#common bonds

Bulgy-Head Transformations:

Exciting news - Common Bonds is getting a sequel anthology! more aromantic & platonic stories!

The kickstarter will launch February 16 for #AroWeek. if you're interested in helping promote, sign up here!

I'm on it!

You can find a whole lot more details about the project in general here, and well as how to pre-order it, if that's a kind of thing you'd like to do (basically, just pledge for the amount that gets you a copy).

As for me? My story is a little thing about a teenager trying really hard to make a gift for his queerplatonic soulmate with his mentor helping him learn how to be the one welcoming others into his community for the first time.

My CP described it as "a dollop of Neosporin on a stinging cut" when I was doing early stage edits back this summer (this is...a reference to a bit in the story, but anyway).

Anyway, I gotta get back to finalizing my edits to send back to my editors for the anthology.

A lot of my inspo for it came from Jeweler Richard, honestly, and the mentor character honestly wound up only working because Dr. Xeno finally showed up in Dr. STONE and finally gave me a way to make the archetype work (my mentor is not looney tunes; I didn't take that part).

You, Me, and the Sea, my short story featuring an aroallo siren named Marlowe that definitely eats people (but would never eat Masie), and Masie, their tired aroace human bestie who is hanging on by a thread, has been accepted in Common Bonds 3! Art by the incredible @starsinmycoffeedraws

Be sure to visit the Kickstarter and sign up for updates, and support it when it launches.

Books of 2025: November Wrap-Up.

Hello, world!! I emerge from a fungal fugue state having SUCCESSFULLY WRITTEN ANOTHER BOOK (peep my little notebooks of proof!) and also apparently having read a not-insignificant number of others!! What a great time!! (NaNo!Antagonist DNI)(actually NaNo!Protag DNI either, sorry girl)

Review photos linked:

WHIRLWIND ROMANCE ★★★ Weird and fucked up little collection of domestic, intimate stories (which was. not what I was expecting. when I put it on my TBR this year. but that's on me lol). I liked his style enough that I'll probably check out his novel-length work, too!

YOU MADE A FOOL OF DEATH WITH YOUR BEAUTY ★★ I've loved Emezi's other work, so this one was a HUGE disappointment to me. Messy and fucked up in an infuriating way (not a fun way). If you're considering picking Emezi up, don't start here.

COMMON BONDS ★★* Ugh okay as a Fellow Aro™ and Aficionado of SFF, I desperately wanted to love this anthology, but: unfortunately as a collection it was. not great. There are a few knockout stories in there, but they're mostly buried in the second half. I'm glad we've got more aro anthologies coming, and I do list my favorite stories from this one in my review, but maybe don't read this volume in order. *I feel bad rating this low, because aro perspectives are important and I want more of those, but from a technical perspective...these could be better, I'm sorry, I can't just not have standards because I'm aro lol.

A TASTE FOR POISON ★★★ This was fine! I wanted more science than I got (it's heavy on the true crime: historical edition). Interesting starting point for All Things Poison, though.

SILENT SPRING ★★★★★ Finally got around to reading this, after [mumbles incoherently in Biologist Interested in Ecology and Conservation]! Very good, very approachable, very incisive and relentless. The number of times I hollered GET HIS ASS, RACHEL while reading is unreal.

Now, if y'all will excuse me: I have to go enter a second, smaller fungal fugue state, in which I type up this book that I scribbled by hand in 29 days and knit a bunch of Christmas gifts and then collapse until New Year.

Under the Cut: A Note About ~*★Stars★*~

my first (and only lmao i can only get my shit together to finish stuff when COMMON BONDS opens submissions it seems) short story, HALF A HEART, was published in the first COMMON BONDS anthology years ago and now my new short story will be in the second volume!

THE HUNGER WHO WEARS HIS SKIN cannibalized an old short story of mine but the final product is veeery different from the concept it originated from. it is about two witches, an ancient rivalry between two families, a city cradled by mystical river and dead old gods buried in the wetlands. i hope you guys enjoy this world and characters when the anthology comes out!!

you can still pledge to the kickstarter!! when it comes out i will be sharing the link here too

That story about refusing the call to sit back and be sacrificed is my story!

Common Bonds 2 is an anthology of aromantic speculative fiction, and I am included in it! My story, "Screw Everybody," is about a timeline that is falling apart in the wake of someone being saved. Not the main character, no, the main character's survival was an accident. One that the MC will not be giving up any time soon.