Tonight without leaving my bed I make my pilgrimage to the darkest corner of the forest. The shadow of black granite rises to pierce the rumbling sky. I do not let the chill in my bones slow my determined progress. I drag the ache in my heart behind me as I place my well worn doll into the empty chamber for safekeeping.

It was three years ago today, on the then equinox, Morsel's final pen and paper edit passed through my favourite hag stone and sailed out into the world. The product of a creative vision I couldn't get anyone else's head around, I self published her with very specific structure and content to weave a spell all of its own.

She came through my window like spotlight, interrogating me from dead sleep. Strange dreams crawling in my hair unseen and the covers wrapped around me like a cocoon. Her moon head in her hands in the dark before dawn, perched on my balcony wanting coffee.

It was 2 years ago today, on the then equinox, Morsel's final edit passed through my hag stone and sailed out into the world. I kept the oldest promise I made to myself as a fervent writer of journals, poetry and short stories. Still, with more on the way.

For a year and a day now my very first book baby has been making her way into the world. Self published on the Aries equinox after years - some would say decades - of procrastination, ruthless editing, relentless changes in form and shape, long stretches of self doubt and even greater nights of scribbling and scribing. Pouring my soul out on to the pages, weaving its song through magical tales to carry us all away.

The Phoenix Motel languishes at the end of a long dusty highway, the bugs on your windscreen betraying how hard and fast the drive has been. The rooms are filling quickly as they always do this time of year. The smart money is getting locked in for the scorpion's moon.

Every dark moon found her wandering these enchanted moors, a practice she had employed for lifetimes as she bore witness to painful rising and falling in the world of men. For far too many centuries now she had held the terrible cost to her aching heart as the moon turned her face to darkness. They wept together, tears turning to crystal in the frozen night air and falling from the sky like diamonds to litter the landscape with hope.

Meet my Nanna, darklings. This is the inimitable Nancy and today would have been her 109th birthday. An ultra Aries journalist, shrewd operator and my very first Bohemian role model, a reporter and then a publican at The Australian Hotel where my Mum ran up and down the stairs as a kid. The stories of her heyday are legendary.

The very first time you hold your first book in your hands.

Because this is my birth-ing day, it seems entirely perfect to announce the arrival of my very first book baby.

Morsel, a collection of poems and tales, is due for release when the stars align in just a few short weeks!

Today without leaving my bed I make my pilgrimage to the darkest corner of the forest. The shadow of black granite rises to pierce the rumbling sky. I do not let the chill in my bones slow my determined progress. I drag the ache in my heart behind me as I place my well worn doll into the empty chamber for safekeeping.

Neptune is doing a roaring trade at the Zodiac Bar. Most every night booths crammed with strange cosmic couplings, the kind that crack the haze just the way he likes it. The room has been tilting and heaving with the constant choreography.

Evanescence
lifting the night air from the earth swirls
into cool air
thinner than my breath
undressing quickly I flew
to walk in the tendrils
between worlds seen and unsettled and the coming
of the new
shaking dreams from my night hair
tucking the stars in my eyes away
for another day