hi, I’m Lj,
I help writers to create artworks as singular, rich, and indelible as the greatest fairy tales.
Ceremony is a feast to savour with a silver fork or devour from berry-stained fingers.
Ceremony
Ceremony helps writers to create fiction, memoir, poetry, and nonfiction that are as luxurious as cocktails of molten gold.
It is relatively easy to teach the foundations of story craft and book architecture, and to help someone to complete a novel, story, or memoir.
But no one reads for technique; what they read for is to immerse in a world unlike their own.
The intangible element of a piece of writing that elevates it to an artwork is its atmosphere.
Atmosphere is what is imprinted on their psyche.
I help writers to distill the atmosphere of their projects through my writing, teaching, and mentoring.
Distilling the atmosphere makes the writing as singular, rich, and indelible as the greatest fairy tales.
It makes writing and reading feel like a ceremony, a celebration, and a feast.
I invite you to feast with me on rich, mouthwatering morsels of red velvet cake, scallion pancakes, sour noodles, and caramelised garlic.
To savour every bite and to share your abundance with your readers.
I invite you to devour my intensive programme, Slow Practice, or to drink psychedelic potions in my community, Atmospheres.
Or to read my newsletter or listen to my podcast where we explore the atmospheres of contemporary fiction and sharpen our appetites for creativity.
You can read more about my clients’ books here, and hear interviews with many of them on the Ceremony podcast.
books
“A frightening fairytale, surreal, not the story you think you know. A book that reads like a spell, meant to be read slowly. It unfolds like a strange dream, and a nightmare. A book I still think about years after reading it.” Kirin Khan
On Christmas night, a small girl is crowned at a pageant, before stumbling into the snowy darkness, alone, to meet her greatest fan. Set in Rosewood’s forest, the “creeping liquefaction” of the dead produces a fungal harvest that casts a spell on the town. In the endless dark of winter, feral creatures thrive, and psychedelic spores infect the air. The Museum of Atheism, deep below ground, is full of hallucinatory terrors.
“A fierce and deadly little fantasia that bites its way deep into your brain.” Brian Evenson
THE LUMINOL REELS takes its imagery from pornography, Catholicism, and crime scene investigation to interrogate the violence done to women. It considers the ongoing brutality of the femicides in Ciudad Juarez and the institutional misogyny of the Catholic Church. Violence is intrinsically linked to location, and the shrines, quinceañera parties, holy communions, and seances of this book are all stained luminescent blue.
“This book will forever change how you read about violence.” Nicola Maye Goldberg
When human blood reacts with luminol, it lights up a ghostly blue. This reaction, most commonly used to detect whether violence has taken place at suspected crime scenes, combines the human and the chemical, it invokes violence but also transformation.
interviews and discussions
Playlist at Largehearted Boy
Research Notes at Necessary Fiction
‘Scorpio Rising: Gothic Hybridity and the Occult: a Discussion with James Pate’ at 3AM Magazine
‘Rituals for Creative Writing + Unearthing Our Deepest Stories’ at Living Open Podcast
‘Talking about Tarot, Creativity, and Writing’ at The Life of Tarot Podcast.