J. M. Prigmore

Spring has sprung, and my allergies are literally trying to kill me. Send help. Or a box of tissues. Either way, donations are appreciated. Half the trees have bloomed, the other half are dying from oak rot, it hit 90 degrees in March, and all the wildflowers bloomed too early. Things are going great!

In other news, sorry for missing a month. February kind of turned into a nightmare, and I just completely spaced the blog post. Not that March has been much better, but there's hope that April may bring good tidings. We'll see. Still, I've finished my edits to The Silver Witch and the Amethyst Cat, and the first batch of test readers are currently going through it! It's exciting, in a weird way. I know that the whole story is here, scattered in my posts, but its neat to have it all done and being read in its entirety now. Once I get the reader's critique's back and see if any more changes need to be made, I'll start sending out query letters to some agents I've got pinned down. It might take a good while before I get anything back once that process starts, but I can't let rejections or a lack of responses hold me down. I'm going to make this work, somehow. I need to.

Don't worry, the epilogue is going to be attached to the bottom of this post. Were you worried? Yeah, you were. Anyway, I'm really happy with the story I wrote and hopefully others will be too. I think I was able to pin down the themes I was shooting for and tell a good story, even if it might not resonate with everyone who reads it. I know I said that I might start posting the transcripts for my YouTube stories here, but I think I'll just upload them as seperate things alltogether on the site here. If I can figure that out, at least. It'll require some digging to see how to make that work, but if not, I'll just slap them into here as seperate blog posts on their own, that way there isn't all this forward getting in the way if people want to read them standalone. Here's hoping they still stand up, as I've decided that I won't be doing any editing! Just going to slap them here with no thought, because I'm lazy- I mean, busy. Lazy.

Now that I'm done with Yelena's story, I've finally been able to pick things back up with Sigmund in The Kin-Slayer. I've made some good progress as of late, and I think I'm finally back into the flow and a healthy enough headspace to really crank out some words. So far, I've already got almost as much down for Kin-Slayer as I do for The Silver Witch, if that's any indication of how long it'll be. Which it isn't, I guess? Kin-Slayer is going to be long. Probably twice as long as The Red Mother, if I can make it all work. Stay tuned for some news on that as it develops.

Now that you're all caught up with book stuff, I think that's probably going to do it for now. Like I said earlier, there's a lot going on and I'm kind of rushing to get this out before I forget again. You'd think that I'd be able to set aside an hour every month just to write a little post, but as it turns out, being candid on the internet is a difficult thing for me to do! So yeah, that's it for now. See you next month...probably.

Make your own fate
J. M. Prigmore

Epilogue

For most, ten years would be considered a long time. For Yelena, it was just a drop in the bucket. The years came and went, the days grew hot and cold, and though a new problem arose at what seemed like an endless cadence, she was able to find the right brew, the right magic, or the right person to overcome it all. Things didn't always go as planned. Sometimes things got out of control, a wildfire from a spell gone wrong here, a magical sludge beast the size of a building there, but it was always just another day for Yelena and Hemlock. Over the ten years, she'd learned more than she ever would have staying put on the small farm she'd grown up on. She faced overwhelming trials, but she was able to come out on top. She had her friends, her cat, and her wife to help when things got too big for even her.

Still, ten years is a long time for a normal human. Yelena might not have looked a day over twenty-five, but Sonya too was aging slower than her peers. As it turned out, there was a bit of a rub-off effect from Yelena's magic wellspring, which was a happy accident for both of them. Hemlock had a hypothesis about the sharing of energy from their soul bond, which they'd never severed anyway, that helped, as well as a frequent 'exchange of fluids', as he had so ineloquently put it, that was slowing her aging. They were both more than happy to let that little oddity continue.

Things were a bit calmer these days, now that Yelena had set up totems and warding spells around the Deep Forest. It was enough to keep out all but the most dangerous of beasties, which she then had to handle herself. As for Lord Inod, he had tried to have her arrested, assassinated, and plotted a thinly-veiled attempt to take the entire village into the custody of a band of 'unaffiliated mercenaries'. All of the schemes had failed spectacularly, and they hadn't heard a peep from the angry little man for some time now. Perhaps he'd learned his lesson, or perhaps he’d died. It didn't mean anything to her anyway, so far removed from the politics and troubles of the world. She knew the little town of Harske couldn't remain hidden forever, but until the day they were forced to join in the world’s woes, she'd let the easygoing folk here live in the tranquil peace of anonymity for as long as they could.

Hemlock had become far more of an actual housecat now as well. Yelena could handle most threats now on her own, and since he had surrendered his remaining lives for the people of Harske to the Three, Yelena and Hemlock were both much more cautious with their respective lives. Hemlock could, in theory, live forever, but he had decided that when Yelena eventually grew old and passed, he would join her. A morbid conversation, but one that Hemlock had long thought over before bringing up. So long as they didn't meet a violent end at the hands of a shadow beast, that day wouldn't come for a few centuries. It was a difficult thing for her to grasp, the idea that she could live long enough to see a handful of generations of people be born, grow old, have their own children and die. She tried not to dwell on it. Despite all of her power, she was still just a human.

Far from the raging tempest of life-threatening drama that had filled the first few months and years of Yelena's career as a witch, things were slow and quiet now. It was just as she'd desired. She had everything she wanted and more. She got to wake up every morning next to the most beautiful girl in the world, share a cup of tea and converse with her magical cat, and use her magic to help anyone in need. Helvetia even stopped by every now and then, regaling her with stories of lands far away and exotic beasts she'd bested. Perhaps one day she'd go with her on one of her trips, but she was still quite happy in her quaint little cabin in the woods. Still, Yelena had a long, long life ahead of her, and only the gods could guess as to what lay in store next for Yelena and Hemlock, the Silver Witch and the Amethyst Cat.