In Language Strange: Now Available

It is here! The chapbook I’ve written, a saddle-stitched folio with front and back endsheet and cover illustrations by Greene Spiro, is now available for purchase on my Ko-fi. The booklet is limited to a hundred copies, each signed and numbered. I don’t plan to make more of these once they are gone.

“In Language Strange” is my favorite story I’ve written to date. Dear to my heart for several reasons, this almost 11,000-word tale explores one woman’s interactions with the landscape of Dartmoor and with a fey being who seems to encapsulate both the danger and beauty of the magic to be found there.

I first visited Dartmoor two years ago in 2024, and within an hour of parking my car the mysteries of the place were already reaching fingers into my heart, sometimes testing me, sometimes showing their faces without a hint of fear or hiding. All landscapes can be a residence for magic, but in certain places it lingers closer to the surface. Dartmoor is absolutely one of them.

I have said before that the experiences I have there are, for the most part, meant to stay private, but that they would show up in my creative work. Never has this been more literally true than this story, which I wrote as an extended love letter to Dartmoor and the people who helped me learn more about it.

The story is also an exploration of the narrative in John Keats’ poem, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci.” Ever since I first read the poem, I felt for the faerie maiden, swept up on an unknown man’s horse and taken away from her home. If her language was “strange,” then what made him so sure she was happy about her fate? And if she had power to stop him and used it, then why does that make her the villain in the story? How might a feminist version of the same tale vary?

To all who consider purchasing a copy of this book, I hope you enjoy it. More so, I hope it opens your eyes to the wonders that exist in this world, both in Dartmoor and in your own life as well.