[R. They/She/He] A writing blog. Working on a story about a couple of magical hot messes. (I reblog a lot of stuff to @foolsnonsense; Norse myth stuff to @those-horrid-horrid-things)
[Image description: The phrase "Something Wicked" in glowing, red, neon cursive on a black background; it is surrounded by the following neon signs: an arrow, a crescent moon, a palm tree and a cocktail. End description]
“So, I’ll ask you again, Seer. Could this poor bastard ever be redeemed?”
WIP Intro: Something Wicked
Jade Shaw, a witch and one of the few Seers left in the world, has been using her ability to see the future at Las Vegas’s casinos for years, but lately even that hasn’t been enough to pay the bills.
So she doesn’t object when Casimir Mraz, vampire and former hit-man, with a reputation stretching back to Vegas’s organized-crime days, offers her a deal.
Caz says he only wants to kill and drain the blood of people with no chance for redemption, and asks Jade to determine for him whether the city’s worst of the worst will re-offend.
But things go sideways when a cop catches Jade and Caz disposing of a body, and blackmails them into helping him solve some unsolvable cases.
Soon, the two are facing off against giants, Fae and several of Caz’s exes.
Status: Third draft (including reworking several plot elements); considering this the first of a series (my brain won’t let me call this a book out loud without thinking I’m jinxing myself, so)
Genre: fantasy, urban fantasy, with some elements of crime and mystery
POV: Third-person limited of the two main characters
Setting: Modern day (pre-pandemic), in and around Las Vegas, NV
Themes/tags: Redemption, justice, some gore, murder on a bi-weekly basis, dark humor, neurodiversity, queer characters (including two disaster bi leads)
What can you expect here?
Currently I’ve been posting a lot of dialogue and jokes about my characters, as well as some aesthetic posts. Snippets of my writing can be found here. I’d like to try sharing some longer excerpts, such as my first chapter when I’m done editing it.
Taglist (ask to be +/-) below the cut
Characters
Jade Shaw: A witch with the ability to calculate your life’s outcome down to the exact percent chance. A mathematics PhD student juggling her work-study job, her meetings with Caz, and work as an odds-maker and poker player. Wishes these visions of the end of the world would lay off a bit.
Caz Mraz: Vampire, ex-hitman, polyglot, excellent dancer and an absolute train wreck of a man. Caz says Jade is helping ease his conscience about his need to occasionally to kill and feed off someone’s life force, but Jade is still doubtful about his supposed “change of heart.”
Violet Anouilh: A hedgewitch with an expertise on plants and potions, living with her mother Marie Anouilh on a farm outside of the city that is welcoming to vampires and werewolves. Trying get Jade to notice she’s been flirting with her at her family’s fruit stand for days now.
Ruby Hall: Jade’s best friend and a witch specializing in illusions. She performs at the casino as the assistant to magician Dominic the Great — who is actually her pet rabbit Domino under a powerful glamour.
Lila Brown: A werewolf currently living in and around the tunnels of Las Vegas. Used as Caz’s eyes and ears in the city on occasion. A Gen-Xer who knows a bit about Caz’s past.
Theoris Myrina: The head of the Southwest Coven of witches. Jade’s former mentor who barred her from the coven after learning she made a deal with a vampire.
Kenny Brooks: A detective who is on the verge of retirement — mainly because he keeps spouting theories about two suspects seen around seemingly unconnected homicides and disappearances, and his coworkers are getting sick of it. Spoilers.
Amelia: Caz’s former girlfriend, who left him after interpreting his secretiveness and strange habits as signs of a drug addiction. Caz is determined to win her back (but if he happens to date some others along the way, including a rich Fae prince, what’s the harm?). Spoilers about Amelia can be found here.
1925 c. Silk plain weave with metallic thread supplementary-warps with metallic thread and silk satin (lame) and metallic thread embroidery evening gown with train by design house of Louise Boulanger France. From LACMA.
“It's not fair.” The little ghost kicks impotently at the chalk lines around her feet. “I ain't done nothing.”
I nod, setting down my chalk and spellbook. “It does sound like there might have been a bit of a misunderstanding.”
“She took against me, that's what happened,” the dead girl says with a scowl. She looks about fourteen, round faced and spotty, with whisps of brown hair peaking out from under her mob-cap. Her face and her crossed arms have a tell-tale bluish tinge to them. A cholera death.
“I been here for don't know how long and never gave any trouble. Nobody ever complained about me 'till her.”
…well, that's not strictly true.
Number 12, Barclay Street has been attracting rumours of haunting since the mid nineteenth century.
Sounds of faint singing and crying in the corridors at night. Cold spots. Doors that open and close by themselves. Animals acting strangely. Harmless, mid to low-level stuff, typical for a bored teenage poltergeist.
Still, pointing that out isn't likely to achieve much, and certainly the most recent complaints of blood running down the walls, screams in the dark and paralysing night terrors seem distinctly out of character.
The ghost toes the chalk again, more tentatively this time. It stays resolutely unbroken.
She could get out if she wanted to. I'm not one of those assholes who brings out their full arsenal of wards and sigils for a first meeting with a level 2 spectre. The summoning circle will keep her in one place for as long as I need her to talk, but it wouldn't hold for a moment if she really fought against it.
I take it as a good sign that she's still here. Pouting or not, she's clearly willing to work with me.
“None of the others could do this,” she says. “None of 'em even saw me.” She looks up. “Are you here to exise me?”
“Exorcise,” I say instinctively, and curse myself when she flinches. “Sorry, no, no! I don't exorcise people from their homes without good reason, not if they're happy where they are.”
“I was happy. Till she started calling in all them ghost hunters.”
Mrs Delaney had been quite persistent in her attempts to 'fix' her haunted house. Most of the people she found were charlatans, of course, but I'd still arranged an appointment as fast as I could once word reached me. It wouldn't have been long before she happened upon somebody with Talent, and unfortunately not everybody in this field knows how to behave like a professional.
“I think we might be able to help each other,” I say, careful to keep my voice calm and level.
“Don't see how. Not unless you can exorcise Her.”
“Not quite what I had in mind.” I pull out my phone and scroll through my photos. “You say that you're not the cause of the most recent incidents of paranormal activity?”
A pause. The ghost gnaws on her lip. I wait, patiently, keeping my body language open and nonthreatening. “I… I knocked her coffee cup over,” she admits at last. “She was being mean and talking on her telephone, saying I done all these things when I never did! So I decided to show her what I could do if I wanted.”
“Hmm.” The ghost eyes me nervously, as if expecting me to pull out a book, bell and candle and banish her on the spot.
“I only tipped it,” she adds. “I didn't break it or nothing!”
“You shouldn't have touched it at all,” I say sternly. “But… I can appreciate that you were frustrated, so let's say no more about it.”
The ghost looks relieved.
“My point is,” I continue, “if you weren't the one making blood rain from the ceiling or tormenting people in their sleep, then what was? There's no other ghosts on the property.” I find the picture I was looking for. “You can get anywhere around the house, right? Including behind the furniture and in the backs of cupboards?”
“Yes'm.”
I hold the phone up so that she can see the picture on the screen. “I'm going to let you go free in a moment, and I need you to see if you can find anything that looks like this.”
The ghost wrinkles her forehead. “What's that when it's at home?”
“Black mould,” I say, reaching out a foot to break the binding circle. “And I'm pretty sure it's the cause of this haunting.”
Good news! My upcoming vampire novel can now be pre-ordered as an e-book from Gumroad! (in English; Dutch version to follow) Buying direct via Gumroad ensures the most money from the sale goes to the author, and also gets you DRM-free epub, pdf, and mobi formats. If you buy now, you can already download and read the first scene! The full book will be emailed to you on September 22 - one day ahead of the rest of the world! Link to Gumroad in bio!
Anna never wanted to be a vampire. After seven years in hiding, she is finally safe—but safety isn’t the same as having a life.
When she visits her prospective friend Henk and his blood father Aloïsius at their isolated house in the Dutch forest, she finds herself confronted with unsettling truths about life on the edge of moral catastrophe.
What disturbs Anna most is Aloïsius himself: a practicing Catholic who seeks God’s grace while living as a serial killer, openly admitting he exists in “a state of mortal sin.” And Henk, who lost his faith decades ago, seems content remaining for nearly a century with the man who murdered him. The longer she stays, the less she understands the household around her, or herself.
Grounded in Dutch landscape and culture, This Body, This Blood is a novel about sin, survival, and what we make of the lives we never chose.
The vampires are queer; the style is bleak with a glimmer of hope; the theology is thorough. Check the tag 'this body this blood' to check out a writing sample!
Shout-out to characters who don't plan to survive their stories! Heroes who think they can only atone for their failures through sacrifice, villains who don't think they deserve to live in the world they're trying to create. Gimme that passive suicidality baby, mm-mm, delicious.
the thing that you HAVE to understand about much ado about nothing is that beatrice and benedick are NOT COOL. they are HUGE DORKS and also major softies. they make everything loud and obnoxious and about themselves because they are SO hurt about what happened in the past between them and SO sensitive about it. Beatrice says this more explicitly but it’s also true about benedick. he gets legitimately so upset and angry when he thinks beatrice doesn’t know who he is at the party and she calls him a dumbass. he storms off stage when he sees her next. because he’s hurt!!! because it really really matters to him what she thinks!!!! and right after that Beatrice literally talks about how Benedick “lent [her his heart] awhile, and I gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one. Marry, once before he won it of me with false dice” HE BETRAYED HER and she’s STILL UPSET. “thus goes everyone to the world but I, and I am sunburnt” she is not railing against marriage because she’s principled against it or because she’s Strong Female Character (tm). she’s sunburnt!!! she loved benedick more than he loved her and she’s still torn up about it!!!! she would rather never deal with that again!!! which is what you have to understand here. they are putting up fronts that they don’t care all the time. they are putting of fronts of Cool Mean Witty Remark Girl and Living It Up As A Bachelor Dude but this is not who they are in ANY way and they are both so sensitive and get hurt so easily!!!!!! and this is why they almost don’t get together this is why they almost take it all back in the last scene!!! they can’t be vulnerable! they can’t risk it! it’s easier to be Cool Mean Witty Remark Girl than just Beatrice who got her heart broken and now can’t trust anymore. it’s easier to be Living It Up As A Bachelor Dude when you blew it with the girl you’re obsessed with and you survived war just to go back to her after you broke her heart and she calls you a dumbass to your face. the vulnerability necessary to their relationship only happens through their friends but otherwise they are actually hopeless. it is so so important to me that these two are both incredibly sappy losers
"I like Stone Soup," said the cow. "Stone Soup is an honest con. We get a meal, everyone thinks they've seen a little bit of magic, you sell the stone for a little bit of pocket money, you pick up another stone at the next town. Everyone gets something."
"And if I remember right, you were the one who suggested we steal the magic beans."
"That wasn't stealing, that was a legitimate trade."
"A legitimate trade for a talking cow that disappeared by morning?"
"He didn't even lock the barn! How is that my fault?" She huffed and laid her head onto her forelimbs. The stalk of grass in her lips wobbled with her scowl. "Old fool never knew what he had."
Jack hummed. He craned forward to get a better look into the tiny, cracked glass, pulled gently at the corner of his eye and delicately dabbed the makeup brush.
"My point is," said the cow, "this all seems rather - cruel."
Jack turned. One half of his face was magnificently painted in faerie shades of blues and violets. The other half was just confused. "What on earth are you talking about?"
"For gods' sake, Jack, this is a perfectly innocent girl who you plan on humiliating in front of the royal court."
"How would she be humiliated? As far as she'll know, she'll have a lovely time at a lovely ball in a lovely ballgown."
"You don't have a lovely ballgown!"
"Well I can't afford a ballgown, now can I?!"
"So you're going to make her waltz in her fucking underclothes?!"
He took a dramatic breath. "Look," he said, brandishing the makeup brush. "If it worked on the fucking emperor, it'll work on a fucking scullery maid. If she gets told by a fairy that she's wearing a fairy dress that can only be seen by intelligent people, she is going to believe like hell that she's wearing the very image of sartorial extravaganza."
The brush was masterfully twiddled. "And when everyone else finds out that she's wearing a fairy dress that can only be seen by intelligent people, there won't be a single person in that room who would dare to disagree."
The cow shook her head. "I don't know, Jack," she sighed. "I just don't know."
"It'll be fine," Jack said, turning back to the tiny glass and bringing a deft hand again on the canvas. "Trust me. How did you do finding the slippers?"
"Couldn't find crystal," said the cow. "Best I could get were a glass set from an elf down at the cobbler's."
Jack hummed. "Well, they shouldn't be that important. Nobody will look too closely at her shoes."
There were two guards at the palace gate, slabs of meat and muscle wrapped in candybright costumes. They looked every bit as solid as the iron gate between them, and looked like the kind of guard prepared for every kind of foolishness they'd see tonight.
They weren't prepared for the woman who stepped down from the cow-drawn wagon. Her slippers gleamed amber in the torchlight, and her dress was... It was...
Well, the fey who hung over her shoulder told them that her dress was a beautiful thing, spun from the glimmer of starlight, the sound of snowfall, and the colour of the moon. He said that any discerning gentleman could tell that this was true, and the guards agreed.
Neither of them had looked too closely at the dress. In fact, they had been trying to carefully, politely and inexplicably avert their gaze.
It had been, Jack decided, a wonderful night.
The story of the woman with the fairy dress had spread through the party like - well, gossip, which is what it was, but it was gossip said by the rich, who couldn't afford to be wrong, and that was just as good as wildfire.
The real magic had been when the prince had asked her to dance. Her chemise had twirled like a dishrag, and everyone in the watching crowd that night would swear they saw her gown glimmer and gleam in a whorl of stars and snowlight.
And that was all well and good until midnight, when she had slipped her arm into his, gave the prince an "Attends un moment!" that glittered with polite laughter, and hauled Jack away from the hors d'oeuvres.
He slipped the squidgy grey thing he had been eating into a pocket. "May I help you, my lady?"
"I need to talk to you."
"But of course, my-"
"Now."
Jack heard the tone.
Oh fuck, he thought.
Her glass slippers made high, clear, silver sounds as she marched across the marble floors and out onto the balcony. She let him go and stepped away, breathing in the cool, clear air of the summer night, smelling of night stock and distant rain.
Her shoulders were shaking.
Jack felt something in his heart turn cold. Oh fuck, he thought. Oh fuck. Oh fucking fuck. I've gone too far, the spell's been broken, the con's gone bad, I have to get her out of here-
And then she made a... noise.
He would've called it a laugh, only it sounded like the kind of noise made by an aroused boar. It was joined by a rivulet of little snorts.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry." She turned. She looked at him. She turned away again and melted into snorting hysterics.
Jack blinked. "My lady?"
"I'm sorry," she said again. She took a few calming breaths, bubbling with suppressed laughter. "I'm sorry. But holy fuck, did you see their faces?"
"Uh," said Jack.
"I mean what a bunch of morons. Fucking hell, look at this thing." She grabbed the collar of the chemise and pulled it up for an experimental sniff. "The Duchess wouldn't stop talking about opulent and extravagant it is. I think I haven't washed this thing in a week."
The penny dropped and activated his brain. "How long have you...?"
She flapped a hand. "Oh, from the start," she said. "At first I just wanted to see how far we'd get. I thought we'd be turned away at the gate, but then it just kept going!"
She pulled herself up to sit on the balcony rail and grinned at him, glass slippers glittering as she swung her legs. "There has to be a market for this," she said. "Selling fairy clothes to the nobs? Get the whole royal court's bits flapping about?"
Jack stared, and in spite of himself, felt his face grinning back. "Nah," he said. "Already did that with the emperor. No point in pulling the same con again."
Her face lit up. "So that was you! I thought so! You got a long con going on here?"
"Something like that."
"I want in."
"I already have a partner."
"I know. She's lovely. I want in."
He stared. He shrugged. He offered her his arm. "Why don't we head down to the stables to talk about it with her?"
They had made it down to the outer court before she drew herself up short. "Damn."
"What?"
"I think I lost a slipper."
"Oh, don't worry about that," said Jack. "It was only a glass set, anyways."
If you haven't heard, the em dash has been getting a lot of attention lately…
Because it was trained on pirated work—including freely accessible online writing (like fanfic, academic texts)—ChatGPT picked up patterns and quirks native to human writing.
Including (sigh) the em dash.
There are other victims here (RIP tapestry and delve 🫠), but the appropriation of the em dash—a punctuation mark beloved by writers everywhere—feels especially personal.
A kind of low-grade panic is ensuing. Writers who once memed their own em dash overuse—the greatest punctuation mark ever to grace the control-freak’s lexicon, frankly—are suddenly backing away to avoid accusations.
No. More. We have centuries of dash-abusing writers behind us. We will not sit quietly while AI repurposes our beloved stilted aside—or the just-one-more clarification the sentence demands—or the dramatic pause your comma could never—etc.
You don’t write like AI—AI writes like you.
Defend the em dash.
(Feel free to download/share/stick it where it matters!)
happy trans day of visibility to all the trans folks out there. to the dolls. to the trans people of colour. to the fat trans people. to the hairy trans people. to the trans mascs who present feminine and the fems who present masculine. to the trans people opressed by the binary present even within queer culture. to the trans people who feel dysphoria, and those who don’t. to the ones who aren’t out for their own safety. to the ones who aren’t out to themselves. to the trans people in warzones and facing genocide. to the trans people whose basic rights and humanity is constantly up for debate. to the ones that are still alive despite it all. happy trans day of visibility to you
I was so pretty. My boyfriend was this super sweet, sensitive, popular guy. I got good grades without having to spend all my time studying. My parents weren't anybody special in town but they had enough money that we never had to really worry about paying the bills.
My parents died the same night that I did. They had the funeral while I was still dead too. My aunt from out of town arranged it after they found my body later on, in the fridge. I don't... remember much. I'm kind of glad. I don't think I want to remember that night. But everything else, even from before then, feels different too.
There were times before I died when I would sit in front of the mirror and it felt like a stranger was looking back at me. Everything was just so hollow. I thought I wanted to die. But it would always pass. Usually my mom or someone would come and get me and drag me back, and I'd be myself again. That lucky girl.
I'm so hungry. All the time. But it's different. It's not like when my mom would put me on a diet, or when I'd stare into the mirror, or when I'd watch my boyfriend inhale a double cheeseburger and choke on my dry salad (dressing has too many calories). That kind of hunger was like trying to swallow past a weed that was rooted in my stomach.
This feels like that weed is finally gone and I could eat and eat. Like I might finally know what it's like to be full.
There's definitely something wrong with me. I wish it felt more like it was wrong with me, and not like something clicking into place. I know what I want but if I do go get it, what then? What if I get caught? Even if I don't, it's not like I can keep going that way.
Maybe it's just... once. Maybe it's a resurrection thing. So much freaky stuff happens in this town and no one ever seems to know how it all works, right? Who's to say? It could just be a one time deal, and then I'll be satisfied, and no one will ever have to know.
Oh god. I don't think I'm ever going back to normal. Normal people don't sneak out to the cemetery in the dead of night and dig up their parents graves and... and...
It had to be them, though. For the first time I think, anyway. So that I could keep a part of them. So that I could still be with them in a way. So that I could sink my teeth into them and rip them apart and carve out what was inside because that needed to happen.
My boyfriend's got this friend. He's a little different. Eccentric. His family's rich, I think? He lives just on the edge of town. My boyfriend has so many friends, but I was always a bit surprised with this guy. He's... well he's really gay? Like rich theater goth guy gay? That sounds bad, but I mean. A guy like my boyfriend, friends with a man like that?
It was just surprising. My boyfriend doesn't exactly speak kindly about him behind his back.
But he knows lots of things about this town and the freaky shit that happens, so it actually does make sense. We usually go to him when there's some problem we don't know how to solve. I'm sure my boyfriend talked to him after I died.
I mean ordinarily I'd be flattered. He's like every high school girl's moody gothic antihero crush until he opens his mouth, and I was not immune to Edward Cullen in my day. In fact I was sort of notorious for always dating guys who turned out to be gay.
But like. Again, he's really gay, and I haven't exactly been bringing my A game to the personal hygiene routine, so I doubt he's looking at me for those reasons.
Oh fuck he's going to tell the cops and they're going to put me away and then everyone will know me as the fucking ghoul who ate her parents corpses oh god baby jesus mother of mercy why did I ADMIT IT???
Something's wrong. He's being weirdly cool about all of this. There's no possible way that he doesn't have a problem with it. I'm eating human corpses. Everyone would have a problem with that unless they're fucked up.
Is it wrong that I'm glad he's being nice about it? This shouldn't be allowed, right? I should probably warn someone that he's being nice about it, but how could I explain?
And... I don't want to get him into trouble. Everything's been so difficult. There's no one I can talk to. But he's so easy to talk to, and even though I wait and wait for him to tell me it's wrong, he just... doesn't.
