letter from the author • Nov 15, 2024

The Magic Guide is magic. Life is magic. This is a true magical story:

On Wednesday, November 13, I dreamt that I was pregnant. I went to the doctor, and she shocked me with the news, “You’re four months pregnant!”

“I am?!”

She marked the conception date on my file — July 5, 2024 — and told me that if I didn’t want to keep it, that was okay, but the window for making a decision was closing. I needed to decide what I really wanted.

I spent the rest of the dream organizing a messy closet and wrestling over whether I wanted to keep this baby. Thankfully, my oldest dearest friend showed up and asked me a pivotal question: “But what about your writing?”

She wasn’t referencing The Magic Guide. She was referencing the book I’ve been secretly writing all year. My first novel. A magical fantasy fairy tale that reminds me of what might happen if The Lost Symbol, A Discovery of Witches, and ACOTAR threw a party.

As of this writing, I am knee-deep in the second draft, but honestly, I want to be waist-deep. I want to be drowning in it. I want it to bury me alive until I come out the other side, reborn with a book in hand.

“If I keep the baby,” I told my friend in my dream. “Then realistically, I won’t be able to focus on my writing much for the next five or ten years, and I probably won’t publish anything until I’m 50.” The realization punched me in the gut, and my choice was clear. If I want to be a writer, I must keep choosing my writing, again and again and again. And so, I chose. I decided not to keep the baby, and I woke up from my dream.

On the morning of November 14, I opened my eyes and remembered the date: July 5, 2024.

I brushed my teeth and remembered the date.

I poured my coffee and remembered the date.

I opened my computer and remembered the date.

I turned to my 2024 PDF calendar, which was currently open to page eight of forty-four, and started to scroll. I was scrolling so quickly that I couldn’t see where I was in the file when I intuitively stopped — at the exact page for July 5 — and that’s when I saw…the Cancer new moon.

July 5 was the Cancer new moon.

The chapter Aestivus in The Magic Guide.

Back then, I sat down to write, thinking maybe I would take a little summer break from the guide, but instead, I heard the opening for the next chapter. I heard a story in second person. I heard the word “you.” And so, I started writing. I published that chapter and the next and the next and the next, and on the morning I woke from my pregnancy dream, I was preparing to publish yet another. I had already written it and just had to add the finishing touches.

I switched away from my calendar and went to The Magic Guide to do just this, but something was wrong.

For some reason, I couldn’t edit the chapter at all. It was like it was locked away and frozen in time. I refreshed the page and refreshed and refreshed but still…nothing.

I checked other pages on this site and my other sites, and all was working as expected. As many of you know, when I’m not writing, I design websites. I am quite adept at troubleshooting and understanding web issues, so I hope you’ll believe me when I say that this particular issue was…strange. Beyond strange. Squarespace itself couldn’t even detect the issue on their end, yet for some reason, I could not edit The Magic Guide.

More specifically, I could not edit any chapter of the Magic Guide that had been published since July 5, 2024.

Every chapter published before then? I could edit.

But all nine chapters of the “new” second-person Magic Guide were locked up and frozen, behaving as though some magical force had cast a spell on them.

And so I came to interpret my dream: on July 5, 2024, with the Cancer new moon, I unwittingly conceived a “baby” — aka, the “new” Magic Guide.

In my sleep, I made the decision to end it to focus on my book.

And that decision rippled, from the dreaming to the waking, from one side of reality to the other, landing me — whether I was truly ready for it or not — here.

Just hours before I was scheduled to publish the next chapter, I still could not edit it, and so I found myself writing this letter instead. A letter to share how something strange happened and how I believe it means I need to take a break.

I finished drafting the letter and voilà, the spell was broken and the chapters unlocked. It was as though the universe (or something) was holding me to my dream’s decision, unwilling to yield until I took the steps and followed through.

(Thankfully, because the spell broke, I was finally able to publish the Taurus full moon chapter. May it propel some big magical change in your life just as it has me.)

All of this is to say that as of today, November 15, 2024 — three days before my thirty-eighth birthday and four days before Pluto pushes us all across the threshold — I am taking a hiatus from The Magic Guide.

I am focusing my creative writing energy on other work.

And I don’t know where things will go from here.

I could be back in a month.

I could be gone for a year.

I literally have no idea.

But I am following the magic and taking the leap.

Please know that while The Magic Guide is paused, I am still here.

I am available for private intuitive guidance and intuitive astrology sessions.

And I’m also available for soul-centered web, illustration, and graphic design services.

To my wonderful members, you can still expect a 2025 year ahead reading in December, and I’ll email you (as usual) on Sunday with more information on what this means for you. :)

Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for reading. Thank you for sticking with me through my perpetual evolution.

Thank you, thank you, thank you,

May you hold onto your heart and tend to your light during this and every time,

And may you never forget that you are free, you are powerful, you are loved, and magic is real.

Love always,

Virginia