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Writing

Revision day

Ashleigh NicSidhe
Cherry Valley Falls, near Duvall, WA.

I’m having to do revisions on Unseen, part one of The Dreams that Carried Us. (The full trilogy consists of Unseen, Unbroken, and Unbound.)

These three stories tell the story of Anastaja Czarny, a Lalleri Romni from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and her rescue from the destruction of the Zigeunerfamilienlager (Gypsy Family Camp) at Auschwitz-Brenau on 2 August 1944 by a group of Jewish women, and her eventual meeting with Józef Schwartz, a rabbi’s son, also from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and a prisoner at Birkenau. 

In the second story, Unbroken, Józef has been “evacuated” on a death march to Dachau, where he remains until after that camp is liberated by US troops in April 1945.

They reunite in Prague, in the third story, Unbound, where they marry, and then eventually migrate to New Orleans, where their daughter Miriam “Miri” is born, who is the mother of Brooke, the main protagonist of Good Bones, the mystery book I’ve been working on since 2022.

I’d be finished with Good Bones, I think, except that characters from it keep interrupting me, telling me other pieces of their history – like how Brooke met her wife, Anna, following Hurricane Katrina. How Anna pulled a huge surprise party for Brooke’s “seventh birthday” (she’s a Leap Day baby” and only gets to celebrate her actual birthday once every four years. That’s also the story where they told me just how their kid, Riley – who was 16 when I first met them, and non-biinary – was conceived and born. While writing that one dow, Anna also finally told me what had happened to her back in University that made her so rigid aout being honest and not keeping secrets, and why keeping the birthday surprise was so difficult for her.

Which then led to Anna’s parents telling me how THEY met! I never would have guessed that her dad was a former police constable …

Most of this past month, however, has been Józef and Anastazja telling me their story. It’s particularly timely, given what’s going on in the United States right now. The parallels are gut-wrenching.

I thought that I had pretty much finished Unseen, and then ralized that I had a major error in the geopgraphy of the camp layout, which is pretty well documented. That kind of a mistake cannot be overlooked, so I’ve spent most of tioday rediting and revising dscriptions, and wading back through the online archives and photographs to make sure that my descripions as a close as I can be in this work of fiction. To do otherwise would be disrepectful.

Inward clockwise spiral beneath the Anglo-Saxon 'ash' rune (ᚫ), representing descent into the Otherworld and spiritual thresholds (spiral), combined with the ash tree's symbolism of rootedness, ancestral connection, and liminal authority (rune). The spiral represents the Sidhe raths or fairy mounds. Combined it is a representation of "Ash McSidhe,

Ash NicSidhe

Ash NicSidhe has been a voice in the Pagan and Traditional Witchcraft community for over fifty years, writing under this name and its evolving magical lineage. Her work explores Witchcraft, folklore, Tarot, and the esoteric arts, weaving scholarly insight with lived ritual experience and initiatory tradition. As Elder High Priestess of Nemed Cuculatii, she continues to serve as a guardian of the old ways and a trickster of the spiral path. Her writing has appeared in The Witches’ Almanac, The Crystal Well, and other Pagan publications back into the 1970s. She has also contributed to books including The Small-Town Pagan's Survival Guide, Reflections in Diana’s Mirror: A Devotional for the Queen of Heaven, Which Witch is Which, and more.

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Photograph of Anne Frank. Above it: GERMANY OF 1943 IS BEING REPEATED IN usa OFF 2025 Below it "Terrible things are happening outside. Poor helpless people are being dragged out of the homes. Families are torn apart. Men, women, and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parent have disappeared." - Diary of Anne Frank January 13, 1943. Image credit Jeffrurr.bsky.social
Writing

Another Month, Another Post

Towards the end of March, the characters related to the *Good Bones* saga began talking to me—no, lecturing me. More specifically, Brooke Morningstar’s grandparents, Anastazia and Józef, both Holocaust survivors, sat me down one evening and began telling me their harrowing story. From Auschwitz-Birkenau, to their struggle for survival and eventual reunion in Prague, their journey is one of resilience and love. Not to mention their history has some parallels to current events today.

Ashleigh NicSidhe
Eddy BERTHIER from The Hague, Netherlands, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Writing

Beyond the Shadow: Reclaiming the Hidden Light Within

In the realm of Carl Jung’s psychology, shadow work has become a popular term, often conjuring images of exploring one’s darker impulses and repressed flaws. It’s a practice of looking within, facing those aspects of ourselves we’d rather deny—our anger, jealousy, or selfishness. While this journey is undoubtedly transformative, there’s another, equally vital side to the shadow that often goes unnoticed. What if, instead of only confronting what we fear in ourselves, we also asked: What good have we buried in the shadow?

Ashleigh NicSidhe
Photograph of Anne Frank. Above it: GERMANY OF 1943 IS BEING REPEATED IN usa OFF 2025 Below it "Terrible things are happening outside. Poor helpless people are being dragged out of the homes. Families are torn apart. Men, women, and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parent have disappeared." - Diary of Anne Frank January 13, 1943. Image credit Jeffrurr.bsky.social
Writing

what we have learned from history is that we do not learn from history

The grandparents of the protagonist of the novel I’m writing were survivors of the Shoah – although Brooke’s grandmother is technically also a survivor of it and the samudaripen, which is one of many terms the Roma people call the same time, as she herself is Romani.
I have spent much time recently reading about the Roma camps, especially the “Gypsy family camp” (German: Zigeunerfamilienlager) was Section B-IIe of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp, where Romani families deported to the camp were held together, instead of being separated as was typical at Auschwitz. (Yes, I am very much aware that word -G*** – is a slur, it’s the title of the Wikipedia article.)
Research takes you down many a strange rabbit Warren, and this one been no exception.

Ashleigh NicSidhe