Mabon 2026: A New Beginning

To say that it’s been a while since my last blog post is an understatement.

It’s been just shy of two years since my last update, and I wasn’t much more consistent before then; though I always intended to maintain a regular presence, time always seemed to slip away from me. However, just over a year ago, what felt like everything I’d been building in my life fell apart, and my usual coping mechanisms weren’t enough to help me. Desperately needing something to hold onto, I returned to that which has always sustained me, though I didn’t necessarily recognise it at the time.

Deepening my relationship with the natural world has honestly been life-saving, not just because it gives me a sense of purpose (or tells me that it’s okay not to have one, that just being is enough) but also because it provides much-needed structure. Time can’t slip away so easily if you have waypoints pinning it down. To this end, I’ve been making an effort to observe the passing of the seasons, the cycles of the moon, to slow down and connect. My mental health has definitely been improving. (Maybe that’s more to do with my concerted effort to cut down on how much I use my phone, but I like to think the two are working in tandem).

So, instead of trying to write a blog post/life update every month (stressful) or just whenever I felt like it (never going to happen), I’ve decided to write one to coincide with each of the points of the wheel of the year, because then even if writing has been going dismally and I have nothing creative to reflect on, I’ll at least be able to talk about what’s happening seasonally (which is very interesting to me, if no-one else!)

And speaking of structure, I’ve decided to divide my posts into sections to help corral my thoughts and (hopefully) reduce my rambling. So, without further ado, let’s move onto…

Practising the craft

Autumn isn’t usually considered a time of new beginnings; that sentiment is reserved for spring. But, like spring, autumn is a time of equinox—of balancing on the precipice of change. I have a lot of change happening in my life at the moment, some of which is certainly a new beginning, so this feels like a fitting time to resuscitate my blog and my creative ramblings, too. Besides, autumn has always been my favourite month. I love the cool, crisp mornings and bright, sunny days; the darkening nights perfect for cosy blankets and candles; the world bedecked in all my favourite colours, rust oranges and mossy greens. There’s something magical about dark nights, though admittedly I could do with more sun in the mornings—but that’s the compromise, I guess. The balance.

Autumn is also the season of two of the three harvest festivals: Mabon and Samhain. Mabon marks the autumn equinox and is a time of reflection, to take stock of what you’ve grown or achieved and to decide what to release before the dark half of the year commences.

By pure coincidence, this time of this specific year feels like a creative harvest for me. Throughout the tail end of last winter, all through spring and into midsummer, I sowed: writing a second draft of the book of my heart, five months of solid work in the making. I didn’t give myself much respite, diving straight into draft three, but the hard work had already been done. I’d sown the seeds in re-writing that book, and now came the harvest-time, the reaping—editing, drawing upon what was already there, slowly at first. It was a struggle before I found my flow, but August ended up being my most successful writing month in a long while. There were only three days where I didn’t do any form of writing activity (be that drafting, editing, plotting, researching) and one of those days I actively chose to be a rest day. September is shaping up to be…patchier. Already I have eight days of inactivity, most of it unplanned. But, I am also going through a massive life change, so maybe I can cut myself some slack.

I’m over halfway through my second pass over draft three of my book, and I know I’ll need a third pass (with some reworking required) before I can hand my book off to readers, but I’m feeling positive about it. This really is the book of my heart, and I have so much more patience with it than any other project of mine. I’m glad that it’s providing me the respite of creativity at a time when I need it the most, and I’m looking forward to sharing it with others and seeing how I can make it better.

Looking ahead to winter (though astronomical autumn has just begun!), it would be nice if I could get my creativity to follow the year’s natural rhythm, but I don’t think I could let my imagination sit fallow overwinter. So, while it’s likely that I’ll still be pushing myself as hard as ever during the colder months, hopefully the turn of the seasons will keep giving me little reminders to stop and pause and appreciate—and I’m looking forward to seeing what else I can creatively harvest before autumn comes to an end.

Drawing inspiration

I’ve been writing my current project on and off since August 2024, having come up with the idea for it in June that same year. It’s my love letter to the nature documentaries that inspired me growing up, the young people who tirelessly fight back against the state the natural world has been left in, and the creature that fascinated and terrified me in equal measure: the shark.

Strangely, I love terrible shark movies just as much as I do nature documentaries, and both have inspired this project in equal measure; a particular scene in Sous La Seine (Under Paris) planted the seed of my prologue, and I’ve been devouring shark documentaries (and biographies, and research papers) ever since to learn as much as possible, to ground this fantastical story I’m telling in reality. Some favourites have been Blue Planet Revisited and Why Sharks Attack, the latter of which is seriously insightful and perfectly captures the interconnectedness of human and shark activity.

Seeing the terrible way that humans treat sharks—and the lengths that other humans will go to to raise awareness and fight back—in these documentaries fires me up and reminds me why I’m writing my story, though not all of my recent inspiration is necessarily shark-related. Melissa Harrison’s lovely duology By Ash, Oak and Thorn and By Rowan and Yew fosters the kind of love and respect of nature that I want to share with readers someday, and Liv Torc’s poem We Are The Seeds moved me to tears. As I move into the latter(ish) stages of writing this book, inspiration becomes less about the content and more about the feelings it inspires. I think: I want to make people feel that, too. I hope that, someday, I’ll get a chance to.

Walking the woodland path

I’m very fortunate to live in a part of the world where nature is on my doorstep and I get to observe the turning of the seasons far more easily than some. It felt like autumn came early this year thanks to the heat wave and drought, with leaves crisping on trees and falling to the ground, whole swathes turned orange and brown even as summer lingered. Luckily, the area around me has recovered after the drought and is lush and green once more, ready for autumn to arrive in earnest.

I marked the first harvest festival, Lughnasadh, by foraging for nettle seeds and blackberries. The nettle seeds didn’t turn out so well—I didn’t dry them enough, then dried them too much, so they returned to nature—but I harvested plenty of blackberries, some of which are still in the freezer, and am looking forward to doing some more seasonal baking. I made a slightly underwhelming chocolate and blackberry cake for Lughnasadh, and while I don’t have any baking plans for Mabon I have seen a chocolate and pumpkin cake recipe for Samhain that I’ll have to try.

It’s been a plentiful summer for nature encounters. I saw a kingfisher no fewer than four times—incredible!—and just last week saw a green woodpecker for the first time, having heard them but never laid eyes on one before. I also found a smooth newt whilst on a work party at the local nature reserve, which was very exciting, and saw a kestrel whilst visiting a local beauty spot, hovering in place in spite of the buffeting winds; it was amazing to see. And of course, there are the muntjac deer which creep around so secretively, which you can avoid disturbing if you pretend not to have seen them, and the pair of swans who have successfully raised five cygnets over the spring and summer months (four of which still remain, the fifth having boldly struck out on its own).

Autumn is shaping up to be promising, too. I was thrilled to find fungi sprouting out of the lawn, which I think were common meadow wax caps but were exciting to me nonetheless, and there’s a huge weeping conk (oak bracket) growing from the large oak by the river, which always fascinates me with its amber-coloured droplets beading like blood.

As the nights begin to draw in, my mind is already turning to some of my darker projects. I’ll have to keep my focus in the sunny seas of my fantasy ocean world for a bit longer as I continue to refine my draft, and then maybe when it’s in readers’ hands I can let my thoughts drift to some of my horror projects…

Until next time—a blessed Mabon and a bright equinox.