Author Melanie Frome

Well, my first ever private tour happened. 🖤

What was supposed to be a two-hour walk from the Castle turned into five 🫣 we made it as far as World’s End (an actual Old Town spot, not a comment on our pace 🤣).

By the time you add rain, lunch at Coldtown House, ice cream at Mary’s Milk Bar, an 11-page document written in German 🇩🇪 on my iPad, and my inability to stop talking about dead people ☀️ sunshine turned up too. I can’t take credit for that.

Thorsten, Silke, Helmut and Karin let me drag them past witch trials, Maggie Dickson’s almost-hanging, ⚰️ grave robbers and the surgeons 🪚who paid them, architectural confusion, religious chaos, and ocassional pop culture references, out to the edge of the old walled city — and were kind about it afterward:

“Melanie is a fantastic guide; she adapts to the pace of even the slowest participant... We felt well taken care of.” — Thorsten

“Die Tour war wahnsinnig gut. Melanie konnte alles so anschaulich erklären.” — Karin

Thorsten also sent an email afterward so lovely I reread it more than once — about bringing history to life rather than reciting it. (Be still, my gothic ❖ heart.)

🤦🏻‍♀️The one thing that didn’t happen across five hours? A single photo. Not one — not of me, not of them, not even the obligatory group selfie. Enjoy this ‘extremely accurate’ recreation instead.

🎟️ Dates for the (much shorter, 90-minute) public version are live. 🔗 Link in bio.

📸 by Julia | Firmament Creative & 𝕲𝖊𝖔𝖗𝖌𝖎𝖓𝖆 | Horror | Weird Lit Fic

💀 I think I’ve been telling you the wrong story.
Scratch that 🙅🏻‍♀️ I think I’ve been telling myself the wrong story, and you just got looped in.

Since I dreamt that first scene back in 2022,  the pitch was: Outlander walks into Frankenstein’s lab. Gothic longing. The morally grey resurrectionist worth losing your reputation for 🥵The choice between mercy and monstrosity.

Turns out writing about a certain morally grey man—one who wandered out of my actual life and into 1827 Edinburgh with zero consent from me—is a slightly more loaded (emotionally)  task than expected. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Who could’ve predicted that? (Everyone. Everyone predicted that.)

Plot twist)s): Then, a few weeks ago, somewhere between the dreams and the avoidance, the story lost patience and gave me a swift kick up the arse instead. Rude. Also, apparently exactly what I needed.

🖤Now the real heart (pun intended) isn’t the romance. It’s the choices she makes—stop shrinking into whatever shape 1827 Edinburgh demands of a woman. And somewhere in the middle of all that, a circle starts growing around her—Maidservants. Musicians. Working girls. Kept women. The wayward, the overlooked, the ones who’d been hurt and told to be quiet about it. Same fights we’re somehow still having now two hundred years later.

🫶🏻Shout out to all the wonderful women in my life whose friendships have made my life so much better than I could possibly imagine. There isn’t enough room to name y’all but know you always have a place in my heart.

So? The romance stays. It’s just no longer running the show. 🤨

💀TBD💀 finally grew a spine. So did I.

P.S. Speaking of spines, these books on my shelf are ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Well...apparently spending far too much time in Edinburgh’s archives researching a 💀 gothic novel has consequences. 🤓

Introducing:
✨ Edinburgh’s Witches, Wh*res & Wayward Women ✨

A 90-minute wander through Edinburgh’s Old Town, following the stories of women history filed under witch, wh*re and wayward—and asking who exactly was doing the filing.

💀If you’ve been following along, you’ll know I’ve been elbow-deep in research for my next novel: 1820s Edinburgh, grave robbers, reluctant miracles, and women whose stories have a habit of refusing to stay buried.

Somewhere along the way, the research escaped the manuscript. 👀 So I’m taking it to the streets...the cobblestone streets that is.

Witches. Brothels. Body snatchers. Bedlam. And the women behind the history.

🎟️ August dates are officially LIVE:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/edinburghs-witches-whres-wayward-women-tickets-1995459904290

Come wander with me. 🖤

Edinburgh's Witches, Wh*res & Wayward Women A 90-min walking tour through witch trials, body snatchers, brothels, and the asylum — and the women who survived all of it. Or didn't.

🌹 Well, Reader, it finally happened.

After approximately five spreadsheets, thirteen publishing spirals, some questionable conversations with trim sizes and ISBNs, and discovering that becoming an author apparently also means becoming a logistics coordinator... EVERLASTING and EVERFALLEN have officially made their way onto IngramSpark. ✨

🫣One of my biggest hopes for Legacy of Blood & Hope has always been finding ways to make these stories a little more accessible—not just to readers, but eventually onto indie bookshelves too.

So, if Amazon isn’t your thing, I’ve updated the link in my bio with the IngramSpark reader links for BOTH books (with retail pricing attached because y’all deserve transparency 😉).

And if you’re one of those magical creatures 🤩who spends entirely too much time wandering independent bookshops (🙋🏻‍♀️same), please know your favourite local bookstore can order them through their existing Ingram account at wholesale pricing too.

Stories grow. We grow. Sometimes slower than we’d like and occasionally with considerably more spreadsheets than anticipated. I think that’s rather beautiful.

📸 .creative

Welcome to the altar, where words I never spoke find a place to burn.

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