March’s Worm Moon tonight marks the slow thaw of the earth. As soil softens and frost loosens its grip, worms rise again, turning and aerating the ground that’s been locked tight for months.
In truth, it’s an unglamorous name, right? Earthy and faintly unsettling. But entirely appropriate, nonetheless.
As the ground warms, it releases what it’s been holding.
Bones. Roots. Forgotten things.
In folklore, spring is often known for rebirth. But rebirth requires excavation. Because you can’t plant without breaking the ground first. You can’t grow without disturbing what lies beneath.
I imagine all writers have a handful of themes they return to, whether they intend to or not. And as I’ve been pondering The Season of Secrets and following the turning of the moons from winter into spring, I’ve become increasingly aware that this isn’t new territory for me. It’s familiar ground. I’ve walked here many times before.
The seasonal themes – ghosts of winter, quiet hauntings, buried secrets – aren’t concepts I chose at random. They’re threads that have been winding their way through my work for years, surfacing in different guises, wearing different masks.
In The Shadow of a Shadow, grief opens the door first. A funeral is the catalyst that sees Catherine Hall return to a place heavy with memory, followed by the uneasy realisation that the past is not finished with her. The story revolves around a truth long concealed, tied to folklore and the disappearance of her cousin, waiting patiently for the right moment to rise. A buried, terrible secret, kept alive by silence.
With The Sullivan Carter Chronicles, secrecy takes on a different shape. The past interrupts the present not quietly, but violently. A teenaged boy is marked by darkness arriving when there should have been light. Or so his mother insisted. An ancient creature stalks the edges of the story, not always seen, but definitely always felt. Here, secrets are inherited, passed down like curses, shaping identity whether acknowledged or not.
And in Harrow House, my current project, the secret becomes more architectural. Built into walls. Pressed deep into land. A family curse whispered about but never fully faced. A wolf-like presence stalking the estate’s boundaries, while the residents of Harrow House are kept at bay not by denial, but by fear of what lies beyond. The secret is not what exists – it’s why.
The Season of Secrets draws these ideas together and places them under the moon’s incandescent light. Winter asks us to listen to what lingers. February’s quiet hauntings reminded us that absence can be just as loud as presence. March’s Worm Moon disturbs the soil beneath our feet and proves that nothing stays buried forever.
Across many of my stories, one truth repeats itself: the past isn’t inactive. It watches. It waits. And when conditions are right – when grief softens, when darkness deepens, when the ground begins to thaw – it rises.
For readers who enjoy tracing patterns, this season is an invitation to do just that. Not to decode, but to notice. To see how ghosts change shape from story to story, and how secrets migrate from folklore to family to flesh.
These books aren’t connected by plot, but by my – okay, I’ll admit it – obsession with buried secrets and past trauma.
I write about what refuses to stay forgotten. About the quiet places where history presses close. Uncomfortably close. About the moment when something long hidden decides it’s waited long enough.
If you’ve walked these paths with me before, you may recognise the footprints.
But if you’re new, consider this a map that’s incomplete, utterly unreliable and drawn in chalky moonlight.
R. H. DIXON 