The Wee Hoose

An update on Call for Heroines

I arrived home under grey, dismal skies, to our little Scottish cottage on the edge of a leafy green park (thanks, January rains!) on Saturday. All I could think about was my couch, my cozy yellow blanket covering potentially chilly toes, and a plate of fish and chips on my lap (our coming home meal). Constant travel had dissolved the days into airports, lost jackets and passports, weird time zone changes, and the particular exhaustion of being cheerful around strangers so they don’t know how stressed you are (why do we care so much about strangers?)

We renovated (ok, essentially rebuilt) this house three years ago, so it’s weird that it still smells new when you enter, but it smells like home. I dropped the suitcases in the foyer, vowing not to look at them again until the next day, then stepped through into the back of the house which looks out over our garden, currently filled with a carpet of snowdrops and the sprouting bursts of green leaves that will become bluebells over the next few weeks.

And there it was. My wee hoose (my gorgeous writing shed, built only to be the “room of my own”). It was just sitting there, quietly, not needing anything from me. Not scolding me for being absent, or buried under ignored work, just waiting to welcome me back into its cozy belly.

Something in my chest unknotted.

Three weeks earlier, I’d been standing at a different window, looking out at an expanse of a cerulean sea. We had decided to escape the dark, grey winters of Scotland and explore the delights that are Ortigia, Sicily. The apartment was gorgeous, with the owner’s art on every wall, shelves full of books (Italian and English), a fully stocked kitchen. This was the kind of place for which I felt nothing but privilege and gratitude. We had 6 weeks of wandering the ancient streets, Campari spritz, hordes of friendly stray cats, gluten-free cannolis, a daily fish market to die for, Michelin-star meals, long visits from cherished friends, and yet. And yet.

For much of the time, what I was thinking about was this. The wee hoose. The back garden. The walks in the park. The movies with friends. In my brain I was already home before I got home.

My life has been filled with travel and excitement, and I don’t intend to stop slurping up all of the sugary sweet goodness the world has to offer. But my desires, my deepest desires, are shifting.

So. I’m making some changes.

I’m passing on The Heroine’s Salon (this mighty little corner of Substack that I built with genuine love and watched grow into something real). I’ve found someone I believe will serve the Salon and all of you, and I am genuinely excited to work with her and introduce her to you (which I will do very soon).

This publication is becoming what it always wanted to be underneath all the architecture I built around it. (You can read about my battle with the Architect vs the Artist here). It’s going to be about writing. I’ll go back to my roots with Journals Prompts and Essays from wherever I happen to be (like this), bits of memoir (like this one), maybe some short stories, and updates on the new novel I’m writing (you can find all the others here). All dispatches from the wee hoose in my walled back garden, where apparently, I belong.

If you want to support the writing and enjoy the Heroine’s Adventure, there’s a paid subscription. That subscription now comes with access to a digital library: the Heroine’s Adventure course and all the Questbooks. Any income generated goes to my daughter, who worked so hard on the original course. I like that detail more than I can explain.

Free subscribers get everything I write.

I’m not disappearing… just arriving somewhere I should have been all along.

There’s a light on in the wee hoose.

Ortigia, Sicily

*P.S. If you are a current paid subscriber your existing subscription has been extended for three months for free as a thank you for hanging in there, and so you can hear all about The Salon changes.