com written in the stars: part divine drama, part cosmic fling. The planets you resist most are simply lovers in disguise, holding the keys to your next transformation.
Falling in Love with the In‑Between - The Dating Game Version
An exploration of life’s doorways and the liminal landscapes between them — where low‑stakes love stories become maps, “fluff” becomes a refuge, and archetypal lovers step forward to guide us across.
The Fluff Reads Oracle
Trust your gut, choose a card, and uncover the romantic mood you need right now. It’s like a fortune cookie for book lovers—cheeky, fun, and tailored to entice your romance cravings.
Romancing the Sky-Shaper
A sudden storm that shatters your rut and clears the air for the life you didn’t know you were craving.
85 Romance Reads Later - What I've learned (and Loved)
I didn't plan to read 85 romance novels this year. But somewhere between monster kisses and slow-burn enemies-to-lovers, I found myself changed.
The Lover beneath the Armor - Courting Saturn*
Saturn doesn’t just test your resolve — he woos it, shaping passion into purpose. In Aries, he’s the lover who dares alongside you, but only if you meet him halfway, offering your devotion in return.
Romancing the Threshold
From Comfort Reads to Cultural Alchemy — Reimagining the Worlds We Long to Create