Portland, Oregon: The Witch's Castle and the Board Game from The Alchemist of Riddle and Ruin

It was sweltering while I was in Oregon this past week, so in order to visit The Witch's Castle, we set off shortly after sunrise. In addition to avoiding the heat, we were rewarded with a nearly empty hiking trail through Forest Park as we made our way to the destination that I first wrote about in The Alchemist of Fire and Fortune, and that appears once more in The Alchemist of Riddle and Ruin.

Gigi at the Witch’s Castle

Hiking up to the Witch’s Castle

On the warm day, the ruins weren't quite as spooky as when I first wrote them into my fiction. And it's not "officially" the Witch's Castle. It's the Stone House, but local teenagers called it the Witch's Castle and the name stuck. The structure has a long and fascinating history, so I keep toying with the idea of doing even more with it in fiction.

I was in Oregon to visit my mom for her birthday. She's a talented artist, and after reading The Alchemist of Riddle and Ruin, she was inspired to try to illustrate the characters in the board game Crimson Fish (a play on "Red Herring") that features prominently in the book!

Sue Parman with Crimson Fish characters

Mr. Octopus and Sir Seaweed from Crimson Fish, by Sue Parman

Crimson Fish isn't a real board game, but one I invented for the book. But who knows, maybe I need a project to create a mystery board game. My mom's artwork is definitely inspiring me.

Read more about Crimson Fish in The Alchemist of Riddle and Ruin.

Planning a Permaculture Garden of Herbs, Fruits, and Vegetables

Collard Tree before and after gopher.

Last year, around the time I was beginning to write The Alchemist of Riddle and Ruin, our thriving backyard vegetable garden lost a battle with our gopher nemesis.

I'm the chef in my household, and my husband is the gardener. Most of what he grows are edible plants that I can cook with, so we were both devastated that our backyard garden was left in shambles after gophers moved into our neighborhood.

With an opportunity to start with a clean slate in the garden, I undertook a lot of research into different types of gardens that might be well-suited to our area (after we installed gopher wire), including the books Creating Your Permaculture Heaven by Nydia Needham and Restoration Agriculture: Real-World Permaculture for Farmers by Mark Shepard. I'd heard about permaculture and polyculture before, but didn't really know much until this past year.

As a bonus, since my Accidental Alchemist characters are deeply involved in working with plants, my deep dive into my own garden plans made its way into the novel. I'm not writing nonfiction, so my goal isn't to fit in a ton of details in my fiction. Instead, I hope the selected details sprinkled through my books help bring the characters to life.

And yes, I write books about subjects that interest me, so my book research is always such fun!

For example, I love herbalist Rosalee de la Forêt's book Alchemy of Herbs, and have used it so much over the years that the spine is falling off. While working on The Alchemist of Riddle and Ruin, I discovered her latest book, Wild Remedies, co-written with Emily Han.

Those books inspired me to include even more herbs into our new garden plans. For now, I'm buying dried herbs, like nettles, for making loose leaf herbal teas at home. Nettle tea is my go-to tea for a late afternoon energy boost when it's too late in the day for coffee, but I'd like a little pick-me-up.

Wish me luck with our new garden. In the meantime, I'm living vicariously through Zoe Faust's garden.

Read more about a permaculture garden, a backyard garden, and herbal teas in The Alchemist of Riddle and Ruin.

Should I grow my own tea plants?

I don't have the green thumb of Zoe Faust, and I can't cook as well as Dorian Robert-Houdin. But through my novels, I can explore subjects I love in more depth and live vicariously through my characters.

I love scribbling plot and character ideas in my paper notebook, seeing what develops as I play with different twists and introduce strong-willed characters to each other. But to add the details that really bring a book to life, that's where book research comes in.

For The Alchemist of Riddle and Ruin, part of that research involved tea. I already love drinking tea, so Max's journey in the book, as he prepares to open The Alchemy of Tea, was a great excuse to learn more about it.

Two books I especially enjoyed were Grow Your Own Tea: The Complete Guide to Cultivating, Harvest, and Preparing by Christine Parks and Susan M. Walcott and Homegrown Tea: An Illustrated Guide to Planting, Harvesting, and Blending Teas and Tisanes by Cassie Liversidge.

Technically, "tea" is made from the leaves of the camellia sinensis plant. The leaves of the tea tree are harvested to make white, green, oolong, and black tea. Anything else we think of as tea, such as mint tea or chamomile tea, is actually an herbal infusion—or a decoction made by boiling heartier elements like roots and bark. But "herbal tea" is so commonly used that I use that easily-understood distinction of tea and herbal tea.

I already knew a fair amount about tea, but one thing I didn't previously realize was that it's possible to grow tea plants in California. Any tea I grow in my backyard wouldn't have the same flavors as old-growth trees in parts of the world where tea has been grown and harvested for centuries, but still.... it's tempting to try it!

I also took an herbal tea workshop at the Herbal Academy, which was so much fun, and now I'm experimenting with even more loose-leaf teas.

A few of my favorite herbal teas right now. camomile flowers, a blend of green tea and herbs, CCF tea (an ayurvedic mix of spices: cumin, coriander, and fennel seeds), and nettle tea is in my mug right now.

For now, I'm sticking to growing herbs for herbal teas, like this mint growing in my backyard garden.

Read more in The Alchemist of Riddle and Ruin.