I don't really have a better February newsletter intro than a winter haiku that I can't even take credit for. But to be fair, it's a really good one, one of my favorites!
✥ I don't know about you, but I like a thematic sonic background for my various projects. I am working on something right now that calls for some weird, wild, far-out tunes, and this “cursed disc of groovy fugues” is working out really well for me.
✥My Instagram feed really wants to sell me hail oil and scalp serums, but I am finding that it's the scalp massage itself that's helping with new hair growth. For context, I have always had a lot of hair. I've gotten quite used to that being the way of things and took for granted that it would remain so, in perpetuity. Oh ho ho, how dumb of me. I've noticed it seems to be thinning all over, but it seems particularly, egregiously patchy along my hairline near my face. Using a rosemary hair oil, I give myself a vigorous scalp massage just about every night and over the course of a few months I am noticing some new growth! Plus, it also just feels really good! You probably could use an expensive oil or serum, but I honestly don't think that's the part that's doing the trick. I think it has to do with stimulating blood flow to your scalp.
✥ I feel like every time I send one of these out, I am always sharing something else to do with your sourdough starter discard, and since I guess it's tradition now, here's another recipe that was really good (and if you add cheddar and scallions and garlic butter, they are almost like Red Lobster's Cheddar Bay Biscuits!)
✥ This Japanese mushroom rice isn't even a recipe really, but it just never occurred to me that you could put …things…in the rice cooker…along with your rice? It sounds so stupid when I admit that in print! Anyway, now I know and this is really tasty. Once I made it up, I mixed in some quinoa that I had leftover in the fridge, just to get rid of it (and to ostensibly make the quinoa easier to eat) and I served it with a bit of broiled salmon on top. It was so, so good.
✥ I would never tell anyone to run out and spend $200 on a smart bird feeder but I got one for Ývan for Christmas and I have never in my life seen him so obsessed with anything! Not even Warhammer 40K or that YouTube channel he watches where a guy who looks like a nerdy Dracula explains things like how space heaters and lava lamps work! (Ok I poke fun but I actually have a tiny crush on nerdy Dracula.)
✥ Arcana Wildcraft Oxomoco is (to my nose, anyway!) the scent of Leonora Carrington’s shadowy, enigmatic “The Feast of Samhain” distilled into fragrance—a realm where darkness consumes light, where fathomless frankincense overwhelms a pale, luminous core with primal intensity. Smoke spirals and weaves through soft coconut milk, creating a landscape of raw, mystical contrasts: hand-captured frankincense emerges not as a delicate whisper but as a profound presence, its tendrils curling against the saline, creaminess like umbral fingers of smoke tracing a tenebrous shroud. Threaded throughout, cedar and amber drift like ghostly mediators—subtle conductors that amplify the tension between the scent’s disparate elements, lending depth to its complex intricacy The coconut milk lurks like a secret silver thread, barely visible beneath the deep, consuming woodiness—both elements distinct, stubborn, refusing to blend yet creating a complex, unresolvable presence, elemental and strange and unutterably glorious.
✥ I FINALLY received my library copy of Grady Hendrix's Witchcraft for Wayward Girls (no thanks to the person ahead of me in queue taking their sweet dang time with it, the whole 14 days!) But it was worth the wait. I finished it and immediately burst into tears. I should note that I finished it in two days time and returned it immediately, and SOME PEOPLE should try being more efficient and considerate.* Ahem. Anyway. In 1970, at the Wellwood Home in Florida, pregnant teenage girls are hidden away, their stories silenced, their futures predetermined. Fern arrives scared and alone, joining other girls who've been cast aside by a world that refuses to see them. This book broke my heart wide open. When Hagar, the cook, (one of the most empathetic--but also most grumpy and put upon-- adult characters in this book) snaps at a male character that 'nobody sees these girls,' I felt something fundamental shatter inside me." Her words captured the profound violence resulting from the denial of their humanity—how they are punished for circumstances often beyond their control and stripped of every choice The story follows Fern and the other girls as they discover a form of power through witchcraft—a metaphorical and literal reclamation of agency in a system designed to erase them. It's a narrative about survival, friendship, and the quiet, fierce magic of girls who refuse to be forgotten. I finished the book in tears, overwhelmed by its power. Some stories punch you in the gut. This one reaches into your chest and rearranges your entire heart. I will say the witchcraft aspects feel somewhat uneven—more a tool of a specific character's agenda than a fully realized magical system. And a serious content warning: the birthing scenes are graphic, almost gratuitously so. It's as if Hendrix is overcompensating, trying so hard to authentically tell a story he's not sure he has the right to tell that he pushes the visceral details to their absolute limit.
*my baby sister (a librarian) scolded me for being so mean about this but dammit, don't make me wait! Which is rich coming from a Taurus, I know.
I have been a subscriber to Rue Morgue Magazine's fantastically curated pages of horror since 2009--and not only is it the only periodical I have ever consistently subscribed to, but it is also the only one that I read every issue literally from cover to cover. I honestly thought my life could not get any better than when they interviewed me for their Nov/Dec 2022 issue about my book The Art of Darkness. I was over the moon! But guess what....
It DOES get better than that because, in their current March/April issue, you will find an article that I have written! 2009 Sarah would be shrieking madly, and I won't lie, 2025 Sarah is freaking out too!
As a lifelong horror fan and an obsessive enthusiast who has been writing about fragrance for going on twenty years now, it was really a dream come true to be invited to contribute something on horror perfumes, and I had an absolute blast thinking about it and writing it. I hope you will check it out!
And here's what I've been up to over on the Unquiet Things blog, from perfume marinades to peeks into my favorite corners, to all kinds of art madness!
