the taste of stories

Week 129’s goes up tomorrow, but in the meantime, let’s vote on Week 130!

Magnet Monday Poll Taglist (Check out my Google form to get added): @auroblaze @stardustanddaffodils @srjacksin @alesseia @kaitheenbydoesthings @void-botanist @theghostofarbyrouse @eviezerker

For the unfamiliar, Magnet Monday is a magnetic poetry series I do where, every Sunday, my readers vote on the topic of the poem. Over the week, I write a poem for the winning answer, and then share it the next Monday! By that time, the next poll will have already been decided, and so the cycle continues.

Week 129’s goes up tomorrow, but in the meantime, let’s vote on Week 130!

Magnet Monday Poll Taglist (Check out my Google form to get added): @auroblaze @stardustanddaffodils @srjacksin @alesseia @kaitheenbydoesthings @void-botanist @theghostofarbyrouse @eviezerker

For the unfamiliar, Magnet Monday is a magnetic poetry series I do where, every Sunday, my readers vote on the topic of the poem. Over the week, I write a poem for the winning answer, and then share it the next Monday! By that time, the next poll will have already been decided, and so the cycle continues.

Week 129’s goes up tomorrow, but in the meantime, let’s vote on Week 130!

Magnet Monday Poll Taglist (Check out my Google form to get added): @auroblaze @stardustanddaffodils @srjacksin @alesseia @kaitheenbydoesthings @void-botanist @theghostofarbyrouse @eviezerker

For the unfamiliar, Magnet Monday is a magnetic poetry series I do where, every Sunday, my readers vote on the topic of the poem. Over the week, I write a poem for the winning answer, and then share it the next Monday! By that time, the next poll will have already been decided, and so the cycle continues.

Week 129’s goes up tomorrow, but in the meantime, let’s vote on Week 130!

Magnet Monday Poll Taglist (Check out my Google form to get added): @auroblaze @stardustanddaffodils @srjacksin @alesseia @kaitheenbydoesthings @void-botanist @theghostofarbyrouse @eviezerker

For the unfamiliar, Magnet Monday is a magnetic poetry series I do where, every Sunday, my readers vote on the topic of the poem. Over the week, I write a poem for the winning answer, and then share it the next Monday! By that time, the next poll will have already been decided, and so the cycle continues.

Week 129’s goes up tomorrow, but in the meantime, let’s vote on Week 130!

Magnet Monday Poll Taglist (Check out my Google form to get added): @auroblaze @stardustanddaffodils @srjacksin @alesseia @kaitheenbydoesthings @void-botanist @theghostofarbyrouse @eviezerker

For the unfamiliar, Magnet Monday is a magnetic poetry series I do where, every Sunday, my readers vote on the topic of the poem. Over the week, I write a poem for the winning answer, and then share it the next Monday! By that time, the next poll will have already been decided, and so the cycle continues.

Week 129’s goes up tomorrow, but in the meantime, let’s vote on Week 130!

Magnet Monday Poll Taglist (Check out my Google form to get added): @auroblaze @stardustanddaffodils @srjacksin @alesseia @kaitheenbydoesthings @void-botanist @theghostofarbyrouse @eviezerker

For the unfamiliar, Magnet Monday is a magnetic poetry series I do where, every Sunday, my readers vote on the topic of the poem. Over the week, I write a poem for the winning answer, and then share it the next Monday! By that time, the next poll will have already been decided, and so the cycle continues.

Week 129’s goes up tomorrow, but in the meantime, let’s vote on Week 130!

Magnet Monday Poll Taglist (Check out my Google form to get added): @auroblaze @stardustanddaffodils @srjacksin @alesseia @kaitheenbydoesthings @void-botanist @theghostofarbyrouse @eviezerker

For the unfamiliar, Magnet Monday is a magnetic poetry series I do where, every Sunday, my readers vote on the topic of the poem. Over the week, I write a poem for the winning answer, and then share it the next Monday! By that time, the next poll will have already been decided, and so the cycle continues.

Week 129’s goes up tomorrow, but in the meantime, let’s vote on Week 130!

Magnet Monday Poll Taglist (Check out my Google form to get added): @auroblaze @stardustanddaffodils @srjacksin @alesseia @kaitheenbydoesthings @void-botanist @theghostofarbyrouse @eviezerker

For the unfamiliar, Magnet Monday is a magnetic poetry series I do where, every Sunday, my readers vote on the topic of the poem. Over the week, I write a poem for the winning answer, and then share it the next Monday! By that time, the next poll will have already been decided, and so the cycle continues.

i wrote this post over on bluesky today and, after receiving a few of the predictable "but what if i Want to write badly" responses you get to any opinion that can be taken as prescriptivist writing advice, i thought i'd talk more about what i'm getting at.

basically, it's an issue of suspension of disbelief. there are a lot of things in fantasy and historical writing that we're willing to look past. dragons, potatoes, the divine right of kings. we are able to suspend our disbelief that a monarch could be anything but a despicable tyrant if the story we're being told is convincing enough, or plays to our comforting worldviews about nobility and Great Man theory. we can also suspend it if we straight up didn't know that europe didn't have potatoes pre-columbian exchange. basically--it means it doesn't bother you that these elements aren't perfectly realistic. fiction is not required to be realistic. clue's in the name.

but there are some things we just can't ignore. some things hit us as out of place for the setting we've been presented, or the world as we understand it. it pulls us out of the story by reminding us, in that moment, that we are reading a constructed narrative made of a series of choices by an author. and for whatever reason, they made a Wrong choice, like plucking the wrong guitar string.

Week 129’s goes up tomorrow, but in the meantime, let’s vote on Week 130!

Magnet Monday Poll Taglist (Check out my Google form to get added): @auroblaze @stardustanddaffodils @srjacksin @alesseia @kaitheenbydoesthings @void-botanist @theghostofarbyrouse @eviezerker

For the unfamiliar, Magnet Monday is a magnetic poetry series I do where, every Sunday, my readers vote on the topic of the poem. Over the week, I write a poem for the winning answer, and then share it the next Monday! By that time, the next poll will have already been decided, and so the cycle continues.

by which I mean: there are no contraindications to getting the rabies vaccine for post-exposure prophylaxis.

every other vaccine usually has a few contraindications like ‘don’t take this if you’re allergic to it’ or ‘if you’re pregnant discuss the risks and benefits with your doctor’ or ‘don’t give to children below age 6′ or something, but not the rabies vaccine. if you’ve been exposed to rabies, there is literally no medical reason that can justify not getting the rabies vaccine–you can be deadly allergic to literally every single ingredient and the correct decision is still to administer the vaccine, because if you don’t, you’re 100% guaranteed to die of rabies. even the life-threatening allergies are a step up in survival rate (especially since anaphylaxis is something that can be managed, even if there are risks associated with it)

which is to say, the rabies condition: if a character has been ‘exposed to rabies’, aka, in some impending absolute worst-case scenario, like the apocalypse or some death curse or the destruction of their entire city via demons or whatever, then that character has to take action and the consequences and risks no longer matter, because literally any other outcome would be better, and 1% chance of survival is still better than 0%. that doesn’t make those actions necessarily good, the same way that injecting yourself with something you know you’re deadly allergic not a good thing to do, but it’s still better than dying horrifically of rabies. desperate times and desperate measures etc

chapter 1: the sinking

cobs is returning home from another grueling shift on the docks. deep, stinking, swampy mud has already reached up to the calf of her smock/rainboots as she's just spent all day hauling one of the fishing boats out that had gone aground. everyone knew the island was sinking. every day that you put off leaving was a further creeping chance that you'd never leave at all.

after awhile her home comes into view: a little shack at the damn near other end of the island. the island isn't big but big enough and cobs's feet already hurt from digging into the rocks at the bottom of the shallows for purchase. when she was a little girl and the island was much greener and the land wasn't oozing in sickness, this shack was one part of her family's commune: the guest house. once pristine and now in a dilapidated state. they weren't rich but they lived well while her father was still alive; the house and its grounds the marking of his and her grandfather's tenure at the small island court house where they were able to even keep a few well paid workers to keep the place going. they had cattle and goats, crops, and flowers--but all of that was gone now. the only crops they had were in the planter at the front of the house on top of the slouching porch. when cobs reaches the planters, nothing had even sprouted yet. the soil was too damn moist. nothing grows anymore.

when she pushes open the saloon doors of the home, she finds her mother, osceola, laid up watching tv. she demands cobs get her the remote and cobs grimaces when the command comes with the nickname "bina". cobs says shallowly under her breath that she asked her mother not to call her that, though its said mostly to herself--yet somehow osceola was able to hear it. her mother then proceeds to throw a bowl of lukewarm sugar grits at her and cobs barely manages to dodge the bowl. osceola rages that jacobina is her name, after her damn daddy, and she'll call her that if she damn well wanted to as her mother. cobs bites back a scathing remark, regarding what kind of mother osceola is laid up as she is, and osceola snarks that she'd call cobs a bitch if she wasn't her own daughter. this is followed by her saying that "a real bitch is your brother's good for nothing wife" which starts her on a rant about her brother's wife asha (vanasia).

osceola tells cobs that asha lost the damn baby and she'll never have a grandchild now since this isn't the first one the woman's lost--she must be cursed! cobs grimly thinks that if it wasn't from the foul food or air, it was probably from the way her brother (jacob iii) beats her which caused the loss. instead of saying this aloud, cobs asks how osceola came to learn of this and her mother tells her that jacob told her just this morning before he went into town... or what was left of it. cobs nods, and says she'll bring some food over for asha since she got new rations from the aground ship from the mainland, and this sends osceola into another rager that "bitches who can't breed don't deserve shit!" cobs tries not to think about her own situation and disappears into the kitchen closing the door behind her and drowning out osceola's shrill cries.

she takes a chicken from the icebox out that she'd left there thawing the night before and she grimaces feeling the temperature of the box; almost too warm. still good. but almost. she starts to wash it, beginning to cook. she puts her hair up (box braids) as she does, revealing the cobra tattoo that circles her left ear and falls into deep contemplation about the conversation that she had earlier today with her close friend samba. he'd once again offered to take her to the mainland with him when he finally moves at the end of summer, and once again she'd refused it. she didn't want his pity. she'd pay her own way there; besides, now she had a real estate agent--emersyn wellspeak--who was going to help get her set up with a new place after she finished her down payment. samba had frowned and warned her that city folk are nice, but worry if they're too nice and she'd chided him for worrying too much about her. that was actually why she was planning on "taking food" over to asha and jacob's--asha had been nice enough to let cobs use her phone. though she did want to check on her. it was vile that a pretty, well spoken woman like her was basically a house slave to her brother's jealous whims--while he was out on the town with whatever floozy caught his eye. there was even a rumor she'd heard today that he'd been spotted a few days ago with a white woman. and there were no white women on the island. light colored, like asha. but not white.

cobs tried to keep her nose out of her brother's business, but she suspected if her mom caught wind of this she'd send her out to reel him in anyway. that was always the lot of being the elder sister wasn't it?

The Sweet and Spicy itch.io bundle has 36 romance and erotica titles for only $30! It includes our titles Monsterotica: Tales of Unusual Courtship and Coupling and The Salt in the Sea by J. D. Rivers. Check it out today to get a lovely pile of yummy books!

This bundle ends on July 31st.

Thanks for the tag, @lamuradex!

E- Every little detail was perfect, including the freckles that dusted her dusky skin- inherited from her dad’s mother- and her poofy curly dark hair that resembled her mother’s. Mini-Mary Arden was dressed in a mini version of her favorite lavender sweater and jeans shorts. Black and white leggings went into a pair of brown hiking boots. The matching pair was upstairs. The only thing that was off was the eyes.

N- "Nope, I think I'm just gonna..." She slipped the string around her neck, leaving the key there. Picking the doll up, Mary Arden pushed some boxes to hide the door. The cat seemed to nod his approval.

D- "Do not try that again," he hissed more than said. "I don't want to hurt you. I will not be guilty of hurting my friend again." His eyes narrowed, and he continued, "When I came here the other night, I came here with the intention to kill you, but when I returned to my own side, I was met with the disturbing realization that all the wounds you attained, so did my friend."

U- “Uh, this is Mr. Cox,” Frida said. She looked like she wasn’t sure how to feel, her shoulders hiked up to her ears and biting her lip in what could’ve been annoyance or worry. “He heard about you discovering that girl’s body and he just wanted to make sure you were alright, if that’s okay with you?”

R- Right now, the inside was empty, waiting for the clothes to arrive, the sign done in calligraphy orange print. An empty flower pot was on either side of the door, waiting for flowers to be planted.

E- Each plaque had a picture of the person with the date and the game. The last one was the girl who had disappeared- Amaryllis Eagerton.