Ghosts of Kezan

Do you like slow burn romance, opposites attract, and older lesbians? This book might be for you!

Unaccounted For is a slow-burn sapphic romance about public image, private damage, and two women who have spent decades learning how not to need anyone.

Disaster response veteran Allegra Sinclair saves people. She doesn’t court attention.

But when a chance rescue saves the life of a billionaire heir, Allegra’s face is suddenly everywhere. News crews want interviews. Strangers want selfies. And Sal Lategan, a ruthless PR strategist with a talent for getting under Allegra’s skin, knows exactly what Allegra’s unwanted fame is worth.

The deal is simple: Allegra lets Sal prove her sudden fame can become more than headlines—that it can become shelter, funding, and support for people who need it.

Then the deal changes.

Sal’s world is built on image, leverage, and secrets, and Allegra is very good at finding people others thought were lost. The closer she gets to Sal, the more obvious it becomes that the woman managing everyone else’s narrative has been trapped inside one of her own.

Allegra never wanted to be famous. She never wanted to be anyone’s asset. But leaving Sal behind may be harder than turning back towards the flames.

-

Purchase now on Amazon Kindle | Bookshop.org | Kobo | Apple

Wider distribution across all major bookshops, bookshop apps, and library apps will be available over coming weeks (check your faves!).

Paperback available soon!

I say, give Asynca's book a try for all that and the sweet descriptions of that landscape's natural beauty.

And because Gerard is THE best. I will fight over that.

“While the eyes of millions of Europeans were glued to the flamboyant show on stage at the Eurovision Song Contest, another music festival celebrating European identity was taking place hidden away from the spotlight.

They call it the “Eurovision of minority languages,” but the title would be reductive of what Liet International actually represents.

On 13 May, in the small and picturesque town of Tonder in southern Denmark, which counts under 8,000 inhabitants, 13 musicians from all around Europe took part in Liet International a niche music festival for European minority and regional languages only.

Prompt 11 of #feathruary2025 is Flock, and I chose to depict a ridiculous amount of #TurkeyVultures gathering in a kettle around a rising column of hot air.

The photos in fact show hundreds of #vultures massing over Miami high-rises. I have no idea what all these birds are eating.

A little sailboat lost her way En route to French land: Camaret Boat meters eight, her crew just two Captain David knew what to do

Pan-pan call sent - that's not distress They have a trouble. What a mess! But no life's in danger. Only then Do you cry "Mayday" to the wind.

An answer came, "We're on the way! We're setting sail to save the day." Said Swedish tallship Götheborg David cried back "You're much too lorg! With your fast ship, you'll break our craft And there's nothing but water, fore and aft"

"We're fifty meters and three masts! Though our ship is mighty and our crew is vast, We'll gently tow you to the harbor And there re-fill our empty larder!"

Linked by radio and strong rope The crew of the Corto found new hope Götheborg's men were strong, their captain kindly. Even the weather treated them mildly.

And when they arrived at Paimpol harbor The great old ship helped even farther No other boats came out to help and Götheborg ventured into the kelp

David and Simon were safe at last In France, the furthest part from Basque Corto's rudder could be fixed But her destiny was forever mixed

With legendary Götheborg she sailed Now little sister to a ship that hasn't failed A ghost of centuries past, yet living Crewed with generous hearts of giving.

ArmoredSuperHeavy, 2 Aug 2023

Story references: (1) , (2)

Ships don’t blow up cleanly in flashes and sparks.  Oh, if you’re in the engine room, you’ll probably die instantly, but away from that?  In the computer core, or the communications hub?  You just lose power.  And have to sit, air going stale and room slowly cooling, while you wait to find out if the battle is won or lost.

If it’s lost, nobody comes for you.

It had been about half a day (that’s a Raithar day, probably a bit shorter than yours) and Kvala and I were pretty sure we had lost.  Kvala was injured, Traav and I were dehydrated and exhausted, and Louv was dead, hit by shrapnel when the conduits blew.

Most fleets give you something, of course.  For Raithari, it’s essence of windgrass.  I looked at the vial.

“It’s too soon,” Traav said.

Kvala gestured negation, shakily.  She had been burned when conduits blew, and her feathers were charred, and her leftmost eye was bubbly and blind now.  Even if we were rescued, she probably wouldn’t survive.  “You know we’re losing the war.”

They couldn’t deny that.  “It doesn’t mean we lost the battle.”

“Doesn’t it?  The Chreee have better technology.  Better resources.  And they have their warrior code.  They don’t care if they die.”

“We can’t give up!” Traav protested.  They were young, a young and reckless thar who had listened to a recruiting officer and still believed scraps of what they had been told.  “Any heartbeat now—”

There was a clunk.  Something had docked with our fragment of the ship.

“You see?!” Traav crowed triumphantly.

Kvala exchanged glances with me.  The Chreee never bothered to hunt down survivors.  What was the point, after all?

The Aushkune did.

There weren’t supposed to be Aushkune here.  They were supposed to hide in nebulas.

But if there were—

If there were, we were too late.  The windgrass couldn’t possibly destroy our nervous systems in time to stop the corpse-reviving implants, and once you were implanted, it was over—or it would never be over, depending on how you looked at it and whether Aushkune drones were aware of anything—

Footsteps.

Bipedal.  The Aushkune were supposed to be bipedal.

And then the blast door opened, and a figure stood in it.  My first thought was, robot?  That’s almost worse than Aushkune . . .  But no, it was a being in some sort of suit.

Who wore suits?

“Friendly contact,” the suit’s sound system blared, as the being moved over to Kvala.  “Urgent treatment.  Evacuation.”

“Who are you?”  Kvala struggled upright.

Despite the primitive suit, the blocky being was using up-to-date medical scanners.  “Low frequency right angle shape,” it explained—or maybe didn’t explain.  Two more figures came into the room and put Kvala firmly onto a stretcher.

“You’re with the Chreee, aren’t you?”  Kvala was not at all happy to be on a stretcher.

“Not Chreee,” the sound system said.  “You Man.  Soil Starship Nichols.”  The being hesitated.  “Rescue Chreee as well.  On ship.  Will separate.”

“You what?” I said faintly.  Who would do that?

“Oath,” the being explained.

“What kind of oath?  To what deity?”

The shoulders of the being moved up and down.  “Several different.  Also none.  For me, none.  Just—oath.”

I exchanged glances with Traav, who looked as unsettled as I was.  I had never, ever heard of groups cooperating when they couldn’t even swear to or by the same power.

The being scanned me.  “Have water,” it said.  “Recommend.”

Raithari have fast metabolisms.  I could—would—die of thirst quickly, and painfully.

“Where will you take us,” Traav asked, “after you give us water?”

“Raithari to Raithar.  Chreee to Chreeeholm.”

“Chreeeholm would kill them for failing,” Traav remarked.

The being hesitated, and then said, “War news sometimes bad.  Sometimes lie.”

We had learned long ago not to believe the recruiting officers, but what did that have to do with anything?

“And you—what?” I asked.  “Just fly around looking for battles and rescuing victims?”

The being seemed to consider this.  “Best invention of soil,” it said finally.

Most of what it was saying didn’t make any sense.  Did it worship soil?  But it had said that it had sworn to no deity . . .

Madness.

On the other hand—war was a deliberate, rational act by deliberate, rational people, and I wanted no more of it.  So why not embrace madness and see what happened?

“Soil Starship—Rrikkol?” I asked, stumbling over the word.

“Yes.  Soil Starship Nichols.”

This is what took me a moment.

Kaixo!

Ooooh anon, how we love you asked us that! Because we would have bet there wasn't but investigated and there actually IS and we didn't know and now we're kinda obsessed with it??

Ok, ok. We calm down.

You may already know that Basque people love sticks. We just do. We come from shepherds and it shows. We give a stick - makila in Basque - to the elected Basque president:

We use it to sing:

And to dance:

And we used it to FIGHT.

Yes! The Makil Borroka or Basque Stick is presumed to be a very ancient self-defense technique developed by shepherds to protect themselves and their flocks from wild animals, but it slowly evolved as some sort of poor people’s fencing. Its practice peaked between 18th and 19th century, and Basque fighters - called makilkariak - were said to be excellent. So good, in fact, legend goes Napoleon hired some of them for his army. 

It’s documented mainly in Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa and Iparralde, where they would use shorter makilak. In 1951, etnologue René Cuzacq wrote how this style was still in use in certain areas of Iparralde: «They quickly start fencing after the slightest argument. Basques wield sticks in a unique fashion that has rules and masters.(...) During a while entering Baiona with a stick was banned, because it was rare a single market day without a skull cracked or several limbs broken.»

The sticks were made of loquat, blackthorn, ash tree or hazelnut tree wood, and wheighed around 1kg / 2.20lb. The attack and defense in Makil Borroka is based on rotation, making it a very elegant but dangerously swift fight that only needed one hit to be decisive, just like with a sword. As you can see in the video, it’s not surprising that the set-phrase to start a fight was goazen dantzatzera or let’s dance.

Iñaki Ganboa - the one shown solo in the video - is the one who rediscovered this Basque fighting style and is currently working hard to recover this tradition and to train future masters who will later teach around Euskal Herria. 

Fun fact: he rediscovered it thanks to a Sicilian friend who told him that he just watched a documentary about a Sicilian stick fight - called Paranza Lunga - that was taught by Basque soldiers around 1400. Ganboa went to Sicily and talked with the documentary makers, as well as with masters in the Paranza Lunga, and it’s believed to be a true story.

World of Warcraft landscape sketches I did for @ghostsofkezan's personal bookbinding project. I had a lot of fun drawing all of these! Definitely learned a lot :3