March 15, 2025
Elora, ON

Greetings from the windswept moors of my mind, where I’m slowly surfacing from subnivean slumber. With only a handful of days left before spring proper, I feel it’s quite safe to label our recent season a “doozy.” Anyone living in Ontario will agree, they haven’t seen this much snow since they were wee!

I’ve been a bit quiet this last while, lost in my own thoughts and wintry reveries. It’s hard not to be hard on one’s self at times, especially when you spend more hours staring at your computer than typing on it. Then I remind myself, every field must lay fallow now and then to ensure its future bounty; the promise of spring is not just a promise, but a guarantee. Thus, I’ve been hibernating in my own way, avoiding the news and finding comfort in the consumption of media that makes me feel good. Right now this pretty much exclusively includes 80’s music and gothic romance novels —we do what we must to survive.

Looking out at the Wellington County countryside, frozen in time, I feel as so many gothic heroines of literature once did: longing for connection and wondering, “Wtf was that noise I just heard in the attic?” The answer to this question is almost always “a ghost” but sometimes it’s just your lover’s secret wife screaming from the flaming roof. Or in this case, an icicle come crashing down.

So the thaw begins.

With the days now brightening and the ice retreating, I’m getting my wits about me once more. There’s much I want to make happen in the next six weeks before I head overseas. I’m making steady progress on all my new creative works and can’t wait to share some of them with you soon… Stay tuned. In the meantime, let’s cross our fingers for no more snow and get our elbows way the heck up, shall we? I may be avoiding the news but I’m not living in a bubble. I’m truly inspired by how all my fellow Canadians are coming together right now and rising to the occasion. We are resilient and will not back down.

Although the tropes of the gothic novel tend towards the dark and brooding, we can’t forget that even the most tortured tales have happy endings too. Let’s take our poor Jane Eyre for example, whose story I’ve been revisiting via the 1983 series starring Timothy Dalton. After all the tragic ups and downs her and Mr. Rochester individually suffered, they finally came back together to live happily ever after in the end. Sure, he had to go blind, perhaps as some kind of karmic payment for his perceived sins, but still… blood of my blood and bone of my bone and all that. A bit creepy, but romantic? It’s a gothic romance, after all.

Don’t give up, my loves. We’re gonna make it.

xoxo
Kristin

Canadian Gothic… more photos from my Instagram here