✨ Some Exciting News ✨ (Patreon)

Hey hey 👋!!

I hope you are all well, not too cold, not too hot. It's finally getting chilly in my neck of the woods and that's delightful. If I play my cards right, I'm going to be dragging Richard up into the mountains sometime next week to visit a really cool shrine with a golden torii gate. I've been wanting to go forever. It looks like it's a "several hours" up the mountain hike, but with the weather like this, I think taking it slowly, it might be doable. I'll post all the details here with photos. I don't mind sharing specific places with you all at all 💕.

Ready for the Big News? While I was in the States, my editor asked me my thoughts on pitching an oracle deck or tarot deck of yōkai to the publisher. Ironically enough, I actually had been brainstorming this very idea for a couple months now. I won't do a tarot deck because I feel there's so much history and it may sound weird, but sacredness to them, that I don't feel I have studied them enough to even attempt that. But oracle cards, to me, feel a lot more open and accessible. There are so many different types of oracle cards. It feels like whatever the creator imagines, it's all good. So, I said, yes, of course! I then spent a couple weeks and wrote up a pitch with how I was thinking about putting a deck together, along with some mock up cards and the team really dug it. So that's going to happen ╰(*´︶`*)╯♡What I'm going to do is match each yōkai with some Japanese proverb, unique phrase or thought, witticism, Buddhist or Shinto wise saying, you get the picture. I really feel that through studying another language we can learn to think differently and even put words to feelings or thoughts we had that we couldn't express before. For example, you know how kintsugi (mending broken pottery with gold) and tsundoku (buying lots of books and magazines and letting them pile up) crossed over into the English language and everyone uses them now? Well, that's just TWO phrases, there are so many more that I love and have always wanted to share with people.

They asked for fifty cards and I asked for sixty. Which was kind of dumb because I don't get paid any more and the deadline is again really tight. But sixty is a good numbers in Japanese, so... plus we get ten more yōkai! Oh, if anyone has any favorite obscure yōkai shoot me your ideas. I have plenty, but it's always hard to cut and I'm leaving open that last ten to see what comes together. I don't want to forget anything. Also, it needs to have a good balance of different character traits.

I'm doing it old school at the moment, writing the creatures on index cards, then all the sayings and phrases I've collected (and am still collecting) on more index cards and matching them up. This is really, really fun!Oh yeah! if there's some Japanese phrase or word or old wise proverb you particularly love let me know that, too. There are SO MANY. But the more the better, because then I can sift through and match them (hopefully) perfectly with some creature.

Here's one of my mock up cards I sent the publisher. My little drawing. We'll have Michelle Wang do the art for them. She did The Book of Japanese Folklore. So the art will be nice!  The layout will be different. This was just one of my ideas. But todaimoto kurashi is such a neat proverb. "Under the lamp, darkness". Referring to how sometimes you don't see what's right in front of you.

Anyway, I want them to work as words of wisdom, but also for language and culture learners.

That's what I've been up to. Any ideas or suggestions, just let me know. I'm all ears! XO,

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