#jersey devil

♐︎ Day 2: Wyatt Vollendroff ♐︎

Birthday: December 11, 1990

Sagittarius - Mutable Fire

Restless as a rampaging inferno, Sagittarius is an independent, freedom-craving sign. Always ready for the next adventure, these honest people are most well-known for their curiosity and charming sense of humor, but also possess penchants for both optimism and impatience.

Wy's Giving Sag When...

- he breaks the rules to chase adventure

- they care about people with their whole chest

- he tells it like it is even when it's hard

- they try to rush paint into drying

- he literally moves across the country to flee his problems

- they make light of a serious situation out of anxiety, coming off as dismissive

Like what you see? Check out...

Devil On My Shoulder

—queer tales from the garden state—

♏︎ Day 1: Ben Warrender ♏︎

Birthday: November 9, 1989

Scorpio - Fixed Water

Private and mysterious like the barely-touched waters of the deepest ocean, Scorpio is known for emotional depth hidden beneath a protective outer shell. Refined intuition and perception are used in concordance with fierce determination and loyalty to create an intense, razor-sharp straight-shooter.

Benji's Giving Scorpio When...

- he decides he wants something and seizes it by any means necessary

- he protects his friends to the very goddamn end

- he reads those around him with unnerving ease before using the findings to his sometimes-manipulative advantage

- he pretends he's hard only to turtle intensely once he realizes you're starting to figure out he's actually pretty soft

- he holds the truth close to the chest even when it's no longer an asset

- he pokes the bear just to see how far he can push it

Like what you see? Check out...

Devil On My Shoulder

—queer tales from the garden state—

Looking back, I know that a large part of it is being a Libra — I found that most readings characterized me as a vain social butterfly, and since I'm an awkward little bean, I figured that meant all of it was bullshit. I now realize that I'm more of the justice-obsessed, indecisive, can-find-beauty-anywhere brand of Libra? But enough about me.

Creating the characters for this work was a labor of love that had a lot of steps. I was still characterizing them most of the way through my first draft, knowing that I'm an obsessive editor and would be able to iron out the continuity stuff later. I was eventually deciding their birthdays, and I realized how much fun it would be to build them with their zodiac deeply in mind. And so once their birthdays were decided, if I as an author had a hard time deciding what the character might do in a situation, I harkened back to their astrological sign to help me make decisions. The characters were already so built by then that I found their signs blended kinda perfectly with the intentions I already had for them. I didn't have to change a thing — only had to notice the patterns I'd already created more concretely.

So in honor of that, I'm gonna spend the next two weeks doing an in-depth dive on each of the six queerbabies' astrological reads and how it shows in their narratives.

This week we'll talk about Ben the Scorpio, Wyatt the Sagittarius, and River the Pisces. Next it'll be Kat the Aries, Morrigan the Capricorn, and Tanner the Aquarius. I'll talk a bit about what's awesome about their signs! Aaaand about the less awesome parts too.

And in the meantime? Check out:

Devil On My Shoulder

—queer tales from the garden state—

That said? I've never been able to get on board with writing anything that's JUST romance. And younger me turned that into genre fiction. Sure, it's a love story, but there's elves. Aliens. Ghosts. Whatever. And don't get me wrong, I love genre fiction. The idea that real literature only exists in classic settings is ridiculous, and I'm not trying to weasel my way into the English Canon anyway.

But this time, I didn't go the supernatural route with the same gusto a younger version of me would have. Cuz the thing about the supernatural is that it only continues to count as that so long as we haven't discovered proof that it's real.

Cryptids seemed like a perfect way to bridge the gap between contemporary fiction and fantasy — to make it so the reader doesn't necessarily know what's real and what isn't.

So yes. Part of my book is two trans boys falling for each other, and the drama that ensues throughout the rest of that school year. But it's also about the unexplainable. Situations you walk out of going "I don't know what the fuck just happened, actually."

Because certainty, even about something frightening, is comforting. The unknown, however? Most people's worst nightmare.

So come explore the woods (and hearts) nestled in the queerbabies' mid-2000's world, where things aren't always as they seem.

Devil On My Shoulder

—queer tales from the garden state—

And one of the things I just didn't have it in me to include is a single Christian character that isn't wildly tertiary in importance. I'm not going to give paragraphs of not-all-Christians here, cuz just like not-all-men and not-all-cops and all the rest, it's trying to make allowances for the people who suck by saying some of their peers don't suck. If anything, that's even more reason why the ones that do suck could maybe ... quit it?

But the constant pushing of Christian ideals is rather fucking tedious for an ex-Protestant-turned-practitioner-of-witchcraft and it felt really good to just revise them out of existence a bit on this one.

The queerbabies (the group of six queer kids this story follows) contains two atheists, two agnostics, and two neo-pagans, where religion only plays a major part in one of their lives — cuz in my humble opinion, more stories need a ✨ sapphic trans witch ✨. Even the trans-and-homophobic rhetoric from antagonists is not so much religiously motivated as socially — since I would argue that many Christians, too, are more motivated by judgment and fear than the words in their holy text.

Yes, there are some books where Christian queers exist in healthy spaces. This is not that book.

What can I say? Guess I like my folklore with leathery wings and cloven hooves.

Devil On My Shoulder

—queer tales from the garden state—

Rough sketch of Phyliss