Let’s be clear about what elephants meant to the American circus: everything. They were the tent poles around which the entire economy spun. One elephant could draw more crowds than fifty acrobats. They hauled the wagons, raised the tents, and carried the paychecks of hundreds of performers on their massive shoulders. The Ringling Brothers knew this—by the 1920s, they owned more elephants than most zoos combined, all wintering in Sarasota’s suddenly tropical-feeling grounds. These weren’t just animals; they were the foundation myths made flesh. Every circus poster, every child’s dream of running away to join the show, every gasp of wonder under the big top—it all rested on those pillar-like legs that could dance on command but never forgot an insult.

The Ringling cemetery operated for over thirty years, with the last known burial in 1956. Think about that—three decades of elephants dying in Florida, far from the African savannas and Asian jungles their ancestors knew. Each burial was a secret ceremony, conducted away from public view because dead giants are bad for business. The circus kept meticulous records of their human performers but stayed remarkably quiet about where exactly they laid their elephants to rest. It wasn’t until the property was sold and subdivided that the new homeowners started finding out what lay beneath their American dream—bones so large they were initially mistaken for buried concrete pipes, teeth the size of bread loaves, the calcium architecture of creatures who should have died elsewhere.

But here’s the part that makes my skin crawl with recognition: elephants understand death in ways that make humans uncomfortable. They’ve been documented touching the bones of their dead with their trunks, covering bodies with branches, standing vigil for days. In the wild, they return to the same places to die, creating actual graveyards. Now imagine dozens of elephants, ripped from different corners of the world, forced to create new death rituals in Florida sand. The circus handlers noticed it first—how elephants would get restless when one of their own was sick, how they’d face the direction of that hidden cemetery and sway, how they seemed to know about deaths before anyone told them. There are accounts from the 1940s of elephants breaking their chains not to run, but to stand together in strange formations, trumpeting at frequencies that made windows shake miles away.

The mystique went beyond death. These elephants carried the entire mythology of the circus: exotic, dangerous, magnificent, and utterly displaced. Every elephant in Sarasota was an immigrant, a kidnapping victim, a god reduced to a performer. They embodied the circus’s central paradox—wild things pretending to be tame, natural power perverted into artificial spectacle. Is it any wonder their presence lingers? Between the 1920s and when the circus retired its elephant acts in the 1990s, hundreds of elephants lived, performed, and died in Sarasota County. That’s hundreds of giants who learned to dance on command but never learned to accept cages, who carried joy on their backs while their feet ached for different soil.

Glen Oaks residents have their own folklore now. They talk about pets that won’t enter certain yards, about the particular heaviness in the air before storms, about dreams of being watched by something ancient and patient. Some have kept the bones they’ve found—displayed on mantels like trophies or tucked away in garages, too unsettled to keep them inside but unable to throw them away. Others have quietly reburied them, deeper this time, as if depth could somehow settle what development disturbed.

What those Glen Oaks discoveries confirm is what circus families always knew: Sarasota is built on a graveyard of giants. Not metaphorically, but literally. Under the golf courses and shopping centers, beneath the retirement communities and beach resorts, lie the bones of beings who carried America’s dreams on their backs until their spines broke from the weight. The earth here is thick with their memory, heavy with their presence, haunted by creatures who were never meant to die this far from home. The cemetery location may be lost, paved over and forgotten, but the elephants remain—patient as only the dead can be, waiting beneath the suburban sprawl, a reminder that every paradise is built on something’s bones. And maybe that’s the real curse of the circus—not that it exploited these magnificent beings, but that it made them essential to our joy, then buried them beneath our ignorance, letting us build our homes on their graves without even knowing their names.

The Ringlings and their ilk created Sarasota’s “Golden Coast,” importing not just money but entire European facades, convincing themselves they were cultural ambassadors rather than glorified carnival barkers who’d hit the jackpot. Ca’ d’Zan rose like a fever dream in 1926, complete with a tower stolen from Venice’s skyline and rooms that cost more than most Americans would see in a lifetime. The irony was delicious—these nouveau riche circus kings desperate for respectability, hosting society soirées where they served champagne to bankers who’d spent the afternoon watching their elephants rehearse on the beach. But money has a funny way of making people forget you used to travel in a train car that smelled like lion piss. Sarasota’s elite had to choose: snub the circus money and watch their town stay a fishing village, or embrace the spectacular weirdos who were gilding their lily. Guess which they chose?

Meanwhile, Gibsonton was building its own paradise, one sensible trailer at a time. No venetian towers here—just practical aluminum siding and the radical idea that Percilla the Monkey Girl deserved a nice lawn just like everybody else. The town became a living middle finger to the concept of “normal.” The Giant’s Camp restaurant had special tall doors. The fruit stand was run by the Anatomical Wonder. The fire chief had no legs, and nobody thought to mention it because why would you? This wasn’t poverty; many of these performers made good money. They chose mobile homes and modest houses because after nine months of living in train cars and tent cities, what they wanted wasn’t grandeur—it was stillness. A mailbox with their name on it. A bed that didn’t move. Neighbors who’d never ask them to pose for just one picture, please, for the kids.

The magic happened every winter when these two worlds collided at rehearsals and meetings. The Wallendas might practice their high-wire act in Sarasota’s manicured parks, but they’d drink beer afterward in Gibsonton’s bars. Ringling executives planned next season’s routes from mahogany desks, but they had to negotiate with performers who lived in a town where you could legally walk your pet chimp to the post office. Both communities operated on the same fundamental currency: talent, loyalty, and the understanding that everyone—from the man in the mansion to the woman in the double-wide—was only as good as their last performance. The circus was the great equalizer; under the big top, nobody cared about your zip code.

What both communities shared was deeper than economics—it was the bone-deep exhaustion of being stared at. Whether you were John Ringling being whispered about at the yacht club (new money, how gauche) or Priscilla Bejano being gawked at in the grocery store (is that hair or fur?), you were always on display. So they built these sanctuaries where the spotlight had an off switch. In Sarasota’s ballrooms, former stars could age gracefully without anyone counting their wrinkles. In Gibsonton’s diners, the Human Blockhead could eat his eggs without anyone waiting for him to hammer something into his skull. Both towns offered the same miracle: the right to be boring.

The heartbreak is that outsiders never understood it wasn’t about the money—it was about the tribe. When Gibsonton’s performers held fundraisers, Sarasota’s circus elite wrote checks. When a Ringling nephew broke his neck practicing a new act, Gibsonton’s carnies organized the prayer circles. They feuded and gossiped and competed viciously for top billing, but when the outside world came knocking with its judgment and its normal, they closed ranks like sequined warriors. Because whether you lived in a mansion or a mobile home, you knew the secret: every single one of them had chosen to be extraordinary, and that choice had cost them everything normal people took for granted.

This is why Midway City in The Last Ringmaster had to be both places at once—the venetian fountain and the trailer park, the champagne flute and the beer can, existing on the same street where nobody blinks at either. Because sanctuary isn’t about what you can afford; it’s about finding your people. In my world, the mayor’s mansion sits three blocks from the RV park, and both addresses carry the same weight. The richest family in town made their fortune on the midway, and they still winter next to the folks who run the ring toss. This is what belonging really looks like: not pretending everyone’s the same, but understanding that under the big top—or in this case, under the Florida sun—everyone’s different in exactly the right way. Family isn’t about living in the same tax bracket; it’s about knowing that when the show ends, everyone goes home to the same strange, beautiful sanctuary where the only thing that matters is that you’re one of us.

Chang and Eng were born in 1811 in Siam (now Thailand), connected at the sternum by a band of cartilage and sharing a liver. But their biology was the least interesting thing about them. They were discovered by a British merchant who saw dollar signs, not souls, and spent their teenage years being displayed across the world as “The Double Boy” or “The United Brothers.” Language matters here—notice how they went from plural to singular and back again, as if the English language itself couldn’t figure out what they were. By the time they settled in America, married sisters (yes, really), and fathered twenty-one children between them (yes, REALLY), they’d become walking, talking changeling tales—familiar enough to recognize as human, different enough to make people question what “human” meant.

The folklore parallels are delicious and disturbing. Nearly every culture has stories about doubles, shadows, and split souls. The Germanic doppelgänger who appears before death. The Egyptian ka that could separate from the body. The Jewish traditions of ibbur, where one soul attaches to another like a supernatural conjoined twin. And of course, changeling tales—where something that looks like your loved one is actually hollow, wrong, inhabited by something else. The circus audiences looking at Chang and Eng were unconsciously processing all these ancient fears. Were they seeing two souls in one body? One soul stretched between two minds? Or—and this is where it gets dark—were they seeing proof that bodies could be hollow vessels, that personhood was just a performance, that maybe we’re all just meat puppets waiting for something to pull our strings?

The brothers themselves played into the horror and the fascination, because that’s how you survive as a professional freak. They developed an entire vaudeville act where they’d demonstrate their coordination, their disagreements, their simultaneous yet separate existence. But the real performance was pretending to be okay with being treated like dolls in a collection. P.T. Barnum, who promoted them later in life, literally displayed them alongside automatons and wax figures in his American Museum. The message was clear: here are things that look human but aren’t quite. Here are bodies that move and speak but might be hollow inside. Step right up and see the living puppets.

What Florida’s winter circus community understood—what Gibsonton and Sarasota’s sideshow families knew in their bones—was that being displayed hollows you out whether you’re conjoined or not. Every performer who’d stood on a platform while people paid to stare knew the feeling: the slow drain as you become less person and more object, less soul and more spectacle. The Bunker brothers died in 1874, three hours apart (Chang first, then Eng, who reportedly died of terror), but their real death was decades earlier when they became empty vessels for other people’s fears and fantasies. The sideshow didn’t display conjoined twins; it created hollow men, walking changelings who looked like people but had been emptied out and refilled with whatever the audience needed to see.

The descendants of sideshow families in Florida will tell you the truth if you know how to listen: every “freak” was a changeling story. The real person hidden or hollowed out, replaced with a character, a curiosity, a collectible human doll. The Lobster Boy wasn’t Grady Stiles Jr.; he was a hollow costume Grady wore until he forgot there was anything else inside. The Monkey Girl wasn’t Percilla Bejano; she was an empty vessel filled with other people’s revulsion and fascination. This is why these communities were so fiercely protective of their winter quarters—it was the only place they could stop being hollow, stop being changelings, and remember they had souls that belonged to themselves.

The final horror? Sometimes the hollow wins. Sometimes you perform the empty vessel so long that you forget you were ever anything else. Chang and Eng’s descendants (all seventy-plus of them) will tell you their ancestors were businessmen, farmers, devoted fathers. But history remembers them as The Double Boy, The United Brothers, The Siamese Twins—hollow titles for hollow men who were never allowed to be full. They became their own shadow selves, their own changelings, their own cautionary tale about what happens when you let the world turn you into a doll in someone else’s collection. And that, my friends, is the real sideshow: watching souls get scooped out one ticket at a time, until all that’s left is the performance of being human, echoing around inside an empty shell.

The circus mermaid hoaxes were magnificent in their grotesquerie. P.T. Barnum started it with his Fiji Mermaid in 1842—a monkey’s torso sewn to a fish tail, pure nightmare fuel marketed as exotic beauty. But the Ringlings elevated the con. They displayed “living mermaids” in tanks, women who could hold their breath for impossible lengths, their legs bound in costume tails that made actual swimming near-impossible. These performers would press their palms against the glass, making eye contact with children, mouthing words no one could hear through water and glass. The souvenir postcards called them “Beauties of the Deep,” but the performers called it “the drowning act”—eight shows a day, holding your breath until your lungs screamed, smiling underwater while tourists tapped the glass like you were a goldfish who might do tricks.

Here’s what’s delicious and devastating: the original Little Mermaid was Andersen’s love letter to Edvard Collin, the man who would never love him back. Andersen, gay in an era when that meant death or worse, wrote about a creature who could never speak her truth, who transformed her body into something acceptable but still wasn’t chosen, who faced the choice between killing the one she loved or disappearing entirely. He knew what it meant to perform an acceptable version of yourself until the real you dissolved. The circus mermaids lived this metaphor daily—women who transformed themselves into fantasy creatures for audiences who wanted the myth, not the human. They held their breath, hid their legs, surrendered their voices to the water, all for crowds who’d forget them the moment they walked to the next tent.

The Florida circus winters made the mermaid acts especially cruel and especially popular. Sarasota’s warm waters meant year-round mermaid shows in outdoor tanks, but salt water destroyed the costumes and freshwater had to be heated in winter. The performers developed chronic ear infections, skin conditions from the costume adhesives, joint problems from swimming with bound legs. But here’s the thing about love and sacrifice—the myth only works if it looks effortless. So they smiled underwater, waved through the glass, and embodied every little girl’s dream of being special enough to make someone change their whole world for you. Spoiler alert: the prince never changes his world. You change yours, and then you disappear.

One Ringling mermaid from the 1950s, who went only by “Marina” in the programs, left a diary that surfaced in a Gibsonton estate sale. She wrote about the Valentine’s Day shows being the worst—all those couples wanting to see “true love’s transformation,” buying into the fantasy that love meant becoming unrecognizable. She described watching fathers hold their daughters up to the tank, telling them how beautiful the mermaid was, how magical, how perfect. “They never ask if I can breathe,” she wrote. “They never ask if the tail comes off. They see what they need to see—a woman who gave up everything to be here, smiling for them. The fact that I’m drowning is part of the appeal.”

The real horror of both the fairy tale and the circus act is that they’re teaching the same lesson: love requires the complete annihilation of self. The mermaid gives up her voice, her body, her family, her entire world, and it’s still not enough. The circus performers gave up their names, their comfort, their ability to breathe freely, and it was never enough either. The audience always wanted more transformation, more sacrifice, more proof that someone would suffer beautifully for the chance at love. The Ringlings knew this and marketed accordingly—every poster showed the mermaid reaching through the water toward someone just out of frame, forever longing, forever drowning, forever almost but not quite human enough to be loved.

Today, we’ve sanitized the story. Disney gave the mermaid her voice back, her prince, her happy ending. We don’t tell children that Andersen’s mermaid was given one last chance: kill the prince and return to the sea, or die at dawn. We don’t mention that she chose dissolution over violence, that she became foam on the waves rather than hurt the man who never even knew her real name. And we certainly don’t talk about the circus mermaids who performed that dissolution nightly—women who erased themselves one held breath at a time, becoming myths for audiences who preferred the fiction to the woman drowning behind the glass. But every Valentine’s Day, when we celebrate love with hearts and flowers, remember that somewhere in Sarasota, in Gibsonton, there are old women who still can’t take deep breaths, whose joints still ache from swimming with bound legs, who survived being mermaids long enough to warn us: any love that requires you to lose your voice is not love. It’s just another sideshow, and you’re the one in the tank.

Let’s start with the carnie version, because at least that one has witnesses. In the circus and theater world, whistling backstage isn’t just bad luck—it’s potentially lethal. Back in the day, stagehands used whistle signals to communicate scene changes and cue rope drops. A casual whistle from some fool walking through could signal the wrong rope to release, bringing down a thousand-pound backdrop on whoever was unlucky enough to be standing underneath. Even now, with modern communication systems, the taboo holds.

But here’s where it gets delicious—the practical danger was never the only reason. Circus folk, being a superstitious lot who live their lives on the edge of disaster, knew what indigenous peoples and rural communities worldwide have always known: whistling is a summons. In Appalachian folklore, whistling in the woods calls the attention of things that hunt between the trees. In Mexican tradition, whistling at night invites La Lechuza. In Russian folklore, whistling indoors brings poverty and misfortune because you’re literally whistling your luck away. The Turks believed whistling called the Devil himself. And nearly every culture with fae folklore agrees: whistling is how you get Their attention, and trust me, you don’t want Their attention.

The circus folk knew they were already dancing on the knife’s edge between worlds. Every time that tent went up, they created a liminal space—not quite real life, not quite fantasy, a perfect circular threshold where anything could happen. The ringmaster’s whistle commanded acts, sure, but it also commanded attention from things that love spectacle, chaos, and games with unclear rules. Combine that with the very real danger of miscued ropes, and you’ve got a taboo backed by both blood and belief. The old carnies would tell you: that sandbag that fell when Jimmy whistled? Maybe it was just bad timing. Or maybe something heard an invitation and gave the rope a little help.

In Florida’s circus winter quarters, the rule extended beyond the tent. Gibsonton old-timers would tell you never to whistle walking between trailers at night, and absolutely never whistle near the train cars. Sarasota’s circus royalty might’ve lived in mansions, but they followed the same rules—no whistling in the gardens where performers practiced, no whistling near the elephant barns. They’d all seen too much, traveled too many dark roads between towns, set up too many tents in fields that felt wrong. They knew that when you live your life as professionally extraordinary, you attract extraordinary attention. And some attention comes with a price you don’t want to pay.

The most chilling story I found came from a retired trapeze artist from the 1940s. She swore she saw a stagehand whistle while adjusting the rigging one night after a show. The whistle was answered—not by falling equipment, but by another whistle from somewhere up in the dark beyond the lights. Then another. Then another, each one closer, each one slightly off-key, like something was trying to learn the tune. The stagehand went white, dropped his tools, and ran. He never came back. They found his tools the next morning, arranged in a perfect circle where he’d dropped them. Nobody else heard the whistles that answered him, but nobody doubted it either. When carnies tell you not to whistle, you don’t whistle.

So next time you’re walking past a theater, a circus tent, or through the woods, and you’ve got a catchy tune stuck in your head—hum it, sing it, but don’t you dare purse those lips and whistle. Because whether it’s a sandbag or something far stranger that answers, some invitations can’t be taken back. The circus folk learned this the hard way, written in both practical blood and otherworldly bargains. They built their taboos from equal parts workplace safety and ancient wisdom, understanding that in places where magic and mundane meet, even the smallest sound can open doors you never meant to unlock. And if something does answer your whistle? Well, you’d better hope it just wants to drop a sandbag on your head. The alternative involves running through a labyrinth that doesn’t follow the rules of physics, and trust me, that show never ends well.

Let’s talk numbers, because Ringling certainly did, obsessively, right until the end. In 1925, he was worth an estimated $200 million in today’s money. By 1926, he’d spent $1.5 million building Ca’ d’Zan (about $24 million today), plus another fortune importing art, furniture, and yes, peacocks from across the globe. These weren’t your garden-variety birds—Ringling purchased breeding pairs from specialized aviaries, the kind that supplied European royalty. Each bird cost what a typical American made in a month. Their specialized diet, the groundskeepers to manage them, the veterinary care—it was a bleeding money pit disguised as moving art. But that was the point. Ringling didn’t want pets; he wanted everyone to know he could afford to let money strut around his lawn, screaming.

The timing is what makes you wince. Ringling was importing peacocks and gold-leafed ceilings while secretly leveraging everything he owned against increasingly risky investments. He was playing shell games with circus profits, New York real estate, and Florida land speculation, convinced he could juggle forever. The peacocks arrived at Ca’ d’Zan in 1926, peak hubris season. By 1929, when the stock market crashed, Ringling had already mortgaged the mansion twice. By 1932, he was borrowing money to feed the elephants while peacocks still paraded around his estate eating imported grain. He died in 1936 with $311 in his personal bank account, the circus in receivership, and those damn peacocks still strutting around like nothing had changed.

But here’s where it gets mystically interesting, even without curses. Peacocks in every culture that keeps them are symbols of dangerous beauty—the evil eye made flesh and feather. In Greek mythology, the peacock’s eyes are the hundred eyes of Argus, the watchman who sees everything, transferred to the bird’s tail by Hera after his death. In Indian tradition, they’re associated with Saraswati, goddess of wisdom, but also with warning—their screams allegedly predict rain and danger. In medieval Christianity, they symbolized resurrection but also pride, the deadliest sin. Theater people won’t allow peacock feathers on stage because they represent the evil eye, watching and waiting for hubris to trip you up. Ringling brought dozens of these walking warning systems to his estate, their tails a hundred eyes watching his empire crumble while he refused to see what was right in front of him.

The real metaphysical joke is that peacocks are also garbage birds with gorgeous PR. (And I’m a bird person, so that should tell you something.) They’re mean as snakes, loud as freight trains, and destructive as toddlers with hammers. They attack their own reflections, destroy gardens, and scream at ungodly hours for no discernible reason. They’re basically fancy chickens who’ve convinced the world they’re phoenixes. Which makes them perfect mascots for the circus itself—all spectacle, no substance, beautiful from a distance but vicious up close. Ringling’s peacocks terrorized his guests, destroyed his wife Mable’s gardens, and cost a fortune to maintain, but he kept importing more because the image mattered more than the reality. Sound familiar? It should. It’s the same philosophy that had him gold-leafing ceilings while his creditors circled like vultures.

The descendants of those original peacocks still patrol Ca’ d’Zan, now a museum where tourists pay to see how the mighty fell. The birds are protected, fed, and maintained by the state of Florida—technically owned by the public now, just like the mansion, the art, everything Ringling couldn’t hold onto. They’ve outlived him by almost ninety years, still screaming their harsh calls across the bay, still spreading their tails in displays of beauty that dare you not to look. Docents will tell you they’re part of the estate’s “historic character,” but anyone who understands symbols knows better. They’re living reminders that pride doesn’t just come before a fall—sometimes it survives the fall, struts through the wreckage, and screams at dawn over the ruins.

When you see them—and if you visit Ca’ d’Zan, you will see them—remember what you’re really looking at. Not beautiful birds, but Ringling’s hubris made flesh, his refusal to see the obvious, his belief that if something looked magnificent enough, it must be magnificent. The peacocks cost him thousands while his empire collapsed, but he kept them because admitting he couldn’t afford peacocks meant admitting the greatest showman on earth was just another broke circus barker in a borrowed palace. The birds survived him because that’s what symbols do—they outlast the people who think they’re just decorations. Every time one screams across the museum grounds, it’s not a call. It’s a laugh. The joke was always on Ringling, thinking he owned them, when really, they were just waiting for him to lose everything so they could inherit the stage.

John Ringling didn’t just winter in Sarasota—he conquered it like a sequined Caesar. In 1911, he took one look at this sleepy fishing village and decided it needed more gilt, more grandeur, and definitely more elephants. By 1927, he’d built Ca’ d’Zan, a mansion so ostentatious it made European nobility look understated. But here’s the delicious irony: while Ringling was importing Venetian facades and throwing champagne-soaked parties for society’s finest, he was still fundamentally a carnival barker who’d made his fortune displaying “human curiosities.” Sarasota’s old-money wannabes had to swallow their snobbery because Ringling’s money spent just as well as theirs—better, actually. The town became a glittering sanctuary where circus performers practiced on the beach and aerialists hung their practice rigs between palm trees, transforming the entire coast into an open-air big top.

Meanwhile, forty miles north, Gibsonton was writing its own love letter to the peculiar. If Sarasota was circus aristocracy, Gibsonton was its beating heart—raw, real, and absolutely refusing to apologize for anything. In the 1940s, carnival and sideshow performers didn’t just visit; they moved in permanently. The town actually rewrote its zoning laws to accommodate its new residents. Where else could Al “The Giant” Tomaini serve as police chief, standing at eight-foot-four in his custom uniform? Where else could Grady “Lobster Boy” Stiles Jr. drink at the same bar as Percilla “The Monkey Girl” Bejano without anyone staring? This wasn’t tolerance—it was belonging.

The magic of both communities was that they understood something the rest of America didn’t: sanctuary isn’t about charity, it’s about recognition. These circus folk weren’t seeking pity or acceptance; they were seeking a place where their gifts were seen as exactly that—gifts. In Sarasota’s manicured gardens, retired circus stars taught local kids to juggle. In Gibsonton’s trailer parks, the “World’s Strangest Couple” raised perfectly ordinary children who went to perfectly ordinary schools where having a bearded lady for a mom was just Tuesday. Both towns became liminal spaces, thresholds between the mundane and the marvelous, where the usual rules dissolved like cotton candy in rain.

The cruel irony? These performers who’d spent their lives behind glass, displayed as oddities, created the most normal American dream imaginable: communities where your kids could play in the yard, where you knew your neighbors, where you could retire in peace. They built churches and schools, established burial funds and mutual aid societies. The International Independent Showmen’s Association, founded in Gibsonton in 1968, still maintains a cemetery with a section specifically for circus performers—because even in death, carnies take care of their own. Florida didn’t save the circus; the circus saved Florida, transforming sleepy coastal towns into something extraordinary.

Today, the elephants are gone from Sarasota, and Gibsonton’s special zoning laws are mostly memory. But drive through either town and you’ll still feel it—that electric sense that normal is negotiable, that magic prefers warm weather, and that sanctuary can wear both a diamond tiara and a tattooed face. These weren’t just winter quarters; they were proof that America’s outcasts could build their own promised land, complete with orange groves, ocean views, and the radical notion that being different wasn’t just acceptable—it was the whole damn point.

In my series The Last Ringmaster, I’ve taken these two magnificent truths and woven them into one: Midway City, where Venetian fountains splash just blocks from trailer parks, where the theater owner might be a retired strongman and the society matrons could all have secret tattoos. It’s Sarasota’s grandeur dancing with Gibsonton’s grit, a place where both kinds of sanctuary exist in the same zip code. Because sometimes fiction needs to tell the truth that history kept in two separate towns—that outcasts and aristocrats, freaks and royalty, are all just different acts in the same grand circus. And in Midway City, just like in the real Florida that inspired it, everyone gets their place in the spotlight, and more importantly, everyone gets to go home when the show is over.

Sure, on top, it’s all pumpkin pie, cozy sweaters, and that one relative who insists on discussing politics at the dinner table. But under all that? Gratitude. Connection. The tiny glimmers of light that carry us through the darker days.

In my world—and Harley’s—those glimmers might literally come from beneath the water.

A First Look at Christmas Tides: A Last Ringmaster Novella

On Christmas Eve, Harley discovers mysterious lights beneath the dark waters of the Florida preserve—a hidden community of water fae holding a sacred memorial for their lost. For fifty years, they’ve hidden their ritual behind the human town’s Christmas boat parade. But this year, the parade’s been canceled, and a new development is poisoning their home.

Here’s a sneak peek from early in the story—a moment when Harley first glimpses the impossible.

*****

Excerpt:

“The lights are getting brighter,” Kitty noted, her voice carrying a note of urgency. “And the singing… Harley, I think they know we’re here. They’re… they’re asking for something. In the old language.”

As if responding to her words, several of the underwater lights rose closer to the surface, their blue-green glow becoming more distinct. Harley could almost make out shapes moving with them—fluid forms that seemed to dance through the water with impossible grace.

“Should I cut the engine?” Cole asked, his hand hovering over the controls.

“No, wait,” Harley said, her fae sight picking up something important. “They’re not running from us. Look—they’re doing that thing like when Candy wants us to follow her to something she thinks is cool but probably dangerous.” Harley watched the lights shift their pattern, creating an obvious pathway through the water. “Great. Ancient water fae want to play follow-the-leader into the creepy part of the preserve. Because that’s never gone badly for me before.”

Indeed, the lights had shifted their pattern, creating what looked like a pathway through the water. Some moved ahead, then circled back, as if checking to make sure the boat was following.

“They want us to follow them,” Kitty said with certainty. “The singing changed when they saw us. It’s less mournful now, more… hopeful?”

“Hope’s dangerous,” Harley muttered, though she was already gesturing for Cole to follow the lights. “Hope makes you do stupid things like trust mysterious underwater spirits during a magical crisis.” Her demon coiled tighter in her chest, sensing her growing emotional investment. “Which, obviously, we’re going to do anyway because I’m constitutionally incapable of walking away from people who need help. It’s a character flaw.”

*****

Christmas Tides is a story about remembrance, unlikely partnerships, and the hope that still glows when everything else goes dim. (And yes, there are sparkles. Literal and emotional.)

I’ll be revealing the cover—and the release date—in my next newsletter this Thanksgiving, but for now, I wanted to raise a glass to you. Thank you for reading, for cheering Harley on, and for letting me share my strange little worlds with you. You’re the best kind of found family.

We know they’re wrong, but sometimes… they make sense. We see the wound beneath the wickedness, the hurt that became hunger, the pain that curdled into power. Think of Wicked’s Elphaba, painted as the villain for daring to question the rules. Or Black Panther’s Killmonger, whose rage was born from grief. Or even Magneto, whose war on humanity began with his own survival.

These are the ones who haunt us — not because they’re evil, but because they remind us that anyone can fall if the world pushes hard enough.

In The Last Ringmaster, Harley’s learned that lesson all too well. Under the fae big top, nobody is purely good or perfectly wicked. The performers who call the circus home all have scars — some visible, some buried beneath glitter and charm. Even the monsters have their reasons. And sometimes, those reasons are heartbreakingly human.

So yes, I have a little sympathy for the devil. Especially the ones who smile while they burn.

Your turn: Who’s a villain you can’t help but understand — even if you shouldn’t?

Think about it — would The Little Mermaid be half as memorable without Ursula’s fabulous sea witch swagger? Would Star Wars feel as epic without Darth Vader’s grand entrances and that cape that deserves its own credit line? Or imagine the chaos of the Marvel universe without Loki — equal parts charm, menace, and mischief. These are the characters who understand the power of performance — who turn villainy into an art form.

In every good story, the villain steals the show — stepping into the spotlight with confidence that says yes, I’m the problem, and I look fantastic doing it. And really, isn’t that what draws us in? They embody everything we secretly wish we could be: free from rules, full of charisma, and always ready with a killer line.

The circus understands this instinctively. Every act is a performance, a balancing act between danger and delight. Under the fae big top of The Last Ringmaster, heroes and villains trade masks as easily as they swap costumes. Harley’s world thrives on that blur — one act of rebellion away from redemption, one flick of glitter away from chaos.

Because in the circus, light and shadow aren’t enemies. They’re dance partners. And when the curtain rises, even the darkest characters deserve their moment in the spotlight.

Your turn: Who’s your favorite stylish villain — the one who makes evil look good? Hit reply and tell me, or join the fun on my Facebook and Instagram post this week!

Heaps of Love

Lynda