Tag: fiction

Updates On Updates

Stitch

First, I’ve spent about two weeks knowing I was sick and several days before that telling myself that I wasn’t.

So I’m once again behind Despite My Best Efforts.

I have to figure out how to get to the clinic that takes my – not actually crappy – insurance so I can do a follow up, but I’m probably fine for now. I’m working my way through my emails and getting in touch with people about things I missed because I was sick and trying to catch up so… I’ll be in your inboxes, apologizing profusely.

Second, hey, I’m in a fun little Pride bundle over on itch.io with some cool queer cats. You can get my cozy supernatural short story The Carnival That Comes After and tons of other amazing works for $30 HERE! Profits from the bundle go to the queer creators in the bundle and it’ll absolutely help us all with our future goals as creators and people!!

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[PRE-ORDER] (IN)FAMOUS

Stitch

(In) Famous, my novella about a too-online, fame-hungry teenager who starts hanging with a bad crowd & makes a bunch of crap decisions as a result for JUDGES Volume 3 (2000AD), will be out Dec 1.

Preorders for the novella are open now including for limited edition signed copies!

Post-Shift Stress and You’re Not At Your Best

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Mercy is one awkward, itchy mess of a queer werewolf. But… it’s working for her. Somehow.

Notes: This is set four months after Girl, Get Wrecked and is goopy fluff written for @zrhueiao on twitter! Thank you for your patience – as I was sick as heck and pretty much incapable of focusing for the past uh… like 10 days at least. (It was also called “Howl If You’re Happy” but uh… I’m repurposing that tile for something extra queer.)

This floof inspired about three different potential (and similarly queer) spin-offs that don’t all involve queer werewolves but do introduce you all to a new member of the Selkie Squad. (And one is a short and supremely NSFW story directly inspired by this that will be up this weekend on Dreamwidth.)

Most of the time, Mercy likes being the only werewolf on St. Thomas. There aren’t any petty pack politics or the kind of hierarchy that she’d left the States to escape – considering that she was firmly on the bottom back home. Outside of the selkie squad and the were-tiger that she’d scented on a day trip to Puerto Rico, there aren’t that many shifters on the island that Mercy has come to call home.

In essence, she’s the alpha of the island.

Wild.

But being the alpha, a lone wolf on an island where everyone is a part of one close-knit community or another –

Isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

Especially after the full moon.

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A Very Special Unboxing

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In super awesome and (probably super surprising) news, I’ve got a gosh-darned BOOK coming out in a MONTH!

Judge Anderson: Flytrap, my second novella and my first work published in a standalone book with my name on the cover, is coming out from 2000 AD in August.

This is a story that was incredibly fun to write and that gave me a chance to flex my writing muscles. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to write in Anderson’s world and I don’t know that I can ever convey how much this opportunity means to me.

If you want to preorder this fantastic (if I may toot my own horn a bit) novella, preorders are open here at the 2000 AD online store and there are just 200 physical copies available!

Judge Anderson: Flytrap

Two hundred floors up on Wormwood Block, in one of the poorer corners of Mega-City One, a cit turns on her neighbours, biting and raging. Just another futsie, in a city filled with everyday tragedy.

Psi-Judge Cassandra Anderson and her new partner take the call. It should be an open-and-shut case, until she tries to read the poor futsie’s mind and finds… nothing.

Somewhere in Wormwood is a predator, setting a trap for people like Cass. Hell of a way to finish her second year on the streets…

Thanks for watching and thanks for (hopefully) reading!

Note: the video Absolutely freezes and then skips a bit partway through – no fault of the terrific teen helping me by holding the camera at all – all issues across the board are my own!

The Bride’s Choice – Original Fiction

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the-brides-choice-graphic

Promised to a being that lives in the waters between her village and the rest of the world, a young woman walks to what will surely be her doom.

❧❧❧❧

I walk until I see the shoreline, the hem of my white wedding dress turning darker and darker with every step that I take dragging it through the mud and silt that line the path down to the sea.

Every single step that I take reminds me that I am not doing this for myself. I am not striding towards my death and doom because I want to find myself carried away or crushed by whatever it is that lives in the murky waters between my village’s land and the outside world.Read More »

To Market, To Market

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Market Square

— To market, to market, to buy a plum bun/ Home again, home again, market is done.

Maren walks two steps behind the governor’s wife on their way through the market near Fort Christensen, standing near enough to hear the older woman call her name, but not so near that anyone would assume them to be closer than they were. While she may only have been working for the new governor’s wife for a scattered handful of months, she already feels as if she understands the other woman.

When Regine pauses in front of a stall selling vegetables and fruits from local, small farms that used to be part of bigger plantations, Maren stops at her right elbow, head tilted as she raises the basket holding the woman’s coin purse in case there’s something there that the woman wants to purchase.  Read More »

Frozen in Fear of Failure

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I haven’t managed to submit another story since I sent in “The Accidental Spider-Queen” to Fireside Fiction back in April.

At first, it was because I hadn’t been writing. My former day-job (the part time one I quit in a fit of pique after rightfully feeling unappreciated) drained me to the point where all I’d do was come home, crawl into bed, and go do sleep. But I haven’t been working for almost two weeks.

So why haven’t I been submitting things?Read More »

[Fiction] Temptation Valley – The Beginning

Stitch

Isabella finds herself with a job, a home, and what might be a reason to stop running all in a very short time.

Note: This is the first story in a series.

Image used under a CreativeCommons license.
Image used under a CreativeCommons license.

Isabella rides into Temptation Valley in the early hours of the morning on the back of a bay mare that isn’t hers.

Sitting straight up in the saddle, Isabella doesn’t let any of the worry that she feels show on her face. She guides the mare forward with a quiet click of her tongue, directing the horse towards the biggest building on the town’s dusty main street – a building with a hand-painted sign at the front of it that says Temptation Valley Inn in faded paint.Read More »

Camp Nano: The only kind of camp I’ll ever willingly participate in

Stitch

I was one of those kids that always hated camp.

Day or summer camp it didn’t matter. I hated camp with the kind of furor that was reserved only for cabbage or presidential addresses that come on during the season finale of your favorite show.

But CampNano is different.

For one thing, I don’t have to leave the comfort of my bed and blankets to participate. That’s a pretty big draw for me.  So I’m in.Read More »

[Fiction] The wolf in the woods

Stitch

This is a Red Riding Hood-inspired short story from the (were)wolf’s point of view. Much thanks to my pal Fleet for looking over it for me. Red Riding Hood has always been my favorite fairy tale and I try to play around with it every single chance that I get because it can be done so many different ways.

Contains: allusions to violence, dubious consent/consent issues, mild gore, animal death, sort of sexualized violence, mild sexual situations/imagery

From flicker user tambako. Used under a CreativeCommons License.
From flicker user tambako. Used under a CreativeCommons License.

Val’s second in command Koan comes to him in the early morning before the others awaken, coming off his patrol around the forest. Koan lopes towards Val in his human form, moving gracefully around the other wolves despite the sheer amount of space that their fellows take up around the cooling fire.

“There is someone in the woods,” Koan says, speaking in a low voice when he comes close to Val. He dips his head in a short bow and then steps forward, moving into his alpha’s space just far away from the rest of the pack to provide the illusion of privacy. “I heard the humans talking about it in the middle of the night and I –”

Koan does not get the chance to complete his sentence.

“And you what,” Val says, sitting up slowly from his makeshift bed of hides. He combs one hand through his hair, clawed nails catching on the silvery strands as he peers at Koan with an unreadable look on his narrow face. “You waited this long to come and tell me about it? You could have sent a runner, one of the natural wolves in the forest, if it was serious. What’s changed?”Read More »