October 16, 2025
NEW POETRY COLLECTION ARRIVES!
Thrilled that my newest collection of poetry is out in the world! The Artist’s House is available in ebook or print from Amazon.
“This book is a playground of poetry, art, and music.”
The Artist’s House celebrates creativity with poetry about artists and art in all its forms. Like a dancer springing into the air, this poetry explores art in every field: painting, sculpture, literature, music, and dance, and how the meditative focus of an artist can open into spiritual awakening. The book is enriched with drawings, photos, and links to performances of music and dance. Find touchstones for your own creativity and meditation.
Other news: I’m writing my first-ever mystery novel. This one is a sequel to the Greene family saga, The Invisibles Series. The main character is younger sister Saffron Greene Shelley, now married to Michael Shelley, descendant of the famous 19th century English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. They live in London and are raising two toddlers. Saffron hasn’t given up her compassionate work with The Invisibles, spirits of newly deceased people who need a little help getting oriented about where they’re supposed to go from here. Her newest case is a young man who stubbornly insists he was murdered at a tea party with his elderly aunt, and that Saffron has to help him find out who did it. Lots of new learning for me — London, poison, the afterlife, and how to construct a mystery story to keep the reader entertained. What keeps me entertained is trying new things with my writing!
Here’s a seasonally appropriate poem from the book:
The Society of Ghost Poets
This night before All-Souls Day,
centuries of poets rise in living lines
chanted by youtubers and scrolled
on substack, scattered in memes
and white masks, ghost poets crying
to be remembered for their best lines.
Rumi’s turban comes alive whirling
the universe into ecstatic motion—
I draw close to every dervish molecule
in the dancing bliss of bees.
Should we dig up Heaney
from a peat bog
and let his lonely odes
blow against the standing stones?
With a clean rasping sound
when the spade sinks into gravelly ground.
Our fame is ripe to soon
fade. As creators we lurk
in alleys of culture like the undead
and utter a thing with feathers
that perches in the soul
but our souls Houdini out
of the trap of old tropes and rest
half-anonymous, catching a ride into the future:
the internet, where poems shared
live in corners dusty and eternal.
~~
October 16, 2024
A Complicated Season
As I cruise into the late stages of writing my next book in THE INVISIBLES series, life has become complicated. My mother died a few months ago, and writing time must give way to family needs. Nevertheless, this is a great time to read stories with mystery and supernatural elements. It’s the season of Halloween, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day. These celebrations stem from a belief in a powerful bond between the deceased and the living, to be honored by prayer and festivity. At this time, it’s believed the veil thins between this world and the next. Or, as I called it in my book The Invisibles, “The Room Over There”. I wrote that book, about a woman who could see the spirits of the deceased in order to help them move along, as a tribute to my late brother.
I feel the thinness of the veil every day, as I think of Mom and have the urge to call her, with a story, a question, a joke, or just her good company. She lived 101 years with a kind of quiet bravery that now inspires me to move forward, enduring change by looking ahead and making the best of whatever comes. What’s coming now is the complicated season of letting go of a person, a childhood, a life of memories. Letting go gains new meaning for me, in the sense of honoring the memories as they flow through me, occasioned by glancing at a photo, holding a scarf that I’m giving to someone to remember her, or just spontaneous images that arise.
Here’s a photo taken when she was a mere 85 or so.A family birthday party, in the house I’m now selling. Our family homestead over several decades. My house has now taken over as the center of the family that remains. It’s quite a passage. Bon voyage, Mom! I hope things are lovely in The Room Over There. My heart is there with you every day.
May 26, 2024
My Life Right Now
My focus at the moment is on three books — yes, I’m writing three books at once! A sequel to my recently published Return to Lerici takes two of the characters on a road trip romance to India.I’ve been to India twice on spiritual pilgrimage, so it will be easy to use my memories and the Internet to set the scenes in the many places I’ve visited there. The spiritual quest is mostly the motivation of one of the characters, Lara. Daniel, the other character in this contemporary roamance — can I coin that word? — is just following her. His pilgrimage is to a permanent relationship with Lara, but as is true of all roads in India, the road to true love is rocky! Heartstrung will be a two-person POV contemporary romance with an exotic setting.
I’m also juggling two poetry collections with different themes, and considering whether to self-publish one or both. Exploring my options has led to some interesting investigations of contemporary poetry collections and how they are marketed. I just put my first collection, Earth Lessons, into Kindle Unlimited, and subscribers to KU have begun reading it on their Kindles! This is exciting. I may also start a podcast of reading poems aloud, either video or audio.
I’m on a Three Minutes with the Author Podcast on YouTube. Shail Rajan’s podcast focuses on authors of women’s fiction, and making themselves and their books known in just three minutes! Great fun. Here’s my episode: Rachel Dacus on Three Minutes with the Author. Thanks, Shail!