I dreamed longly and fully last night about going to Dublin with a very pretty young woman whose eyes and makeup were very striking. There was some kind of changling magick in her irises where in glimpses I caught she was disturbingly fey. She’d throw a look at me now and then that said, “Come on. You know what I am.” It gave me such a chill and a nostalgic rattling all at once. Like hearing you’ll see the bad uncle who was expelled from the family, whose black sheepishness never failed to drill down solidly into your misplaced sense of adventure.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about Dublin, but this is downright frightening.

Further, I’ve had a fantasy book basting on the spit in the back of my head that involves France. Despite it Gallic roots, this is not a Celtic place. In the local mythologies — if not whatever recovered by Charles Perrault — there are no fey, no dangerously cute creatures in an Amy Brown sort of way. Only a sort of somber mysticism in the ancient mossy fountains and a lot of ill-disposed gods and dragons hiding in chapels and forests. Oh — and how could I forget the witch trials here in Aix? A priest was ultimately burned at the stake. By all accounts, he rather deserved it although not for what they charged him with.

I tried to convey the obsidian glamor of this country’s magick in “Though Thy Lips Are Pale,” how things just seem so much darker and crueler here in the groves. And more.

Anyway, this morning I’m incorporating The Frenchman’s notes into the second article for ErosZine.com, and then I get to work on the book. Tonight, I’m helping Ros, the host of WHYS on the Beeb, do a little something with Skype to let people know they can call in using it. Hopefully that will improve the mix of people who can participate on the show. And it’s fun.

Back to the tar.