Can't believe I've been on here for over a year (two years?) and never written up an intro post…
Hi! I'm a queer writer with way too many WIPs! Blog name is my pen name but it might not even be what I go with in the end.
My cat's name is Salem and my hobbies include perler beads, reading, and playing video games. I'm currently playing TotK. (I only started a couple months ago cuz I was busy with other games…)
I've been serious about getting a novel published for the last ten or so years now. You'd think I'd have more polished drafts in that time, but I keep getting distracted by shiny new ideas, so five billion rough drafts it is…
I'm autistic and sometimes use my hyper focus to just sit and write for extremely long stretches. It's great until I remember food and water exist 👍
Employment wise, I currently work in a library, but in the past, I've been a writing tutor and a freelance ebook editor. I have a BA in English and Japanese and have done basically nothing with it.
My stories tend to be heavy on found family or exploring friendships. Since realizing I can't focus on a plot unless there's at least one speculative element, I now write exclusively paranormal, fantasy, or (occasionally) sci fi. My characters tend to be almost all some flavor of LGBT. I have some preferred archetypes that I reuse a lot: the fool who knows more than people think they do, the fool who actually knows nothing, the comic relief with deep-seated trauma, the quiet observer who notices things others miss, the blatant self insert, the one with all the secrets (don't worry about it), the trans metaphor, etc.
Think that's about everything! Or all the stuff I can think of right now, at least.
Below the cut are some short descs of a small handful of my WIPs, specifically the ones I'm currently thinking about the most. It's…far from a complete list… Things listed will likely change over time, too, as I get new ideas or change focus.
Genre: Adult fantasy
Forest WIP: The world has ended, and the gods who caused it are sealed below the ground. The survivors of the apocalypse, all elves, live in a city deep in a magical forest that protects them from the monsters supposedly lurking outside while also keeping them trapped within its trees, unsure if the outside world is now safe. But one day, a stranger appears from the forest. He has no memories, and no one recognizes him, which should be impossible. Various members of the community try to solve the mystery of this stranger as best they can, but each new answer only unlocks new questions, and soon after his arrival, the gods who destroyed the world slowly begin to awaken…
POV: Third person present, multiple POV characters
Volumes: 3
Status: Completed rough draft
Rain WIP: When the queen is murdered, her eight children leap into action, making and breaking alliances as they rush to find the killer. But as accusations fly, their distrust of each other slowly leads them to tragedy. Meanwhile, a shadowy force known only as Arc has created a massive, magical rainstorm that might just doom them all. Told from the POVs of Tempest, crown princess and mighty warrior who is the main murder suspect; Brennan, the child of a failed diplomatic marriage which has led him to become the black sheep of the family and who has killed relatives before but planned to leave the queen alive; and Cole, the useless youngest prince who was happy to drink his life away but now suddenly wants to prove his worth, and in doing so, might accidentally create something bigger than himself.
Genre: Adult fantasy
POV: Third person past, 3 POV characters
Volumes: 1
Status: Currently drafting
Werebear WIP: With sudden pressures from his father to live as a woman, a trans prince flees to an enemy kingdom, disguising himself as a wandering bard as he travels with his best friend. But as he adventures, secrets are revealed. His friend isn't who he first assumed, and it turns out the family he abandoned has committed horrific crimes–and is in terrible danger. If he's to save his family and homeland from war, he'll have to confront the atrocities committed by his ancestors and find a way to undo the damage they’ve done.
Genre: YA fantasy
POV: First person present
Volumes: 1
Status: Completed rough draft, started revision notes
Zidriya series WIP: Strange things are happening in the land of Zidriya, everything from missing siblings to sinister necromancers. Each book focuses on a different set of characters and a different issue in the world, culminating in a final book that brings everything together. Some of the stories: a pair of gay bards accidentally save the world while flirting the whole time, a group of mercenaries are tasked with making sure the old gods stay chained, a band of misfits try to live their lives while stopping an evil plot in their spare time, and a murder mystery where one of the people on the case is the culprit but doesn't even know it.
Genre: Various, but all are fantasy
POV: Various, but mostly third person past with multiple narrators
Volumes: 16 as of right now with the potential for more
Silverblood WIP: Damen, a werewolf, has lived his entire life in a secret community for weres. His twin brother Arden, on the other hand, lives among humans, and they haven’t seen each other in years. After Arden’s sudden death in a car accident, Damen gets a letter from his deceased brother: “If you receive this message, I’ve been murdered. You must find my boyfriend and protect him at all costs.” Desperate to learn why his brother died, Damen hunts down his brother’s human boyfriend, protecting him from shapeshifting dragons, hacker werelions, and vampire assassins all while trying his hardest not to fall for the guy. But as the two get closer, they uncover a truth about their world that will change everything.
Genre: Adult paranormal romance
POV: Third person past, multiple POV characters
Volumes: At least 5
Status: Completed rough draft of book 1, kinda technically shelved but it keeps invading my thoughts
Blast WIP: Meet the WIP that's so weird and gross that my boyfriend recoils at the merest mention of it! In space, no one can hear when the government accidentally creates a fungal zombie apocalypse that infects over 95% of the population, or however that saying goes. But whatever it is, Rak, an alien life form colloquially known as an angel, is pretending it never happened. Holed up in xeir mansion, xey’re living out the end of the world in the only way xey know how: a massive party. But when a demon brings said party to a screeching halt and blackmails Rak into stealing the cure, Rak has no choice but to save the world.
Psychic boyfriend WIP (~BRAND NEW~): Told entirely in texts, chat room logs, and forum posts, the MC and his two friends must figure out how to get close to a complete stranger and stop him from dying in the way the MC foresaw in a psychic vision.
Genre: …does this count as paranormal romance???
POV: ???? Is there an official name for this style?
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See, the first time I grew parsnips, I fucked it up good. I hadn't seen parsnips sprouting before, right, and in my eagerness I was keeping a close eye on the row. And every time I saw some intruding grass coming up, I twitched it right out, and went back to anticipating the germination of my parsnips.
But it turns out parsnips take a bit longer than anything else I'd ever grown to distinguish themselves visually. It's just the two little split leaves, almost identical to a newly seeded bit of kentucky bluegrass when they first come up, and they take a good bit to establish themselves and spread out flat before the main stem with its first distinctive scallopy leaf gets going.
I didn't get any parsnips, not that year, because I'd weeded them all out as soon as they showed their faces, with my 'ugh no that's grass' twitchy horticulture finger.
The next year, having in retrospect come to suspect what had happened, I left the row alone and didn't weed anything until all the sprouts coming up had all had a bit to set in and show their colors, and I've grown lots of parsnips since. They're kind of a slow crop, not a huge return, but I like them and watching them grow and digging them up, and their papery little seeds in the second year, if you don't harvest one either on purpose or because you misjudged the frost, so it's worth it.
Anyway, whenever I see someone stuck and struggling with their writing who's gotten into that frustration loop of typing a few words, rejecting them, backspacing, and starting again, I find myself thinking, you gotta stop weeding your parsnips, man.
Literally put on my emergencies and pulled over. This is the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me. Bird watching holy grail. Not sure if it’s leucistic or albino but it’s a black vulture, was part of a group of all normal coloration. Literal shiny Pokémon
you can be peeling a boiled egg and think to yourself wow. that was so simple. and then you peel another one and it’s like being in the throes of war. shell everywhere. egg mangled. tears in your eyes. that’s how god keeps you humble
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– 92% of respondents reported feeling somewhat to very “calm / peaceful” after visiting the Library
– 74% of respondents reported that their library use positively affects how equipped they feel to cope with the world
– 90% of respondents reported that their Library use positively affects how much they love to learn new things
– 88% of respondents reported that their Library use has supported their personal growth
Free service with ads: Well, if I'm not paying for it they have to foot the bill somehow.
Paid service with no ads: Well, if they're not funding it with ad revenue, they need to charge us something.
Paid service with ads: Well that's bullshit.
"We used to be a paid service without ads, but now we're putting ads in it! If you want the ad-free version you have to pay more for preeeeemium": Fuck you fuck you fuck you
A lot of understanding your writing process is literally just throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. Trying new processes and experimenting. You find what you like by trying things. You don’t have to keep them. You don’t even have to follow through. I feel like a lot of writing advice ends up sounding like it’s going to lead you to The One Right Way For You, but honestly, truly, the first and most important rule is to have fun.
The problem with story concepts is that they take a while to ferment, so you think of something at 3am and you're like "wow that's fucked up" and then it sits in the back of your head for 3-12 months until it's ready and by then you're used to it so you're like "oh yeah the thing, the totally normal thing" and you write it and put it out in the world and people are like "wow that's fucked up" and you're like "what do you mean? It's literally normal?"
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Don't let the "I've never even opened ChatGpt" anti-ai posts guilt you. You can change your mind at any point. You can stop a harmful behavior any time. This is your first life too. You can educate yourself. You are allowed to be wrong about something. It doesn't matter if you used AI in the past. It is pretty easy to research the negative effects and dangers of generative AI. Learn and change. And don't look back.
I'm literally the greatest AI hater in my own surroundings and I am someone who used to debate ChatGpt for fun, tried using it as my 'therapist' and was addicted to AI chatbots for about a year, sacrificing entire nights to talk to them. Today I'd rather die than touch that hallucinating computer again. The dangers and effects hugely outweigh any advantages of AI.
What I'm trying to say with this is—cool if someone has never used Gen ai, but there is literally no award for that. I promise it doesn't make them better than you if you've only stopped using AI for a while because you found out how bad it is. You can change your mind any day and start a new way of living.
It’s recently been found that even hive insects rest. Bees will play with colorful toys. Ants sleep for about 1 minute but they do it so frequently it amounts to a few hours per day. Even trees take breaks.
The only things that work without rest are machines; literally everything that lives requires rest.
EVERYTHING THAT LIVES REQUIRES REST. STOP JUDGING YOURSELF FOR NOT BEING A ROBOT.
robots require very frequent breaks! welding machines generally have it programmed in that they can’t run so long they melt themselves. ive overseen two different manufacturing robots now and each of them were fragile, finicky idiots that require constant maintenance and repair. they pause in between moves, in between jobs. you’re always keeping an eye on programming errors, on coolant levels, on heat. you’re always pulling bits of scrap out of joints, sweeping up debris, washing off nozzles and untangling hoses. and even then it snaps a chain and takes a whole morning’s vacation.
"these researchers published a paper on something that literally any of us could have told you 🙄" ok well my supervisors wont let me write something in my thesis unless I can back it up with a citation so maybe it's a good thing that they're amplifying your voice to the scientific community in a way that prevents people from writing off your experiences as annecdotal evidence
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.
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Just saw a tweet like "REAL libraries check for quality!" as some kinda gotcha at AO3?? But I'm a librarian, so... heads up that "quality checks," AKA "weeding" or "pulling," means looking for damaged books or ones that haven't circulated in a few years to clear up shelf space. We don't Quality Check for if the library books have nontoxic romance or good grammar. :U I assure you every library in your area has absolute ABOMINATIONS of bad storytelling as well as your favorite pop lit.
"ReAl LiBrArIeS cHeCk fOR qUaLiTy" LISTEN. There was a collection of poems in circulation at one of my previous libraries that had never actually been published, and we only found out about it because the author called while I was on the reference desk one day asking how the hell a book that never went to print had ended up in our online catalogue. And you think we're monitoring content?
