With a Little Help

To try and get more work done on the most recent book (announcement this week!) with its rapidly approaching deadline, I decided that I needed to take a little time away for focused progress.

Katelan Foisy agreed to come with me on a roadtrip to stay at a mutual friend’s house and work on our respective projects (and hopefully brainstorm about a collaboration or two down the line.)

We ended up driving into a bit of a blizzard, stopping first for a quick bite at a cute cafe and to peek into a 100+ year old theatre:

We made it safely there, unpacked and settled into the snowy evening with our books and notebooks, a bottle of wine and some spicy veggies and pasta for dinner.

There is something so satisfying about fragrant, colorful foods cooking while the world outside the windows is white and cold.

Now we’re camped out on the comfy couch with blankets and laptops and mugs of warm beverages for work before bed. (Thanks to everyone pitching in back home to make this time and space possible. It continues to take a village, and I am so grateful.)

#sweetdreams #amwriting

Published by Valya

Valya Dudycz Lupescu is the author of Mother Christmas, The Silence of Trees, Forking Good, and Geek Parenting. She is also the editor of Embroidered Worlds: Fantastic Fiction from Ukraine and the Diaspora, published in 2023 by Atthis Arts. Valya earned her MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been published in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Ukrainian American Poets Respond, Kenyon Review, Strange Horizons, Mythic Delirium, and others. Valya has been making magic with words and food for 25 years, incorporating traditions from her Ukrainian heritage with practices that honor the Earth.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *