Crone&Quill

Crone&Quill Appalachian writer and visual creator building worlds from memory, magic and wild ideas. Breaking the old ideologies we were never meant to carry.

Honoring those who came before me while stepping into the wisdom, fire and freedom of who I am becoming. Author & researcher sharing Appalachian folklore, witches & cryptids. Based in NE TN. Join the Folklore Circle for book news, event dates & freebies at croneandquill.com.

🌕 The old stories say they came out when the mountains lost the light.The Moon-Eyed People are one of Appalachia’s stran...
09/20/2026

🌕 The old stories say they came out when the mountains lost the light.

The Moon-Eyed People are one of Appalachia’s stranger and more enduring legends. Described in some tellings as pale, light-sensitive people who avoided the sun and moved more freely at night.

Like so much mountain folklore, the details shift depending on who is telling the story. Over time, history, speculation, and retelling have all blurred together.

That is part of what makes these stories worth preserving carefully.
Not because every old tale should be taken literally, but because the stories people chose to keep can tell us something about the places they came from, the people who told them, and what they were trying to explain.

đź“– Some legends survive because there was never a simple answer.

I’ve shared a lot of the stories I grew up hearing, the places that shaped me, and the work I’m building now. I also rea...
09/18/2026

I’ve shared a lot of the stories I grew up hearing, the places that shaped me, and the work I’m building now. I also realized I don’t always share much about the person behind it all.

🤲🏻 So here I am, in bullet points. A Gen-X woman with Appalachian roots, unfinished childhood novels, motherhood, a few moves, a tattoo studio, too many creative side quests to count, a Dogo Argentino keeping watch over the household, and a lifelong habit of listening more than I talk.

I’m much more comfortable behind a book, a camera, or a computer than in front of one, so consider this my version of introducing myself without having to make awkward eye contact for ten slides.

If we ever meet at a signing, festival, or bookstore someday, at least now you’ll already know a little about me.

🕯️ Some folks inherited the knowing.The woman who could tell rain was coming before the clouds gathered.The grandmother ...
09/17/2026

🕯️ Some folks inherited the knowing.

The woman who could tell rain was coming before the clouds gathered.

The grandmother who noticed when the birds went quiet.

The person who knew which dreams to remember.

The one who could walk into a room and feel that something had changed before anybody spoke.

In Appalachia, not every old practice looked like what we now call magic. Much of it lived in observation, prayer, family knowledge, weather signs, remedies, warnings, dreams, and the quiet habit of paying attention.

✍🏻 It is almost the day! Come meet me at Kingsport’s new bookstore, Tales and Taverns from 3-6pm. I can’t come without g...
09/17/2026

✍🏻 It is almost the day! Come meet me at Kingsport’s new bookstore, Tales and Taverns from 3-6pm.

I can’t come without gifts! I will be bringing stickers and bookmarks too!

đź“š Katelin Elizabeth Canter - Author and I hope to see you there!

✍🏻 The more I wrote, the more I kept returning to the same question of what if we have spent so much time fearing a hell...
09/16/2026

✍🏻 The more I wrote, the more I kept returning to the same question of what if we have spent so much time fearing a hell somewhere beyond this life that we have failed to recognize the hell human beings can create for one another here?

I do not pretend to have all the answers. I only know what I have witnessed.

And through all of it, I have never seen the fires of hell.

⛰️ Mary Foust’s story stays with me because of what she had to endure and survive in these Appalachian Mountains in her ...
09/15/2026

⛰️ Mary Foust’s story stays with me because of what she had to endure and survive in these Appalachian Mountains in her time.

There was nothing simple about the work Appalachian women were expected to know.

They cooked without convenience. They spun and wove cloth. They preserved food, tended gardens, raised children, cared for the sick, kept homes going through hard winters, remembered which plants were useful, watched the weather, stretched what they had, and carried whole households with labor that was rarely written down.

By the time Mary was an old woman, some of those everyday skills had become unusual enough that people traveled to see them demonstrated.

Think about that..

A woman can spend her life doing what survival requires, only to have the next generation call it quaint.

I don’t want to romanticize the hardship Appalachian women endured, and I don’t want to reduce them to bonnets, cabins, spinning wheels, or some pretty idea of “the old days.”

I want to respect them for what they actually were:

skilled women.

working women.

women who knew how to make something last.

women whose knowledge often disappeared because nobody thought ordinary women’s work was important enough to record.

Mary Foust lived long enough to see the world around her change dramatically. And somewhere along the way, the things she had simply known how to do became “history.”

Maybe that is why women like Mary deserve more than nostalgia.

They deserve to be remembered as people whose hands held knowledge a whole culture once depended on.

Some things aren’t meant to stay buried.

🧂In my part of Southern Appalachia, people say that spilling salt on the table was bad luck.But that is a simple fix. Ta...
09/14/2026

🧂In my part of Southern Appalachia, people say that spilling salt on the table was bad luck.

But that is a simple fix. Take a pinch of that spilled salt and throw it over your left shoulder to blind the devil before he could make use of your mistake.

Like a lot of old Appalachian beliefs, it is hard to say where superstition ended and habit began. But that is part of what makes folklore worth keeping. These small household rituals remind us that people once moved through the world believing even an accident might mean something.

✍🏻 This Saturday, September 19th, I’ll be at Tales & Taverns Bookstore in Kingsport from 3:00–6:00 PM for an Appalachian...
09/13/2026

✍🏻 This Saturday, September 19th, I’ll be at Tales & Taverns Bookstore in Kingsport from 3:00–6:00 PM for an Appalachian folklore book signing.

These books grew from the things I’ve always been drawn to, like the old wives’ tales, family signs, mountain beliefs, folk practices, and stories that somehow kept finding their way from one generation to the next.

⛰️ Some of you will recognize pieces of your own family in these pages. You may remember a grandmother who knew things without explaining how she knew them. A saying you heard growing up. A sign somebody always watched for. A remedy kept in the family. Or one of those old stories you were never quite sure you believed, but never completely forgot, either.

I’ll have What the Mountains Remember, Tales of the Mountain, and A Guided Grimoire of Appalachian Witch Wisdom with me to sign.

📖 And if you have an old saying, family sign, bit of folklore, or mountain story of your own, bring it with you. I’d love to hear it.

📍 Tales & Taverns Bookstore — Kingsport, TN
đź“… Saturday, September 19
🕒 3:00–6:00 PM

Save this post, swipe through the books, and come share an afternoon of Appalachian stories with me.

Address

Church Hill, TN
37642

Telephone

+19807452943

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