Hey Reader. As the trees strip themselves bare and the shadows stretch long across the frost-bitten ground, a heavy, quiet stillness settles over the landscape. This time of year has always felt profoundly different to me—it's a season of hard thresholds, of turning inward, and of closing the gates as the light fades away. In Wales, this sharp descent into the dark half of the year brings us Nos Calan Gaeaf, the winter calends. It got me thinking about the boundaries we build to keep...
1 day ago • 6 min read
Time to catch up on what's been happening this past month, and see what's coming up. Hey Reader. October has properly arrived here. The mornings are cold enough to see your breath, the leaves are coming down in wet heaps along the lanes, and I've seen the smoke from my neighbour's chimneys as they light the first fires of the season. It's the month I find myself most settled in, with the clocks about to change, the evenings pulling in, and a good excuse to stay home with a pot of tea and a...
28 days ago • 4 min read
Hey Reader. As the leaves begin to turn and the evenings draw in, there is a distinct shift in the air. Autumn has always been a season of reflection for me—a time of harvest, of gathering in, and of looking up at those spectacular, heavy golden moons. In Wales, this time of year brings us Gŵyl Canol Hydref, the Mid-Autumn Festival. It got me thinking about what it means to truly belong to a place. Home isn’t always where we start; sometimes, it’s a landscape that catches us by surprise and...
about 1 month ago • 8 min read
Cover Reveal: Only in Fairy Tales There are some stories that arrive quietly. They don’t announce themselves with grand gestures or sweeping declarations. They simply begin with two people meeting at the right moment in their lives and discovering that perhaps the things they thought were behind them are not quite finished after all. Today, I’m delighted to reveal the cover of my latest novel: ONLY IN FAIRY TALES A contemporary, later-in-life romance set in Monmouth, Wales. Nia is...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Time to catch up on what's been happening this past month, and see what's coming up. Hey Reader. There's a particular quality to September light that I've always loved — the way it slants golden through the trees earlier each afternoon, catching the first hints of amber in the leaves before they've fully committed to changing. The air holds that undecided feeling of a season mid-turn, warm enough to sit outside with a cup of tea but cool enough to want a cardigan close to hand. The hedgerows...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Time to catch up on what's been happening this past month, and see what's coming up. Hey Reader. August arrives with that particular quality of light that belongs only to itself — golden and thick, slanting longer and lower each evening as though the sun is reluctant to let go of summer. Here in the Welsh Pagan calendar, the first of August is Gŵyl Awst, the festival that marks the turning of the harvest tide. The wheel hasn't tipped into autumn yet, not quite, but there's a knowing in the...
3 months ago • 4 min read
Hey Reader. We've reached the height of summer, and yet Gŵyl Awst carries within it the first whisper of change. Celebrated on the 1st of August, Gŵyl Awst is the Welsh festival of the first harvest; a day to give thanks for what the land has produced, to acknowledge the abundance around us, and to sit with the quiet knowledge that the wheel is already turning. The sun is at its strongest, the fields are golden and heavy, and still the days are shortening. Gŵyl Awst holds both of those truths...
3 months ago • 3 min read
Time to catch up on what's been happening this past month, and see what's coming up. Hey Reader. July arrived the way it always did, warm and unhurried, with the hedgerows heavy and the evenings stretching long past supper. This was the month of Ceridwen's cauldron, when the old stories about transformation and quiet endurance felt closest to the surface. It's a good month for slow magic and for finishing what had been started in spring. Anyway, what else has happened since last we spoke, and...
4 months ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader. Midsummer has always felt like a held breath. The sun reaches its highest point and the world seems to pause for just a moment, long and golden and full of possibility, before the slow turn back begins. In Wales, this time of year carries old names and older stories; bonfires lit on the hillsides, flowers laid at doorways, intentions spoken quietly into the warm night air. It's a season made for folklore, and I couldn't let it pass without a story to go with it. This month's short...
4 months ago • 5 min read