chasing satisfaction

Don’t fight with monsters, for you can become one. If you look into the abyss for long enough, the abyss looks into you. (my grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry) main @quartzified

[qelizhus]

obligatory post again abt critique partners… would anyone like to be critique partners? or something? i just would like someone to ask for feedback on my short stories; i’m happy to do the same for either longer wips or short stories as well…! pls contact me if ur interested and we can try to work smth out :)

[writeblrfantasy]

ARC signups for FIRE IN THE MOONLIGHT are officially OPEN!

FIRE IN THE MOONLIGHT ARC Form

Thank you so much for your interest in leaving a review on FITM. Here are a few rules/information before you sign up. Release date is June

ARC reviews are the backbone of a successful release day for any indie author. It'd mean the world to me if you would give a thorough review in exchange for a free copy of the book! More details, requirements, and timelines are outlined in the form, but always feel free to ask me any questions!

Even if you're not interested, just reblogging this post or sending the form link to a friend who might be interested would be helping me out LOADS. Thank you so much and I'm so excited!

Once again, here is the blurb in case you don't know what the book is about:

Servant meets master. Spark meets tinder. Will an inferno ignite? Sovereign Rashan may be a Firelord by blood, but not by practice. He is a solitary man who brought himself from farmhouse to throne. Rashan is trying only to serve his country and end the war between his own people and the Firelords he feels no tie to. He is most certainly not looking for love. So when one of the engineered servants of the Firelords defects and pledges himself to Rashan, Rashan is flabbergasted. Ellund is brilliant, beautiful, and powerful, a deadly combination for a sovereign trying to remember why he cannot accept Ellund's offer of service. When the war comes to a head, Rashan must decide—accept Ellund as his servant and lover by embracing the Firelord nature he's defied his whole life, or continue to stand alone.

[pmamtraveller]

Ana Teresa Barboza

[weltenwellen]

Ruth Awad, "Moral Inventory"

[qelizhus]

i miss writing ahhhhhhhhhhh

[primulaceas]

Alejandro Zambra, Ways of Going Home (translated by Megan McDowell)

[primulaceas]

Natalie Diaz, “Snake-Light.” Postcolonial Love Poem

[toavoidtherush]

this is an old story, one anyone can tell.

1, matthew stover - revenge of the sith. 2, david lynch - twin peaks. 3, tory adkisson - anecdote of the pig. 4, aeschylus - agamemnon. 5, homer trans. emily wilson - the illiad. 6, david leviathan - revisiting mockingjay ahead of the hunger games prequal. 7, richard siken - planet of love. 8, taylor swift - exile. 9, mike flannigan - the haunting of hill house. 10, iain reid - i'm thinking of ending things. 11, hadestown - road to hell (reprise). 12, anne carson - h of h playbook. 13, ts eliot - four quartets. 14, craig howell and chris nielsen - the last magician. 15, ethel cain - ptolemaea. 16, aeschylus - the oresteia. 17, joan tierney - how to draw a circle. 18, yellowjackets - flight of the bumblebee. 19, eula biss - the pain scale. 20, jean anouilh - antigone. 21, richard siken - the worm king's lullaby. 22, a series of unfortunate events - that's not how the story goes. 23, john darnielle - wolf in white van. 24, leigh janiak - fear street 1978. 25, joel anderson - lake mungo. 26, markus zusak - the book thief. 27, marah in the mainsal - leviathan. 28, dave filoni - twilight of the apprentice concept art. 29, terry pratchett - reaper man. 30, matthew stover - revenge of the sith.

[asoftepiloguemylove]

DO I EXIST?

Jody Chan aubade for the BPD subreddit user who wrote can people with BPD love? // 鉄男 Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) dir. Shinya Tsukamoto // The Mountain Goats Birth of Serpents // Dorothea Lasky Love Poems for Bathsheba // Zen Cho The Four Generations of Chang E // atlas a conversation about identity // Silent Hill 3 (2003) cr. Konami // Richard Siken You Are Jeff // unknown // Roe Gardner Requiem // Teki Yatsuda Sleeping on Paper Boats // Jane Mead World of Made and Unmade

[ink-flavored]

i caught a glimpse of someone in the mirror today waiting for my t-gel to dry shirtless and smooth with a thin rope necklace a single butterfly ring as a charm hair bleached on one side of its freshly cut shape breasts bound to the chest with skin-colored tape old sweatpants with ancient elastic, sagging at the hips, letting the boxers sneak out a notch that had a stuffed pouch in the crotch yes, this person is almost myself a wo/man i almost recognize despite his imperfections, i took a picture of her because i know how quickly time flies

                                       – mirror mirror

Poetry Taglist: @elegant-paper-collection​ @polyphonetic @qelizhus @livums @auroblaze @stardustanddaffodils  @thelaughingstag @ceph-the-ghost-writer @auntdarth @srjacksin @alesseia @maxdamaz

[letterful]

i do love listmaking…

[letterful]

here be two decidedly incomprehensive lists based on highly arbitrary criteria — off the top of my head and in no particular order:

rattling like a bag of bones:

"gretel, from a sudden clearing" & "the promise" & "what the silence says" & "calvary" by marie howe,

"i watched you disappear” by anya krugovoy silver,

"the song of hen's head" & "this is a photograph of me" & "a sad child" by margaret atwood,

"bruise ghazal" & "i go back to may 1937" by sharon olds,

"harold's leap" & "deeply morbid" & "the orphan reformed" & "do take muriel out" & "not waving but drowning" by stevie smith,

"we who are your closest friends" by phillip lopate,

"the loft" by richard jones,

"eating together" & "death poem" & "party" & "you with the crack running through you" & "the numbers" by kim addonizio,

"thanks" by w. s. merwin,

"the bee meeting" & "lady lazarus" & "daddy" & "sheep in fog" & "fever 103" by sylvia plath,

"yesterday he still looked in my eyes" by marina tsvetaeva,

"we don't know how to say goodbye" & "the last toast" by anna akhmatova,

"unknown girl in the maternity ward" & "lessons in hunger" & "the truth the dead know" by anne sexton,

"anne sexton’s last letter to god" by tracey herd,

"aubade" & "the mower" by philip larkin,

"the blue bowl" by jane kenyon,

"her long illness" by donald hall,

"myth" by natasha trethewey,

"in bertram's garden" by donald justice,

"the drowned girl" & "the leavetaking" by bertolt brecht,

"ovid in the third reich" by geoffrey hill,

"musee des beaux arts" by w. h. auden,

"report from a besieged city" by zbigniew herbert,

"napoleon" by miroslav holub,

"me up at does" by e.e. cummings,

"snow line" by john berryman,

"the hollow men" by t. s. eliot,

"dedication" & "in warsaw" by czesław miłosz—

resonating like a bright bell:

"what the living do" & "my dead friends" & "magdalene, afterwards" by marie howe,

"funny" by anna kamieńska,

"woman unborn & "i'll open the window" & "i am panting" & “tomorrow they’ll cut me open” by anna świrszczyńska,

"the book of hours" by b. h. fairchild,

"there is a gold light in certain old paintings" by donald justice,

"when eurydice saw him..." (an excerpt) by gregory orr,

"sometimes, when the light" & "the blind leading the blind" & "there are mornings" & "monet refuses the operation" by lisel mueller,

"try to praise the mutilated world" & "transformation" by adam zagajewski,

"the end and the beginning" & "the tower of babel" & "discovery" & "thank-you note" by wisława szymborska,

"while eating a pear" & "the dead" by billy collins,

"never again would the birds' song be the same" by robert frost,

"a meeting" by wendell berry, 

"death at daybreak" by anne reeve aldrich,

"next time" by joyce sutphen,

"the god abandons antony" by c. p. cavafy,

"failing and flying" by jack gilbert,

"goodtime jesus" by james tate,

"all my friends are finding new beliefs" by christian wiman,

"angels" by maurya simon,

"the saints" by margaret atwood,

"dirge without music" by edna st. vincent millay,

"i’m glad your sickness" by marina tsvetaeva,

"you will hear thunder" by anna akhmatova,

"fern hill" & "do not go gentle into that good night" & "and death shall have no dominion" by dylan thomas,

"an arundel tomb" & "love, we must part now" by philip larkin,

"please read" by mary ruefle,

"men made out of words" by wallace stevens,

"ash wednesday" by t. s. eliot,

"on angels" & "this world" & "if there is no god" & "encounter" by czesław miłosz.

[ariaste]

YIELD UNDER GREAT PERSUASION comes out on September 17th! It's a cozy M/M romantasy about second chances, the difficult journey to self-forgiveness, and a one-sided enemies-to-lovers situationship 👀 It's available from most book retailers in hardback, paperback, and ebook (with more retailers coming soon) -- links to most of the common ones right here. The cover art is by the amazing @holographings, check out more of his work!

SUMMARY: Tam Becket has hated Lord Lyford since they were boys. The fact that he’s also been sleeping with the man for the last ten years is irrelevant. When they were both nine years old, Lyford smashed Tam’s entry into the village’s vegetable competition. Nearly twenty years later, Tam hasn’t forgiven him. No one understands how deeply he was hurt that day, how it set a pattern of disappointments and small misfortunes that would run through the rest of his life. Now Tam has reconciled himself to the fact that love and affection are for other people, that the gods don’t care and won’t answer any of his prayers (not even the one about afflicting Lyford with a case of flesh-eating spiders to chew off his privates), and that life is inherently mundane, joyless, and drab. And then, the very last straw: Tam discovers that Lyford (of all people!) bears the divine favor of Angarat, the goddess Tam feels most betrayed and abandoned by. In his hurt and anger, Tam packs up and prepares to leave the village for good. But the journey doesn’t take him far, and Tam soon finds himself set on a quest for the most difficult of all possible prizes: Self care, forgiveness, a second chance... and somehow the unbelievably precious knowledge that there is at least one person who loves Tam for exactly who he is—and always has.

This book might be for you if:

You like enemies-to-lovers but you think it would be improved by being one-sided and meanwhile the other person is living through a “hopelessly yearning for childhood crush” trope

you like it when two people are so, so, so stupid that they’ve been fucking for 10 years and Person A hasn’t figured out that Person B is in love with him, and Person B hasn’t realized that Person A doesn’t even know about his feelings

You know how fucking hard it is to Do The Work In Therapy and you want some catharsis about it

you want to read about an imperfect, truly difficult person who still gets loved, because being perfect is not a requirement to deserve affection and care

you know that apologizing for wronging someone doesn’t just magically take away the bad feelings and automatically repair the relationship, and you want to read about someone having to do the extra steps that come after the apology

this one’s for the wlw: fat harvest goddess milf. my gift to u

you like gods who don’t have anything better to do than stick their noses into human business

when you see a gorgeous man holding an infant, it takes you out at the knees

you like queernorm fantasy AND small-town gossip, and you find the intersection of the two delicious and intriguing

a religion based on pre-Christian Brythonic England. That is, they’ve got henges and standing stones instead of churches and altars. it’s cool

plant magic!!!!!

“god of temptation and evil” actually “god of self-care and personal boundaries and taking responsibility for the consequences you consented to”.

"Alongside the sexiness and absurdity (and the sexy absurdity) in Yield Under Great Persuasion is a tender, resonant story of second and third chances and being loved when we need it most and feel we deserve it least. Evocative, emotional, and endlessly entertaining." —Jules Arbeaux, author of Lord of the Empty Isles Preorder links for most retailers are here! If you live in the US and you'd like to order a paper copy from the retailer that benefits me most (thank you!), that retailer is Allstora.

(Signal boosts are always greatly appreciated, thank you in advance!)

[ariaste]

Comes out the day after tomorrow!!!

[ink-flavored]

Magnet Monday Week 53: Sinister

i may have gone ape shit ham on this prompt

If you’re interested in being able to choose the topic of the next poem, make sure to vote in the weekly Magnet Monday polls! Or if you want a commission just like it, check out my pricing sheet!

Transcript under the cut!

[Ko-Fi] [Magnet Monday]

Magnet Monday Taglist (Check out my Google form to get added): @elegant-paper-collection ​ @polyphonetic @qelizhus @livums @maxdamaz @auroblaze @stardustanddaffodils @thelaughingstag @ceph-the-ghost-writer @auntdarth @damageinkorporated @srjacksin @alesseia

Sinister

oh sinister son,

what have you done?

the world screams as

fire blazes through the sky

and your wings smoke and bleed

son of the dark

are you even sorry?

salted dirt for broken bones

angel and animal wearing

ferocious desire

Devil & brother of sins

at eternity's end

how do you feel?

between wild and secret

a spider in the air

above yourself in silence

not a word in the deep

before you die

[aritany]

current project goes craaaaaazy

[ordinaryheavenn]

the memory police - yoko ogawa

[dallonwrites]

this was supposed to be the quick set up to a flashback about trying to understand your friends chronic illness and pain from a time when he himself didn't yet understand it, from the pov of grief and irrational guilt, where the most important moment about that is after the events of this set up, but language wise she ended up doing the most and is now holding up the entire scene and therefore doing the most for the "trying to understand chronic illness and pain and your own guilt about it" themes. i fear the prose immediately after this is falling apart in my hands as we speak

[qelizhus]

i hate school

i gave up on editing silicone heart 1 in the same doc, im starting over. maybe this will inspire more creativity

transcript under cut

The halls have moved, you find; corners don’t turn where they used to. The walls are now a pallish, green colour. There is far more colour in this house than where you were, previously, and it is draining on your tired eyes. You get lost twice on the way back to your bedroom, and it is perhaps not your memory that leads you there but instead the tether you have to the bane of your existence. 

Inside you find yourself sitting on a chair in the middle of your bedroom; it is an old wooden thing, with a flattened cushion that no longer properly works. Sprawled across your face is the bane of your existence, in a floppy form that resembles a cuttlefish. Its tentacles drip down the sides of your face, leaving your eyes bare. You make eye contact, but there is no recognition nor life in the you that you meet. 

“Won’t you come closer?” asks the bane of your existence. Its mouth is a small opening hidden underneath its tentacles, and they wriggle against your face as it speaks. A deep-seated revulsion rises to the top of your throat, hot and ashamed.

“You wouldn’t want me to,” you say, and it is only half the truth. The rest of it is as follows: it knows that you wouldn't do anything it tells you to, which makes life rather difficult, and that even if it did want you to come closer, you don’t think you could move an inch.

[zegalba]

A frozen lighthouse on Lake Michigan.

[misterlemonztenth]

misterlemonztenth.tumblr.com/archive