Darling

Ash. 27. SoC, TSC, TFoTA. Writer, Illustrator.

[carolinawrenn]

Copies of Rollins' tax returns for the past ten years tower in big stacks on his desk. His neck is tight and his shoulders ache from hours spent bent over his files. Keep at it like that and you'll go blind, he hears Jordie's mocking voice in his head.

Shut it, Jordie.

Miss Ruysch evidently agrees with Jordie. She raps her knuckles on Kaz's desk on the third afternoon, and he looks up, annoyed, from his paperwork. "Enough, Mr. Rietveld," she says firmly. "Something's bitten in to you. You need to get out of this office."

"I'm fine," Kaz snarls.

"You are not, you silly man," she replies tartly. "Come over to my sister's tomorrow evening while you still remember how to be human."

Listen to the lady, Jordie says. She's got more sense than you.

Kaz takes a deep breath. "Will your niece be there?" he asks. Why should he waste time fretting over Inej? Let her do whatever she's going to do. It's none of Kaz's concern.

Miss Ruysch gives him a wry look. "I'll make sure of it." Chapter 11 of Numberless Crowded Streets is up on AO3!

[ekbelsher]

Kaz (without his gloves) and Inej  🖤🖤 This is the last page illustration I did for A Darker Shore: Letters from Ketterdam :)

[linearao3]

The Unmourned

Chapter 3: The Sickle-Sword

“Jump,” he says, hooking his cane on his arm, and when she gives a half-hearted hop, he closes his fists in a complicated pattern and pushes up, and her head stops only a foot shy of the ceiling. She can’t help the delighted laugh that bubbles out of her as she floats there in midair, and when she looks down, he’s very nearly smiling as he looks up at her.

[carolinawrenn]

It becomes a routine on Inej's late nights, coming down to the lobby at nine bells to talk with her. They're occasionally interrupted by guests arriving late—a delayed coach or a missed gondel—or by others coming back from the opera or theater instead of going for a fashionable late supper afterwards, but it's mostly just the two of them, with Willem an indifferent chaperone in his corner by door.

It's comfortable, these nights. Like throwing a ball with Jordie when they were kids, an easy back-and-forth. Inej asks Kaz about his travels across Kerch, and her eyes light up when he describes the rocky coastline of the north and the music floating over the Belendt conservatory's walls. She tells him about Ravka, its deep forests and Sirkuzoi mountains, which have snow at their peaks even in midsummer. She likes his Da's stories about selkies and goblins, and teaches Kaz about the Sulis' Clever Hare, who always outwits Fox and Wolf. Chapter 10 of Numberless Crowded Streets is up on AO3!

[linearao3]

The Unmourned

Chapter 2: Two Offers

He comes around the parked car very quickly, for a man with a cane. And if she was startled to see him here, it’s nothing compared to the shock that hits when she sees what he’s holding in his other hand.

“Get in the car,” he says, and levels the handgun at her.

[linearao3]

The Unmourned

The vampires who emerged with the closing of the Fold don’t trouble the Geldstraat. Ketterdam’s rich live securely, with powerful wards against the supernatural built into the fabric of their houses and private security to walk their streets after dark. The rest of the city does what they can to keep safe, but the last line of defense for the poor, the helpless, and the unlucky are the Flames. Chosen by the University of Ketterdam’s Night Science Institute and sponsored by the city in the interests of preserving their labor force, Flames hunt vampires through the streets, accompanied by University-trained Wardens who strengthen and protect them.

Ever since Inej’s parents were killed, she’s devoted herself to a single ambition: becoming a Flame. But on the streets of Ketterdam, the future she dreamed of may not look much like the future she gets.

Chapter 1: The Wet and the Dry

She expects him to try for something inspiring, some drum-roll of rhetoric for the hundred people gathered here to compete for the privilege of risking their necks to save people. After all, anyone who’s here could be going out for private security, and maybe some will, if they don’t make it. The government subsidizes the NSI and its Flames, but it’s not like it doesn’t pay more, to walk the wards around the Geldstraat and the Zelverstraat and play bodyguard to rich kids when they slum it. Nobody tries to become a Flame unless they’ve got some ideals.

But all the Warden says is, “Welcome to the first day of the Night Science Institute’s trials. Candidates number one through twenty-five will go to the north hall for the written. Twenty-six through fifty, west hall for small science. Fifty-one through seventy-five, east hall for mental. Seventy-six through one hundred, please proceed to the south hall for the athletic.”

[marinevhs]

“I hate you so much that sometimes I can’t think of anything else.”

.

Mentally I’m still in here 🧚‍♀️

[alltheworldsinmyhead]

Chapter 5: SANKT ILYA IN CHAINS

the patron saint of unlikely cures

"He reaches for the chain and pushes the door open, and is so surprised, seeing his visitor, that it overpowers any other emotion. He hasn’t seen this face ever since before he was deployed. How long has it been? Four years? More?"

read on ao3

[alltheworldsinmyhead]

Chapter 4: SANKTA MAGDA

 the patron saint of abandoned women

"Why would you give me this envelope, Kaz?” she asks at last, her voice barely above a whisper. The warm light of the lamp paints her face in yellow and black. “What am I meant to do with it?” He empties his glass; the moonshine burns his throat all the way down to his stomach. “I don’t know,” he says, “these are yours. He was your husband.” "Your brother,” she shoots back."

READ ON AO3

[rylandgracie]

and frank being happy and giddy about mel liking him until he looks at mel’s face and realizes He Wasn’t Supposed to Know That

[japril]

[alltheworldsinmyhead]

Chapter 3: SANKT DEMYAN

the patron saint of those recently deceased

"The cathedral is filled to the brim with flowers. The vines of purple, five-petaled clematis, a symbol of Kerch, are wrapped around every support beam, every bench, every column. There are bouquets on the stone altar. And people wear yet another bloom on their lapels and pinned to their hats - passifloras, neatly arranged into small corsages with the cursed purple ribbons. A sign of honor, because is there even a higher honor, to give your boy’s life for the sake of your country? Inej watches them numbly from underneath her black veil."

READ ON AO3

[ao3commentoftheday]

memes are fun and relatable and all that, but don't let them discourage you. all of that stuff that doesn't make it into the final product is part of how the final product gets made

[linearao3]

Publish or Perish

(E; 12/12)

Chapter 12: Ghafa, Inej. “What Is Owed: Ambition, Obligation, and Freedom in Ryllart’s The Six Thieves.” Unpublished.

Falteringly, she says, “He’s — trying to make it up to me.”

Nina snorts. “With his tongue, I trust.”

“No — I mean not yet — I mean — Nina!”

“What?” Nina says, frowning. “What do you mean, not yet?”

“We’re — taking things slow,” Inej mumbles. Nina will understand that, and anyway it’s true, isn’t it? Isn’t it? “He just offered to marry me.”

And she did say she’d tell Nina everything, but maybe she could have led up to that bit a little better. The look on Nina’s face suggests that she isn’t sure whether Inej has brain damage or has somehow managed, by words alone, to give Nina some. “Inej. That is exactly nobody’s definition of taking it fucking slow.”

[thewritingumbrellas]

Writing advice from my uni teachers:

If your dialog feels flat, rewrite the scene pretending the characters cannot at any cost say exactly what they mean. No one says “I’m mad” but they can say it in 100 other ways.

Wrote a chapter but you dislike it? Rewrite it again from memory. That way you’re only remembering the main parts and can fill in extra details. My teacher who was a playwright literally writes every single script twice because of this.

Don’t overuse metaphors, or they lose their potency. Limit yourself.

Before you write your novel, write a page of anything from your characters POV so you can get their voice right. Do this for every main character introduced.

[writerlyn]

This is legit good writing advice, especially the first bullet point! In playwriting class we did a bit where every bit of dialogue had to be an accusatory question and it was glorious.

[sourdough-seal]

writing is easy actually. all you have to do is tell people what happened

[enjoylentgreen]

[the-chelseahotel]

Reblog with your listening age according to Spotify