crime lord corvidae

i hated the sketch i made for this so i decided i might as well experiment with it a little since i wasn't gonna do anything else with it

I noticed that there was a bigger egg under one of the broody chickens, when I checked. Of course I noticed, it was twice the size of the others. But I have geese. I figured it was a goose egg she’d found and stolen. It was about the right size, and I didn’t take it out to check the colour because that particular chicken gets very protective of her eggs. I’ve already got a scar on one hand from trying to get eggs away from her. I didn’t want a matched set.

That was a decision I regretted the moment I went out to feed the chickens and found a little blue-and-silver dragonet’s head poking out from under a very confused-looking chicken. The poor thing kept shifting around and looking under herself in a bewildered way, like she didn’t know what to do next. This particular chicken is a good mother, and she’s raised clutches of ducks and geese without any trouble – she’s even resigned to some of her children swimming – but this was too much. She didn’t object when I carefully reached in and fished out the little dragon.

It was so tiny, then. It fitted in my hand, with its little head peeking out one side and its tail looping around my wrist. Cute, too, with its big eyes and little snout turned up towards me.

That was when I made my second mistake. I decided to feed it before releasing it. Dragons are innately wild creatures, everyone knows that. They can’t be tamed. People have tried. The eggs are abandoned as soon as they are laid, and the dragonets hatch able to hunt, so they don’t even bond with their mothers. So just feeding it a little shouldn’t have been a big deal. It should have gobbled the meat and fled as soon as I loosened my grip on it and it saw the open sky.

It didn’t. As soon as I’d fed it, it fluttered up to a sunny window ledge and went to sleep. I went about my work, figuring that it’d leave in its own time.

By noon, it was sitting on my boot, squeaking pathetically. I wondered if maybe it was confused by the farmyard – they usually hatch in mountains, if the stories are right – so I took it back to the farmhouse with me and fed it again when I ate, then took some time away from the fences I should have been mending to walk it up to the hills. I found it some nice rocks, with plenty of lizards and beetles and suitable prey for something that size. It pounced on a beetle almost as soon as I put it down, and when I left it was crunching happily.

I hadn’t walked a quarter of the way back before something hit the back of my boot. The little dragon was holding on with all four claws, and when I looked down it squeaked pathetically. If possible, its eyes got even rounder.

Listen, you don’t make it as a farmer if you just let orphaned baby animals die. We hand-raise calves and lambs and ponies, set chickens to sit on abandoned eggs, or put them under the kitchen stove or by a fireplace. You don’t make a success of farming if you don’t value every animal. A good shepherd will spend all night looking for one lost sheep. So despite what was said later, it wasn’t just sentiment that made me sigh and pick up the little thing and carry it back to the farm.  I am a good farmer. I don’t let orphaned babies die just because they’re a little work.

"They were a good person and people still died because they didn't put trust in anyone else" ← is so fucking good but people don't fucking appreciate it

"They were a good person and they failed. Over and over again. They failed." ← DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND HOW DELICIOUS THAT IS!?!?

it's like Game of Thrones meets Star Trek meets The Expanse meets Regency romance. it's incredible.

if you haven't heard of this AMAZING series by Lois McMaster Bujold, run don't walk and go read it immediately!!!!

also, fun fact, Lois Bujold got her start writing fanfic for Star Trek fanzines, which REALLY makes sense when you look at the content of her writing lol

the series wasn't written chronologically but it's definitely best to read it chronologically with one exception (which is to read Falling Free before Diplomatic Immunity).

here's my personal preferred reading order (with some notes):

Shards of Honor - 1986 start here! this book is about 33-year-old Cordelia, an astrocartographer from Beta Colony (Star Trek commie soyboy planet), and how she meets and falls in love with 44-year-old Aral Vorkosigan, a general from Barrayar (military aristocracy feudalism planet)

Barrayar - 1991 continues the story of Cordelia and Aral's romance, with many complications

The Warrior’s Apprentice - 1986 from this book onwards, the protagonist of the series shifts to Miles, Cordelia and Aral's disabled son. I was bracing myself for this switch because I was so attached to Cordelia, but 17-year-old Miles immediately jumps off the page here and quickly became one of my all time favorite literary characters. he's a disabled nepo baby from an extremely prejudiced and ableist society who may or may not have inspired Tyrion Lannister. he's incredible, character of all time, no notes

The Mountains of Mourning (novella) - 1989 this one is a novella that is part of The Borders of Infinity, which is a framing device for 3 novellas. the framing part of the book is set after Brothers in Arms, but I recommend reading each individual novella as it falls chronologically and then going back and reading the framing sections later

The Vor Game - 1990 Miles is 20 now

Cetaganda - 1995 a fun murder mystery starring 22-year-old Miles

Ethan of Athos - 1986 this book is somewhat of a detour because Miles isn't in it, but it heavily features a character who later becomes his girlfriend. it's set concurrently to Cetaganda

Labyrinth (novella) - 1989 another novella from Borders of Infinity which introduces Taura, a character who becomes very important to Miles

The Borders of Infinity (novella) - 1987 the final novella from the Borders of Infinity. it goes here chronologically. the framing device is technically set after Brothers in Arms, but it's fine to read here too if you want

Brothers in Arms - 1989 Miles goes to Earth in this one! kudos to Lois for pulling off one of my least favorite plot devices here (a secret clone) and making it an incredible and heart-breaking exploration of identity and character

Mirror Dance - 1994 this book is probably one of the best in the whole series. Lois was really cooking with this one! split POV between Miles and his clone brother, Mark

Memory - 1996 this book is a little quieter than the previous ones, but in a really good way

Komarr - 1998 introduces Miles primary love interest, Ekaterin, and splits POV between her and Miles. they're both 30 here

A Civil Campaign - 1999 this one is like, a classic Shakespearean comedy in terms of structure. apparently it was inspired by Regency romance. it's absolutely incredible and one of my favorites in the series

Winterfair Gifts (short story) - 2004 Miles and Ekaterin's wedding, told from the POV of one of their armsmen. sort of a Christmas special but in a good way!

Falling Free - 1988 another detour. this book is actually set 200 years before the events of the series, but it tells the origin story of the Quaddies and is relevant to Diplomatic Immunity, hence why I suggest reading it here

Diplomatic Immunity - 2002 32-year-old Miles and his wife untangle a diplomatic crisis with the Quaddies

Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance - 2012 told from the POV of Miles' cousin Ivan

The Flowers of Vashnoi (novella) - 2018 a novella about Ekaterin, Miles' wife

Cryoburn - 2010 get ready to WEEP

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen - 2016 we're back in Cordelia's POV for this one. lots of spicy revelations about her and Aral's marriage (including a space throuple)!!!! we love to see it!!!

I read this series so insanely fast, like I was quite literally blasting through one book a day (each book is around 300 pages so it's not as crazy as it sounds), but that's honestly how good they are.

every single book has at least one moment that made me stop short and really think about my life. I would say the whole series is kind of a meditation on the concept of honor. and also gender issues and disability politics. some of the gender terminology is dated, but the sentiments are extremely forward-thinking, especially considering when these books were largely written. as I mentioned, the main character is disabled, and there are MANY queer and gender non-conforming characters throughout the series!

if you like Ursula LeGuin, you'll probably enjoy these! honestly surprised Bujold isn't as well-known/highly regarded as LeGuin, because imo they're very similar and very comparable!!!

I think this is probably a generational thing.

I grew up in the 90s, and ... Bujold was one of the top-selling and most well-known writers of the era. She is also one of the most highly-decorated SF/F authors of any era so far. She has four Hugo awards for Best Novel. The only other person who got four Hugos for Best Novel was Heinlein, who was writing when the competition was a lot looser because there was less SF/F being published. There has only been a Hugo for Best Series since 2017. Bujold is the only author to have won it twice so far--her Vorkosigan series won in 2017, and her World of the Five Gods (i.e. "Chalionverse") series won in 2018. IOW, she has two major series, and her most popular series won the award the first year it was available, and her second most popular award won it the second year it was available. She was awarded the title Grand Master of Science Fiction in 2020. She's semi-retired now, which seems to mean she only writes things she finds interesting and self-publishes them as ebooks instead of working with agents and publishers and things. (And also means she writes mostly novellas, because she finds that length much easier to write than novels.)

You don't tend to find Bujold books in used book stores very often because people like to reread them, but I don't know that I've ever walked into a bookstore that sold new books and had a decent SF/F section that didn't have Bujold's books on the shelf; Bujold is an outlier in publishing reliability. Unlike most authors (whose backlists don't tend to sell well), Bujold's older books sell well enough that they've never been out of print (except for The Spirit Ring, a stand-alone fantasy.)

I don't know if I've ever met a SF/F fan my age or older who doesn't know who Bujold is. Whether they like her stuff or not, they know who she is and have read at least one of her books.

So it doesn't occur to me to do promo posts or anything because. Of course everyone knows Bujold, right?

And, no, she hasn't done much traditional publishing since she went into semi-retirement, and she hasn't done any marketing, so a lot of Gen Z and younger people don't know who she is. When the Plot Trysts podcast did a series talking about the Vorkosigan books, they had a new guest author every episode (Katherine Addison, Jo Walton, Yoon Ha Lee, etc), and they'd ask them how they got into reading Bujold. And most episodes I'd sit there shocked to hear this person who grew up reading SF/F only recently heard about Bujold.

My latest story "Maintenance Email Transcripts Sept-Oct 2022" is now available to read as an online feature from God's Cruel Joke. This story was inspired by living in Boston apartments for the last five years, and the Kafkaesque dilemma of seeking help from your local slumlord. Content warning for depiction of mold-induced illness and unreality.

TERRITORIAL is a horror minizine about a man delving into the depths of the unknown, and finding the answers to secrets that should never have been revealed. Set in the underwater caves of Vortex Springs, Florida, this story twists and turns in the caverns beneath, echoing one unified thought: is there something in this cave worth dying for?

Content warnings for thalassophobia, claustrophobia, and mentions of death and drowning.

Itch.io download includes both two PDF versions for online reading (one in spread form, one in singles form) and a formatted single-page PDF for printing and folding.