coast | BREATHE: Michelle Garren-Flye

Last week I went home for a vacation.

Home is the mountains of North Carolina. At least, that’s where my hometown of Brevard is. As I’ve now lived on the coast for longer than I grew up in the mountains, I sometimes wonder where “home” really is. If my blood was once the red clay of the mountains, surely it’s now mixed with the Crystal Coast seawater.

It wasn’t totally my choice to set down roots here on the coast, but I can’t say I’m totally sorry I have. And I definitely don’t feel as at home in my old hometown as I do here in my new one.

But oh, those mountains. I spent a fair amount of time outside during our stay. I walked with my son and his dog in the little neighborhood where we stayed. We all hiked through the gardens of Biltmore Estate one afternoon. The steps we got that day! We spent a day touring the Western North Carolina Nature Center. The animals were mostly asleep while we stood gaping at their beauty.

And in the evenings, a glass of wine in hand, I sat on the front porch looking out at the trees, wondering if I ever moved home would the roots I had put down in the sandy soil of the coast re-acclimate to the mountain soil?

Starting over is not something I’m great at, so I won’t be doing it anytime soon. I love my life here, and I don’t want to leave it.

But oh, those mountains. They call me still.

Written six months ago post Hurricane Helene, whose destruction I saw in person for the first time last week. Photo and poem copyright 2025 Michelle Garren-Flye. Not for use without permission.

Oh, those mountains. 🙂 Someday. Photo and poem copyright 2025 Michelle Garren-Flye. Not for use without permission.

Anyone want to see a magic trick? Ta-daa!

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Okay, not so much a magic trick, but I sort of feel like this entire book is magic. It started out as something totally different. It was a book called Pirate Magic. Yeah, I know. Goofy. Although maybe not! I might actually write that one someday! Anyway, I digress. That was back in 2014. I had an idea set in Beaufort, N.C., and it was all about pirate cosplayers and it was a lot of fun. But it had too many problems, so then I started writing Movie Magic in 2015 and I set part of it in Beaufort and put some of my pirate cosplayers into this book…and it was a mess.

So obviously I abandoned the whole concept. Went off and wrote and published the first two books of Synchronicity and never looked back…

…Until this summer. I published Time Being in June and turned to the third book of Synchronicity. But, although Timeless is written and waiting for editing, I couldn’t get into it. And I can’t stand to NOT have some sort of writing project going on, so I picked up Movie Magic, and I fell in love with the characters all over again and I edited and rewrote like a madman for a couple of weeks and bam! It was done, the story was told.

I then formatted and edited again and then I called on the fabulous Farah Evers for a cover. For this one, I had such a definite idea of what I wanted, it took no time at all for her to come up with the beautiful cover you see above.

So now what? I have the book. I have the cover. But I always try to release my magic books on October 31, the anniversary of Harry Houdini’s death. So I guess I’m just going to have to start pulling out some magic tricks to entertain you guys for three months!

Stay tuned!