"Through careful conservation of energy, the engines of creation move forward."
I've been soothsaying with tarot cards, runes, the flicker of firelight, etc. for so long I can't remember where I first read that bit of wisdom. It was probably a guide book I picked up in the 1990s when I was reading tarot for a living. I'm going to attribute it to the Nine of Wands; that "yeah, you're competent, but you're burning out" card that points to overwork. The fellow with the bandage on his head in the Rider-Waite deck (or in my current favourite deck, the wee crow picking up a stick) is the mascot for this edition of the Folkbyte newsletter, because it's time for some real talk about the Folklore & Fiction project.
When I started the Folklore & Fiction newsletter in 2019, it was intended to be a modest, temporary contribution to my overall writing career. But projects like this one often develop minds of their own and branch in ways we don't expect, as mine did. Eventually, it became a podcast recommended by the American Folklore Society, a topic of peer-reviewed scholarship, a creative writing resource for college and university classrooms, and it even got me paid work as a playwright. On the flip side of that coin, it was plagiarized more than once by people who should have known better. The kind of idea mining I suffered is a serious problem online, and I'll cross swords a long while to defend my work, but who wants to be at war all the time? Better to keep ideas close to home until they find the right market. The problem is that Folklore & Fiction required a steady stream of quality, free output to stay relevant in the algorithm economy, and I stopped giving away that level of effort at the end of last year. Since then, I've been offering excerpts of my work in progress, links to folklore archives, and the occasional academic response to a question, but it's all trivial stuff.
There's another thing. I've said much of what I want to say about the intersections of folklore and storytelling, either in the Folklore & Fiction podcast or in The Storyteller's Guide to Folklore (in progress), and the rest I'll be saying in The Songwriter's Guide to Folklore (in research). My heart is with the climate crisis and the ways we might address it as a sacred task given to people of all spiritual persuasions. I want to find out what it takes for us to genuinely grieve for what we're losing and love the rest enough to preserve it, and I want to use the tools I've gathered as a folklorist and author to do that. I also want to write about animism and Paganism in ways that reflect my decades on the path. I want to make music. I want to write fiction. (Gods, I want to write fiction.) And it isn't as though I'm starting from scratch here. The Storyteller's Guide to Folklore, The Folklore & Fiction Ballads EP, the Lead On, Wild God EP, and the Song and Covenant series of novels are all in various stages of completion, and they need my attention. More importantly, so does my own creative well. I need to go into the woods, light a fire, and sit with the cosmologies that speak to my art until it fills again.
With this in mind, I've permanently archived the Folklore & Fiction Facebook group because I don't have the energy to maintain it. I've also put the Folklore & Fiction Patreon account on hiatus until The Storyteller's Guide to Folklore is finished. The Folklore & Fiction Facebook page will shift to an announcements paradigm that notifies followers of news and new releases, but I do plan to post more often on Instagram, and the Folkbyte newsletter will remain a monthly offering. Some of you have been with me since I was an author guest at Hal-Con in 2012, Harbour Con-Fusion in 2014, or Hal-Con in 2015. I'm so grateful you've remained a part of my journey all this time. The rest of you are here because of Folklore & Fiction; you subscribed to the newsletter, followed the podcast, attended a workshop, or signed up for a class where my work was assigned. Thank you as well, for believing in my work enough to show up for it. I hope you'll stick it out until I have something new for you again.
I'm drawing in a bit now, like the summer draws in as it turns toward the autumn, but I'm still making art and knowledge. Stay if you will, go if you must, but either way I send you a blessing. Meanwhile, through careful conservation of energy, the engines of creation move forward.
Footnotes
Image Credit: Cullinane, M. J. “Nine of Wands.” crowtarot, May 11, 2018. https://www.crowtarot.com/post/nine-of-wands.