August at the house: a finished book, a scored podcast, scones
The month the second book was finished, the podcast learned its own music, and the scone recipe finally got an address. Notes from a literary house at nine thousand feet.
August at Galena House, in Frisco, Colorado, was the month the work stopped being plans. The aspens on the ridge have their first thought of gold in them, the inn on Galena Street is full of late-summer guests, and the front desk — which is also the writing desk, the recording booth, and the publishing house — turned out three finished things.
The second book is finished
Good Little Innkeeper is complete. If Still, by Design. was the atmosphere — a novel about a man who builds a perfect place to stand still in — the second book is the reckoning. It is finished, and it is finding its home. That is all the house will say for now, and the house means it kindly: some things should arrive at their own hour.
A podcast with its own weather
The show grew its second episode this month: The House That Didn’t Save Me — twenty-six quiet minutes about the difference between a place that rescues you and a place that keeps you company while you do the work. Every episode is now scored with original music composed here at the house, and every episode is released twice: as audio, and as a film in which the words land on the screen at the instant they are spoken, under a sky of starlight. The films live on YouTube, and inside Apple Podcasts and Spotify for anyone who presses play with the screen on.
Scones at nine thousand feet
Halfway through the new episode there is a scone recipe, because a podcast, like a breakfast, needs something on the plate that isn’t feelings. Enough listeners asked that the recipe now has its own address — the high-altitude scone recipe, with the adjustments that altitude actually demands. It is the same recipe the inn’s guests smell in the hallway on slow mornings.
September, from here
Autumn comes early at this elevation, and the house likes it that way. The third episode will arrive when it is ready and not before; the letters keep going out to readers by name; and the Journal — this page — will keep the record as it happens. If you would like the house to write to you directly, the door is the correspondence. Come in.