I'm NB, Ace/Aro-Spec, and Autistic, and yes all of that comes up a lot in my writing
I almost exclusively write spec fic, mostly fantasy, horror, and fantasy-horror.
I write a lot of middle grade, but I also work in adult fiction as well.
I enjoy writing weird stories with humor and heart, strange characters, and lots of subverting/playing with various tropes.
Most of my works include body horror and/or emotional abuse as a theme, so be aware of that.
I'm down for following/supporting any fellow middle grade writers! I'm also interested in following fellow horror, fantasy, or weird fiction writers, and I'm especially drawn to stories written in a unique and/or unconventional format.
That being said, romance/erotica is not my scene. I support y'all from a distance, though.
Main Tumblr (if you want to see my curation of Sonic and Twisted Wonderland fanart): @juneymoonybunny
Current WIPs below the cut:
Current WIPs:
Soul 206
Former small-time rock bassist Neoma Liu wakes up in a discarded freezer to find that their bones have been stolen. They now must confront a dramatically changed world, hostile musicians under demon contracts, and memories of a former contentious relationship to get them back.
Genre: Adult, Spec-Fic
Includes: Body horror (missing bones, actively rotting body), healing from a past abusive relationship, road trips, punk rock vibes, scrap punk aesthetics, angels, demons, blood and bone magic, the inherent magical power of creation, big stupid anime brawls, autistic trauma and rage.
Ismael Attair just wants to escape from their current life, especially the unwanted attention they've received after coming out as non-binary. When they receive an invitation to Aberrant University High School, a mysterious and elite private academy, it seems like the perfect chance to flee. However, life at Aberrant is truly deadly, and Ismael will have to befriend allies and steel their nerves if they want a chance at surviving.
Genre: Middle Grade, Horror w. Spec Fic elements
Includes: Frank discussion of gender identity, infinite inescapable high school, subversion of "super school"/"academy of adventure" stories, what if every fictional thing could be real and how horrifying would that be, the dangers of escapism, child characters actually dying (or having fates worse than death), frequent classical literature references, fighting a parody of sonic.exe.
When his hatred of cake uncovers a conspiracy and (mostly) saves him from a curse placed on his family, unconfident noble's son Arnold Wedgeworth joins forces with a pair of curse breakers known as the "Page Thieves" to thwart a conniving earl's plans.
Genre: Middle Grade, Fantasy/Humor
Includes: Found family, themes of recognizing and resisting emotional abuse, body horror (frog tongue), 1890s-based fantasy setting, book-based magic system, cozy coastal town full of eccentric locals, royal conspiracies, magical gadgets, heisting hijinks, an evil chocolate cake, way too many puns.
Status: Shelved Until Further Notice (though I do want to go back to it someday!)
Rose, Vermil, and Crim Swann are triplets who have never seen the outside world. Supposedly, it's for their own safety: their family harvests potion ingredients out of magical creatures after all, and several powerful forces therefore have a grudge against them. But when that danger thrusts them out into the real world, they'll have to confront what truths they were really being shielded from...
Genre: Middle Grade, Fantasy/Horror
Includes: Themes of familial abuse, dark fairytale-inspired world, fairytale reimaginings, swan maidens, crime family activities, bloody deaths, gruesome fates, family secrets, limited verbal autistic character (Vermil), finding yourself, everybody's got grey morality.
Montgomery Leonidas Fulbright is top dog at the prestigious Iverknox Academy of the Arcane-- or at least, he was. When his usually flawless magic ability fails catastrophically, he's expelled and sent to study at the local underfunded magic public school instead, under the reluctant aid of its top student, Penelope Plum. However, the two soon realize that Monty is not alone in his predicament, and must ban together to find the cause before everyone's magic is on the fritz.
Genre: Middle Grade, Fantasy/Humor
Includes: Themes of identity versus expectations, magic academy parody, magic in a modern setting, the pressure cooker that is school, gifted kid syndrome, jerk kid redemption arc, a kid who talks to rats, evil stress monsters, dodgeball on flying brooms.
Next time you go to write a ten year old child, please know that mine just gave me a fairly accurate explanation of fiat versus commodity currencies, in those terms. So for goodness sake, just have them talk like the adults they’re around most.
Also I saw a post yesterday that said that children under ten don’t understand sarcasm, and I assure you, that is not the case.
I talked like an adult when I was 10. So did all of my friends. Writing children believably is not about making them not know stuff, or making them struggle to express themselves. Kids can be very knowledgeable and very expressive, especially if they’re little book weirdos like I was.
To write a believable child, DO NOT make them:
- dumb
- inarticulate
- prone to outbursts
- superlatively innocent
DO make them:
- totally incapable of accurately calculating delayed gratification or the long-term consequences of their actions
- intermittently sociopathic
- sometimes choose to lie in a way that cannot possibly be believed, due to a dearth of life experience making it impossible to determine the likelihood of their own statements
My 10 year old can do her own laundry, cook simple meals, look after pets, carry on a sophisticated conversation, make jokes that will make adults laugh (with her) for days, and do long division, but sometimes wears the same pair of underwear for several days in a row or forgets to wash the conditioner out of her hair.
My favorite thing about kids of all ages but especially pre-adolescents is they will casually observe and absorb whatever older kids and adults are doing and be doing it too within a day.
Also, if your little kid has older siblings/kids they spend time with, they have the advantage of learning stuff sooner than expected. Older kids are who you learn dirty, dangerous, and “grown up” knowledge from. If adults won’t tell you, older kids are only too happy to sound wise.
My experience with 14/15-year-olds is that — as you would expect — they know about half of the things that “everybody knows” by age 30.
But it is a completely random half
Some of them have all the emotional skills and none of the practical. Some of them have all of the practical and none of the emotional. Some of them know how to mop a floor but not how to wipe down a counter. Some of them can be trusted to cook dinner for 50 people. Some of them don’t know how to say “I don’t feel good” and just have to sit around waiting for someone to notice that they’re about to pass out. Some of them have all of the adult skills but only half as good as an adult. Truly, there is no combination that would surprise me at this point.
So yeah. 1/3 completely competent, 2/3 utterly unaware of their own ignorance. That’s what a 10-year-old is like
Characters that are gravely and shamefully convinced that they are dangerous, able to kill, have no control of their power, that would rather die than injure someone close to them. Characters that yell and scream and scramble to back away, throwing their hands up and crying 'Please, stay back, I don't want to hurt you.' Characters that think they are nothing but a loose cannon, a loaded gun, a ticking time bomb.
Thanks for the tag @cat-esper! My words are wind, laugh, stars, and jump. Leaving these one as an open tag. You words, should you chose to accept them, are breath, dead, warmth, and water.
I'll be pulling from Soul 206 draft 2 for this!
Wind
Neoma couldn’t help themself. They gasped– audibly– when Ravenna opened the case. Vulture wasn’t just a beauty made with love, but an actual thing of beauty. He was a blinding electric white, untarnished by a single scratch or scuff of dirt. He was rimmed and headed with a contrasting black, and the lacquered wood of his neck was such a rich chocolate that it looked edible. Instead of stickers or blemishes, he’d been hand-painted with the black silhouettes of roses and birds, all carefully painted to wind around the silver knobs of his body.
Laugh
“Um… are you my girlfriend?”
Ravenna spit out her cigarette, coughing violently.
“Ravenna?!” Neoma hovered their hands over her back, not knowing what to do. “What’s wrong? Are you choking?”
“No, no, I’m–” Ravenna coughed some more, with each one gaining more of the cadence of a laugh. “I’m fine. I just… where the hell did that come from?”
Stars
The lingering chill in the air garnered their attention first– even at night, the Florida heat usually persisted, so the cold warranted notice. A black sheet hung overhead, washed out with artificial light that only let the strongest stars assert their place in it. Down below, the apartments were lit like salt lamps, their glow reflecting on the nearby lake. The porch itself was nothing special– a concrete slab, occupied by dead leaves and a single lawn chair.
Jump
A chime echoed from the television, leading the male identical gamer– this one with a shaved head and a hoodie– to jump to his feet.
“Hell yeah! That’s four out of five, baby! The Amster does it again!” The twin, Am, pointed and jeered at his long-haired sister, teasing her with a sing-song voice. Her eyeliner lifted as she rolled her eyes.
“Best five out of seven then, dingus?”
“Oh, you’re on–!”
Thanks for the tag, @winterandwords! I'm going to tag @moonrabbitwriter, @rayne143, and open tag! Your words are wind, laugh, stars, and jump
My words are throw, catch, hold, and drop
Throw
Jerome gasped in mock affront, stooped to tear some of the long grass free, and threw it at her. It fell woefully short, the breeze wafting it back at him.
Nyx laughed. “You throw like an old man.”
“Listen, when you get to be my age–”
She threw more grass at him. A piece stuck to his mouth and he sputtered and wiped it off.
Catch
She tried to spot Laurette and Sylvain, but gave up and tried to focus on the microphone instead, adjusting it down as she sat.
“This is–” She stopped, had to lean in more so the mic would catch her voice. “This is for my mother. And for lost friends.”
She settled down, put her fingers to the guitar, and started to play.
There was a moment where she thought she’d forgotten–had to remind herself what chord the song started with, repeating it over and over in her head for at least an hour before coming up here–but her fingers found their positions. They seemed to move on their own, remembering the song so she didn’t have to.
Hold
Amélie wasn’t quite sure how the Wish worked, but she recalled seeing one used and tried to copy what Radda had done. She prayed this would work. As Maman watched her curiously, she moved her hands over to her chest, right above her heart. Visualized what she wanted more than anything in the world, imagined grabbing hold of all the threads lowering her mother’s body into the ground and yanked them back.
Drop
Jerome lost all track of what was happening as Flare ascended, wings fluttering wildly on either side of him. He flattened himself against her fur–please don’t drop me!–and squeezed his eyes shut as his stomach lurched. He missed when Flare was too small to ride, when she clung to his clothes with barbed legs and slept on his chest; she was so much less scary then. Now she rose and dipped and for a terrifying moment, he thought they were falling, but then she rose again. When enough seconds passed and he hadn’t fallen, he chanced a look.
With every dip of her wings, he could see clear sky around them, gray clouds skudding across blue. Treetops appeared and disappeared rhythmically. It sure looked like everything was fine but he couldn’t shake the awful feeling in his gut. It didn’t help that Flare’s flying couldn’t be called smooth; more like bobbing. Jerome's heart lodged in his throat. But she didn’t let him fall.
General taglist: @thatrandomlemononyourcounter1, @teacupsandstarlight, @ark-inkweaving
New Guy From the Bottom of the Primordial Sea has dropped!
(no name yet)
Like Eugene, he's excitable and a terrible meddler in human affairs, and often gets himself into shenanigans. He's less of a braggart than Eugene, but is an incorrigible gossip. While Eugene's wheelhouse of interest is adventure, his is romance.
He really wants a true love romance for himself. Unfortunately, this has not once worked out to date. Fortunately, he's difficult to discourage. Next time, right? 加油！
As a general rule I think the guys (and gals) from the bottom of the primordial sea don't necessarily vibe with one another. However, I think that there are siblings that he gets along with worse than Eugene. I have a feeling that they are among the younger ranks of Guys From the Bottom of the Primordial Sea.
There's no story here (yet?), these guys are just dollies for me so I may make up some more whenever the mood strikes me!
Art taglist: @crimsonshadetress @hakbot @bloodlessheirbyjacques
The fastest way to accomplish The Project is to cease being afraid of The Project. The Project cannot maim you. The Project cannot kill you. The Project is more afraid of you than you are of it. It is okay if The Project turns out differently from how it was in your head, and it is okay if it has flaws. You are capable of engaging with The Project.
I emphasize: DOES NOT mean that it is poorly written.
It does not mean the story is bad. Or the concept is bad. Or the words themselves are bad.
It means it is rough. It is unedited. It is not submittable, saleable, ready for publication. It's raw and messy and needs work.
As all first drafts do.
Even professionals at it for decades, dominating the industry, do not write a publishable piece of fiction when they sit down to write.
If you've seen videos of artists working from rough sketch to final piece you can compare the two.
Your first draft is bad because it is a draft.
Reminding new authors of this is a way to lessen the fear of perfection. To get out of your head and just write. To let them know it doesn't have to be perfect it just has to be written. You can fix whatever you hate in revision. You're going to be revising anyway. No matter how great the first draft reads you will be revising it. Probably more than once. So don't worry if it isn't perfect first time out.
It is not meant to be an aggressive and cruel expectation or condemnation of beginners or some declaration that your first draft must be terrible or you've failed somehow.
That is asinine.
You are writers, you understand words and their meanings so for the love of those words would you please act like it.
I used to use Google docs, but the white mode only was really annoying me (tires my eyes), so I swapped to Ellipsus (which I genuinely love and recommend), but it was bothering me a bit that I need wifi in order to use it, so now I switched to LibreOffice Writer, which I do like.
It very much has a Microsoft Word feel, but is open source and you need no accounts to use it. It's local on your device, so no AI can scan it, and no wifi is needed.
I still wish it had the Google Docs cards, because, bitch, that thing is so good for easy organizing.
josephine and birdie meet for the first time at a convenience store, neon blue shopping baskets glued to the crooks of their sweaty elbows. they're standing over the meat, looking for yellow discount tags and orange stickers marked $8.99. they say nothing to each other, but something churns in birdies stomach.
awareness.
hunger.
later that evening, something in the dining room shifts and warbles. the pair are dragged closer underneath a heatwave and the need to be fed.
Did I need to add any more books to my TBR shelf? No, absolutely not. But could I resist buying Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability and Making Space by Amanda Leduc? Also, no.
Time to put this on the pile on my bedside table under Queer as Folklore 🫣
