Under the Surface

It's been years since I last played World of Warcraft .  It certainly helps with having background and familiarity for the story if you played, but I think the story might work even if you know nothing about that world. It's a story about brothers. You just already know where the setting and structure came from if you played the game.  I don't know exactly when I wrote this story, but it was more than 10 years ago because it was shortly after Cataclysm was released. It mostly takes place well before that, and there are references to things that were removed in that expansion. For example, Elaine Trias is mentioning some of those quests when she talks about the Defias Brotherhood and the missing king. I didn't have a Horde or Alliance loyalty when I played. I wanted to take in the whole lore, so I played both sides. Stormwind was a difficult city for me to navigate (an effect of my dyscalculia), so I always had to start from the Trias cheese shop. It caught my attention...

I wrote this retelling of Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu almost 20 years ago. Sockthulhu is real, packed away in a box right now. I had made a sock monkey for a nephew, and I decided to buy some green socks and make a Cthulhu for myself. It wasn't complete until I sewed on big black button eyes so he could just stare at me from a shelf across the room. That was my inspiration for writing the story.  --------- I. The Horror in Crayon Ignorance truly is bliss. When you don’t know something, there’s a good chance you also don’t know that you don’t know it. It just doesn’t exist for you. Once you become aware of what you don’t know, it becomes a thirst you can only quench by immersing yourself in it, and that holds the risk of drowning. Unless you’re hollow plastic. You’ll be pretty safe, in that case. For as long as I can remember before the events of this story, I was a very happy toy in The Child’s bedroom. I was played with often, but also had plenty of time to myself for look...

I've heard AO3 (Archive of Our Own) is down, though it could be back up again by the time I post this. I don't usually pay attention to what's going on over there, or with fanfic in general. I don't say that in an insultingly dismissive way. It's just not my passion.  Since I'm Old On the Internet (working my way toward just being old), I remember when AO3 didn't exist yet and there was way to much arguing about whether or not fanfic is "real writing". Of course it is! It may not be my passion, but there's never been any question for me that it's valid. My dream in middle and high school was that I would be hired to write a Star Trek novel someday. If you're a fan who gets a contract to do a novelization of something, I call that professional fanfic.  You know the thing that goes around about how our ancestors did do oral history and storytelling for so long just for people to now say audiobooks don't count as books? There's a ...

Wow... I really thought I'd have different news to share by now. Being surprised with having to move and finding a new place isn't something we thought would be easy, but we also weren't prepared for just how hard it's turning out to be. Let's take a minute to get caught up on how that's influencing my creative work.  The whole moving thing isn't something I'm really ready to talk much about. The truth is that it has become a traumatic event. Just about the only thing I can accept help with from folks online is handling the costs of all of this. Moving is expensive, and it doesn't help that all of this has caused some complications with a family member's job.  My Ko-fi works as a tip jar  if you'd like to help with that. HOWEVER... None of what I do is about just getting money. There would be better ways of going about that. So, yes, I will accept tips, but  you could buy my books  if you're already going over there.  If Ko-fi isn't y...

I haven't been interacting with much of anyone or anything online lately (except my birb, and you know that's not a typo if you use the Finch app), so you might have missed a quick update even if you do follow me somewhere other than checking in on my blog.  We found out in mid July that we have to move. It's been a month and a half of looking for a new place, getting things related to jobs in order, getting things related to money in order, packing... It's a lot! It's also have unpleasant effects on the health of some family members, with me being one of those family members. The weekly readings will come back! I said back in July that I would keep doing them as long as I could. It's been a few weeks since I had to decide it was time to let go of it for a while. I'm not happy about not being able to keep working on my next book, or throw spontaneous poetry into the pile to be sorted and edited later. I don't require a dedicated writing space, but it is ...

This week's reading really resonates with me. I don't know about you, but I'm in need of some good news!  (Three cards from the Rhythm and Soul Tarot . From left to right: 3 of Axes (Swords), Page of Roots (Pentacles), and The Fool.) Something has not been going well, and you probably didn't see it coming. Something someone else said or did has just crushed you. Let it out! Bottling things up can keep us plowing ahead on a road we shouldn't stay on, or can at least make the journey harder than it needs to be. Take some time to process how this has influenced things for you. The Page brings some good news! Maybe getting pushed off the road you are on isn't a long-term bad thing. You've got some obstacles to climb over or get around, and there's going to be some skill learning involved, but there are new opportunities that can be so much better than what you were focused on before. Not questionable "opportunities", but some good optio...