How it Started
Nearly every creative person I’ve met has a story about their “pandemic project.” You know, the creative outlet that helped people cope during those early months in 2020 when the world shut down and collectively, we were sequestered to the confines of our homes and, if deemed “essential,” our businesses.
In September 2020, I started pulling a tarot card a day and recording my immediate thoughts around how the cards resonated with my writing practice. At that point, I’d been using the cards from a creative, storytelling lens for more than six years, but I felt like there was more to discover, more to learn about the cards that extended beyond their esoteric origins. And so, I ordered a beautiful tarot journal from Writual Planner and began making daily notes from a storyteller’s perspective.
Around the same time, I learned that several of my readers were also writers who worked with the tarot, but they had never thought about using the cards to enhance their writing. Inspired to help my fellow storytellers, I began researching how other writers were using the cards and found my options surprisingly limited. To that point, there were only five or so texts helping writers learn how to use the cards for creative outcomes, including Tarot for Writers by Corrine Kenner (2011) and The Creative Tarot by Jessa Crispin (2016). Once those 78 days were up, each card having been pulled and mulled over, and I had purchased and read every available book on the subject, I knew that an updated book on tarot for storytelling was needed, and I must be the one to write it.
And so, I did just that. I drafted a rough (ROUGH) outline and compiled my notes from those 78 days, collecting research, and assigning myself activities to incorporate in the project. I also captured notes for an accompanying tarot deck, the theme of which might especially resonate with other storytellers, with familiar symbols that could be found on many writers’ workspaces. The suit of Cups would include coffee mugs and teacups, the Pentacles suit would feature notebooks, typewriters, computers, and other gadgets used for storytelling, the Swords suit would be ink pens and markers, and the Wands would be pencils and candles.
As the winter of 2020 stretched into 2021, while still working on my tarot book and deck, I began making notes for Only the Rocks That Float, a Southern Gothic work of literary fiction. While Pamela Colman Smith's original tarot illustrations were helpful, I knew I wanted to incorporate Southern themes, so I searched for a Southern Gothic tarot deck. That's when I discovered Stacey Williams-Ng's Southern Gothic Oracle and I fell madly in love. Stacey’s painting style was SO similar to my own, and the way she wrote about the South made me feel like we had grown up down the same stretch of dusty country road.
I self-published Only the Rocks That Float in September of 2022, while still chipping away at my tarot book. By that time, I had been working on the latter project for two years, and what started as an outline and 78 journal entries expanded into a research-based academic tome. In April 2023, I finally finished. My 14th book and first nonfiction draft was finally complete.
How it’s Going
The book went to my incredibly insightful editor, Grisel Scarantino, where it stayed until the end of July. During that time, I posted an oracle card drawn from the Southern Gothic Oracle on Instagram, explaining how the Southern themes and folklore within the deck were inspirational while writing Only the Rocks That Float. I tagged the deck creator and owner of La Panthère Studio, Stacey Williams-Ng.
Ever the seeker of signs and synchronicities, that card was The Horseshoe, which symbolizes luck and chance. Well, as luck and chance would have it, Stacey saw the post, ordered my book, read it (and loved it), and on the luckiest day of the year, 7-7-7 (July 7, 2023), she made me feel like the luckiest girl alive. Stacey called me and asked me to work with her and La Panthère Studio!
“Work with you?” I asked, shocked by her request. “Are you kidding?! Yes! What did you have in mind?”
“I want to create a tarot deck with you,” she countered, “so what did you have in mind?”
I explained to her that I had just finished writing a book to help writers use the tarot, and when it returned from my editor I’d be pitching it to literary agents for publishing. That’s when Stacey politely yet excitedly cut in. “Don’t pitch it!” she exclaimed. “I want to publish it! With my company, La Panthère...”
After a moment of hysterical laughter and disbelief, I caught my breath and told her, “Well, then, let’s create a companion tarot deck for writers, because wouldn’t you know I’ve been working on that as well...”
My diligence to write the book regardless of the uncertainty of what might come of it (if anything), followed by a simple tagged post on Instagram, led to me finally securing a traditional publishing contract, and in a most mystical, serendipitous way. When I shared with Stacey my story about how I’d searched for a Southern Gothic tarot deck back during the lockdown, she laughed and said, “I did, too! And when I couldn’t find one, I knew I had to create the Southern Gothic Oracle. That was my own pandemic project.”
Release Date and Other Details
UPDATE: The Mystic Storyteller book and tarot deck were launched on BackerKit August 2024 and fully funded! The book and deck will release spring 2025, and both are available now for pre-order. As a subscriber, you’re on the fast track to staying updated on this magickal project.
I cannot say it enough: THANK YOU for your interest, your kind words of encouragement, and your celebration of Mystic Storyteller!
About Mandy
Amanda "Mandy" Hughes is an author and instructional designer who uses the tarot to inspire storytelling. Her book Mystic Storyteller: A Writer’s Guide to Using the Tarot for Creative Inspiration and companion tarot deck are helping her peers do exactly that. She also writes fiction under pen name A. Lee Hughes. Mandy lives in Georgia with her husband and four sons, two of whom are furrier than the others (but not by much). Visit her website at www.haintbluecreative.com and find her on Substack @HaintBlueCreative.