Milo Winter 🌌

A few of the poems from Alterlife, a fully illustrated poetry collection that explores ghosts and the afterlife as metaphors for personal trauma. Sweeping landscapes, ecosystems, and natural phenomena are set in parallel to PTSD, self-destructive tendencies, and traumatic memory.

Haha, that would be @the-d12rose, aka Elrose, who is still active on the WOG team! I believe she's open for commissions right now? I cannot recommend Elrose enough, she is an incredible artist and human being.

I look at this art every day on the books! I always like to pause and look at the colors on the back cover, for some reason those deep blues and greens are soft to the eyes. Hopefully it's okay to share the full piece here, all credit to El <3

For those who have been asking for a first edition hardcover, the last ~200 of them are for sale. The 1e hardcover will not be printed again, as it was a special edition print for TikTok Shop preorders; clearing out what was left from this offset print run! These ship in 2-5 business days, signed, and include the original foil bookmark only available with the 1e hardcovers.

Making lots of room for 2e. Big updates upcoming, including writing updates. Also need to go through a very full inbox here. More content coming soon...

I have a lot of asks to answer, but this one just came in; I have a few questions like this/asking about my name change, so I wanted to take the chance to clarify. Thank you for asking!

My preference is that my old videos/content from when I was presenting femme is not used or shared when discussing or talking about my writing or projects now. I'd be really uncomfortable with someone using old content of me while talking about Alterlife, for example. AOS and Gardian will consistently and always be under Milo Winter now, just as it was under Audra Winter before! I avoid looking at any media of myself online because I know I will see my pre-transition self. Audra is a dead name at this point, but I don't at all mind being referred to as Winter.

And, no, I was not aware that there was a children's book illustrator named Milo Winter. When I came out, I actually came out to the team first, and had them refer to me as "Winter" until I was ready to fully come out as transgender (and before I chose my new name!). Winter's been my pseudonym since I was 12, it stuck after all this time. When I chose my new first name, I decided I would have the same first name pseudonym and autonym; my legal dead name was already doxxed and it makes me extremely uncomfortable to be referred to as that dead name. When I came across Milo, I looked up the meaning, said it out loud a few times, and then... chose it. It was an instant decision. I just rolled with it. I loved it. Immediately told the team and close friends to refer to me as Milo and then that sealed "Milo Winter" as a pen name. I (mistakenly) did not look up if there was anyone in the literature world named Milo Winter. Oh well.

On a similar note, I published Alterlife under Milo Prather, because I could. It's a personal poetry collection; the writing in Alterlife is separate from Gardian, it represents me as a human.

Related answer to this question from High Disturbance:

Throughout my life, I have been someone who struggles to listen to my own voice or watch a video of myself. As you could probably imagine, this did not fare well with the thousands of people mirroring my face back to me and referring to me exactly as the role I forced myself into. I leaned more and more into the girlboss-entrepreneur-business woman stereotype, wondering if I was uncomfortable being perceived as so because of the amount of shock I was under. But, as reality sank in, I had a different realization when I flinched at every she/her, when I found myself disgusted at being so widely seen as a woman. I was playing an act, one I had played all my life, but it was a reality check to be ambushed by the complete disconnection between who I was and who I was being seen as—not on the hatred level, but simply on gender and identity. I hated seeing myself perceived as a woman. It worsened each video I watched of myself, I despised my own image, I couldn’t recognize myself in old or new videos.

On a related note, I've been signing the last of the 1e hard cover copy sales with Milo Winter, despite the cover and book with my pre-transition name.

Hello there! Should've answered this one a bit ago, but had my media break. Yes, we most definitely will see more trans representation in Gardian! Though Avia is a canonically cis character, I don't mind head canons at all, and I love that people can find inspiration in my characters to create their own stories. I answered previously about trans representation:

additionally, i found your “high disturbance” article very interesting and you seem to be very knowledgeable about ecology and forestry. do you plan to release any other pieces like it in the future?

Hello there!

I do have plans (and always have) to write more installments or side projects in Gardian! Right now, I'm just keeping my focus on AOS, but I've been writing with the intention of expanding the series over time.

Are you going be using "Milo Winter" or "Milo Praher" for publishing your stuff?

Yes, that's true, I published under Milo Prather—Prather is my actual surname/autonym. Winter is my pseudonym. Milo is my first (chosen) name for both my autonym and pseudonym now.

My choice to publish Alterlife under Milo Prather vs Winter was a reclamation of my identity with a heavily interpersonal collection of writing. Alterlife embraces who I am as a person, and I want to be able to reconnect with the ghosts I divided myself from because of dissociation.

AOS and Gardian will still be published under Milo Winter :) I'm just putting it out there that Milo Winter and Milo Prather are the same person.

Earlier this year, my dead name was spread to cause harm to me. This was in the middle of my egg cracking. I had my pen name and legal name separate for a reason—I went by Audra instead of my dead name was because my dead name made me that uncomfortable, lol. Milo is a comfortable name, why not use it for both my autonym and pseudonym?

Yes, it will! So will Chapter 3. I’m hoping to get Chapter 2 out within the next month—we’ve been working on restructuring the book with a full outline, having conversations with Kaitlyn and the team, and laying out the bones for the first ten chapters. I’m in the process of rewriting Chapter 2 as we speak!

Yes, I just published a whole book of it :)

I took a social media break. That’s all. I’ll answer asks soon.

For those wondering, I don’t scroll Tumblr or look at my own tag(s), at all. While Sauli & Elrose update me on the important things, I actively avoid watching content about myself. I’m really just here to answer asks (when I feel comfortable doing so) and throw out my thoughts to the void. I have deliberately avoided scrolling any tags with my name for months, on numerous platforms. I do not look at accounts talking about me, I don’t scroll my home page at all, I’m around to occasionally post content and answer questions.

Today’s critique topic: I spelled my own fictional words wrong.

Yes to both! It’s already being written in—there is a trans character featured in the main cast. The second version of AOS will openly have both trans masc and trans fem representation.