I am personally not a big fan of Christmas, it makes me sad and grinchy. I think it’s an ugly honliday, with all those stressed people crawling down the streets trying to find some crap to buy to fulfill the social protocol of GIFTS. Too bad that all the philosophy of the gift goes to hell when you just buy crap for some kid.

A gift HAS to be a meaningful, thoughtful thing. That’s why me and my husband, passionate haters of shopping, have come up with something more original and surely personal: we – for the 3rd year now – have thought about making a little book to print and to give away to our friends and relatives as a christmas gift.

We call it The Dark Spark, a name our very dear friend Ornella came up with.
Being myself an hopelessly grinchy soul, I always put a lot of weird stuff in TDS – creepy novels, creepy drawings, mysterious lyrics to songs that do not exist (yet) – and my husband contributes with some more pleasant creations, because he’s a great writer and his works are less bizarre than mine, wiser.

This year I wanted to put my love for horrid aside at least for the cover. I wanted to do something wintery, with a lot of stuff I like in it. So it has pomegranates, brambles (though they don’t make berries in autumn but whatever), alkekengi, a hedgehog, a wee mouse, and the Moon. And a goddess-ish girl with some horns, why not. It was very fun to make!

Maybe one day we’ll edit and publish the things we put in TDS in some better form, but today is not the day.