Hey folks, Aaron here. I don't normally drop content on a non-release day, but today's special.

And to explain why, I want to tell you a quick story, which, after all, is sort of what I do, right?

Way back in another era, I was a graphic designer. I ran my own business and I made logos and

marketing material for a bunch of companies,

and in my spare time and evenings, I was writing novels and self-publishing them.

You could think of them as supernatural thrillers with a touch of folklore.

And my favorite thing to do was to find local folklore. For me, that means here in New England,

and then weave some of those stories into my books.

I loved writing fiction, but I also discovered that I really loved finding cool true stories

or moments in history when folk traditions and beliefs sort of broke through into the real world

and had an impact on real lives.

Honestly, there's nothing like stumbling upon some event or person from the past

and then basking in the weird and dark material around their story. And it got me thinking.

You see, even back then, it was really hard to sell self-published novels. So I hatched this

plan where I would give away something really entertaining in order to get folks to sign up for my

email list for future books. And what I decided to do was write up a few essays about my favorite

New England stories with folklore at their heart. Mercy Brown's gruesome exhumation, the haunted

Husuk tunnel. You get the idea. So I got to work. It took a few weeks, but in the end I had a document that was about

10,000 words long, and that's when doubt hit me. I had spent all this time crafting something

that I planned to give to people as a PDF, but in the process, I had made it too long to really

enjoy reading on their small little smartphones. So I let panic and doubt take control,

and I dragged the file for this collection of essays to the trash on my computer. And then, I had a

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