"Quick, into the blanket fort!"

She/her. 38. Semi-professional writer, amateur singer/songwriter, well-intentioned ball of pure quivering anxiety. Buy my queer sci-fi/mystery YA novel STARS, HIDE YOUR FIRES or my sapphic YA dystopian romance YOU PIERCE MY SOUL now available in paperback wherever books are sold!

[idiopathicsmile]

on finding each other if this whole magical terrible basement really does implode—

Bluesky @jesserbest

Instagram @jesserbest but my presence there is mostly just photos of charcuterie boards

Wordpress jessicamarybest.com, you can also sign up for my extremely periodic newsletter at the end of this post ETA: idiopathicsmile on pillowfort as well!

mutuals, if you're okay with it, pls drop me a line (you can do it privately if you'd rather) and tell me where/how to follow you across the various webbed sites.

in the meantime, i will be here posting til security chases me out. <3

[idiopathicsmile]

Incidentally, if someone forced me to teach a college course of my choice, it would be about the art of parody. Everyone would have to bring in a work of parody and then we'd discuss what that work captures (or doesn't) about the thing it's riffing on, and whether or not it succeeds. This is partly because I find this topic fascinating, and partly because I am fucking enchanted with the concept that coursework could include "please reflect on this Weird Al song."

[idiopathicsmile]

Wait wait if you were forced to teach a college course, what would it be?

[idiopathicsmile]

Incidentally, if someone forced me to teach a college course of my choice, it would be about the art of parody. Everyone would have to bring in a work of parody and then we'd discuss what that work captures (or doesn't) about the thing it's riffing on, and whether or not it succeeds. This is partly because I find this topic fascinating, and partly because I am fucking enchanted with the concept that coursework could include "please reflect on this Weird Al song."

[idiopathicsmile]

Wishing you a speedy recovery! Some questions for you:

Who in your life has the best laugh?

What's the best real-life-not-necessarily-academic thing a teacher has ever taught you?

FMK: rice, noodles, bread

thank you!

What a neat question! I'm terrible at ranking things, and I don't have a good memory for sounds (which, I realize the irony that I make audio drama) but my very dear cousin who's a traveling circus performer is in town and recency bias here I think is going to take the prize.

My (absolutely wonderful) fifth grade teacher told me once that not everyone was going to like me, and that this was okay. (Full honesty, this is something I am still in the process of learning.)

Ohh man, I am gonna make some enemies here. I love all starches a lot, but if I had to choose, I would kill rice, fuck noodles, and marry bread. Whitest sentence in the world incoming: a good toasted piece of sourdough with butter is my comfort food.

[idiopathicsmile]

a fun fact about me is that the local anesthesia has begun wearing off from my surprise toe surgery today, an extremely cursed cluster of words, and so if you feel like dropping me an ask, now is a pretty good time as I scuttle around looking for distractions.

[idiopathicsmile]

Hey, just wanted to drop you a message and let you know that I've really enjoyed every audio drama of yours that I've checked out.

Aw, thank you so much, I really appreciate you both listening and letting me know!

[idiopathicsmile]

my cousin: (playing a song on the piano)

me: sounds awesome, what is that?

my cousin: ...it's midnight florist

[idiopathicsmile]

Visit Original Link

In pulling together the Kickstarter funding for the pilot episode of my paranormal rock musical audio drama Everyone Leaves Alive (out now!), one of my backers generously gave at a level where I agreed to write an original song for him. When asked what to write about, he said either municipal zoning or car dependency.

LYRICS

Well take a good damn look At the ride you’ve got A truck the size of Texas in the CostCo parking lot A hood high as a flag pole and there’s just one catch: your monumental Chevy has a blind spot to match

All the cyclists are shaking a disaster in the making There’s a reason they think you’re a pig: You don’t need a truck that big

And just from making car hoods of a kickass larger size In eight years, three thousand more pedestrians have died And people shrug and say that it’s the land of the free (Free to get pulped by an SUV)

Is it worth it, the lost lives? Worth it, the gas price? Worth it, just to own those libs? You don’t need a truck that big

It’s not as if you’re moving loads of two by fours Your flatbed is as empty as those words of yours Yeah you live in the suburbs you ain’t hauling hay but we pay the blood tax for your cosplay

All he punchlines are waiting 'bout overcompensating are you prepared for that type of dig? You don’t need a truck that big

Well, it’s a driver’s world, carved into this land Public transit swept away by Big Oil’s mighty hand They say “jaywalking” if I just cross the street The only question left is how much dirt I’m gonna eat

Hear that El Dorado thunder oh it’s mankind’s classic blunder Hubris, final form: a giant rig You don’t need a truck that big You don’t need a truck that big You don’t need a truck…

[idiopathicsmile]

ohhhh so YOU'RE the banana fic author

loved that shit back in the day <3

Assuming you're talking about this one, then yes I am!

[idiopathicsmile]

Jumping on the bandwagon because I love both bands and wagons. Which piece of personal lore is the most telling?

Read so much L.M. Montgomery that at 12, I spoke like an Edwardian-era Canadian

Once tried to bond w my gym teacher over the race in Alice in Wonderland

Didn't cry when I was violently mugged; did cry the first time I watched Shrek

College friends joked I'd marry a podcaster (I now write audio dramas)

My one "real job" included writing tweets about beige for a major paint company

The biggest cultural impact I'll ever have was a Stucky fic about bananas

Didn't realize I was queer until age ~30; assumed I was straight but bad at it

Voting ended onJun 21

[idiopathicsmile]

there is an entire category of media for me where it's like "i can't tell if this is good or bad, only that it has struck my entire brain like a tuning fork and days later i am still vibrating"

[idiopathicsmile]

hi!! I'm reading (AND LOVING) your new book and I am so curious: are you familiar with williamm dalrymple the historian? I listen to his podcast with anita anand and one of their jokes is that the dalrymples are always in significant moments of scottish/british history, and dalrymple academy in a new colony felt so fitting as a callout to that family lol anyway! I am loving it! such a fun take on austenian love stories <3

Hi! Thank you so much for supporting You Pierce My Soul! Totally accidental, but I love that it worked out that way. So glad you're enjoying it!

[everyoneleavesalive]

...and we are live!

The pilot episode of Everyone Leaves Alive is now available for your listening enjoyment!

Everyone Leaves Alive is a musical audio drama about a struggling indie rock band that secretly solves paranormal problems. Life on the road isn’t easy when you’ve gotta worry about counteracting the more traditional “kill the beast”-style monster hunters and negotiating a fair contract for performing a gig for the Fae King. But with friendship, humor, a dash of queer romance, and the occasional sing-along, our plucky rock band just might prevail—and even get their shit together enough to finish recording their single.

You can listen here on Apple Podcasts, here on Spotify, and it should be filtering down to the rest of the podcatchers soon. If there’s a particular listening platform you’d like to hear it on, reach out and I’ll see about getting it added there. You can also check out our website for more info, including an episode transcript.

Many thanks to Charles Huth (@charleshuthart on instagram) for our excellent cover image.

[everyoneleavesalive]

...and we are live!

The pilot episode of Everyone Leaves Alive is now available for your listening enjoyment!

Everyone Leaves Alive is a musical audio drama about a struggling indie rock band that secretly solves paranormal problems. Life on the road isn’t easy when you’ve gotta worry about counteracting the more traditional “kill the beast”-style monster hunters and negotiating a fair contract for performing a gig for the Fae King. But with friendship, humor, a dash of queer romance, and the occasional sing-along, our plucky rock band just might prevail—and even get their shit together enough to finish recording their single.

You can listen here on Apple Podcasts, here on Spotify, and it should be filtering down to the rest of the podcatchers soon. If there’s a particular listening platform you’d like to hear it on, reach out and I’ll see about getting it added there. You can also check out our website for more info, including an episode transcript.

Many thanks to Charles Huth (@charleshuthart on instagram) for our excellent cover image.

[idiopathicsmile]

Oh, also for anyone who would prefer to just have the RSS feed, that is here.

[everyoneleavesalive]

...and we are live!

The pilot episode of Everyone Leaves Alive is now available for your listening enjoyment!

Everyone Leaves Alive is a musical audio drama about a struggling indie rock band that secretly solves paranormal problems. Life on the road isn’t easy when you’ve gotta worry about counteracting the more traditional “kill the beast”-style monster hunters and negotiating a fair contract for performing a gig for the Fae King. But with friendship, humor, a dash of queer romance, and the occasional sing-along, our plucky rock band just might prevail—and even get their shit together enough to finish recording their single.

You can listen here on Apple Podcasts, here on Spotify, and it should be filtering down to the rest of the podcatchers soon. If there’s a particular listening platform you’d like to hear it on, reach out and I’ll see about getting it added there. You can also check out our website for more info, including an episode transcript.

Many thanks to Charles Huth (@charleshuthart on instagram) for our excellent cover image.

[idiopathicsmile]

one of my friends introduced me to a pancake recipe from that site* when we were in college & I did have to find it somewhere else when I started making those pancakes myself after graduating, because I simply could not bear the thought of giving them any page clicks

*(I sincerely hope it was the same one, though I suppose it's entirely possible that I'm thinking of a different recipe site with a racist & cringey gimmick 💀)

god yeah. the internet being what it is, i do think there's a narrow possibility we're talking about two separate recipe websites. but i will choose to be an optimist and try to believe there was only one (1) website of this nature. ugh.

[idiopathicsmile]

🌻

tonight for dinner i'm making caprese sandwiches from cookie + kate, and also gonna try out this lemonade recipe. excited for more spring and summer foods! tomato season almost makes up for the month or more when it's too hot to walk around in the middle of the day.