“Your land must be a realm of peace and content, and there must gardeners be in high honor.”

The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien

For years now, I’ve harbored the oft-spoken desire to start a vegetable garden. It hadn’t ever quite become solidified enough in my mind to be a goal, but somehow the idea of planting seeds or seedlings in the dirt, watering them, watching them grow, and eventually harvesting the literal fruits and vegetables of your labor has, over the past few years, captured my imagination and blossomed there.

One day, I kept telling myself, when I have more time.

One day, when I have a good space for it.

One day … one day …

Well, this spring, the world turned upside down, and that day finally came. Or rather, this spring, the world turned upside down, and I decided it was high time I stopped putting off the things I’ve always wanted to do, and if at all possible, and if at all beneficial, to simply do them. Such a shift in philosophy is doubtless to be expected when the every-day “normal” we so easily take for granted suddenly becomes a thing of the past.

It is a marvelous, and at the same time, terrifying, wake up call to the reality that each day is a gift and time is not infinite, and perhaps we should, as author and speaker Allen Arnold puts it, “live wildly unbalanced as [we] pursue what matters most with God and with joyful abandon.”

So, shaken awake by the unsettling of the world from what had become my rhythm—putting off all nonessential dreams until next week or next month or next year—I embraced my hobbity love for green and growing things, and together with all the family members I could recruit, set to work.

It is only a tiny thing, our vegetable garden. A valiant first attempt. But barely a garden by anyone’s standards, let alone a master gardener like Samwise Gamgee. Still, it is ours and I am proud of it. Ridiculously so, considering I contribute nothing to the actual work that is occurring as the plants grow … and already, they are growing! Tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries, bell peppers, and sugar snap peas (which for some strange reason I cannot explain, other than that it is so much fun to say, I want to keep calling “spring sprouts”).

And the marvel of that growth happening moment by moment and day by day as the plants gather nutrients from the soil, drink up the rain, and stretch in the sun, brings me to my knees in awe. It is an ordinary miracle, a natural thing, but a magical thing nonetheless, a thing of beauty woven into the fabric of the universe by the Master Gardener who causes all things to grow.

I, who can pour far too much effort into the work of my hands, who often spends far too long agonizing over a single word or the placement of a line break, and who struggles with the strain of waiting and the inability to control what happens once the work has left my hands and entered the world, now find myself not only welcoming the opportunity to weed and water the garden but also welcoming the chance to rest and watch and wait as the garden grows without me.

I cannot escape the sense that this is a moment of growth for me too.

And somehow, as I awaken each morning, eager to venture outside to water the plants and see the changes that have emerged overnight, the thing that is growing inside of me, unfurling its delicate stalks and leaves like a fragile seedling reaching for the sun, is hope.

Lately, it has begun to feel like hope—in the temporal and not eternal sense—has so often been squeezed and crushed and stamped and smothered within me that it has been reduced to a cold, weak, and waning thing. Not quite dead but gasping. Not quite blown out but barely a spark. Not quite gone but not quite here either.

It sounds a mite dramatic when put that way but sometimes dramatic words are needed to convey abstract feelings. And perhaps I am not the only one who has felt this. Perhaps it happens to many of us as we grow through adulthood, as we emerge from the bright and seemingly endlessly possibilities of youth to the realization that we ourselves are not endless. It reveals itself in the sickly-sweet voice that offers consolation after disappointment, using phrases like “Did you really want that?” and “Maybe it’s best it didn’t happen” or “Would you really have been able to handle it?” A voice that at once deprives the dream of its brightness and the loss of its shadow and casts all in a featureless wash of gray.

And now, it is equally terrifying and exciting to feel hope stirring inside me again. Allowing it to awaken requires both courage and daring, because hope cannot remain safely buried. Like a seedling must part the earth, hope must crack you open to emerge, and in so doing, it exposes the delicate and unarmored heart of yourself to a world that seems to delight in crushing delicate and unarmored things.

Who knew gardening could demand such courage? And in the call to courage and the awakening of hope, in the need for faithful work and the equally faithful relinquishing of control, who knew gardening could bring about such healing?

Samwise Gamgee knew it, I think. During my latest rereading of The Lord of the Rings, it struck me that Sam is not simply a gardener by occupation. He is a gardener in heart and bone. It informs every aspect of his character and grants him the stouthearted qualities that define him from the start of the journey to the end: courage and hope, patience and determination, and the faithfulness of a healer and a nurturer.

Even in his defiant song in the tower in Mordor, after Frodo was poisoned by Shelob and taken by the orcs, when at the end of all hope, Sam lifted up his voice and sang, he began with a reminder of spring and of growing things to combat the darkness and desolation that surrounded him.

He certainly knew it later, as he wandered through the recently scoured Shire, grieving a land that had been ravaged, visiting groves chopped down and left to rot, surveying hedges crushed and gardens abandoned. Remembering the gift of Galadriel, that tiny box filled with the dust of fair Lothlorien that he had borne to Mordor and back again, he opened it and began the work of healing.

“So Sam planted saplings in all the places where specially beautiful or beloved trees had been destroyed, and he put a grain of the precious dust in the soil at the root of each … The little silver nut he planted in the Party Field where the tree had once been; and he wondered what would come of it. All through the winter he remained as patient as he could, and tried to restrain himself from going round constantly to see if anything was happening.”

The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien

He seeded, tended, watered, waited, and hoped to see what would grow. And the land was restored by his work, but more importantly, hearts were restored by his work, and among the hobbits of the Shire, hope was kindled, hope survived, and hope flourished again.

Here we are at the end of my musings, and somehow this piece of writing has blossomed into something far longer than I intended. But just as there is healing in gardening and in learning to wait and to hope again, there is healing for a writer in the free flow of words and thoughts, and in the connections that form between feeling and reason as the work takes shape. Still, now that I have written … the garden is waiting. I think I am quite ready to set down my pen and wander outside for the third time today, to sit and breathe, to rest and watch the garden grow, and to feel hope flourishing again.

Once upon a time, a young writer had an idea for a blog. She was just starting to feel out her writing wings, you see, and needed a space to spread them wide and launch ideas into the world, to muse and to form connections with other writers and thinkers and readers too. It was a quirky space, filled with rambling (but occasionally deep) musings and bright and airy fantasy posts, and it served its purpose well, allowing the young writer to carve out her niche, to land upon her voice and style, to discover the unique thread that bound all her writings and stories together.

The echoes of eternity, she called it, forever ringing through stories of heartache and hope, of brokenness and beauty, with eucatastrophe built into their bedrock.

Yet over time, as the young writer began to soar and her endeavors drew her ever farther away from the space she had originally made her home, her postings became less frequent … and somehow, simultaneously, less “her” and more “simply-that-thing-that-an-author-must-do.”

Eventually, the blog suffered the same fate that many an author’s blog does. It was hauled before the marketing tribunal that forms in every author’s mind soon after signing a publishing contract, and under strict scrutiny and after a rapid crossfire of questions delivered with enough force to trample any spark of creativity (“Well, Blog? What brand do you present to the world? Do you convert blog readers into book readers? How do people find you? Are you saying something important? Are you saying something that might scare readers away? Are you anything more than a compilation of the writer’s rambling thoughts?”), it withered, its defense left speechless, and it was declared guilty of insignificance and ineffectiveness and consigned to the worst fate imaginable: nonexistence.

If the story ended there, it would be a sad thing indeed. And indeed, years passed before anything changed. But eventually, the writer, now not nearly so young, remembered that stories of heartache need hope and eucatastrophe built into their bedrock.

So one day, after the real world had turned unexpectedly on end, uprooting the writer and sending her tumbling, she remembered the place that she had carved out once upon a time. A place for musing and connection, for deep thinking and bright dreaming, for taking in the world one word at a time, and she decided that it was time for the blog to WAKE UP.

It is older now—undoubtedly. She is wiser now—hopefully. At the very least, she better understands her limits and her need for a creative space that is not bound to a regular schedule with the deadlines that follow, or forced to squeeze into the shape and pattern of a marketing tool when other means are a far better fit and this effort was always meant to be free. Once again, it will be simply a space to stretch, to reach out, to test and to try, to give wing and fly, to crash—perhaps—and to rise, to write and to remember why.

So the writer dusted off her ancient passwords and half-forgotten logins, set her fingers to her well-worn keyboard, and began to type …

Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving week! I was too excited about this news to wait until after Thanksgiving to share, so I hope you will excuse the Christmassy announcement now.

For the first time ever, I am officially offering readers the chance to order a signed copy of The Songkeeper Chronicles or my novella Out of Darkness Rising to give as a gift (or you know, keep for themselves) for Christmas! *gasp* Some of the best gifts I have ever received have been books. I am also notorious in my family for giving people books all. the. time. Conversations sometimes run like this:

“Guess what I got you for Christmas!”

“Hmm, let me think really really hard. A book?”

“Um … yes?”

But of course, they always end up loving it!

So without further ado … no, wait, more ado is needed: This offer is open to US readers only simply because international shipping being what it is, I can’t quite make it happen. (Sorry friends in other amazing places!)

Haven’t read the books yet and trying to decide if they would be a good fit? You can read detailed descriptions of each of the books here: Orphan’s Song, Songkeeper, Song of Leira or read the highlights version below. If you’re up to speed on the books, you can scroll on down to pricing/ordering info!

Story Info: In the Songkeeper Chronicles, music is magic and one girl’s song can shape or break her world. When Birdie accidentally draws the attention of the warlord who rules her country and would like nothing better than to control the power of her song, she is forced on the run.

Alternating View Points: Birdie (13 y/o girl), Ky (14 y/o boy) and Amos (50ish y/o “Scottish” peddler)

Fantastic Creatures: griffins, cats (yes, cats are fantastic), saif (horse/deer), chimera (3-headed monsters from Greek myths, part lion, part snake, and part goat) and more …

Weapons: music, sling and stones, a magical sword with a blade of bluish white, and a bronze dirk with a hawk’s head for the pommel

Adventures: Well … you’ll just have to read the books to find out. :)

Reader’s Age Range: Young Adult audience, ages 12+

Because of the split point of view narrative and the wide age range of the main characters, these books have hit their mark with a fairly wide audience, which I think is really cool!

Pricing/Shipping Breakdown:

Individual books:

Orphan’s Song (Bk 1) or Songkeeper (Bk 2): $13.00

Song of Leira (Bk 3): $14.00

Out of Darkness Rising (novella – unrelated to The Songkeeper Chronicles): $10.00

Packing/Shipping: $3.00 for first book, plus $1 for each additional book

(*Note: US only – sorry, friends-in-other-amazing-places!)

Ready to Order?

Send an email through my contact form in order to receive your PayPal invoice. Please include your shipping address as well as signing directions (i.e. if you would like the book personalized to someone and if so who, or just signed).

After December 13th, I will not be able to guarantee shipping in time for Christmas and will have to place a hold on orders then.

Let me know if you guys have any questions!

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Your Turn: What is the best bookish gift you have ever received?

For me? Probably my “Red Book” Lord of the Rings copy. It is 19 years old and has been well-loved, but I can’t quite yet face the idea of buying a new one.

How is your imagination this morning? Energized and fighting the bit and raring to go?

I discovered the #WhatIf Fantasy tag game roaming around the blogosphere – set loose upon the world by fellow fantasy author Jenelle Schmidt – and thought you guys might enjoy a chance to play along and answer the questions too! So I tagged myself into the game and now I’m tagging in all of you as well.

How’s it work?

Well, there’s a list of questions (created by Jenelle). I’ll answer them here and then you all are invited to answer in the comments or create your own blog post! Guidelines on how to do that are listed at the end of this post.

Ready? Onward!

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1. Your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. The cast of the most recent fantasy book you read comes to your assistance… who are they? Will they be helpful?

I’m currently reading A Wrinkle in Time. Not very far into the story yet, but the characters seem a mighty resourceful bunch so I’m guessing they’ll be pretty helpful. At the very least, they’ll be good company! I’d love a chance for a chat with Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace.

2. You go to bed one evening and wake up in the lair of the villain of the last fairy tale you read, where are you and how do you plan to get out?

That would be the castle of King Haggard from The Last Unicorn. *shudder* Not a pleasant place. Not a pleasant place at all. If King Haggard wants you, escaping his reach doesn’t just mean getting beyond his borders, it means escaping the Red Bull and that’s just not something that happens.

So, really, I don’t think that running would be any good. I think I’d have to prepare for a final stand. Blaze of glory and all that, wot wot.

3. You are transported into a fantasy realm and given a mythical creature as a companion and best friend… which mythical creature do you get?

A magical steed of some sort. It could be a unicorn, or a pegasus, or a saif (*grin* like Frey in Song of Leira), or one of the Mearas like Shadowfax. I guess I’ve just seen how incredibly beautiful the relationship between horse and rider can be and can’t imagine anything better than a magical steed in a fantasy world.

4. In a strange series of coincidences, you end up needing to take the place of your favorite fantasy hero or heroine. Who are you? 

Ooh, this question. So difficult! *sigh* I have so many favorites. We’ll stick with heroines to narrow the list down a bit (that carves out Aragorn and Kaladin at least, not to mention a few others), and then I’d probably have to go with Eowyn. Still such a hard decision though …

5. To go along with question #4, now that you are that character, is there anything you would do differently than that character, now that you are running the show?

Really, that’s so hard to say. Because Eowyn’s story is so good, and I feel like if I changed any part of it, it wouldn’t be her story and she wouldn’t be the character that I’ve grown to love.

6. If you were yourself in a fantasy novel, what role do you think you would play in the story?

Well, if we’re dreaming … a horse-riding warrior of the knight errant sort, you know the type, someone who goes around helping people, setting wrongs to right, and fighting monsters. So a secondary character who stumbles across a quest randomly and decides to join in and then spends the rest of the journey encouraging everyone with why we need to accomplish our goal. ;)

Yes, this is my wild thing. Just look at the wisdom in those dark brown eyes of his! Wouldn’t he make a good warrior’s steed?

7. One morning, as you are going about your daily business, you pick up an everyday item and a voice booms in your head with prophetic words about your future. What object is it, and what is your prophecy?

The object, of course, is a laptop. And the words, like most prophecies, could be interpreted as either a curse or a blessing. Something to do with endless typing, stories that burn like a fire within demanding to be told, characters constantly whispering in your ears, and living caught between two worlds.

*shudder* What can it mean?

8. You are transported into a magical realm and turned into a mythical beast… what beast/fantasy creature do you want to be?

A phoenix.

They’re really just too cool. (*grins*)

Songkeeper fun fact: In the early, early planning stages of Songkeeper, Birdie was going to meet a phoenix in the Vituain Desert at the Hollow Cave before the Hollow Cave ever truly existed. Once I started writing, the phoenix was scrapped from the story before any of the characters even reached the desert because I wanted to make Gundhrold a bigger part of the tale and realized I was really only adding the phoenix because I think they’re cool.

That may not be a bad reason to add a character, but it’s also not necessarily a very good one. His name was going to be incredibly cool though … but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was. I’m sure I have it written down somewhere. ;)

9. If you could read your way into any fantasy realm, but the catch is that you can never leave, would you? Which realm would you choose?

In a heartbeat. Middle-earth. Narnia would be a close second. But Middle-earth is my first and greatest love when it comes to fantasy realms.

10.  As you are going about your normal day, you discover that you have a magical power. What is it?

The ability to sleep after drinking caffeine! Not sure how magical it is, but I usually can still manage to fall asleep after drinking coffee at 10 PM at night. On the rare occasion that means I type until 2 AM, but typically not. I have also discovered that if I drink a cup of coffee fairly quickly right before going to sleep, I wake up earlier and far more energized. Pre-caffeinated! It’s the best.

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Well, there you have it! Thanks, Jenelle for such fun questions.

Now, fellow wanderers, it is your turn.

You can answer the questions in the comments or write your own blog post and leave a comment here so I can go check it out and read your answers too. :)

If you write your own blog post, there are a few #WhatIf tag game rules (guidelines?):

• Thank the blogger who tagged you. (I found the tag game on Jenelle’s site, so thanks Jenelle!)
• Include the graphic somewhere in your post.
• Answer the questions.
• Tag a few blogger friends – and let them know they’ve been tagged
• Have fun!

A few weeks back, I posted about my favorite mythical monsters, so I think it’s only right to follow it up now with a look at favorite non-monstrous fantasy creatures. And yes, if you haven’t guessed it already from the  common themes in the covers of my books and the hints I’ve been dropping about my new top secret project all over Instagram, I love all the fantasy creatures.

I suppose you could say I’m an animal person …

So fantastic animals with magical abilities, um, yes, please!

Of course, I could never dream of making this list complete on my own, so I hope you all will chime in and add your favorites onto the end. Ready?

Here we go …

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1. Eanrin

Honestly, I hesitated about putting Eanrin from Anne Elisabeth Stengl’s Tales of Goldstone Woods series on a list of Fantasy Creatures because he’s a Faerie and sometimes appears as a man and sometimes as a cat, and of course that’s confusing, but I love him as both Eanrin the man and Eanrin the cat, so he made the list.

Because he is awesome. ‘Nuff said.

(Sadly, my copies of the Tales of Goldstone Woods are still packed in a box somewhere – tragedy – so I had to make do with a stock cover image.)

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2. Nighteyes

Nighteyes is a wolf from Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy who is witbonded to FitzChivalry Farseer, which means that they can share thoughts and feelings and abilities and pretty much everything. And I just love their relationship. The two of them together are so awesome and practically unstoppable.

Also … wolves are just cool.

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3. Sea Dragons

Singing sea dragons? Yes please! I fell in love with sea dragons in Andrew Peterson’s Wingfeather Saga and especially the idea of the Dragon Day festival in Glipwood when the dragons sang and rose from the water in their annual dance.

A long, warm note like the sound of a yawning mountain rose in the air and bounced off the belly of the sky. The deep echo was absorbed by the tall trees of Glipwood Forest and was answered a moment later by a higher sound that felt like a soft rain.”

– On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness

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4. Thestrals

Okay, the thestrals from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series may seem strange, but I’m all for the magical steeds, so even though the thestrals are skeletal, bat-winged, carnivorous horses who can only be seen by people who have been truly touched by death … I’m including them in this list.

I just kind of think they’re cool! Also, can you imagine being one of the people who hadn’t seen death firsthand who had to ride an invisible steed?

(Diclaimer: So … I realize that thestrals don’t really come into play until the fifth book in the series … but I only have the first four to photograph at the moment, so we’re rolling with it!)

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5. Frey

Just going to sneak this one in here …

I know, I know, I said I was going to try to stop putting my own creatures on the lists. But you guys know that gorgeous creature on the front cover of Song of Leira with Birdie? Well, I honestly can’t wait for you all to meet him. His name is Frey and he is a saif—a horselike creature with the slim legs and antlers of a deer, cloven-hoofed, and bearded like a goat, with the softest, downiest, fly-away mane.

But the eyes—oh, the eyes—were the most entrancing things. Birdie couldn’t tear herself away. The dark bluish-brown of a woodland pool, half concealed beneath soft, white lashes like a dusting of snow.”

– Song of Leira

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6. Axehounds

This one is kind of random but I just had to include the axehounds from Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive mainly because they sound so interesting and I haven’t the faintest clue how to visualize them!

She was sleek and lean, six legs extending before her as she sat on her haunches. Axehounds didn’t have shells or skin; instead, their body was covered with some fusion of the two, smooth to the touch and more pliable than true carapace, but harder than skin and made of interlocking sections.”

– Way of Kings

Anybody? I guess I need Shallan to draw a picture for me! ;)

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7. Cham Bear

The cham bear is a fire-breathing bear from Jill Williamson’s Blood of Kings Trilogy. How cool is that?  Actually, probably pretty terrifying. Not the sort of beast you’d want to tangle with, but I’m sure it would be fascinating to see from a distance, and I have a soft-spot for fire-breathing beasties, so it had to make the list!

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Your Turn! Any favorite fantasy creatures to add to the list?