Ash the Hermit

Heads up that the RUNNING CLOSE TO THE WIND ebook is on sale for 99 cents until June 17th, so if you want a fantasy book about pirates, with bawdy comedy of a Terry Pratchett flavor (including the quiet anger about systems of institutional oppression), check it ouuuut, it is your Pride summer read AND IT WILL MAKE YOU LAUGH ON EVERY PAGE I PROMISE

we need to instill a new storytelling rule of thumb into people called "show don't tweet" where we encourage them to put all pertinent canon information into the actual story and its official supplemental material instead of using reddit AMAs as lore dlcs

there's an old anne rice interview circulating on twitter rn that i remember reading ages ago where she makes a pretty salient point about how submissive men who have bdsm fantasies etc will go to a sex worker and basically order the ala carte version of their fantasy to be performed in real life but women don't really have that same option and certainly not at the same point of availability so they read her horny books instead. and honestly that argument has been in the back of my mind every time people get on their high horses about the popularity of booktok romantasy novels or heated rivalry or whatever the "women are horny and we're upset about that" cultural property du jour is ever since. women, especially straight women, have so few outlets for their sexual desires, especially if they have a partner who doesn't share them, and i will never understand why "someone ELSE'S private sexual fantasy makes me uncomfortable and therefore they should not be allowed to engage with it, even if i am in no way being affected by it or even aware of it at all" is such a popular party line among allegedly progressive young people.

favorite type of word: names of genres that tell you nothing without context. literary fiction. popular music. interactive fiction. lets invent a new genre called experiencable media

additions: speculative fiction, art film, point and click, simulation game. anything that makes you say "i sure hope so"

"high concept" is the worst of these. i'm a professional author with 14 books and i don't know what that means

WARNING do NOT start reading books and comics or watching movies or looking at art!!! you will start wanting to create art yourself. or god forbid. writing.

love love love when a particularly manipulative character is lying off their ass about something and then throws in one hauntingly genuine line

“indeed, it seems that the Pacific Northwest (Twilight) is a common locale for finding vampires and werewolves at a high school” oh my god

Can't wait to run across this drama summarised in a three hour video essay

i do write for attention, actually, because that's a normal reason to create art

did you hear about that actor performing a play in front of a crowd? clearly only doing it for attention

im trying to say something and im not gonna say it in an empty room

“Why would you stop in hell?” has changed my brain chemistry

Exactly this. 😏

I can’t believe that in order to tell a story I need to withhold certain information from the reader at first. I’m excited about it and I want them to know.