#monstrous affections

I did know that and I found it delightful! You may be the first person besides me to pick up on it, thank you! Though I told Patrick about it, and was like ‘my Holly and Angela are LOVERS!’ while he nodded politely. Honestly I think all the stories in the Monstrous Affections anthology are so good and I was so thrilled to be part of it. 

I mean, Holly Black’s ‘Ten Rules for Being An Intergalactic Smuggler (the Successful Kind)’ and Alice Sola Kim’s ‘Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They Are Terrifying’? So good! Also such good titles. Should make me even more ashamed that my title is a vulgar pun, yet somehow it doesn’t. 

I’ve always found short stories tricky, because... who can write short? (Many people. Kelly Link is a wizard at it. Just not me. I run long. Typically short stories are under ten thousand words. I have committed short stories over thirty.) I get invested! And then I write... online short stories to be promotional prequels... and then they are over a hundred thousand words long... but that only happened one time!

(In an alternate universe where I never wrote In Other Lands, people just read the short story and thought Elliot was a catch, and nobody ever imagined him as an obnoxious 13 year old. Sorry 4 ruining your rep, Schafer!)

By the time the Monstrous Affections anthology was published, I’d written a whole book-length online story set in the world, and people who’d read the online story were like ‘There’s no way to understand this without the online story.’ Those who hadn’t read the online story and just read the anthology were like, ‘Oh, a dude with wings snags a hot redhead. Get it, Wingsy.’ (This experience is why I usually don’t worry too much about tie-ins: people who have the context of a larger world love their context and think it’s necessary, of course, but humans catch onto stories fast.)

Sometimes people ask me what my favourite short story I’ve written is, and I tell them Wings in the Morning, and they’re like, oh, uh-huh, and then it inspired you to write a book which I may also have to read, THIS IS A TRAP.

It used to be even worse, because I used to tell them my favourite short story I’d (in this case cowritten) was Saving Raphael Santiago in the Shadowhunters universe, and people would be like ‘Oh so I should read SIX OTHER BOOKS written by someone else, huh?’ But that short story was also worth writing. Harry Shum Jr (played Magnus in the Shadowhunters TV show) read it and talked to me about how he liked it, while I stared at him in perhaps too obvious shocked delight. What a petal. I am ready for Crazy Rich Asians 2 anytime, king! (Anyone who has read the Crazy Rich Asians books, which I have with great enjoyment, knows Charlie is the best.)

LIBRARY BOOK HAUL!!!

I might be insane but I bought the entire anthology just to read ”Wings in the Morning” by Sarah Rees Brennan. After finishing ”In Other Lands” I had to read the happenings surrounding Luke being half-harpy in his POV. I wasn’t disappointed in the least. Reading everything from Elliot’s POV already told some information about Luke’s inner conflict but of course told in his own POV I could understand him better and it made me love him even more than before. The best part of it was to learn about his thoughts about Elliot and when realization finally hit him.

Thanks to Dale! He kinda helped both of them to realize how they feel, or to be more precise who they truly love!

I really enjoyed this story so much!

Monstrous Affections: An Anthology of Beastly Tales (2014) by Various Fiction | Young Adult | Anthologies, Fantasy, Horror, Romance, Paranormal

Predatory kraken that sing with - and for - their kin; band members and betrayed friends who happen to be demonic; harpies as likely to attract as to repel. Welcome to a world where humans live side-by-side with monsters, from vampires both nostalgic and bumbling, to an eight-legged alien who makes tea. Here you'll find mercurial forms that burrow into warm fat, spectral boy toys, a Maori force of nature, a landform that claims lives, and an architect of hell on earth. Through these, and a few monsters that defy categorization, some of today's top young-adult authors explore ambition and sacrifice, loneliness and rage, love requited and avenged, and the boundless potential for connection, even across extreme borders.

Kill Game (2017) by Cordelia Kingsbridge Fiction | Adult | Romance, Mystery, LGBT, Contemporary, Crime, Thriller, Suspense

Homicide detective Levi Abrams is barely holding his life together. He’s reeling from the fallout of a fatal shooting, and his relationship with his boyfriend is crumbling. The last thing he’s prepared for is a serial killer stalking the streets of Las Vegas. Or how he keeps getting thrown into the path of annoyingly charming bounty hunter Dominic Russo. Dominic likes his life free of complications. That means no tangling with cops—especially prickly, uptight detectives. But when he stumbles across one of the Seven of Spades’s horrifying crime scenes, he can’t let go, despite Levi’s warnings to stay away. The Seven of Spades is ruthless and always two moves ahead. Worst of all, they’ve taken a dangerously personal interest in Levi and Dominic. Forced to trust each other, the two men race to discover the killer’s identity, revealing hidden truths along the way and sparking a bond neither man expected. But that may not be enough to protect them. This killer likes to play games, and the deck is not stacked in Levi and Dominic’s favor.