2026 Summer Newsletter Quarterly
Hello Everyone!
This is only my 2nd quarterly newsletter from Substack, but I am so happy that I was able to move 15 years of content and my domain name to one single location. Yay!
For good or bad, I’m in a new phase of Lara’s Wandering and about to launch my weekly serial called “The Gryphon’s Inner Dale” on October 6th. I am hoping that everyone will be able to see the short 1000-2000 word stories on the website, but financial supporters will be able to receive them in their email as soon as they are published. I’m still learning this platform.
I also have some career news: I am becoming a school librarian starting in the 26-27 school year! I am already starting my training, lesson planning, and brainstorming. I am very excited about this new phase of life, and it will help my youngest child start preschool. She has been asking to go to school all year long. It has been 16 years since I have had a job outside the house, and now that all the children are going to be in school, it is time. I have also always dreamed of being a librarian and helping children love books the way I do. I feel like this job is such a good fit for me at this moment!
I am still working on my novels and submitting them to agents. I am still trying the traditional route, but once I finish the Fidelia Duology and have given it a good try, I may go back to self-publishing. I am finding that the publishing world is going through major transitions, and I refuse to change my standards to become more marketable. I want to write good books, the best I am capable of producing. I am not going to write for the market, so we will see what the future holds.
This year, I am not going to attend the Writer’s Conference in town since I will be working. It will be the first time I haven’t attended any conference at all in a number of years. That is fine. Having moved to Wyoming last year, there has been a shift in so many areas of our lives. The children have been much busier with sports, church activities, clubs, and friends. My husband and I have had more dates and have had to revisit all our hopes and dreams to see if that is really where God is leading us now. I am doing more art, and we are reading more and spending more time in nature. It has taken some growing pains, but I think this is going to be a good place for us to finally put down some actual roots. We’ll see, though.
So… about the “Gryphon’s Inner Dale” series of short stories. Mina Gentry, a twenty-year-old woman traveling alone into Wyoming in a 1991 Honda CRX, breaks down in the Teton National Park and gets a job at a shop and cafe working for a fairy couple. She is a human woman learning about the fairy world of Gryphendale for the very first time and the fairy portal located on the Grand Teton Mountian’s lower saddle called by the ancient humans “the fasting beds”(real place! See a magazine article here.) The stories will include original fairy stories about this area of the country, stories told to Mina by strange visitors to the shop, and excerpts from the “Legends of Gryphendale” novels with commentary by fairies who know the real stories and the author (me). Hopefully, I can have enough written before the launch dates that I can maintain the weekly schedule of fun and delightful stories. It should be entertaining for those who would like to know about Jackson Hole and the national parks, as well as, a deeper dive for fans of my fairy stories who want more.
So that is all for now, and may you be touched by the Gryphon’s wing!