It's The Full Moon - Cold Moon 2018
Hello seekers after truth,
You probably thought this newsletter wouldn’t arrive on time due to the government shutdown, but thankfully my horoscopes have been deemed essential by the Department of Homeland Defense. (You laugh)
I stayed up so late last night drawing star charts and peering into my scrying stone that I’ve barely had time to clean my Yule altar from yesterday’s solstice.
Anyways, here’s the future.
HOROSCOPES
Aries
Like your ruler Mars, you have water-rich minerals frozen and locked beneath your dusty surface. Be receptive to any little rovers that might land on you this month, you big red weirdo.
Taurus
As a Taurus, you are lazy, which is why you don’t have friends and will spend New Years’ Eve alone. Luckily, the position of the moon favors new endeavors, so use your social isolation to finally start that novel that no one will read.
Gemini
As a Gemini, you have a strong desire to please everyone. You also have a missing twin who will show up on your doorstep this month. Don’t let yourself be pressured into letting this long-lost twin into your life. Set healthy boundaries.
Cancer
Shortly after the New Year, you will be seized with a reckless “screw it all” energy that leads you to quit a job, end a relationship, and start smoking again. You will spend the rest of 2019 trying—and failing—to right the ship.
Leo
Uranus is crashing through your celestial house this month, which bodes well for your career but signals interpersonal instability. So prepare for professional flourishment and a fist fight in a supermarket parking lot.
Virgo
In the New Year, you will be starting an adult-education course because you “miss learning,” but when the instructor becomes romantically obsessed with you, you’ll be forced to abandon the endeavor.
Libra
According to the position of Venus, you are going to do something truly crazy this month—buy bitcoin, arm some rebels, re-watch those Hobbit movies. Who knows?
Scorpio
Everyone knows Scorpios are the unbalanced sociopaths of the Zodiac, but I still feel compelled to warn you: unless you’re careful, you will lose money when Jupiter squares with Neptune on January 13th.
Sagittarius
Whatever you do, don’t trust Capricorns.
Capricorn
Whatever you do, don’t trust Sagittarians.
Aquarius
When a holiday package arrives from overseas, your Grinch-like disdain for all things Christmas will be tested, then reaffirmed when you discover the contents.
Pisces
The health kick you’re about to go on will be futile. I know it. You know it. The stars know it. Embrace your inner fish and drink up.
WRITING NEWS
I wrote a story for The Patriot Ledger about the night I spent sleeping (or trying to sleep) in Lizzie Borden’s bed. Here’s a link to the article in case you missed it, though I’m not sure how you would have managed that, seeing as my mother was pressing copies into strangers’ hands and standing over them while they read it.
http://southborough.wickedlocal.com/entertainmentlife/20181028/dead-and-breakfast-he-spent-night-at-lizzie-bordens-haunted-house---and-lived-to-write-about-it
Ever since the story was published, people have been stopping me around town to inform me of other local haunted spots—hotels, hospitals, lighthouses, etc. I’m beginning to wonder if this will become my new literary beat. I don’t see why not. It’s not as if writers who scoff at the paranormal for a living have ever faced horrifying consequences when they encounter actual demonic entities, right?
A NOTE ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER
On the one hand, I firmly believe that social media is an addictive, mind-altering tool of mass conditioning that is rapidly eroding our souls and poses an existential threat to our very species. On the other hand, my agent told me to cultivate a digital platform.
Rather than barrage people on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, I have chosen to start this newsletter. It seems a more humane, dignified method of keeping in touch with readers. Though if I’m honest, the basic concept is the same: capture the personal data of anyone who has ever expressed the slightest, even momentary interest in your work, trap them in an endless one-way relationship in which you make escalating demands only tangentially related to your output (Please donate $1.50 to my Patreon to buy me a cup of coffee! Also, I need a new roof!) in exchange for the sporadic sharing of banal observations and the occasional glimpse into your private life, a play for authenticity which serves only to dispel your personal mystique, which is the only true currency a writer has to begin with.
So we’ll see how this goes.
—WD
P.S. I thought I would end each newsletter with a song-of-the-month. This one has been chosen in honor of my nephew, due to be born any day now at Beth Israel Hospital.
“The Fenway” by Jonathan Richman