Musings of a Meandering Magpie

(ID in alt)

Hi, I'm Joy Demorra, international bestselling author and general disaster.

This is my book. Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites is the first book in the Hunger Pangs series, a queer, polyamorous, paranormal, gaslamp slow-burn romance featuring vampires, werewolves, and various other creatures that go bump in the night.

It started out life as a Tumblr shit post and became an international bestseller within several hours of pre-orders going up. No one was more surprised than me.

It features Nathan, a deaf, disabled werewolf newly returned from war, and Vlad, a neurodivergent mad scientist vampire trying to unionize the workforce of the island in between tripping over all his various ongoing projects. (free healthcare, free schooling, y’know, small hobbies)

The other main character is Ursula, an all-powerful [REDACTED] working to save the world from imminent ecological disaster. The main romance arc of book one focuses on Vlad x Nathan, with Ursula forming her own relationships with them alluded to in the next book.

No love triangles here. Just three highly competent bisexuals sharing the same brain cell the closer they are to each other.

The world is set in a pseudo-regency meets fake Victorian Gaslamp Fantasy world, complete with gothic castles, enchanted forests, and just a smidge of industrial coal dust.

One of my favorite reviews ever described it as "the queer, goth love child of Terry Pratchett meets Jane Austen," so if that sounds interesting to you, you can check out my links below.

Buy the (high heat) Flirting With Fangs Edition Here.

Buy the (medium heat) Fluff and Fangs Edition Here.

Why are there two versions, and what's the difference between them? Glad you asked! You can also find content tags on my website at www.joydemorra.com if you want to find out more.

I'd put them on the book itself, but Amazon would pitch a fit.

I am *hoping* by the time the second book comes around, I will have hardback options available for all my stuff that are affordable and widely available.

At the moment I just have the limited edition hardbacks that were supported by my patrons over on Patreon. I do have a few boxes of those left--and I will be putting those up for sale on my Payhip hopefully soon.

(ID in alt)

Hi, I'm Joy Demorra, international bestselling author and general disaster.

This is my book. Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites is the first book in the Hunger Pangs series, a queer, polyamorous, paranormal, gaslamp slow-burn romance featuring vampires, werewolves, and various other creatures that go bump in the night.

It started out life as a Tumblr shit post and became an international bestseller within several hours of pre-orders going up. No one was more surprised than me.

It features Nathan, a deaf, disabled werewolf newly returned from war, and Vlad, a neurodivergent mad scientist vampire trying to unionize the workforce of the island in between tripping over all his various ongoing projects. (free healthcare, free schooling, y’know, small hobbies)

The other main character is Ursula, an all-powerful [REDACTED] working to save the world from imminent ecological disaster. The main romance arc of book one focuses on Vlad x Nathan, with Ursula forming her own relationships with them alluded to in the next book.

No love triangles here. Just three highly competent bisexuals sharing the same brain cell the closer they are to each other.

The world is set in a pseudo-regency meets fake Victorian Gaslamp Fantasy world, complete with gothic castles, enchanted forests, and just a smidge of industrial coal dust.

One of my favorite reviews ever described it as "the queer, goth love child of Terry Pratchett meets Jane Austen," so if that sounds interesting to you, you can check out my links below.

Buy the (high heat) Flirting With Fangs Edition Here.

Buy the (medium heat) Fluff and Fangs Edition Here.

Why are there two versions, and what's the difference between them? Glad you asked! You can also find content tags on my website at www.joydemorra.com if you want to find out more.

I'd put them on the book itself, but Amazon would pitch a fit.

Please spread this around. Don't let ANYONE lie and say my community is anything but ASTONISHINGLY UNITED in rejection of ICE's behavior. This crosses generations, race lines, party lines, class lines. THAT is how bad ICE is. THAT is how bad we want them gone.

THAT is how loudly we are DEMANDING they leave!

Do you understand what a crowd like this means in a small city like Minneapolis??? In weather that hurts to breathe???

idk, i thought it was fan + kingdom, or fanatic + domain??

The OED also rejects your portmanteau hypothesis, though I suppose sportswriters from the 1900s might’ve been trying to be quirky and different when they coined fandom from the productive derivational suffix -dom, which the OED also gives copies examples of throughout the 1800s (including BA-dom, old fogey-dom, blizzard-dom and theater-dom.

"This woman has a beard, thats not-" eat them.

"That man has a baby face, that's not" - eat them with barbecue sauce.

The sharpest, best-trained pilots make worse decisions when they're tired or sick or stressed out, so there's two of them. The most dedicated and experienced air traffic controllers garble an instruction over the radio sometimes, so pilots are trained to always repeat clearances back to catch misunderstandings quickly. The best and brightest maintenance mechanic still overlooks a screw or misconnects a wire once or twice in her career, so aircraft systems are built with two or three or four layers of redundancy, and pilots are exhaustively trained to deal with failures safely. 

The sharpest, best-trained pilots make worse decisions when they're tired or sick or stressed out, so there's two of them. The most dedicated and experienced air traffic controllers garble an instruction over the radio sometimes, so pilots are trained to always repeat clearances back to catch misunderstandings quickly. The best and brightest maintenance mechanic still overlooks a screw or misconnects a wire once or twice in her career, so aircraft systems are built with two or three or four layers of redundancy, and pilots are exhaustively trained to deal with failures safely. 

CRIMSON PEAK (2015)

Arwen (Kelpie, 60lbs) is 15(ish?) now and while she has a high prey drive and history of successful hunts, she's also 15 and doesn't give many fucks. I also have my dogs. Charleston (Sighthound/pointer mix, 50lbs) is 10 and another proactive carnivore, but he's also JUST finished making his Perfect Couch Nest and doesn't want to get up.

...Herschel (Corgi, 40lbs and extremely tube-shaped) is 5 and has no Prey Drive, but he does have a PLAY Drive, which i found out last time I was up here and found him, having cornered a baby bunny, play-bowing and shaking his ass at it because he just had a Great Time chasing it, now it was the bunny's turn to chase HIM! Even though all three of these assholes spent all day dragging me hither and yon through the rockies, he still has the endurance of an athenian messenger and still looking for a reason to careen around the house at Mach Fuck.

A Reason has Arrived.

"Ah!" I told him.

As much crime Herschel commits, he's actually quite biddable, and stopped, little paw raised, staring at me before slowly lowering it.

"Good job!" I tell him, and he wiggles with joy. "Figure it out!"

Herschel returns his attention to the wobble, circling and sniffing it with small boofs of excitement, looking bac at me for approval eery so often, before giving the bottom of Wobble the smallest, gentlest push with his nose, which doesn't make it rock, but does scoot it along the carpet.

"Okay!" I tell him, and for the last few minutes he has been slowly scooting the mouse inside the wobble across the living room floor an inch at a time.

This has, however, made charlie actually sit up and watch, so I may need to intervene soon.

FUNNY STORY-

I mean my whole life is a funny story but in this particular case, it's funny because while I do not have a broken ankle, I do have a pretty severe sprain, and a new appreciation for the horrors of Wordle.

I'll get there.

Anyway, when we last left off, Herschel was doing the Canine equivalent of Playing Cars with the wobble, scooting it around the living room with his nose, which was enough to wake up both Charlie and Arwen, who were squinting at him with matching expressions of "What is the Ginger Idiot up to now?"

Sister: So I saw the mouse story???

Me: oh god don't tell mom.

Sister: oh no, they'd worry too much.

Sister: ok but if I tell you something you can't tell them, okay?

Me: now what

Sister: were you up at North Shields Pond? The one with the turtle sign?

Me: yeah?

Sister: okay that's just spooky.

Sister: so you know that huge dent in the back of Beyond? (my car, formerly her car)

Me: Yes, it's how I find it in parking lots?

Sister: never tell mom but I didn't back into a Ballard.

Me: oh my God.

Sister: I think it was like 2019, but Arwen had cornered a mouse that climbed into her old puzzle ball so I took it out to the meadow there to release it, and it was suuuuper late at night so I didn't see the moose either...

Me: what the fuck

Sister: I mean I didn't eat shit and fuck up my ankle but that thing hit the car harder than that time I got hit by that pickup.

Me: what the fuck kind of Bethesda-ass glitchy specific trigger videogame cutscene bullshit is this?

Sister: I DON'T KNOW???? MAYBE THE MICE ALL HAVE A TELEPATHIC LINK TO THAT MOOSE SPECIFICALLY??

I have to get into a rheumatologist, which we'll see how easy that is. I've heard it's hard as a new patient. And somehow deal with this new all over pain until then. My primary doctor ordered a CBC and a test for lyme disease, and I have to schedule a full autoimmune blood panel (to speed up the process, he said).

What the hell causes all over muscle cramps and spasms that are painful, as well as stiffness, progressing in a matter of 2 months all over the body. Any time of day, no matter what I'm doing. Nothing helps. It's not hydration related, getting a better sleeping pillow doesn't help, topical pain gel doesn't help, stretching doesn't help. My doctor was confused on why I thought stretching could help at this point. Idk, I thought I was sitting too long and thought stretching twice a day would help. It doesn't, it hurts while I'm stretching and it does nothing. I'm completely new to this autoimmune thing. Closest thing I have is MCAS, which is a white blood cell disorder, not autoimmune.

You should absolutely keep pursuing things with your doctors, but I would like to point out that what you are describing can happen with both some forms of EDS and also MCAS.

I took a look at your profile and saw that you have the hEDS subtype (Same as me), and just in case none of your doctors have mentioned it, there is something known as "the stiff phase" in hEDS (source - search for "stiffness phase"), which can come on later in life due to prolonged muscle tension from holding our joints in place.

It was a real surprise to me when I suddenly cramped and stiffened up a few years ago after being as bendy as a noodle my whole life. (Mine also happened over a relatively short time. It felt like one day I just woke up and my body was too tight.)

It actually delayed my hEDS diagnosis because by the time I was able to see a rheumatologist, I had entered the stiff phase, and they were unfamiliar with it and said there was no way I could have EDS. When I saw a knowledgeable EDS doctor, they informed me that it was a crock of shit and I'd likely entered the stiffness phase of my hEDS journey due to lifelong injury.

My joints are still too mobile, but my muscles and soft tissue have tightened up to compensate for it, and no amount of exercise helps undo it, unfortunately. Personally, I find some relief from connective tissue massage, like myofascial release. Accupressure has also been helpful.

Something else to consider is that your MCAS could be causing the pain. While so many people think of MCAS as just an allergy thing, but as an autoinflammatory disorder, it's also known to cause pain in soft tissue. It has most recently been linked to things like fibromyalgia.

There are some foods that no longer cause me an allergic reaction while medicated, but they will still cause neuroinflammation and body-wide pain. So that might be something else you need to look into in terms of managing your MCAS.

I apologize if you know any of this. I just know this isn't something a lot of EDS or MCAS doctors talk to us about unless they're really in the know.

I'm gonna see them. If they are like a joke to your friend or whatever that's fine. If you're actively talking about me and making a shitty joke at my expense I'm going to pull your tags and reply because I see that shit

You don't get to act huffy and say "I was bored and reading all the notifications on that post" I get a notification! It was in my fucking face!

a lot of people seem to have this notion that tags are their 'private space'. I see ppl getting annoyed at having their tags responded to and acting like OP is some kind of weirdo for having read them.

this made sense back when tags were only viewable by going through each response individually, but as I said upthread, tags have been public for some years now.

OP can read what you are saying in the tags on their activity feed. the only difference between a tag and a comment notification is one has a # at the beginning. acting like other users should treat your tags as if they're private when they are, objectively, not private is very silly. you have emailed them to the OP.

It has already gone way too far...

I made a little folding nightstand while I was waiting for stain to dry, so that's something.

Vice has figured out how to operate the touch lamp, which is exciting.

I am so sorry to have to tell you all about this. None of you, I suspect, will ever have any idea how sorry.

I am in utter shock and terrible pain to have to inform everyone that our friend, my dear husband and creative partner of nearly forty years, Peter Morwood, passed away suddenly early this morning after a brief illness that as late as yesterday (when his doctor saw him) had seemed to be on the mend.

I'm not in any position to say much more about this situation now, as you'll understand my current mental state is not up to the task. (I keep expecting to wake up from a bad dream, but it shows no sign of breaking.) I will let people know more about this in coming days.

There will be a postmortem shortly to determine the exact cause of his death. I'll share what details of this are appropriate as they become clear.

Meanwhile in the short term I'm very much going to need assistance with the expenses that in the days that follow will inevitably surround what's happened. For those people who want to assist, please feel free to use the Ko-Fi account here, and simply tag the associated messages, etc, "P expenses".

My love will wait for me, I know, however long it takes. He's never minded waiting. (the saddest smile) My job now is to make sure he's not forgotten while I go on.

Meanwhile, can I just say to all of of you: I thank you all ahead of time for all the support and fondness for Peter that I know so many of you will express. He'd blush over it, I know. (He always did.) Please forgive me for being unable to do much in the way of answering messages, just now, in the wake of having to get to grips with this sudden and awful change in my world.

But also let me say, so urgently: Hug your loved ones now, while you can. Eventually a day will come when, expected or not, your opportunities end.

Thanks, friends.

--DD

I am so sorry to have to tell you all about this. None of you, I suspect, will ever have any idea how sorry.

I am in utter shock and terrible pain to have to inform everyone that our friend, my dear husband and creative partner of nearly forty years, Peter Morwood, passed away suddenly early this morning after a brief illness that as late as yesterday (when his doctor saw him) had seemed to be on the mend.

I'm not in any position to say much more about this situation now, as you'll understand my current mental state is not up to the task. (I keep expecting to wake up from a bad dream, but it shows no sign of breaking.) I will let people know more about this in coming days.

There will be a postmortem shortly to determine the exact cause of his death. I'll share what details of this are appropriate as they become clear.

Meanwhile in the short term I'm very much going to need assistance with the expenses that in the days that follow will inevitably surround what's happened. For those people who want to assist, please feel free to use the Ko-Fi account here, and simply tag the associated messages, etc, "P expenses".

My love will wait for me, I know, however long it takes. He's never minded waiting. (the saddest smile) My job now is to make sure he's not forgotten while I go on.

Meanwhile, can I just say to all of of you: I thank you all ahead of time for all the support and fondness for Peter that I know so many of you will express. He'd blush over it, I know. (He always did.) Please forgive me for being unable to do much in the way of answering messages, just now, in the wake of having to get to grips with this sudden and awful change in my world.

But also let me say, so urgently: Hug your loved ones now, while you can. Eventually a day will come when, expected or not, your opportunities end.

Thanks, friends.

--DD