I think I need to write a book...

Of course, my first post on this newsletter is about writing a book. I’m an author after all. So I need to write a book, specifically the next book in the Lyra Cycle.

But that’s not the book I’m talking about.

Let me take a few steps back. If you stick around, at some point you’ll hear me talk about my garden, if you haven’t already. That garden is mostly beans plus a few greens and the occasional tomato.

Recently, I went on a walk with a friend around a local public garden. I don’t know how it came up, but at some point we got talking about poison gardens. And how I would love to have a poison garden.

Which is true — if I were independently wealthy, I’d plant myself a poison garden. Maybe put it next door to the medicinal garden so they Venn diagram each other, with the plants that both kill and cure in the middle. So many plants fit that bill, and many poisonous plants have non-poisonous cousins, or vice versa, depending on your point of view. My non-poisonous garden does have Solanum melanocerasum — a nightshade, just not a deadly one.

And one of the places on my bucket list is the Alnwick Poison Garden. Seriously visit the website — even the gates are inviting.

Which leads me to the book I need to write. I even grabbed Wicked Plants from the library; I might have to pick up my own copy, for research purposes you understand. I had no idea the strychnine is a South American plant used to poison arrows along with curare.

So far, I know nothing about the book I need to write except it has a poison garden. I don’t even know the genre — scifi poison garden? fantasy? not so cozy mystery? So onto the next book in the current scifi series in the meantime.