idk man sometimes i like it when video game writers are allowed to plan a series of events that happen in a specific order and affect each other in turn to become an overarching narrative, and i don’t mind trusting those writers to take me through those events in the order that is emotionally effective. i don’t really care if a game forces me to go through the forest area first before i can attempt the icy area because maybe there’s things that happen in the forest area that inform later scenes in the icy area. maybe we don't need more superficial player choice open world concepts if it comes at the cost of the ability to write a story with actual significant plot events and character development in each section
this ot3 is putting the "romance" back in "necromancers." yes it is a canon ot3. this is queer gothic horror with sexy cannibalism, sexy blood magic, and sexy body horror bugs. and an HEA if you like that sort of thing
yes. sexy body horror bugs. i said what i said.
what's up i worked 12 hours today but still gotta market my preorder campaign!!!!!
if you preorder The Halls of The Dead (from anywhere you want to preorder!) you can get instant access to the first chapter with proof of receipt. yes! before the book even comes out! and not just any first chapter! but an annotated first chapter! with color-coded, handwritten notes, by me!!!!
AND,
if you preorder from Well Worn Books, you will also get a signed first edition! yes! it will arrive signed! by me! so you could preorder here and get a signed copy AND an instant download of the annotated first chapter!!
to get your annotated chapter, CLICK HERE for instructions!
need convincing???? synopsis under the cut. but imagine if The Locked Tomb happened in Victorian London. or, if Sweeney Todd was gay and didn't die at the end. or, if Penny Dreadful was a gay revenge love story and Vanessa Ives did Forbidden Catholic Blood Magic
A queer, gothic horror romance set in a necromancy-tinged London, sure to entrance fans of The Death of Jane Lawrence and Mexican Gothic. [[and also The Locked Tomb. seriously, we should have put The Locked Tomb in the marketing. can't think of everything, guys]]
London, December 1849-
Irene Shallcross Haley has dedicated her life to necromancy, a forbidden, reviled art that is passed along through sentient grimoires bound in human skin. With her undead husband St. John--a marriage of kindred spirits and platonic convenience--she has been protecting the knowledge of generations of witches that came before her. Like any magic, it has come at a cost: her reputation, her relationship with her sister, and her soul. But when Irene's love, Agnes, is hanged for witchcraft, Irene refuses to let Agnes be one more thing that is taken from her.
A true resurrection has not been achieved in two thousand years, but Irene is determined. With the help of St. John, Irene bangs on the doors of the Halls of the Dead, demanding the third part of their triumverate back...or did she? Because the Agnes that awakens comes with both a hunger for raw flesh and a malignant ghost tied to her soul.
Necromancy is the art of saying no--no, I won't let you go; no, I won't let you be destroyed--and Irene's work is not yet done. She must find a way to bring Agnes back to her true self, she must navigate her feelings for her resurrected lover as well as St. John, and she must do all of this without catching the attention of Sir Silas Underhill, the man who sentenced Agnes to death.
Death is not the end of love. But Irene may realize it can actually be the beginning.
Have you published any short stories or smaller works to different publishing houses before? I saw the add for The Halls Of The Dead and wanted to see if I could sample your writing somehow! If not I might just chuck cash your way anyhow cause ot3 has me interested lol
hi there! yes, actually! I have a whole list of my short stories on my website, but allow me to point you toward my favorites:
How to Stay Married to Baba Yaga was published by Baffling Magazine, and then included in the Locus Recommended Reading List, and then selected for Best of Fantasy Vol. 3 alongside authors like P. Djèlí Clark and Catherynne Valente. Writing style wise, this is closer to my novella How to Survive This Fairytale (which will be back in print August 11), but it's got the gay witch themes of Halls.
Little Screams was published by Seize the Press. It has no accolades to speak of, but it's a short horror story about mental health, fucked up families, and being replaced by the worst version of yourself.
My Formaldehyde Darling; or, A Redress for the Female Creature was published by Icarus Writing Collective, and they nominated it for a Pushcart. You can maybe see that I had the seed for The Halls of the Dead in mind here. It's a Frankenstein retelling in which Elizabeth uses Victor's science to resurrect her lover, Justine, after he lets her take the fall for his brother's death so he doesn't have to acknowledge his own creature.
You can peruse other stories are available on my website! Here's a link!
if you dont decouple your drive to create from your desire for attention you will go insane. simple as. you will never feel satisfied b/c you will always want more and you will feel perpetually bitter that you did not get what you are “owed”
It’s an unpopular opinion but it is absolutely and completely true. I’ve never seen someone who creates for engagement happy with the engagement they get. I posit they can’t ever be happy that way because it will NEVER be enough
But, because I see statements like this turn into a sort of general notion of “it’s bad to want validation or attention or engagement”, and to me, that’s not what this means.
It’s perfectly valid to want people to like and engage with what you create. In a general sense, when you create anything, you do it to share with other human beings. Art, craft, food, anything you create is a way to connect with others through our shared humanity.
And wanting someone to like you fanart or read your fanfic is part of that.
the words used by OP is decouple, and this is important. Nothing wrong wanting engagement. But it cannot be tightly coupled with the drive to create.
Honestly, at this point, if you're still bitching about AI but not moving to open-source and nonprofit software/tech/services, you deserve it. Shut up or stop using it. Those of us who've put in the effort to switch to non-evil tech are sick of the purposeless whining.
I've been nicely letting everyone suggest open source on this post because it might genuinely be useful to someone but because you've decided to be a condescending little bastard- this might be a hard concept to grasp, but some of us actually have jobs. Some of those jobs also provide us with computers equipped with an OS we have zero say over, to use software we also have zero say over. Kindly get off your high horse and suck my dick.
As someone who has worked in IT for the past 17 years, I'd also like to say that there is often a higher barrier of entry for open-source software / operating systems when it comes to technical knowledge and ability, and those who can't jump that barrier still deserve to not have AI programs installed on their devices without their knowledge or consent. Someone who struggles with Windows is not going to be able to just hop into Linux, especially when they probably have other things going on in their lives and don't have the time to sit down and learn a brand new operating system. Someone who doesn't even recognize that there are different browsers, much less open-source ones that aren't Chromium forks, isn't going to be able to seek out one they can both a.) safely download, b.) install, and c.) use instead of the shortcut they know as The Internet.
And sure, you can dismiss these people as lazy, as stupid, as being elderly and so who cares. But from my 17 years of experience, I can tell you that technical instinct and ability varies widely across the entire adult spectrum. And I can also tell you that people have different strengths, and that just because someone isn't good with computers doesn't mean they aren't smart as hell.
And I can also say, again, that it really doesn't matter.
Companies like Microsoft and Google sneaking AI software into devices and software without the consent of those using the software or devices is wrong. It's invasive and raises major security concerns. People should not have to learn entirely new operating systems to escape this nonsense. It's an unreasonable expectation, and it fails to hold companies like Microsoft and Google accountable for their malicious behavior.
it is unfortunate that there's no reason for most people to remember high school chemistry because the best analogy I have found for "the amount of energy that it takes me to initiate a task, which can be higher than the amount of energy it takes to actually complete the task" is "activation energy" and it's not precisely perfect but
yeah. and you can even include "thing that reduces the barrier to doing the task" as a catalyst/enzyme
anyway. unfortunately this does not actually clarify anything for the average person. but #ToMe it works
I'm a member of an advanced photography training community. My mentor creates challenges to help demonstrate certain concepts.
This one required shooting a pop-art-style egg photo to show how specular highlights change with hard and soft light.
This was the example image I was to emulate.
A specular highlight is just a direct reflection of the light source.
With hard light, specular highlights are perceived as brighter. To get hard light, the light source must be smaller (or more distant). So the reflection is smaller, but also more concentrated in intensity.
With soft light, the light source is much larger (or closer). So the intensity of the reflection is spread out over a larger area. So it is perceived as dimmer.
Think about looking directly at a flashlight versus shining it against the wall. The same number of photons are involved, but your experience of them is vastly different.
If you are shooting someone with glasses and the light is reflecting brightly, you can move your light much closer to reduce its apparent intensity.
I worked for 10 minutes at a time over a period of 4 days. I got some fake eggs so I wouldn't have to spend energy cooking. Frustratingly, they arrived with a matte finish. They would not take on a specular highlight at all. So I ordered some automotive clear coat and sprayed the fake eggs on my deck.
You may have noticed my context-less egg art on my deck railing in another post. It was drying in the sun.
The clear coat worked well, so I proceeded to glue the egg to some colored construction paper and tape it to the wall in my kitchen.
I don't have a top-down rig to shoot things from above, so I felt this was a creative and low-energy solution.
A bonus aspect of the challenge was to create a Photoshop composite in which I retain the shadows from the hard light example and the gradient specular highlight on the egg yolk. I can't decide if I like that or the soft light version better.
It feels nice to have accomplished something creative. I am struggling so much with boredom as I recover. And doing anything productive is physically challenging. But I've got my birds and now my egg.
theartofmadeline
pixelskylines
areudirty
dailybridgerton
turnnoffyourmind
