Current Writing Goal/Challenge: 1500 words a week.
Writing Masterpost (under construction, links coming as scenes/chapters are cleaned up enough to share)
I do not use AI in my writing, please do not feed my work into any kind of AI program/software/whatever.
Fanfiction
The Albion County Murders
King Arthur but Modern Murder Mysteries. Small towns with big secrets; it’s about cycle breaking, if you will pardon the pun.
.
King Arthur: The Catalyst Cycle
King Arthur but instead of a historical fantasy it’s cowboys on Mars. With Dragons. And Zombies.
.
.
Original Fiction
I have a core cast of OCs I send on various AU adventures (names change occasionally, but if someone seems like the same character with a different name, they probably are), because… well, ADHD.
Complete
Two Weeks in Willowbury - 2019, 5500 words.
A centaur writer meets an odd pair of siblings on a train. Short story, 1800’s Historical Fantasy, intended as a the start of a serial, but I never came back to it. Rough but finished and I’m proud of that!
Incomplete/In Progress
Trailer Trash Barbie’s Guide to Home Gardening in the Zombie Apocalypse - 2021
A single mom (sort of) collects her rag-tag family to hunker down through the latest superbug. Contemporary/Apocalypse. Written to cope with COVID.
.
The Myrtle Crook Cook Mysteries
Vintage (circa 1900s) Murder Mysteries featuring a mary-sue and I’m not sorry.
.
Startossed - Science Fiction, the survivor of a wrecked colony ship wakes up very Lost In Space, sets out to find human-feet shoes.
.
Eidolon - Post Apocalyptic Wasteland, the AI humanity created to save them turned on them, because of course it did. Except it didn’t…
.
Widow’s Oath - Fairytale, widowed on the journey to her husband’s kingdom, a princess tries to get home to her mother.
.
Ordinary World - Modern/Contemporary Christian, my stupid little story about boring ordinary people being nice to each other.
.
Typical blogging fare will include screaming about whatever I’m currently dopamining for my will to live; science fiction, arthuriana, mystery serials, psychology, cryptids, art, poetry, crochet, writerly blathering, etc. Occasionally I get Very Excited About Chickens. Sometimes I vent about chronic illness or bad parenting/child abuse, but I try to tag appropriately—let me know if you need something tagged a certain way for blocking purposes.
Also if you see me posting [redacted fandom] here NO YOU DIDN’T that was for the quarantine side blog ahem.
props to Gingell for concocting the most narratively reasonable “vampire kiss setup” and then subverting its execution in the funniest and most childish way possible Pet CONTINUES to be the most realistic teenager I have ever read.
“Constantly Hungry” being a symptom being my little poke at diet culture. They’re hungry/thirsty because they aren’t getting their caloric/hydration needs met.
All of these conditions are the result of very real needs not being met!
YOUR BODY IS TRYING TO KEEP YOU ALIVE IN A SYSTEM THAT’S ENGINEERED TO DESTROY YOU.
Survival of the fittest. The world is a vampire. There’s a ghost in the machine. Blah blah yadda etc. Metaphors aren’t fun if they aren’t ham fisted.
extremely frustrated because we are FINALLY in a position where we could FINALLY afford to put some money in the bank (selling home—which we have to do anyway—and paying half towards the new place and putting the other half in the bank) to grow our savings beyond a month of emergency funds and my dad WONT DO IT. He just FLAT REFUSES to diversify. One basket, all eggs. NOPE LALALALLA NOT LISTENING!!!
So I’m doing up a monthly and bi-weekly budget to SHOW HIM like, this is totally doable! I’m even accounting for what could go wrong!!!
What could go wrong?
1.) I lose my job—great! I have at least six months worth of expenses covered to find a new job!
2.) the bank collapses—and say even with the bank insurance something weird happens and we lose everything in the bank—I still have my job and can pay the bills!
3.) the bank collapses and I lose my job—babe, if that happens we’re screwed whether the new house is paid off or not! (But also THIS WAY I could FINALLY start putting together a cash buffer fund!!!)
4.) I die and he has to make the payments himself—HE CAN PAY IT OFF IN ONE SWOOP BECAUSE WE HAVE THE REST OF THE MONEY IN SAVINGS!!!!
I could finally stop worrying about money and he WONT LET ME.
Grrrr.
Maybe I just won’t tell him.
I’ll show him first. If he still doesn’t want to do it THEN I won’t tell him.
well it’s a metaphor, but for the purpose of the illustration the idea is that humans were created in God’s image but the reason we are flesh and bone was because we were supposed to take care of the earth and animals—this just takes it a step further and says humans were given the ability to take specific animals’ shape to better understand and empathize with them and get to fully experience all the different biomes.
after the Sin and Fall it was something that was mostly lost over the years, some people who took animal shape didn’t come back, and the belief arose you could get stuck so people stopped trying, then the belief arose it was a mark of sin or something you shouldn’t do, a lot of people were killed for it, etc etc.
In modern times there are only a few families that still know how to do it, and safely, but sometimes it unlocks as like a trauma response—a form of extreme dissociation.
I am having the most wonderful pre/mid apocalypse urban fantasy ideas about a family of Christian Werewolves NO MORE NEW STORIES STOP MAKE IT STOP I AM TRYING TO MOVE I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR A NEW THING TO EAT MY BRAIN
but like
It’s 2525–and the future is getting darker by the day, but there are still people fighting to make a world a better place…
this little boy runs away from his adoptive placement/children’s home and his social worker and a detective team up to find him and track him down to this motley assortment of homeless people living out of a handful of cars on the outskirts of a wasteland town—
and you think it would be simple, scan the kids chip, take him back…
Except the woman claims he’s her son, always has been (and yeah he does look a lot like the kid in her baby pictures) and they never got their ID chips for a religious exemption…
So Social Worker and Detective have to get a warrant to scan the kid for a chip—but in the time it takes to do that, the kid cuts his hand off.
(I know it’s a metaphor, hush, this is fiction, it’s ALL metaphor here)
And now they’re determined to take custody of him either way because of obvious either negligence or abuse, but the family scatters and now they’re off on a chase across the wasteland trying to determine who has the little boy and where they’re hiding him…
And like, the farther they get, the more dire it all seems—these people are nutters. Religion is one thing, but believing you can turn into an animal? And yeah, ok, having delusions and hallucinations doesn’t make you inherently dangerous, but the combination? Theres a very real and present danger they could convince the kid he’s a bird and he might try to fly.
But a series of misadventures eventually leaves them having to confront that somehow they’re actually the bad guys here. Just because you’re trying to help doesn’t mean you are, and just because you don’t understand someone’s faith doesn’t mean they’re wrong.
I mean, if werewolves are a real thing that actually exists—what else might you be wrong about?
the reason it’s rare is because without chlorophyll, the plant can’t get energy, and dies shortly after sprouting unless it has some other source of food. so if you see a plant as big as the one in the picture that doesn’t have any green in its leaves, it’s getting its nutrition from the roots of a neighboring plant of the same species, feeding on the sugars created by the other plant’s photosynthesis.
we’ve already discovered forests where trees share nutrients with young or disadvantaged trees and forests where trees can ask their neighbors for some extra food (they literally send a signal requesting aid, via the web of fungus that connects their roots) and forests where surrounding tees will keep a tree alive even when it has been reduced to a stump through some tragedy…
so, while i love the playfulness of “vampire” and i commend the specificity of “commensal, symbiotic mutualists” i think it’s worth considering, at this point, if “member of the community” might not be at least as apt
If I was a wasp, I'd sting you. If I was a venomous snake, I'd bite you. If I was a lion, I'd maul you. If I was a swamp, I'd poison you. If I was a mountain, I'd fall and crush you. If I was the ocean, I'd drown you. If I was a cat, I'd never let you touch me. If I was a dog, I'd run away. If I was a horse, I'd never let you break me. If I was a farm, I wouldn't grow for you. If I was a fire, I'd burn out without warming you. If I was a home, I would fall apart around you.
If I was harmless and small, and easy to hold, you would love me. If I was a worm you could put me in the soft earth and I would be helpless in your care. Of course you could love me, but could you love me if I stung you, bit you, pulled against you, hid and didn't understand you but wasn't harmless or helpless at all?
Could you love something for what it is, when that means you can't touch it or show kindness, maybe even never be near it, and it might never, ever love you back? Is it okay to exist and not belong to anyone, to not be useful to anyone, to be dangerous or poisonous or a failure but a part of the world all the same?
I know this is a metaphor, but if you take it kind of literally, there is an answer to this.
We build wildlife preserves. Often explicitly for the protection of animals and ecosystems that can and have killed humans.
Whenever a whale gets stranded on a beach, CROWDS show up ad risk getting bludgeoned to death trying to get it back into the water.
Every Zoo has a reptile house full of venomous snakes and a team of humans dedicated to giving them the best quality of life possible.
There are volunteer beekeepers who will travel for miles and miles and hours and hours to relocate an entire hive.
There are people who rehabilitate dangerous dogs and horses
There are people who restore structurally unsound houses
There are people who study the way that fire burns so it can rejoin the ecosystem and not be smothered on sight.
Every day, millions of people get up and devote themselves to things that can and will kill them by their nature. Things they can't touch or show kindness to. Things they can't go near. Things that are wholly incapable of loving them back.
And they do it because they love them.
Everything dangerous, everything poisonous, everything 'useless'- absolutely everything has someone, often many thousands of people, who loves them exactly as they are, without expectation that their affection will be returned.
It is alright for anything, even you, to not belong to anyone, to not be useful, to be frightening and dangerous and not adhere to any standard of success.
It's all alright.
You are loved.
You are loved.
You are loved.
Sparklepants and Señor Tribble had great many long and difficult to pronounce words over both the cowboy hat and the fez but the bottom line is the cowboy hat doesn’t FIT Sparklepants so~
(The glasses are being shared much more amicably by Starchild and Snifty who are much more well-mannered.)
(Lovester, Crabbie, Shiney-Sandshrew and Octopretty are happy as they are.)