farewell, good hunter
There are. Over 100 responses. 113 as of the last time I checked. That is. An unfathomable amount of people who want to take part, and it is truly humbling. Truly, thank you so fucking much. I want to make sure I don’t burn out/get discouraged by how quickly I get through each and every one of your interviews, so I am taking a preventative measure and closing the form for the time being.
Thank you again very much for your excitement and your contributions! I am working as hard and fast as I can between my full-time job and my own writing to get these posted. I appreciate your patience in this endeavor.
Thank you again so very, very much!!
Seo the Mage
race : duinnimf
age : unknown
hometown : unknown
allegiance : unknown
It is not often that duinnimfs are seen outside the thorny forests of the dunes near the coast, so when Seo sets foot in the small city of Harilburgt asking around for spells that blur the line between life and death, it causes quite the commotion.
She is an expert mage, capable of learning any spell or ritual she can get her hands on. But when her Mistress passes away after spending countless human lives together, she is confronted with the two things she knows nothing about, dealing with humans, and dealing with death.
She is thrust onto a quest to find a way to bring her Mistress back to life, as Ikuzand the Mage is the one prophetised to stop the Sea from engulfing the known lands. But the realm of Men is not something she can travel alone. As much as she tries to deny it, she's going to need some help.
Karel the Knight
race : human
age : 39
hometown : Hoogdam
allegiance : The Royal Order of the Heavenly Oak
Ever since he was a child Karel knew that he wanted to do what was right. When he received a wooden training sword for his fifth birthday he proved to be a natural, and combined with a strong wit and moral compass he quickly progressed through the ranks to become the youngest member ever to be admitted to the Royal Order of the Heavenly Oak.
His biggest pride is the way he treats the people he meets. He realised that in order to be seen as trustworthy he has to place his trust in them in return. So when he finds out that Ikuzand the Saviour has died before breaking the prophecy, he turns to his superiors. But his superiors do not act.
With each day that passes he gets more and more uneasy. He is being pulled at from two sides, and he knows that there will be a day where he will snap. So he has to make a choice: support the throne that has given him everything he is, or abandon his post and face dishonour to do what he thinks is right.
Pip the Thief
race : human
age : 15
hometown : Harilburgt
allegiance : One and only member of the Company of Honourable Thieves
Being an orphan in Harilburgt is not as bad as it sounds. He doesn't miss his parents, for who can miss parents when he never met them? And by the burgomaster's decree all orphans receive free education, food and shelter.
There is, however, something that he finds even more interesting than his studies: secrets. It did not take him long to find every hiding spot in the city, so he began a new collection: diplomatic scrolls. The fact that some people pay good money for such scrolls was an added bonus.
But his viewpoint changed when he snags a letter stating the death of Ikuzand the Great, and the strict orders to keep this fact a secret under the punishment of death for whoever breaks this order. Pip's isn't under any obligation to listen to the orders of a foreign burgomaster, so he does what anyone else would do: carefully leak the information in the market square and watch the news spread through the country like a wildfire. Little did he know that the next day he would stumble onto the very person who may be able to tell him more about this illustrious mage, but is that information worth crossing into the afterlife for?
Let me know if you'd like to be added to the taglist!
Just so everyone knows, all my books are 99¢ for the ebooks until the end of the year. And A FLAME IN THE NIGHT (MMF gothic vampire romance) is currently free on Smashwords.
KIRSTY DARCOURT | mid 20s
a young woman taken from the negligent care of her birth parents, kirsty languished in the foster system until being booted out at eighteen. after a period of homelessness, she managed to get hired at a supermarket deli and scrape together enough for a studio in the dying town of copper lake.
she has no friends beyond work colleagues, no family to lean on, and no support network save for her moderately wealthy boyfriend, david loomis. he isn't entirely honest about his life outside of their relationship, but she doesn't care enough to question it; she's destitute and completely alone, and he has money to help pay the bills.
SASKIA DE VILLEPIN | mid 70s, early 20s on death
a german tourist who traveled to new orleans on holiday in 1975 with a group of friends, saskia met a man named beau de villepin in the middle of a bar crawl. he claimed to be a vampire, the one and only in the world. she called bullshit.
before she knew it, she had been taken out back behind the bar and drained to near death, her friends noticing her absence too late. she awoke into a new world, one of debauchery and hedonism and sadism, one where you could do whatever you wanted and nobody could stop you.
only, she never felt right. beau swore to her that, being dead, she wouldn't feel anymore, but she does. she does a lot, and she can't work out the guilt and horror, no matter how hard she tries. why can't she do the things she does?
it's cold and lonely in the deep, dark night is a horror novel with vampires, punks, goths, dying small towns, and something lurking just behind the scenes
Body horror is weird when you know a lot disabled people because some times people say body horror and it the most deep wrong dread scary things and some times people say body horror and it will be a normal human with the body type of my friend alex who has marfans and the walking pattern of my friend kahurangi who has cerebral palsy and the hands fingers of my friend marama who has a congenital limb difference and bad arthritis
I always view body horror as something that cannot happen to a human person. Like, if you walk with a limp? Not body horror, just how you walk! If you have a strange birthmark? Not body horror, just a part of your appearance! If you have a physical disability? That's just a thing you have, not body horror.
I view body horror as "I got an extra mouth and eyes on my hands and a tail and my spine ripped open into a huge gaping void with teeth in it."
Body horror can be about disability in good ways. Writing body horror was like my #1 coping mechanism when I was becoming disabled and showing some joint deformity. But even then, my body horror wasn't "the character has deformed joints! L'horreur!" In my story, my character was having strange, impossible things happen to her body—fingers elongating into vines, limbs disappearing and returning—and had to learn to reclaim herself. In the climax she becomes a shape-shifter.
Body horror gave me permission to articulate the body; to plunge into it and explore it in all its ugliness, both within and beyond the bounds of medical language, in a way no other fiction genre really makes space for. Body horror readers are the only audience I can think of who might put up with a character reaching down her own throat to pull out her organs, which was something I both wished I could do in real life (a relief from the pain! an opportunity to independently examine myself!) and had terrific fun writing at a time when I was very, very sick.
It also became my way to parody the frustrations I had with the medical system. Here, a doctor has asked the MC how many times a day she vomits:
She tried to hold up her fingers, but they were gone. She jerked, gasping.
“Something wrong?” the doctor murmured, not looking at her.
Much later I found this great flash fiction story, "Unexplained," that explores the same themes in a much shorter form. It's actually wild how much this story has in common with my novel: In both, a woman becomes chronically ill in a magical, inexplicable way—her body parts disappear!—and doctors don't believe her, don't care, literally cannot see her.
It's not a coincidence two women unintentionally wrote such similar stories.
In fact, in "Unexplained," the MC has the same body horror dreams I had when I first got sick, suggesting lots of sick and disabled people might be filled up with body horror inspo that they should absolutely put to the page if they want to:
"I dream of mangled toes and pulled teeth. I dream my hair falls out, turns to wire, strangles me. I dream my rib cage deflates as my ribs vanish, one by one. I dream I cut my fingers off with a carving knife and they turn into limp carrots."
There's huge potential in body horror for non-ableist (and anti-ableist) metaphor. Jeff Vandermeer's novella Strange Bird, about a woman whose body is nonconsensually messed with in a lab so that she acquires the physical and mental qualities of many animals at once, including those of a bird and an octopus, is simultaneously an ode to wildlife; a commentary on the ethics of animal testing, capitalism, and industrial pollution; and a queer love story.
I think I love body horror because I see it as a way for people to talk about sickness, disability, mental illness, the environment, gender, and queerness. I don't even consider, like, The Hills Have Eyes to be body horror. That's a different thing. But Junji Ito having his characters' bodies swirl into spirals in order to express how mental obsession literally skews us? Fantastic.
Kafka writing about a man waking up to find that he's a bug at a time when Europe's "new antisemitism" was painting even secular Jews like Kafka to be vermin? It's a classic.
Rachel Yoder exploring the alienation of early motherhood by having a new mother turn into a literal beast called the Nightbitch? Chuck Tingle imagining a gay conversion camp that fills queer kids up with flies they'll later have to vomit out? They're both about self-reclamation and autonomy.
These kinds of exaggerations are ripe for reversing audience desensitization and increasing empathy. Body horror belongs to the marginalized.
The fucking headaches I have endured to set up Meta Business and makes sure it posts to the fucking accounts I want it to post to...
I mean I finally did it but. I feel like it'll break if I breathe too hard.
On the flipside I’m set up on Barnes & Noble and BookVault for distribution purposes, and I have prices from my cover designer for physical copies (since I only have the ebook cover rn), AND I have an editor in mind when I get to that step… so once I have some extra cash I’ll really be able to get moving.
The fucking headaches I have endured to set up Meta Business and makes sure it posts to the fucking accounts I want it to post to…
I mean I finally did it but. I feel like it’ll break if I breathe too hard.
wolf & bunny: a love story
Me when I open the file where my unfinished WIP lies
INTERVIEW WITH A WRITEBLR - A Writeblr Event
(I stole the name for this from @brieflyinfatuated because I saw it and was instantly in love. Anyway)
After quite the overwhelming response from people, I have decided I will start posting interviews with writeblrs. The decision came while I was deliberating how to celebrate my latest follower milestone.
HOW IT WORKS:
As I get responses, I will make posts with the information I've gathered. The "interview" is broken up into sections, going over the writer as a person, what they write, and their thoughts on the writeblr community as a whole. Due to the volume of responses and general interest, I have elected to do it this way for the sake of consistency and also to make this easier on myself.
This will be a long-term activity unlike my last milestone celebration. I aim to post one interview a day until I run out of interviews to post, and will be routinely checking the form for responses. Additionally, I have added a page to my site which will serve as a "hub" for all the interviews conducted--though, tracking the #iwaw tag should serve just as well.
HOW TO BE INVOLVED:
Go to this form and answer as much or as little as you want. You don't have to worry about following me--this is an event for all of writeblr, after all! This is my attempt to give back to the larger community.
Also,,, share this post! I'm going to be doing this for a very long time, so the more the merrier!