I write predominantly sci-fi and fantasy, with a focus on post-apocalyptic and post-post-apoc. As a queer person, I write a lot of stories with queer characters.
I'm an editor and TTRPG player. I'm a huge nerd about the history of the English language, particularly Old English, which I will happily nerd about at any given opportunity.
Open to tags and asks! (Including tag lists for WiPs. And feel free to info dump to me about your projects in asks/similar.)
I often vanish for large chunks of time because disabilities+life are kicking my ass.
Projects
Voices Belonging to Monsters - currently drafting
A post-apocalyptic Beowulf retelling that follows two monsters as they grow into their roles as hero and king. William does not know how to be loved—she is terrified that she will hurt everyone around her, a fear that has come true before. Veylan struggles to move forward as his perfectionism clouds his judgement. When the leader of their town is killed in an attack by a fire-flying monster, Veylan is forced into leadership too soon and William is forced out. But as Sceffing falls under further threat, they will have to learn to work with each other and find belonging even when it seems impossible.
His breath shakes us. Even as it comes in thin, frail gasps, even as he is too weak to open his eyes, it shakes us. We shudder in the heat of it. We shudder in his shadow, some crushed under his body, most surrounding where he has fallen. The grass whispers too, trembling along with us, roots twining with our own as we drink the salt of his sweat, the bitterness of his tears, as they soak into the soil. The heat of his breath has sunk into his skin too, leeches into the ground. We can feel it—it does not hurt us, but it caresses our petals as the sun does.
And yet, in this darkness, the boy shivers. He trembles and shakes as much as one of us, though the world does not breathe on him now. The air around him is still, other than his feverish panting. The world outside this clearing is silent. The heavy steps that shook the earth have gone, leaving only the boy. His heartbeat has slowed. It no longer pounds against the ground like the fall of small rocks, like the pine cones in the autumn. It beats delicately now, the scuttling of a mouse or the hopping of a bird. Softly, slowly, falling away.
The boy sang here, once. Many times. His voice is gone now, but filled the air as we filled his lungs with our chemical signals. The words meant nothing to us—words never mean anything. The things he whispered as his hands closed on us, fingers picking, snapping, pulling, didn’t matter. Our bodies scattered the earth many times in the place he now lies.
Heavy steps that receded mere minutes ago, heavy steps that ended as the boy was heaved onto the dirt, are the last contact he will have with his own kind. He is ours now, in the way he thought our lives to be his. We have claimed him. We have claimed him and as his heartbeat stammers and stops, as the heat leaves his body to be replaced with the heat of the sun, we will feed.
It is the way of the world. What once killed will die, and its body will feed the earth. And as the boy sinks into the soil and is driven from memory, sickly body coming to an end, we will die too, above him, but we will grow stronger from him. Roots will twine with his bones. His blood will seep through our sap. And we will wait for the next hands to close on us, picking, snapping, pulling. They will be ours too.
The girl I built out of glass is standing there in front of me. She mirrors the best in me—only the best. I made sure of that with every handful of sand I wove her out of, with each memory I poured into the work. The sand crystallized into the perfect girl in front of me. The perfect me, I tell myself. This is who I am becoming. This is who I have to become.
No. This is who I am. The fiery gazes on my back wherever I pass, the whispers around every room I enter, those don’t shape me. No, I am this girl. I have the shining wit—I wove that in, didn’t I, with my own mind? Sitting by my mother as she quizzed me. The capitals of neighboring countries. The famous acts of the heroes of old. The price of wool, the trading route it takes from our lands to the sea, who we give to and take from. I can see how her face shines with pride for the glass girl—for me—with each correct answer. I can feel the warmth of her hands, molding, shaping, making the star on the forehead of the shining glass girl.
I circle the girl. The light hits her just so, sending a sparkle across the floor. The breath catches in my throat. I reach up and trace one trembling finger along the edge of that star. The hard corner doesn’t threaten to cut my finger even as I press—no, everything about the glass girl is smooth, delicate. I can see why my mother admires every inch of her. There is something exquisite in her silence that no word from me can ever capture. Everyone loves the glass girl. They admire her whenever they step into this room—my masterwork, drawing the adoration of everyone in a way I never can. They love the mirror more than they love the one reflected in it.
Tonight, the noise, the party, the stares—the crucible of the day left so little light in me that I couldn’t hold together. The laughter that spilled from my tongue, around my teeth that should have clenched more tightly, had lit such rage around the room! Why couldn’t they see the reflection I saw in the glass girl? The girl who relented under her teacher’s correction? That strand had burned my fingers as I wove it into the cool frame of the girl. Pride had stung the back of my tongue like bile as I swallowed it. As I changed, never raised the question that had earned that bitter look again. The glass girl would never question what she was told. It had been a mistake—I hadn’t meant to laugh!
My finger has left a smudge on the rim of the star. I curse myself and find a cleaning cloth on the nearby table. My footsteps echo off of the smooth stone walls. The room is almost as chill as the slippery, silky cloth I keep on hand to clean the glass girl. There is no risk of it scratching her. There is no risk of any damage to the girl.
No one seems to remember me as this mirror does. She is made of my memories—spinning through a field in a dress, dancing lightly along the path, stepping oh so neatly in the lines my best friend drew in powdery chalk—so why am I not her? I choke back a bitter sob. I have poured so much of myself into forming this glass girl. She is the perfect daughter. Why does no one look at me the way they look at her?
The glass is empty in the cold blue light. I regard it as my eyes blur with tears. The glass is so empty, and I am so full. The only thing in the glass girl is memory—my memory. An idea stirs in my mind. It is a half-formed thing—
No. It is why I made her. I drop the silk cloth to the floor and look at the girl. Her face is serene. Peaceful. Calm. I made her everything I want—need—to be—everything I am. She shimmers in the light, insubstantial. I step forward. I press my hand to her chest and feel her give as I step into the glass girl.
The world around me shatters. Agony burns across my skin. For a moment, I think I have done it—I have done it! I am the perfect girl! the glass statue the world wants me to be!—before the scattering shards sing against the floor, a thin sound that rings out too loudly. The moment snaps through the illusion around me as silence falls.
I stand still in shock. A bitter laugh forces itself up through my throat and I clench my ragged hand into a loose fist. There is blood running down my arm again because the memories cut like knives when I touched them. Shards of glass glitter on the floor around me, jagged fragments of the girl who was supposed to be a mirror.
But she never was a mirror, was she? The illusion is gone with her. The perfect girl is gone, leaving me standing in her place.
I close my eyes and let the silence flood me. It will be broken soon enough—a thousand voices clamoring to ask me why, what I was thinking, how I could destroy such a beautiful work. How could I break their plans for who I was supposed to be? How could I not be the perfect glass girl?
I will let them come, I tell myself. I will come up with a story that explains this, stammer away the destruction of a life’s worth of lies. But until then, there is just me. Me, and the blooddrops spreading flower-like from where they fall from my fingers. Me, standing mirrorless amidst the broken memories of how things should have been.
Can we please all agree to stop framing modern trends as objectively good writing advice? I'm not trying to say that there aren't ways to give people pointers on their stories, but just because a style of writing has fallen out of fashion doesn't mean it's bad.
I am primarily referring to people saying antagonists need to be morally gray and to people who say you "shouldn't rhyme poetry" full stop. Sure, modern trends don't align with those things, but are you telling me Sauron isn't a good villain? That Golding's translation of The Metamorphoses is bad?
It's genuinely okay to try to help people with their stories when they ask, but pretending like modern trends are the only things that could possibly work in writing just isn't it.
Notifications/typing noises in otherwise empty spaces
People waving you over from the side of the road and asking if you're their Lyft. Disappear the moment you look away
Abandoned warehouses that sometimes reverberate with an unheard bass
'Cold spots' where you can't get signal (that cannot be otherwise explained)
That dispensary with the blacked out windows? It used to be a Blockbuster until the manager got shot. If it's the right kind of night and you look real close and cup your hands to block out all the light? You can watch it happen, but they might see you
Newsletters from startups that no longer exist
Hype House haunted by the reason they had to make an apology video
Pictures of a stranger in your camera roll
At 2:30 every morning you can hear a ringing bell coming from the elementary school. Thing is, they switched to a digital tone in 2013. Also, it cannot be captured electronically
Welcome to Denny's what can I start you on? You already ordered? Wait.. Tall, pink hair? *sigh* Been dead for a mtonth and she's still stealing tips
Just because fantasy worlds have magic, that does not mean disabilities are gone from the world
It allows for more mobility aids, magic to help in certain areas, but on the flip side it also cause issues, magic strains you and zaps your energy the more you use it, it may help but it also takes from you and it would be so interesting to see that in a story
Some day I want to see a show that does the “no filler episodes” thing from the opposite direction. Just a whole season worth of low-stakes character pieces that seem to move the overall story absolutely nowhere, then episode 26 pulls all the triggers at once and this massive Rube Goldberg machine of a plot the show’s been quietly setting up in the background the whole time hits you like a truck.
I wish there was a website where you could input a character's description (height, weight, sex, medical conditions, etc.) And a situation (car crash, falls, stabbing, etc.) And it would calculate for you from most to least likely the injuries that character would receive, potential complications, and how long it would take recover. This would make writing injuries SO MICH EASIER if I wasn't guessing at everything
This tool would be so fun and I would definitely use it.
But ALSO! The best thing about writing injuries is that there is so much variation.
I spent a few years as an EMT, and I saw people walk away from vehicle rollovers with nary a scratch... and also, I saw people break their knees because they sat down. I've seen a guy get lifelong impairments out of falling off something twelve feet high, but I know someone who survived being stabbed over a dozen times with no lasting (physical) injuries. There's range.
In nearly any given situation*, a realistic level of injury is anywhere from "Dies within five minutes" to "Dies 73 years later surrounded by grandchildren and great-grandchildren, having zero long-lasting repercussions from that incident."
*Not every situation, mind you; papercuts are generally exempt
If you don't mind a ramble (because I haven't done a fun character injury ramble in a while so I shall use this as an excuse)...
The key to writing realistic injuries is to start with what you want to happen. It's your character and your scenario, so start with what you want to happen for Plot Reasons.
Example:
You know your character gets in a car crash with a wall, and you want them laid up for a week, but able to move around with minimal pain soon after. Cool. Now that you have your desired outcome, you can run through the scenario. You won't want your character ejected or to have a major head impact with the windshield, so they were wearing their seatbelt. You want them to still be able to walk, so the dashboard probably didn't crumple in on them. That means they were either in a car with good safety ratings, or they weren't going super fast, or a combination thereof. But you do want them a little bit injured, enough so they don't want to go on that hiking trip for another week, so make sure they were going fast enough to get some good ol' whiplash.
Another example:
You want your character to make a dramatic exit out the window, and you want them to be limping a little for dramatic effect as they head off into the forest surrounding the castle. Nice, we love a good dramatic window exit. But you want to make sure the character won't be out of commission for the battle in a fortnight's time. This could totally be a first-floor window, or even a second-floor one. But what if it really needs to be the fourth floor, for pre-existing scenario reasons? Well, maybe there's a balcony halfway down. Or maybe there's a nice slanted roof underneath that broke their fall. Or maybe the castle is built into a cliff so the windows on that side of the castle are only ten feet up. Or maybe they clung onto ivy outside, which ripped out of the wall a bit but was enough to slow them down. There's all sorts of ways you can play this off!
Rather than trying to make a scenario and then fitting the injury into it, come up with the injury (or at least, level of injury) and plan out the details of your scenario around it.
The only caution is to make sure to build scenarios realistically—like, I could totally see a character being able to keep going after being stabbed because it was a shallow wound. But if they get a shallow stab wound... and they only get ✨grazed✨ by a bullet... and they happen to survive a terrible car accident because they were in the best possible seat... AND they were pushed out of an airplane but their BFF managed to skydive right out after them and caught them... that's getting to be a little much. XD Any of those is realistic except maybe the last; IDK, I know injuries, not skydiving, but too many near-misses in a single story starts to feel like plot armor.
But yeah. The range of possible injuries from any given scenario is immense. But if you figure out how much you want to injure the character (or how quickly you want to kill them, you evil author you), you can then build out the scenario so it makes sense, and research gets a little easier too because it narrows down what you're looking for.
but what if I rewrote Arthur in space. what if Arthur and Lancelot retained memories of a hauntingly different life. what if Lancelot is basically like, if you die again, imma destroy the universe about it. what then.
what if Lancelot didn't fall in love with Gwenivere because he's already been warned off by, oh, memories of Arthur lying dead in his arms. what if the forces of good cannot always defeat the forces of evil, but evil never wins anyway.
Lancelot Du’Lac was born small and bloody and screaming, and she would not stop being small and bloody and screaming for the majority of her unfortunate life.
how about this, if this makes it to 10k notes I will not only attempt to write this but attempt to send it to a publisher since I will know it has at least some potential audience
*Takes you by the shoulders* I ADORE character profiles and character trivia and likes and dislikes sections. I love knowing this ruthless, heartless, cruel man of a character has a childish dislike for mandarin oranges. I believe in the inherent beauty of all characters, no matter the background or moral stance, being made fundamentally human by assigning them insignificant culinary preferences. I stand by the supremacy of humanizing villains by giving them relatable tastes and trivial interests and ordinary hobbies. I treasure the hidden reminders that everyone is inherently human even when everything else we know about a character might suggest the contrary.
When audiobooks with POV shifts have different actors reading each POV and when audiobooks put thought and care into the best narrator to fit the style and when audiobooks are treated as more than just a box to check but a valid form of sharing and as an art form in their own right
Just
AUDIOBOOKS
What is hope when all you know is fire? @elrallin - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
