Saskia's Studio

Notes from the hermit hut

The welcome mat, 1 July 2026

Once upon a time, there was a blog.

Once upon a time, there were a lot of blogs. People wrote them, people read them, people made lists on their blogs of other blogs they read regularly, people added blog urls to their Google feed reader.

Now Google Reader is long dead and so, I hear, are blogs. But I want one. I miss blogging.

It’s not that I hate social media, though sometimes I do. I just really like blogging. I was a long-time user of Dreamwidth and, before Dreamwidth, Livejournal, back when Livejournal was still owned by the folks who originally coded it. Those sites were partway between blogs and social media webs (and still are, especially in the case of Dreamwidth). I’m now a long-time user of Tumblr, over ten years on the blue webbed site that I keep hearing is dead. My feed there is pretty lively.

But I got out of the habit of using Dreamwidth, and Tumblr has always felt more about sharing other people’s stuff than my own. And I’ve wanted for years to make money as a writer, but “monetizing my content” on Patreon or whatever has never worked for me. I don’t do well with meeting deadlines or writing under pressure.

So, a blog. A space for me to write about what interests me. A link to my Ko-fi so readers can throw me some financial support if they want. No schedules. No pressure, not on me to “create content”, not on readers to subscribe. Just me and my interests and my fingers on the keyboard.

If you don’t know me already from another site, you might wonder what I’m interested in, what I might write about here. Well, here goes:

• religion and spirituality
• sex and gender
• erotic and romantic fiction (my own and other writers’)
• birds
• books, music, movies, television
• and did I mention birds?

You also might wonder about my religion and my politics. Well, I’m an Episcopalian, a sometime Pagan, a sometime Buddhist; queer and genderqueer; anti-racism, sexism, and fascism; would have voted for Mamdani if I were a New Yorker. My politics are progressive/lefty, but I rarely write about political topics except in very general ways. I think art is political, everything is political, but thinking incisively about politics and writing about it is not my job.

My job, as a writer, is to explore where sexuality and spirituality overlap; to show that there are alternatives to our fixed gender roles, our heteronormative marriages, our constrictive interpretations of Christianity (being a Christian myself); to demonstrate how sex and religion can combine into fuel for a creative life. So if any of that stuff interests you, come hang out here.

Welcome to my studio.