welcome to my new blog!

Tagged by @oh-no-another-idea a while back and passing the tag onto @queen-tashie @beeonaspiderweb @ceribrennanwrites @sarahlizziewrites @no-relief-next-to-me and offering up an open tag for folk who'd like to take part :)

Morskie Oko, Tatra Mountains, Poland

Hello, my beautiful people. Sorry I'm not very active here, but I share good tidings. My debut novel, Savage as You, is out September 1st! For those not in the know, SaY is a queer Isekai novel starring a transfem protagonist named Hailey, who's gifted an antique mirror and a letter in the mail. The letter outlines a ritual to make the mirror into a gateway, leading to a beautiful yet very dangerous realm known as Lin J'Roe. The letter also says that Hailey is to become this realm's new queen. It's a humorous and also terrifying contemporary fantasy adventure that kicks off an 8-book series I'm writing!

(Zero Generative AI was used in the production of SaY. Ad backdrop by my friend, Reid.)

Softcover clocks in at around 450 pages, 130k words.

Softcover:

Bookshop.org

Amazon

Ebook:

Kobo

Cordelia: cowards, but okay

The old Vor: you get women's responsibilities! Like choosing his household staff, the people he will see every day, and overseeing his education for the next 8 years!

Cordelia, later, to Aral: do they understand what they just did?

clone: im going to take your place and kill your dad!

miles: OUR dad

clone: what?

miles, pointing: baby! baby brother!

clone: What??

miles, still pointing: your names mark!

mark, bitterly: I don’t have a birthday.  I have whatever it’s called when they open a uterine replicator.

📝 Share a line from your story with no context.

@winterandwords Thanks for the tag, friend! This is from the issue of Sunset Vol 3 that went up on Patreon this past week:

"But he’s not himself anymore.” “I’d think that would be an improvement, honestly.”

I'm no pressure tagging  @toribookworm22  @void-botanist   @willtheweaver & open tag

Because @eccaiia's open tag tempted me so here I am! Sorry to everyone who's ever tagged me anywhere, your tag is sitting patiently in my drafts but this tag is brighter and exciting, so we're doing her first 😜

Tomorrow:

Finished with his own things, Quintus buckles his belt and shrugs on his coat. He finds Miriam hanging wet clothes on nearby shrubbery, and shirtless Nikolaos tussling with his trousers. “Perhaps you might cut them off,” he observes. “So that they’ll have to be restitched tomorrow with inferior skills?” Nikolaos retorts. “Think again, Quintus. Perhaps you may like to go into battle and find your pants around your ankles, but that joyful image isn’t to everyone’s tastes.”

Hour:

It does something to Quintus, Miriam notices, to see strong, ever-large Nikolaos a pale shadow of himself. It does something to her too, but Quintus seems to vanish inside himself for hours at a time, emerging wan and unsteady. He sleeps within touching distance of Nikolaos, although the gap between them is never crossed, at least, not when Miriam glances their way.

Pale:

He looks up, lit by the orange glow of the firelight, and frowns. He gestures, and Nikolaos moves closer, kneels down beside him. Quintus’s gray eyes are pale, narrowed. He touches the corner of Nikolaos’s mouth, which stings. “I’m fine,” Nikolaos says. Quintus’s hand doesn’t move. “You’re soaked through, you’re limping, your face is cut open, and you look like something that’s been dragged through the mud and hung out to dry.”' “So, I look normal.”

Dawn:

“Quintus,” Nikolaos says, like he’s been saying it for some time. “Quintus, look.” Quintus battles his exhaustion. There’s nothing to see but Nikolaos’s pointing finger. Nikolaos’s finger wiggles, and then Quintus realizes that the fact that he can see that far is noteworthy indeed. “Dawn,” they say together like a prayer, and find a little more vigor in their frozen limbs.

He should perhaps have remembered that Aragorn is named for Fingolfin. Fingolfin’s mother-name, Arakáno, would properly be translated to Sindarin as “Aragorn”. Most people would not show up to an enemy fortress with an army they knew was far too small, and start a battle they knew they would lose. But Fingolfin famously did exactly that.

This tag is from the beloved @eccaiia -- thank you, kai! I'm looking for PORTAL.

P. Perhaps he is being overly cautious, but to be discovered now is a headache he doesn’t want to deal with for a single minute.

O. Once he understands Quintus means what he’s saying, he drops his head, his hair brushing Quintus’s sternum, and then he moves away.

R. Resting on his own stomach, Nikolaos’s fingers twitch. “I’m so tired,” he whispers.

T. Time stretches and stretches further, and then it’s over, faster than Quintus wished.

A. At this point, there’s not much point in mentioning it, but habits linger, so Miriam puts her foot in her mouth and says, “Quintus, why do you feed him like that?”

L. Lifting his head up after a while, Quintus squints a crooked smile Nikolaos’s direction. He is different like this, made young and happy by first waking.

^^fingers hit some buttons as I started typing and I rolled with it :) Thanks for the tag, @memento-morri-writes!! As usual, I interpreted the word line like a total idiot. Bon appetit!

A line about the sun:

Quintus closes his eyes. In the sunlight, everything behind his lids is buttery warm.

A line about tears/crying:

Perhaps because they are moving towards a clear goal, or because the breaking dawn casts a soothing light, Quintus speaks for the first time. “It’s not your fault.” [Miriam's] gaze latches on to his, and her large, dark eyes fill with tears. “Or Andromeda’s. Or Camille’s.” Quintus doesn’t know what to do with her tears, so he ignores them. “It’s not even Nikolaos’s fault.”

A line where someone learns a lesson:

“What do the others use?” “Honey, sometimes oil,” Quintus listed off, on one hand. “Quills to cover the tips. Tongs of some sort to grasp the arrowhead. Knives to carve away the skin around it.” Nikolaos turns away and retches. “Stop,” he says. “Stop. I’ll find you some quills then, shall I?”

A line that surprised you when you wrote it:

“Do you know most people have twelve ribs on each side?” [Quintus] blusters. “Yet, inexplicably, some don’t. I’ve come across bodies with less, and bodies with more.”