kienn | queer horror author

CODEX UNFERTHO: an ergodic experimental novel...

linguistics dark academia occult psychological horror ciphers art layouts rituals cannibalism angels academic rivals, mm tea for tea

A maze of language, an ancient mystery, a literary challenge: Trapped in a haunted library, two rival scholars lose themselves in a spiral of forbidden wisdom deciphering an esoteric text.

Are you willing to destroy this book to solve the mystery?

Weekly chapters free on my Kofi throughout pride! Feel free to post your theories!!

a 1k word short story I wrote after being inspired by an online writing group that I'm in!

Summary: A wealthy woman becomes obsessed with an impoverished man who can allegedly see the future.

TWs: Non-graphic character death

Since Sisters of Vipers turned one year old this month (whoa!) I decided I'd talk about how my personal experiences with things like neurodivergence, mental health, and disability impacted this story.

I have a very mild form of cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy is a motor disability that can impact muscle tone, muscle control, coordination, and body movement. It's usually caused by brain injuries that occur before or during birth, or sometimes soon after. In my case, I was born very prematurely and suffered internal bleeding in my brain as a newborn. As I got older, I developed problems with balance, muscle strength, and coordination. The fact that I inherited scoliosis from one of my parents didn't help either, my spine is slightly crooked and one of my legs is weaker than the other. But like I said, my case is very mild, and you wouldn't really be able to tell that there's anything different about me just by looking at me.

So, what does any of this have to do with Sisters of Vipers?

Well, a lot of my own perspective and experiences bled into the book. Some of it was intentional, some of it was accidental. (Really accidental).

In the prologue, Kelp talks about how he was born prematurely, and feels weaker and slower than his peers by the time he's hitting puberty. He also has trouble balancing and experiences pain and exhaustion after walking for a really long time. He also continues to be smaller and thinner in size than his peers even as an adult. Kelp doesn't have cerebral palsy, but I based all of this off of things I've experienced myself at one point or another. My mom even called Kelp "the one with cerebral palsy" after she read his POV and couldn't remember his name.

Funnily enough, there are two characters I pictured as actually having cerebral palsy when I wrote them, and neither of them are Kelp.

The first character I "gave" cerebral palsy was Talac Terip. Talac is described as having a bit of a limp...and being seen by his peers as a little strange. Talac describes having trouble socializing, difficulty understanding and coping with his emotions, and self-destructive urges. While some of this is probably related to losing his mother at a young age and being raised by Lord Terip, who is shown to be a rather volatile and emotionally immature person, a lot of it was inspired by the experiences myself and others have had while living with cerebral palsy.

When it comes to cerebral palsy, people tend to only focus on the physical impacts of the condition, such as issues with muscular health, but cerebral palsy is, fundamentally, caused by a brain injury. That means the whole brain is impacted in some way.

People with cerebral palsy:

Are more prone to depression.

Are more prone to anxiety.

Are prone to having issues with emotional dysregulation in general.

Some studies note that children and teens with cerebral palsy are more likely to have behavioral issues, such as displaying headstrong or hyperactive behavior, difficulties socializing other kids their age, and emotional regulation issues such as the ones described above.

And if you've read Sisters of Vipers, you might feel like that sounds familiar...

Zomoc, the main character of Sisters of Vipers, ended up heavily representing many of the emotional challenges of being a kid/teen with cerebral palsy, without me even realizing it. I knew when the story was starting to solidify that Zomoc was likely neurodivergent in some way, but it wasn't until a couple of years later, when I started doing research into cerebral palsy's impact on mental health and saw my own childhood staring back at me, that I realized what had happened. Zomoc is neurodivergent because I'm neurodivergent. I just hadn't understood how or why at the time I was writing this book, because like I said, cerebral palsy's impact on mental health isn't talked about. My family and I were never told that I was more likely to develop these issues, or that the issues I did end up experiencing as a tween and teenager were likely related to my disability. I spent years thinking I was "just weird" or things like my episodes of depression were isolated incidents, not knowing that my problems and behaviors were the result of my brain trying to adapt to the rapid-fire development of teenagehood while having a minor brain injury.

Anyway, personal rant over, back to my original characters (and the fun stuff!).

The second character I intentionally gave cerebral palsy was King Talmazoc. The quietly dignified king of Alapora, he's doing his best to run a functional kingdom while also combatting deeply rooted corruption in the system, and hiding the fact that his left leg is weaker than the right because he believes would be seen as a sign of weakness by his many enemies.

King Talmazoc's leg is ripped straight from my own life, as my left leg is the weaker one as well. Although, Talmazoc's issues are a little more visible than mine, and this is because his issues likely would not have been treated as well in the middle ages. Alaporan society is pretty advanced for the time, and they would have done their best to treat his condition, but there were a lot of things about disabilities that people just couldn't have known back then. (This didn't make it into the book, but I headcanon that Talmazoc wears special, custom made shoes for his condition, similar to something I wear in real life. While there were a lot of disability aids he wouldn't have had access to back then, it would've been fairly easy for an advanced society like the Alaporans to figure out that he needed special shoes.)

Also, here's a fun story: When Talmazoc tells someone about his weaker leg, he says: "It's not even the leg itself that's the issue, it's my spine. It is slightly crooked."

At the time I wrote this line, I had spent my whole life thinking that my left leg was naturally shorter than my right. It wasn't until months later that I went to a doctor's appointment, where they examined me and told me that my legs were actually equal length, it was the just the curvature in my spine making one tilt up higher than the other, making it seem shorter.

Did I tell King Talmazoc that his crooked spine was the root of his problems? Or did he tell me?

I finally read While Angels Trumpet by @kiennwrites, yay! Well, okay, maybe "read" isn't the most accurate way to describe it. I *inhaled* this. It's so beautifully written. There are *so* many good lines in this, and I can't even try list them all because most of them are spoilers.

While Angels Trumpet is a haunting, nightmarish psychological horror that examines guilt, religion, and the cost of war in Kienn Nguyen's distinctly surreal style, creating a creepy puzzle box of a story that sucks you right in from page one.

Right away, this novelette proved itself to be a very unique read, I haven't read anything like this in a long time. The narration and pacing are rather untraditional, all told through the eyes of an extremely conflicted unreliable narrator. Despite being so short, there are some serious layers to this one, and lots of different angles to look at the events of the story from. This story feels like a nightmare that is constantly shifting and breathing around you.

Psst hey! Do you like free books 👀👀

MM gaslamp fantasy with a majority LGBT cast in a queer normative world

Supernatural elements that reflect the MC's mental state

The love interest practices deliberate gentleness

The MC is a soft man forced to be closed off

The MC and LI communicate their problems and feelings*

*as well as their mental health allows

WORMWOOD’S FALL - Book I of The Infernal Apocrypha

RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 13, 2026.

Happy Monday of the Angel, which I am using to announce the release date of my next angel story and reveal its cover! Included is a short synopsis slide (with alt text for those who need it) and also a moodboard… for the vibes.

Add Wormwood’s Fall to your TBR if you like:

🖤 HOLIEST & Angelcore Novels

🌿 Botanical-themed Body Horror

🌟 Second-Chance Friendship

🥀 Royalty x Guard (🌶🌶.5)

🖤 Biblical & Gothic Horror (but cozier this time)

🥀 A Violently Protective Love Interest 

🌟 Biblically Accurate Angels

🌿 A Disabled & Genderfluid Main Character

🖤 Mental Health Rep (Depression & Psychosis)

Wormwood’s Fall picks up directly where HOLIEST leaves off. I suggest reading HOLIEST before it for all of the context, since it references many events in it (yes, I’ll include a little section of relevant info in the novella).

More info about HOLIEST can be found [here] and [here] on tumblr! Wormwood's Fall can be found [here] on Storygraph!

For additional info & content warnings about both stories, please visit their pages on my website: [HOLIEST] and [Wormwood's Fall]

For those who want to catch up before Wormwood's Fall releases, HOLIEST can be purchased here:

RELEASE DAY FOR EVIL GAY STEW SHORT STORY I GUESS

- unreliable narrator

- toxic relationship

- cannibalism

- ghosts? my dead situationship? the representation of my own queer guilt? who knows

- the 'bird' is not a bird

- the 'stew' is not stew

- either 99% dialogue or 1% dialogue. who knows

YOU HAVE SEVEN DAYS TO REPENT

ON KU....!!!