The Sea Claims All

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Trembling in the night time air,
half dozen gulls fly away. This
evening I wait for the moon and the
stars. They shall light my way, to an
enchanted land under the sea.
A clock strikes midnight, the
currents recede, the tides low.
Long ago I dreamed of this place,
and now I shall attend to my fate.
In this still night, I shall stride to
meet what I am meant for, the
siren song of leaving this wold behind.
And the sea shall claim everything,
least of all my doubts and fears.
Least of all, it shall claim all I hold dear.

This poem was originally posted on my Patreon [link] in October.

Site Update, 12/9/2020

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Hopefully this is the last *update* post I need to write for a while.

I tried hosting the site myself. I had no idea at all that doing such a thing would mean having to do all the coding and such myself. Any time I tried to fix something, something else would go wrong. Instead of spending much of the weekend knitting and continuing my binge of The Magnus Archives, I spent it trying to figure out what the fuck I broke now.

So I went back to WordPress, did some math, and invested in their Business plan. Expensive, yes, but it would save me a million headaches in the long run.

Then I installed plug ins.

And my site crashed.

So after a very helpful convo with the WP costumer service person, I’ve gone back down to the premium plan. This does remove plug-ins, but the one I was using the most was causing my site to crash, so I’d end up not using them anyway.

This *does,* however, give back the ability to follow my blog via WordPress again, as well as by email! Like and reblogs are back!

Shout out to the WordPress customer service, they were seriously awesome! They helped me determine that the Business plan wasn’t for me, and helped me set up a refund without any pressure to stay on the plan. Super big help!

So that has been my site maintenance adventures over the last few days. I apologize for an inconvenience.

The Rising Lights of Winter [Part I]

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The beast was made of clockwork. Its feet made a clicking sound on the cobblestone steps as it approached the man who stood alone beneath a streetlamp, a note clutched in his gloved hand. His blond hair was tied at the nape of his neck in a simple knot, and his eyes kept going to the watch he wore. He tapped his foot, his eyes scanning for a person.

“Oh.” Julian looked from the note to the creature, when he felt it nudge his leg. “I see.” The clockwork dog—he supposed it was meant to look like a dog, though it looked more like a jackal to him—was made of sleek black metal, but Julian could see that its eyes were red. He couldn’t tell if the eyes were precious jewels, or if the beast was lit with an inner fire. He tucked the note into the pocket of his jacket. “You’re her messenger.” He adjusted his top hat, and squared his shoulders. “Lead the way, then.” As they walked through the streets, he thought that this must look like an odd sight, a man walking alone with an omen of doom trotting along at his side.

Read the rest of the story HERE [link] on my Patreon! Patrons get this post, and all others like it, three days before the rest of the world does, as well as access to exclusive writings.

Testing

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Trying to see if this
even works? *clicks
save* Now I can take my
time in publishing, rather than hope
I get it right, and don’t piss off whatever
neutrons within the wires, between the stars,
grind my typing to a halt.

This is both a poem expressing frustration at WordPress for not letting me save things easily, and testing that it lets me add things like tags now. Odd that dropping my plan down to WordPress.com, instead of my own domain and hosting, fixed the issue.

That…might actually be what the cause of it was?

Oops.

Site Update 12/4/2020

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I *thought* I had all my issues solved?

I did not.

It turns out that WordPress wasn’t letting me publish my posts easily. I kept getting notifications of “you are not allowed to publish these terms” when I even tried to *save* a document.

So for now I’ve dropped my writing site back to wordpress.com rather than just being a .com site. Maybe that will fix this issue?

At least I got to keep my theme this time.

Writing During a Pandemic

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Stephen’s latest post from Fractured Faith [link] reminded me that I’ve been meaning to write about how COVID has affected my writing style, what I write about, and my writing schedule. It certainly hasn’t been the free time I thought a lockdown would bring me. I do, oddly enough, feel like being disabled has helped me though this in some ways.

I go back and forth between genres I write, and the length of stories I write. Despite my three short stories I’ve sent to publishers all being somewhere within the horror genre, I also have a romance novel in the works. It’s a paranormal/fantasy romance–as I put it on my Twitter [link,] my plan is to write a world “where everyone is queer, there’s no underlying corruption, and I’m going to drag you [my Twitter followers] all along for the ride with me.”

So far Satin Stars has been a lot of fun. It’s been a blast to make a character who’s truly not human, and have Istvan flip who I thought he was going to be. When I began writing, I expected Istvan to be a snobby rich guy sort of character. Instead he’s turned out to be a complete sweetheart who keeps his fiance’s disability [she’s hard of hearing] in mind. Istvan also reads as autistic, so I’m just going all in and writing him that way.

Which brings me to worldbuilding. That’s something that’s really changed during this time. The worlds I write used to be more dark fantasy sort? But these days I find myself writing what would maybe be considered “too cheerful” for some fantasy writers. Especially the Satin Stars universe (for example, everyone knows sign language. Everyone.)

I do write stories that are much more focused on the personal, even when big world-shaking events and characters are involved. I write about gods and supernatural entities falling in love with both humans, and each other. I write about New Years festivals on other planets. I write ghost stories where the lead character’s disability is a strength.

In writing, I’ve gotten much kinder to myself with how much I write. I try and write at least 300 words a day, but sometimes that doesn’t happen. When I think that I need to be writing All The Time, I remind myself that I’m not a Writing Machine, and that it’s okay to just meet my base goal.

So those are my thoughts on writing, and how it’s changed during the pandemic that’s going on.

The Worm and His Kings, by Hailey Piper [Review]

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The Worm and His Kings by Hailey Piper [link] is not only one of the queerest horror novels I’ve ever read, it might be one of the best horror novels of the year. I stayed up way too late reading it the night I started it, then way too late again last night to finish it. There were moments where I’d stop and re-read a sentence, just to take in the sheer beauty of the language in this book.

“Subway buskers, used to fighting train horns and railway clatter for listening ears, would’ve drowned out the choir, no trouble. They understood music. It’s purpose was to fill the soul, with no purity in the Worm’s name, and instead littered with the taint of mortal desires. The choir’s pure reverence left Monique’s soul empty.”

That’s just one example of the subtle beauty in the writing in this book. That moment I quoted above comes at about mid-way through the book. Monique’s musing on music are fascinating considering her circumstances. The scenes involving the Worm’s choir are chilling, yet strangely beautiful.

(There are spoilers after this point. Proceed with caution.)

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