What the Tooth Fairy Left Behind in Belle Morte

Belle Morte Remembers What You Forgot

So Belle Morte means "beautiful death" in Cajun French, which honestly tells you everything you need to know about this town lol. It's one of those tiny coastal Louisiana towns with one road in and one road out, and if you've ever been to one you already know the vibe. The marsh is gorgeous, but it'll also swallow you whole and nobody's going to ask a lot of questions about it.

Last month I introduced y'all to Belle Morte, and this month I want to get into what's actually wrong with it.

Peyton Thibodeaux grew up there and she left, and when she finally comes back she swears up and down it's only for a few days. She is not staying. Spoiler alert, if you're from a small Southern town you already know how that goes.

Down there everybody knows everybody, everybody's got a saint on the dashboard and a grandmother who knows which plants fix what, and there's a whole list of things you just don't talk about. Church and folklore kind of blend together and nobody thinks twice about it.

The scariest part of this book for me isn't anything jumping out of the dark, it's memory. Going home and realizing the version of your childhood you've been carrying around your whole life might not be the real one. That one gets under my skin.

The Tooth Fairy Drowns Here is in progress right now and I'm going to keep sharing pieces of Belle Morte as I write it, so make sure you're following @BayouBoundBooks everywhere so you don't miss anything. And if you're in your spooky era this month, the new Porch Stories Halloween collection is up now at bayouboundbooks.com.

See y'all on the porch.

The Perfect Gift for Someone Going Through a Hard Season

You know someone who’s going through it right now.

Maybe they just moved somewhere new and don’t know anybody yet. Maybe they’re stuck in a job that’s draining them, or they just walked away from a relationship that took more than it gave. Or maybe nothing big happened at all, and they just feel lost, like everyone else got a map and they didn’t.

You can’t fix it for them. But you can hand them something that says, you’re not doing this alone.

That’s exactly why I’d put Chasing 25 and Get Out of the Swamp in the same gift bag.

Chasing 25 is the honest friend
Chasing 25 is a survival guide for the messy, confusing seasons of figuring out who you are. Don’t let the title fool you, it’s not only for people in their twenties. If you’re starting over at any age, it’s for you. It doesn’t pretend any of this is easy. Reading it feels less like being lectured and more like sitting across from someone who’s been there.

Get Out of the Swamp is where you work through it
Get Out of the Swamp is a guided journal, but not the kind that makes you feel guilty for skipping a day. Every week gives you a quote, a challenge, and a journal prompt. That’s it. One week at a time, at your own pace, no pressure to write every single day.

Why they work better together
Chasing 25 helps you understand what you’re going through. Get Out of the Swamp gives you a place to actually do something with it. One is the conversation, and the other is where you get to talk back.

Who to give them to

• The friend who just went through a breakup

• The sibling who just moved away from home

• The coworker who keeps saying they feel stuck

• Yourself, honestly, if any of this sounds like you

Why I made them
I know what it feels like to face hard things and feel completely alone in it. My hope is that these books help whoever’s holding them heal, or at the very least, keep them company while they get through it. Nobody should have to feel alone in the hard parts.

Where to find them
Both are available in paperback on Amazon, under my maiden name, Isabelle McGee.

Chasing 25
Get Out of the Swamp

Want to know more about how these two pair together? Read this post. And if you’re wondering why the name on the cover is different from the one on this blog, here’s the answer.

Isabelle Herrscher
Ink dipped in soul, bound by the bayou.

Is Isabelle McGee the Same Author as Isabelle Herrscher?

Yes! Isabelle McGee and Isabelle Herrscher are the same person, me. McGee is my maiden name, and Herrscher is my married name. I got married on August 5th, 2026, and I’ll be publishing under Isabelle Herrscher from here on out.

Here are the quick answers to the questions I keep getting.

Is Herrscher a pen name?
No, it’s my real married name.

Which books are under Isabelle McGee?
My first three publications stay under McGee:

• Prompt to Grow, my very first publication, a guided journal

• Get Out of the Swamp, my second guided journal

• Chasing 25, my first full-length book

Are you republishing those books under Herrscher?
No. I’m keeping them under McGee on purpose. They mark a chapter of my life, and I want them to stay part of that chapter.

What’s coming under Herrscher?
The book I’m working on right now. The second it’s finished, it’ll be published under Isabelle Herrscher, and so will everything after it.

A little about the McGee books
Prompt to Grow was my very first time publishing anything. Even though it’s a guided journal, it taught me so much about the whole process.

Get Out of the Swamp is where I took everything I learned from that first attempt and made it better in so many ways. I expanded the idea into a quote, a challenge, and a journal prompt for each week. Both journals were made to take the pressure off of daily journaling.

Chasing 25 is my first full-length book, and I’m super proud of it. I wrote it before I met my husband, and I want to keep it under McGee because I learned those lessons, and I want my life to keep evolving for the best.

Want the full story behind the name change? Read it here.

Isabelle Herrscher

Why Chasing 25 and Get Out of the Swamp Work So Well Together

Lately I have been getting asked a lot which book to start with? Honestly, my answer is two of them. No that is not some kind of sales pitch. It is just flat out honesty, let me explain why i Recommend both Chasing 25 and Get Out Of The Swamp.

First of all, Chasing 25 covers 25 different lessons I had to learn the hard way. It is not a memoir, think of it more as a survival guide from me to you and a companion to accompany you. Chasing 25 touches on heavy life themes like grief, self-priority, letting go, showing up for yourself when nobody else is going to. It names the thing. It sits with you in whatever slump or heavy season you're in and tells you the truth about it instead of trying to sell you on some sort of quick fix.

Get Out of the Swamp is the part that I believe could be a huge way to help you further process both what you are going through and what you are reading. It's a guided journal, 52 weeks, and each week gives you a prompt, a challenge, and a quote to sit with. Nothing more complicated than that.

Here's the thing about Get Out of the Swamp, I built it on purpose. It's not meant to be a daily journal. You can do it every day if that's what you want to do or if that is what you need. You can work in it every other day or once a week, the way it's actually intended. The whole purpose to try and help take that silent pressure off of daily journaling.

I know how overwhelming daily journaling can feel. I had always wanted to be one of those people who could daily journal, especially given my love for writing but it just wasn’t for me if I am being honest. I created Get Out Of The Swamp to take that silent pressure away. That pressure to sit down every single day and have to sort of find something to say is exactly what keeps a lot people from starting. So I built Get Out of the Swamp to work around that instead of against it. We already have so much on our plates and for me adding another daily task on top of all the other stuff kind makes me want to do nothing at all so I took that narrative away when it came down to journaling.

That is exactly why these two work so well side by side. Chasing 25 tells you what you're carrying and gives you the lessons to move through it. Get Out of the Swamp gives you somewhere to actually put that down, one week at a time, or at whatever pace you would like to actually keep.

You don't need to have it figured out to start either one. You just have to start.

Chasing 25: https://a.co/d/01rphEfW
Get Out Of The Swamp: https://a.co/d/06GXSc6p

More soon. 🖤