Permanent Vacation

Fairly soon, this blog will officially go "inactive." It's been mostly inactive for the better part of this year (2020) and the domain name will likely disappear as well.

However, as long as I have this Google Account, the blog will live on as hagengard.blogspot.com and you can always find it that way, I suppose.

Ada put the finishing touches on her memoir/essay collection entitled Deukollectrum. Hopefully when that title is released, a new website will be up and running. Ada herself will no longer be working on this blog. She's off to a year sabbatical in the Canary Islands somewhere. Since I know she isn't going alone, I don't expect to hear much out of her.

Thank you for following us thus far. Onto to new chapters.

In the Meantime... You can always order some copies of the Trinity Anthology Project that I worked on through 2019. 

Originally conceived as an exploration of gender, Blue Forge Press gathered three male authors, three female authors, and three authors who identify as nonbinary, and gave them a monthly writing prompt. But as the stories arrived over the course of a year, truths emerged and a new, more authentic trinity was discovered.

Most of the stories I contributed are Ada stories, meaning the Ada you know: Strong, erudite, first person, but vulnerable as most humans are. Every month offered something new. (Especially February wherein she told someone else's story.)

For January, we travel to Hokkaido with Ada where she spent a winter as an ESL teacher. February follows the story of a young woman named Astra who learns the awful truths of her monastic education. March is an essay that riffs on Wallace Steven's "Sunday Morning" and in April you can follow Ada to Leipzig where a cantata of different narratives and genres considers the role of art in our lives.

The rest of the stories are incredibly varied as you can imagine nine different writers can be. So if you want to travel the world, stop by the Trinity Anthology series.

January: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083PSZHD1 

February: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084Q9WQVB 

March: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0863S9WHP 

April: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086Y4GY2H  

-David Mecklenburg.

Hyperborea

Hyperborea was the “Land beyond the North Wind” for the Ancient Greeks. Was it real to them and does that matter? Our mythology often shapes our reality despite the assumption that only the reserve is true.

For Ada, Hyperborea is the land beyond human company—a realm sometimes called solitude and sometimes called loneliness. Like most places—both real and imagined, both literal and mystical--Hyperborea changes over time. Its topography is written in the brush-strokes of love, grief, language, and routine. And its creator? Ada. And, in equal measure, not Ada at all.

Explore lyrical essays and arresting artwork in this newest collection from Ada’s World.






Hyperborea is my first new title published by Blue Forge Press. It's a "grown up picture book" in that it blends both full-color illustration with short, meaningful essays. At times the images inform the writing and others, the illustrations compliment and sometimes contrast the text. -David Mecklenburg

You can order it from Amazon here

Or go to your favorite independent bookseller and order it by ISBN: 978-1076235992

Or do you want to buy it in person? Join me and many other Blue Forge Writers for the Autumn Feast of Words Event,

Sunday, September 15th at the Tacoma Little Theatre: 210 N I St, Tacoma, WA 98403

The Nightingale's Stone Redux

A fictional memoir, The Nightingale's Stone begins upon an evening in the Harz Mountains. A scribner and notary, having crossed the frontier of middle age searches for an old lover and answers. Instead she finds rather a hungry troll. In order to avoid becoming his dinner, she employs one of the oldest narrative tricks and tells him how and why she came there.

13 years earlier, she left her position as a lonely notary for a mining company in the carriage of a handsome man who said all the right things. You know the type. As they traveled across Northern Germany, she discovered magical talents, sensuality, and even compassion from a hideously mutilated indigo maker. Although her journey ended in betrayal and lies, she discovered more important things: her own strength and character through the meaning of her disillusions. But was it enough to sate the appetite of the Troll until the sun came up?

The Nightingale's Stone has now been republished by Blue Forge Press. Newcomers to this site may have missed their first chance at reading the book, but now it's here again.

"This novel represents the first "big" appearance of Ada Ludenow. I was somewhat concerned that things had changed drastically with regard to her outlook, timbre and subject matter, but no… if you've read any of the other Ada's World fiction, the voice remains the same, whether it is in a fictional 17th Century Germany or walking up Pine street in Seattle, WA. So this book remains an excellent way into Ada's World.

For a hybrid twist on memoir and speculative fiction featuring the novel debut of the one and only Ada Ludenow, a bit of personal discovery liberally seasoned with magic and existentialism, well, look no further.

Many of you are already familiar with it and for your support I am still very grateful, but if you haven't checked it out yet, now's your chance.

You can order it from an independent bookseller by using ISBN 978-1095426616

Or you can buy it, you know… here.