#ask audi

[audikatia]

Trick or treat! 🕸👻

Thank you, Kellie!

Since you are a madwoman always writing new fic, I'll share a fic idea I have noodling around in my brain that I'd like to write if I ever get done with my main fic.

It's a Pynch fake dating AU, but the fake dating is between Declan and Adam.

So, Ronan comes out to Declan, but when Declan tries to give a show of support, the two of them rile each other up. Ronan being difficult, Declan overcompensating, etc, until finally Declan finds himself declaring that he's so unhomophobic that he is actually also interested in men and even has a boyfriend of his own. Ronan, trying to call him on his bullshit, says that Declan should bring his boyfriend to the house for Christmas since Declan had already subjected him and Matthew to all the Ashleys he had dated before.

So, Declan finds Adam's post on Craigslist (or similar. Do people still use Craigslist? Is this still relevant?) where he offers to be someone's fake date for the holidays in exchange for a place to stay and a holiday meal. No sex or anything, just basically a place to crash and some food, and, in exchange, he'd either be a pleasant boyfriend or a goddamn nightmare to ruin a holiday, depending on what the client is looking for.

Declan hires Adam and brings him to the Barns for Christmas and fake dating shenanigans ensue, but instead of it bringing Declan and Adam closer, it just introduces Ronan and Adam to each other.

I also have this whole idea of Adam and Ronan having late night conversations in the kitchen of the Barns. Ronan is up late from his insomnia, Adam is up late working on his thesis because that's the only time he can just be "off the clock." This is when they start to bond.

Ronan is so conflicted because he thinks his brother is lying but maybe he is with Adam and if he is with Adam, then Ronan can't date him. And if Declan is lying, then Adam is lying, and Ronan's not sure about that either. Adam just needed a place to stay for the holidays, he wasn't expecting to ever meet anyone worthwhile on one of these Craigslist jobs, but here's Ronan and his terrible mouth. Matthew just wants everyone to be happy.

Basically, I like the idea of taking a basic trope and inverting it a little bit. It's fake dating, but the endgame couple is a different couple. The practice kissing is a nightmare. Declan and Adam have to hold hands and be close to each other, and it's just deeply uncomfortable for everyone. Declan wonders if they need to practice kissing and Adam is just such a bitch about saying "no, that's just stupid."

-

"Should we practice?" Declan asked.

Nothing in Adam's expression changed as he continued to stare at Declan's proffered hand, but the silence crawled along Declan's skin until he finally, reluctantly, pulled it away.

"Holding hands with a man and kissing a man is the same as holding hands or kissing a woman." Adam looked at Declan, something thoughtful and cool crossing his alien face. "Maybe your brother is right. Maybe you are homophobic."

"That’s not—" Declan snapped, cutting himself off. He would not lose his patience this quickly. With years of experience wrangling Ronan's mercurial moods, he would not be bested this quickly by a stranger. "I simply meant it should look as though we are comfortable with each other."

Adam raised one nearly colorless eyebrow and then, without taking a step to close the distance between them, reached out to take Declan's hand. Their joined hands hung limply between them as the silence stretched like taffy. Declan felt shriveled by this protracted touch under Adam's unblinking gaze.

It was an age before Adam finally dropped his hold.

"Glad we got that out of the way. Thank god we practiced."

[kolmetoivetta]

Rate me out of ten 👏👏

Eleven ;) 💙💙

[audikatia]

Queen I need you to know that I’ve been laughing all day at your Gabin as text posts memes

Blessings be upon you! I am so glad you enjoyed it! It's nice to know someone else is obsessed with him as I am. It's what he deserves!

And not to be vain or anything, but I am this close to making the post about his nipples the new background on my phone

Tobias text post memes are coming soon!

[audikatia]

“He should have been shot twice” took me tf OUT. Honestly, you should write stuff like that more often. Fuck that guy.

I said it AND I MEANT IT

[audikatia]

TRICK OR TREAT!

Yay! Thank you!

Here is an unedited section from the next chapter of Transubstantiation, as well as a little glimpse into what my writing method is like.

&&&&&

Adam’s eyes caught on a tattooed hook crawled out over the collar of Ronan’s jacket, the complex physical machine of his shoulders as he unlocked the door to St. Agnes with all the grace of a thief.

He thought of the series of locks furiously attached to the door at the Barns, of Ronan’s nearly inaudible sigh of relief as Matthew clicked the car lock behind him, and he marveled at Ronan’s trust in locks. He thought of Ronan telling him to lock himself in his car that night he found Tad. It didn’t matter. He had found the body anyway.

-

The suffocating scent of incense and the sweet odor of prayer

-

Fingers wet with holy water, Ronan was only halfway finished his sign of the cross when he stalled.

“Adam.”

-

(More under the cut)

-

a small gold cross on a chain around his neck at the hollow of his throat

-

Ronan gave a smoker’s breath: a deep inhalation through flared nostrils, slow exhale through parted breath. It was too much, too loud in the way of sounds in church.

-

It was, Adam thought, like when he was younger and still living in the trailer park with his parents, when he would hedge at his door to his tiny bedroom and flick the lights off before flinging his tiny body onto his bed. That was back when he thought the monster was under the bed, not sitting in the recliner drinking a beer.

-

Ronan swore, “Jesus, Mary, and fuckface Joseph.”

- Adam tasted his own heartbeat

-

Because there, under the broken gaze of a sorrowing Christ, lay disquieting heaps of dead birds.

Adam thought the greatest testament to how familiar he had grown in Ronan’s home was his newfound ability to detect the many shades of Chainsaw’s mood. Before, he had always classified her and possibly all birds as expressionless or at least of only one unwavering temperament.

But he knew better now, cold realization filling his lungs as he looked at the dead crows at the altar.

Their stillness was nothing like Chainsaw’s own still, alertness when she perched on tree limbs to scare her prey. This was a stillness that promised movement was over. There was nothing left alive in them.

-

Ronan grabbed him from behind, impossibly strong arms wrapped around him. The scent of Ronan’s sweat and deodorant cut through the stifling stench of incense.

“Adam, stop! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Chainsaw! What if it’s Chainsaw?”

“These little shits are too small to be Chainsaw. She’s at home right now with a hot dog hangover. She’s not here.”

-

His hand scrambled across Ronan’s chest blindly, fingers catching at the gaps between the buttons

-

"You shouldn’t have to see that."

-

Desperate whispers at the limits of his hearing

He felt like he was standing several paces behind himself

It (the wall? The church?) could hold him up. It owed him that much.

He shut his eyes prayerfully

burning points of life that ghost the eye

A message of violence

Like a fire on the other side of the room

&&&&&&

I hate how long it's taking me to write this chapter this entire fic, but I am still enjoying it when I do get the chances here and there to write. It's been such a bad combo of having too many jobs and too much brain fog to really get all the sentences down. So much of my draft looks like this: patches of sentences, half-formed passages, random snatches of poetic sayings that I will eventually string together into a coherent chapter.

But I really will mash it all together into a new chapter and eventually a finished fic. Eventually lol

[audikatia]

1 and 8 for the tgr ask game?

-@aftgphoenix

Ooh, thank you! the tgr ask game 1 - What is your favorite part? JEAN AND THE GIANT PEACH. Specifically when he checks on its safety in his locker. Shower this man with peaches, is2g Also a big fan of the Foxes' game. Also also a big fan of every JereJean moment, but I feel like that's a cop out answer lol

8 - Which scene is living rent-free in your head?

Not to beat a dead horse, but Jean and the peach lol

Recovery stories in general mean a lot to me, and anything that takes the time to really touch on food-related issues also just resonate so much with me, so all the peach-moments are just so good

Thank you!

[audikatia]

10, 13, and 17 for the end of year book asks. 💕

Thanks, Kellie!!!! ❤️

10. What was your favorite new release of the year?

Henry Henry by Allen Britton

I don't know if I would recommend this overall to everyone because it is definitely a very Specific Sort Of Book, but god. A modern, queer retelling of the Henriad? I didn't know I needed this. This killed me, this revitalized me. I cannot stop thinking about it and I read it months ago. This is going to stay with me forever. Most of the books I read, I get from the library because I do not have the money or space in my apartment for all the books I read, but this... this I had to get a copy of it. I need to analyze it, I need to memorize it.

I knew the broad strokes of how it would go because, well, the Henriad has been around for hundreds of years. But the way it went? The liberations it took? It was exactly what I want from a tragedy where I can see the ending and I know the ending and I want so badly for the characters to break out of the Tragedy, but they never can. Beautifully executed.

13. What were your least favorite books of the year?

This is going to get long and ranty, sorry lol

Honestly, it was a year with a lot of low-rated books for me. It was not a good reading year overall, which is a shame. I have organized my lowest rated books into sub-categories because my complaints tend to be the same by genre.

Queer romances

Delilah Green Doesn’t Care by Ashley Herring Blake (horrendous, I will never read anything by her again)

Cleat Cute by Meryl Wilsner (so aggravating, I am mad when I think about this book)

Late Bloomer by Mazey Eddings (this made me want to not read sapphic fiction anymore, I was so fucking done)

If This Gets Out by Sophie Gonzales

Caught in a Bad Fauxmance by Elle Gonzalez Rose

The Pairing by Casey McQuiston (this made me realize I am so fucking done with Casey McQuiston as an author. I have hated all of their books except Red White and Royal Blue and I just need to call it quits. )

Time to Shine by Rachel Reid

Big Swiss by Jen Beggin (disappointing because this was so hyped up as a Genuinely Well Written book and the writing mostly was good, but the characters and execution just fell apart)

I don't careeeeeeee I just don't fucking careeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee atttttt allllllllllllllll. To be fair, I am not a big romance fan in general, but I do tend to like queer romance most of the time since there is like a genuine hurdle for why people can't be together rather than just bad miscommunication. But these just fucking sucked (in my own opinion, other people might have loved them and that's totally fine). A lot of the authors (I'm looking at you especially, Ashley Herring Blake) had some of the most tone-deaf ways of writing about characters of color or nonbinary characters, specifically writing afab nonbinary characters as though they were women and ignoring that amab nonbinary people exist. Totally tone deaf while also including so much virtue signaling I felt like I was watching fucking Dora the Explorer remind the audience that stealing is bad. The neurodivergent rep was just fucking horrible. I'm sorry, it was. Also, bad writing (minus Big Swiss, that was genuinely good writing), bad plots, bad characters, etc. Some of these characters are like 30+ years old and acting like entitled 12 year old brats. It was painful to read.

Also, Meryl Wilsner, girl, wtf. Watch TikToks about ADHD is not "medical research," jfc. And the word "queer" is not fucking linked with TERF-rhetoric. Are you fucking kidding me?

Thrillers/Mysteries

The New Couple in 5B by Lisa Unger

The Princess of Las Vegas by Chris Bohjalian (this should have been like 200 pages less and then maybe it would have been great)

The Reappearance of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson (this was baffling how bad it was. I like other books by this author. She's normally really good at plotting out a story that is a shakily plausible but mostly acceptable within the framework of mystery conventions, but this?? Wtf happened?)

Home is Where the Bodies Are by Jeneva Rose

Love Letters to a Serial Killer by Tasha Coryell (I read this expecting it to be trash and was still surprised by how bad it was)

The Mystery Writer by Sulari Gentill

I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin (This book could have been a tweet)

Everyone Who Can Forgive Me is Dead by Jenny Hollander (compelling premise, stupid as fuck execution)

The Drowning Kind by Jennifer McMahon

Ughhhhhhhh noooooooooooooooooooooooooo. I love thrillers, but these didn't make sense? They just went for vibes and no actual substance. The plots were terrible, the twists were done only to have twists rather than to serve an actual purpose. Some of them had random 10 year time skips that were mentioned in a single sentence and it was so off putting? So many of them felt like the author copy/pasted twitter threads about social commentary into the book and made it monologues. It was terrible. None of these were compelling, none of these made me give a shit about the events unfolding. Just bland and unimaginative the whole way through, even if the premise itself sounded promising.

Contemporary Literary Fiction

Piglet by Lottie Hazel (I read a few books about EDs this year, but this had nothing else to really offer except Commentary. Actually, I think the issue was that it wasn't written like a real ED? It was written like ED as a metaphor, which just sucked. Although, admittedly, the food was described beautifully. I liked her writing style and will probably read more by her, but this plot and this MC did not work for me)

Mercury by Amy Jo Burns

Overall, I hate the term "chick lit" and find it to be extremely derogatory. But damn. These books were not making a good case for why that's a bad term. These books really were just "wow, women have it rough and we should be poetic about it" without any additional substance.

Superhero Genre

Breaking the Dark by Lisa Jewell

I understand that they wanted a big name in the mystery/thriller genre to write this Jessica Jones novel, but I wish they had gotten someone who was actually familiar with the source material or at least willing to research it before writing.

I like Jewell's books and writing style, so this wasn't a bad novel on its own. But it was a horrible depiction of Jessica Jones's character and ultimately a bummer of a read. Jewell basically ignored every aspect of Jones's personality and also didn't seem to feel like writing about any of her powers, so she just... ignored them? Ignored their entire existence? And she also just sort of passed over Jessica Jones's entire history about her family being killed and being held hostage and repeatedly raped for over a year. Like, I get that Jewell didn't really want to write about the ramifications of all that, but then don't write a book with a main character who went through all of that. I don't know what to tell you.

17. Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

Anyone’s Ghost by August Thompson (I knew this was going to rip my heart out for personal reasons, but I also think it would have destroyed me even if I wasn't as emotionally connected to the plot.)

My Murder by Katie Williams (Amazing premise with fantastic follow-through)

The Royal Art of Poison: Filthy Palaces, Fatal Cosmetics, Deadly Medicine, and Murder Most Foul by Eleanor Herman (I like non-fiction, but I am always pleasantly surprised when the author manages to present it almost conversationally. This was in-depth without being condescending or overinflated and was genuinely fun to read)

Emma Southon's books (Basically the same comment as above. I expected something a little dry but educational, but I got educational and very cheeky!)

Bless anyone who actually read any of that lol

[audikatia]

hello! i am very early in on reading transubstantiation (still in the first few chapters!) and it really just struck me how cleverly you've taken the coffee shop framing (which has its own loaded implications within the context of fanfic) and turned it on its head in introducing the string of perverse murders. i love that it's a genuine mystery with a confident sense of its own internal lore. i love how brittle your adam parrish is. i love how the setting is textured and grimy and brimming with secrets. you're awesome!

This has been sitting in my inbox for two months and I have thought about it every day with sheer excitement at such a nice comment and also mounting shame at how long it has taken me to respond lol

Thank you so much for sending this! I feel so often with fanfic and also published fiction that I can never really get what I truly want which is a combination of a compelling mystery and an engaging romantic pairing. There's either ROMANCE with a lil plot going on or there is MYSTERY and the couple sort of gets together at some point but it's ancillary at best. So I really wanted to be able to write my best approximation of what I want to read lol

And as for the coffee shop part, I really love the classic trope of "it's a cute small town where nothing bad ever happens EXCEPT FOR THAT ONE UNSOLVED MURDER" but I wanted the fanfic version of the small town setting which landed on a coffee shop

It means so much to me that you love my brittle Adam. "Brittle" is one of my main adjectives for his characterization that I refer back to when writing him to make sure I'm keeping him in line. One of my favorite lines in the books is about how Ronan recognizes the cracked lines all over Adam and I really wanted to reflect that in my own work, so thank you.

Really, thank you for this! I've been spending a stupid amount of time and energy on this and I always feel like people have forgotten about it since I don't have much time to write, so it's just really nice to get such thoughtful messages. Thank you!