Callista Van Allen is a professional speechwriter near Washington, D.C. Between her personal and professional life, she's been writing for more than a decade. Van Allen writes short stories and novels spanning various genres, and her short stories have been published by Adelaide Literary Magazine, HauntedMTL, and Bright Flash Literary Review.
Outside of writing, Van Allen practices martial arts and watches professional wrestling. Foxes are her good luck symbol, as one appeared the night of her first publication acceptance. Van Allen, age 24, can be found on Tumblr (@cataclysmic-writer) and Twitter (@CallistaVA).
Current Novels
Katastrophie (drafting)
"You prayed for angels to punish me because the devil would be too nice."
An adult sports romance set in a professional wrestling company, Katastrophie explores themes of faith, family, and the price of ambition through the lens of an unreliable narrator.
Join the tag list or explore the WIP tag.
The Imperial Con (Ready to query)
“I died first, didn’t I, Anastasia?” He asked. “I died first, and you’ll die last.”
A young-adult steampunk alt-history that combines the Russian Revolution and the European Theater of WWII. A hidden Princess Anastasia weighs the personal consequences of revealing her identity against the rising death toll of brutal dictatorships—domestic and foreign.
AKA: A family can be a hidden princess, a criminal mechanic, a disgraced Russian countess, a hotheaded American pilot, and a British code breaker.
Check out the WIP tag or ask to be added to the tag list.
Short Stories
I have 20+ short stories in various stages of development, not counting the three published ones mentioned in the intro. Genres include, but are not limited to, horror, urban fantasy, and period pieces.
My publication announcement taglist provides updates on story status. Ask to be added. You can also request tags by WIP title, or by WIP genre. Ex: You can request tags for any/all of my horror short stories.
In addition to the traditionally published pieces, I have some short works on Tumblr:
How to Survive a War
The Brightest Star
Additional Blog Navigation
My advice
Weekly Goal/Accountability for those interested in my plans each week.
Tagging convention
All of my WIPs are tagged as wip: (WIP name), ie wip: Katastrophie or wip: The Imperial Con. Individual characters are similarly tagged as OC: (Name), like OC: Kas or OC: Sophie.
Hey, look at me. Look at me. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: you need to condition yourself to being okay with being inconvenienced by things. The first time I spoke about this I meant it in a mental health way- it is good to go out to the store and see people versus just ordering alone at home- but there is another more pressing societal issue you should be more concerned about as well.
Any service you rely on for convenience can be weaponized against you the moment you begin to rely on it. Streaming used to be a cheap and convenient way to see movies at home. It is now exorbitantly expensive, you need multiple accounts just to get what you want, and any of those movies can be taken from you at any time. And unless you have gotten used to going through the “inconvenience” of owning physical media, you can do nothing about it. Same goes for buying things on Amazon. Same goes for any service like DoorDash etc. These companies WANT you to be reliant on them for convenience so they can do whatever they want to you because, well, what else are you gonna do?
Same thing goes for the uptick in AI. If you train yourself to become reliant on AI for doing basic things, you will be taken advantage of. It is only a matter of a couple years before there are no free AI services. Not only that, but in the usage of AI’s case, it is robbing you of valuable skills that you need to curate that you will be helpless without the moment the AI companies drive in the knife the way they have done with streaming. Delivery. Cable. Internet. Etc. It will happen to AI too. And if you are not practicing skills such as. Writing. You are not only going to be at the mercy of AI companies in the digital world, but you are going to be extremely easy to take advantage of in real life too.
I am begging you to let go of learned helplessness. I am begging you to stop letting these companies TEACH you helplessness. Do something like learn to pirate. It is way more inconvenient at the beginning, but once you know how, it is one less way companies can take advantage of you. Garden. Go to the thrift store (older clothes hold up better anyway). These things take more time and effort, yes, but using time and effort are muscles you need to stretch to keep yourself from being flattened under the weight of our capitalist hellscape.
Inconvenience yourself. Please. Start with only the ways you are able. Do a little bit at a time. But do something.
As Elon Musk cements his place in history as a fascist tech overlord and the rest of the world looks at us in horror, I really do want to reiterate what I feel will be lost to the history books
Nearly everyone in america has thought and continues to think that Elon is very cringe.
Despite not being a USA citizen, everyon has... no, MUST remember that the billionare Elon Musk has such a tiny, pathetic and childish ego, that he had the need to lie about being a hardcore epic gamer in Path of Exile 2, only to be caught red-handed as the hilarious sham that he is, and ban everyone who exposed him.
the doge meme is from 2013. its easy for dates in history books to get kinda blurry and to just print something like "the department of government efficiency was named after a popular meme at the time", but i think its important to record that musk named the agency that is illegally seizing our government after a joke so outdated that the dog in the picture has since died of old age
