Title says it all, really. I know I talked a big game about said novel just a few posts ago, but I’m someone who tends to work in fits and starts. Or, more precisely, one big start and then a series of little fits until the whole project tapers. It’s hard for me to finish things, especially because my preferred literary medium is the short story. But I’m now over twenty pages in and I still haven’t gotten bored with the whole thing, so the chances are good that I’ll see it through to the bitter end.
It’s your bog standard New England gothic novel, except New England gothic novels are never really bog standard, are they? That’s the beauty of the genre: the eldritch can wear any face you want.
Dress: vintage, via Sydney’s Vintage Clothing
Coat: vintage, for sale in my Etsy shop
Everything else: thrifted
Here, have another excerpt!
The Whitley twins had seen fairies in the wood. Matthew was sure of it.
Marty was less so. “Eyes in the trees could be anything, stupid.”
“No, there was a whole face,” his brother insisted. “I saw it. It saw me.”
The argument lasted late into the prickliest hours. So the next afternoon the Whitley boys invited Lyddie Howland, and Peter Willis, and Pamela Spurr whom nobody liked, to come and see. Pamela, for all her snits and scowls, was the top of Miss Hugh’s class and therefore the team’s begrudging expert. Matthew hoped to impress Lyddie, and Peter simply enjoyed a walk in the woods. His brothers were scouts and he pledged to be one himself someday, if his asthma ever lifted by medicine or miracle.
They were wending across the tracks and down the slope to where the eyes had followed them. The twins had lured their party with nothing more than the promise of an adventure, and Matthew felt the moment had come for more.
“Wait ‘til you see,” he said, and felt a swelling in his chest. “Can you keep a secret?”
He paused, somber, trying not to look at Lyddie.
“There are fairies down there. Well, one, anyway. It looked right at me. It’s not every day they acknowledge humans.”
“All we know for sure,” Marty announced, is that there were eyes.” He rolled his own. “And that my brother’s an idiot. But you all decide that for yourselves.”
“I believe in fairies,” Lyddie said. Matthew could have kissed her. “Sometimes I lose my books or my shoes and find them again somewhere I’d never have thought to look.”
“My dad does that when he drinks,” Peter said. “Maybe Lyddie’s a drunk!” He mimed opening a bottle and belched loudly. The boys laughed and the girls made faces, and the party of five entered the dell’s narrow ingress.
My Kingdom for a Hat 