avian-writes

[avian-writes]

i talk so much about the books i have coming out, i forget to promote the books i already have out! so, a quick reminder that i have two books out right now:

the red king's mystical suitors is about a king who whined so hard about being single his sister set him up with a bunch of suitors. a lighthearted fantasy novel featuring magic, undying devotion, and werewolf curses.

the lover with five names is about a soldier, a spy, and a gang leader who are all working to find a new emperor for their empire-except the old emperor's death is not what it seems, and old secrets have to come out in order for progress to be made. this huge political fantasy is queer as can be, baby!!

all of my books feature queer main characters and relationships which are normalized in a fantasy world!

if you'd like to support a queer indie author and get yourself some cool queer fantasy books, please check out mine!

#to buy

[avian-writes]

This is not a love story. It wants to be at times but we cannot always achieve the things we would like. Dogs always return to the rod if there is a steak in hand, but that does not make it love. Children always turn toward their parents when the world crumbles, but that does not make it love. And in the same nature, though there is love within these pages, though there is love that tries to exist, this? This is not a love story.

this chonker has an 11.5k word outline : )

what do y'all think of these opening lines?

#this goes heavy and i adore it

[avian-writes]

horrible news: in order for you to finish a wip, you have to work on that wip and not the 2543524 other wips you were brainrotting over instead of that one. more investigations at 7.

[avian-writes]

“omg you’re so creative. how do you get your ideas” i hallucinate a single scene in the taco bell drive thru and then spend 13 months trying to write it

#me irl

[avian-writes]

"Used Tombstone for Sale. One Only."

Putting classified ads in the newspaper was both easier and more difficult than I expected. Easy to walk into the office, fill out the paper given to me, and hand over the appropriate amount of money. Difficult to ignore the looks the clerk woman gave me as I hobbled in on my own and at what I requested.

But I suppose they had a rule against asking too many questions, lest they insult the people who essentially pay their wages. So she took my ad request and money and told me it’d run for the following week. Hopefully one week was all I’d need. Short as the ad was, it took what coins I had left.

Outside the bystander office, my pink and white bike was thankfully still where I left it tied with frayed rope to a lamp post. One of the training wheels was stuck on a crack in the curb and I struggled to yank it loose.

The sun was still rising as I peddled and peddled down Main St, taking the long way to avoid Mulkey Road. It’d already been 5 weeks since, but I just couldn’t bring myself to go anywhere near the road sign, much less take a stroll down. Even if it added 10 extra minutes to my pumping legs commute.

The back road past Main St was still in a somber mood. Doors stay closed and windows locked. Gates were chained and flower boxes sat empty to collect rainwater. Not a hint or hue of color to be seen as I biked past the houses. Somehow even the painted wood dulled in the time passed.

My silent home sat near the end of the road. The smallest, but with the most land. Enough for my father’s workshop in clear view of the neighborhood. A workshop that was bigger than the actual house: a simple one bedroom home with a small kitchen and living room combo. My father always insisted the bedroom belonged to me, even if I usually ended up sleeping on the pull out couch with him.

A pull out couch that was still out and messed up. I hadn’t found any reason to make it up or put it away. And despite the fact that all I’d done that morning was go downtown, I was exhausted. The residual heat inside was already dwindling, chill rubbing into my bones.

Creaky springs from years too long of a life under faded cushions. Wrapping myself up in the red knit blanket, scratching at my chipped blue nail polish, and shutting my eyes.

It was a few days before I got a bite. A few days of nothing but sleeping and heating up cans of soup on the stove, not going anywhere else except shuffling back and forth between the couch and kitchen. A trail of scattered dust wove from the couch cushions to the front of the stove.

Somehow the phone hadn’t been cut off yet, and the loud ring jostled me from a nightmare of red stained concrete. “Hello?”

“I’m calling about the ad in the paper? For the- the t-tombstone?”

I bolted up, getting tangled in my blankets in the process. “Yes! Yes. That’s me. I mean- you’re interested?”

“I am. How- how much is the asking price?”

“Oh, um.” Damn it. I hadn’t even thought about that. No amount of money would keep me in the house indefinitely, and I had just enough food left until the end of the month when the late payments would finally collapse on me. “Eight hundred?”

“E-even though it’s used?”

“Well, it is a very nice tombstone. Black granite and doves engraved in the corners. No chips, scratches, or anything like that.” I took very good care of it.

The buyer was a young person, which I was grateful for. Young burying the old was the best way to go and I don’t think I could’ve choked down taking eight hundred dollars from some poor parent or grandparent who lost their child. No matter how much I needed it.

Around 30 years old and shaking feverishly as soon as she stepped out of the car. The buyer drove an old red Camaro with a dented bumper and one missing rearview mirror. A long riding trailer was hooked to its hitch.

Average height with plain clothes. Long blonde hair pulled into a twisted braid that I thankfully saw through the living room window. I briefly braided my own crinkling hair and stared at myself in the mirror.

It would do well enough.

The buyer saw the tombstone waiting in the front yard and stumbled on the walkway. I sucked in a breath and waited, but she quickly collected herself. I had given simple but important instructions that I watched her follow from the safety of my home.

The money was placed in an envelope that she took from a crossbody bag and dropped delicately on the front stoop. The tombstone was already on a pad of felt that she took hold of and easily dragged it across the unruly grass and onto the trailer.

She was sweating by the time it was safely on, but I could see hints of muscle working away under her shirt sleeves. She latched up the small gate on the back of the trailer, hopped in the car, and with one last fleeting glance at my home, sped away with the tombstone.

I waited until she was just down the road before exiting. My bike was ready, the rusty wire basket’s contents hidden under a dish towel. The chain squealed when I initially pushed it out of the grass and onto the road, but once I got it turning it cracked enough to not fall apart.

The funeral parlor, the only one within 50 miles, wasn’t too far into town. Thanks to the minimal speed limits, I was able to catch up to the buyer fairly quickly. Even with my ankle getting knocked by the revolving petal every other wheel spin, the tombstone on the trailer slowed down her Camaro enough.

The buyer stopped outside the funeral parlor and walked inside. I waited across the road, hidden by large, ornamental bushes. I watched as the undertaker and his assistant came out with the buyer withering away behind them. The assistant took the buyer’s car and the undertaker and buyer got into the waiting hearse around the side.

They all left in a shortened processional and I dutifully joined. I peddled and peddled, my knees growing weary the farther the hearse went. Canned beans and salsa on stale bread was proving to be a poor diet to do so much exercise on. I had been too cowardly to confront the buyer in person and ask the location of the funeral and this was my punishment.

Finally, a reprieve. The hearse turned off the main road onto a gravel path leading towards. It slowed to a crawl, the tires crunching over the small rocks as it headed through a large iron gate.

I hopped off my bike, my bones cracking from the soreness built up, but kept pushing on after it with my bike in tow. It was a cemetery, not a graveyard thankfully, dug into the side of a hill downspout from the forest surrounding town. The gravel path curved down and to the left to the bottom of the hill where a small group of people had already gathered.

The hearse stopped and so did I. Hidden in the shadows of the forest, I watched the buyer get out of the car and solemnly walk to the group of mourners who accepted her with open, teary arms. They climbed the hill to a marked plot while the undertaker began to extract the casket from the hearse.

The mourners were a small handful of people. A few women had hand fans that cracked as they were thrust open. A man in a bowler hat stood over the casket with a reserved face, save the clear discontent upon seeing the tombstone.

Only the buyer showed any real emotion. Remorse for the small affair. Sorrow for her loss. Gratitude for the warm bodies, however reclused they were, surrounding her. Somber for the distasteful weather the funeral had to be held in. Disdain at the mismatched tombstone to the body that now was being nudged into the soil.

I listened to the typical words: short prayers and generic stories, some that weren’t even true but who was going to fact check? Compliments and farewell wishes. Nothing bad was said. Nothing a true testament to his true character, whatever it was. No one ever spoke ill about the dead until the grave was out of sight and alcohol was in their system.

No flowers were thrown on the casket before it was covered up. No further tears were shed. All attendants shuffled away and down the hill, thankfully not in my direction. Back towards the gate.

The undertaker and his assistant shook the buyer’s hand before taking the hearse away. She turned her head to the sky, staring into the bleak overcast. It was almost melancholy, the picturesque scene before me on the hill.

The buyer carefully stepped down the hill, the freshly cut grass still attacking her legs.

I took her place

I could see it. The tombstone was at the head of the freshly filled grave. Beautiful flowers already adorned the soil and I knelt to brush some aside to read the inscription.

Edward Dalca

Beloved father

I thought about what the undertaker had told the buyer. It would be a few days before he could change the words. It was eerie and a bit haunting to think that the people who had just grieved a complete stranger had done so to my father’s name.

I took my little trowel from my bike’s basket and started to dig. 

Somewhere nearby, I could hear a scream that was cut off by a gasp for breath. I guess the buyer either hadn’t gotten far or was coming back to say another goodbye farewell see you later.

Hurried footsteps behind me, sharp nails digging into my shoulders and she yanked back. Screaming in my face, obscenities that would make the paperboy blush. None of which I think I heard. I was too focused on the grave behind her.

He’d been buried shallow, the buyer’s great uncle. That and with even my sad excuse for a shovel, I had gotten to the body before the buyer found me.

I leapt forward and shoved her; she was too busy yelling at the corpse to notice my sudden movement.

My trowel cut into everything. Dirt, rocks, bones, flesh. Mixing fresh and old blood into the deathly soil, fertilizing it like a macabre gardening project. On the edge of the cemetery while the screams of the buyer were quickly snuffed out by chokes and desperate pleas for relief.

My necklace came free during all this. My name, Nyssa Dalca, was spelled out in shiny white beads amongst polished smooth stones. Granite and limestone. The same many of the tombstones surrounding us were made from.

Finally, the sounds died down and the buyer stayed put in the shallow grave. I wiped off my trowel against the exposed casket and the buyer’s shirt and swept the upheaved dirt on top. Patting down the grave flat like burying a box containing your first deceased childhood pet. That, as a child you don’t realize, doesn’t like its claws being painted blue.

Standing up, I pulled my blonde hair into a twisted braid; picking up a stick from the forest floor to stab right through the unfamiliar strands, keeping it in place. I was still a bit hungry from my meager breakfast, and according to the undertaker’s assistant, there was a dinner being held at the diner nearby.

Selling my father’s tombstone hurt initially, but his journal and final letter to me was clear it needed to be done. I write this, my first account, to compare to his. He made a living for a good 76 years and, in his letter, assured me I could do the same.

Leaving me so young wasn’t part of the plan, and I have no idea what I’m going to do next, but at least with these muscles I can get started in his workshop. Another tombstone will need to be made.

#writeblr #short story #gothic horror #horror #original writing #fiction #avian writes

[avian-writes]

Glitter & Gold

A gothic horror short story of what lurks outside the fear-filled walls of a church.

#self reblog

[avian-writes]

Glitter & Gold

A gothic horror short story of what lurks outside the fear-filled walls of a church.

#self reblog

[avian-writes]

Glitter & Gold

A gothic horror short story of what lurks outside the fear-filled walls of a church.

#short story #gothic horror #original writing #original fiction #religious horror

[avian-writes]

Nanowrimo Update

I really wanted to participate this year, but I have so much to do what with cleaning and decluttering my apartment, dealing with health, and preparing for Christmas already, I just don't have the time :(

BUT I will use the time I do have this month to do as intended: work on what I hope will one day be my debut novel! The outline is in the works and I hope to post a WIP intro tomorrow.

I've gone back and forth and around in circles with what I wanted to put my effort into being my debut (still don't even know if I'm gonna try traditional or self-publishing) mainly between genres. I write horror and romance, but not horror romance and I do worry about how that'll reflect later on but oh well!

But this horror story is one I feel fits my present skill level, so hopefully that'll be the right move.

#avian crows

[avian-writes]

Google Ambient Chaos if you ever need background noises for writing! It's a customizable soundscape website.

Anon, when I first saw this ask, I thought it was going to be one of those mixers of nice, traditional sounds, like rain or a coffeeshop. And it is! And there's lofi hiphop, my favorite sound to write to! Which means this is legitimately an excellent tool for writers, and I love you for introducing it to me.

But I also want to say. There are some choices here. That I need to point out. Because they're either fantastic or questionable, and I can't decide.

Things like . . .

Couple arguing.

Medieval battle.

Beehive, where you can write to a fuckton of bees.

Crime scene.

And actually the perfect soundscape for NaNoWriMo.

(It's here, for those curious.)

#YES PERFECT #resources

[avian-writes]

Still no response but it's been a whole 3 days since the deadline so the anxiety is setting in lol

Trying to go full steam with a WIP just because of the characters is a hella mood though! And I don't blame you, if you're not attached to your own fictional people to an almost unhealthy degree, how are you gonna write an epic tale with them?

I am loving the whole concept of the Knights and Imma be honest, my mind keeps going to the Knights of the Round Table every time I read "knights". But moreso the vibes they give off, ya know?

If this was published, I'd want to make it into a D&d campaign and be That Person and That Fan 100%

Long time no ask, Jax! What made you grab onto the idea of Midsummer Knights and want to flesh it out?

Toris!! :D Long time no see! How have you been?? How has life been, and did that submission go well??

As for Midsummer Knights, I admit it's mostly that I just love the characters. Viola is my oldest OC I still have around, and I still have her around for a reason (mostly that I adore the concept of really exhausted mentor getting dragged around by a bright-eyed, optimistic protege). And on top of that, any excuse to dunk on Shakespeare characters is a recipe for a good time, in my opinion, and the characters offer plenty of opportunity for just that.

And also? I swear last thing, but I also love the concept behind the Knights themselves, even though what they're for and how the game specifically works seems to change every few years. But the keys and the Knights as this really competitive secret society? Excellent.

It's like. Midsummer Knights in general is this toybox full of really fun concepts that don't exactly connect with each other solidly, and it's this ongoing puzzle to figure out how they should, if that makes sense.

Which is to say, I refuse to give up on figuring out how to put this story together, haha. Someday, I will figure it out.

#blind's writing

[avian-writes]

Where I'm At Right Now

I really wanna hammer on myself with being serious about my writing and creative endeavors. All the ideas in the world mean nothing if I don't implement and execute them.

I submitted a short story to the Tripping the Write zine for their Halloween edition. I feel good about it, but it was my first time submitting so I don't have too high hopes about it getting accepted.

With my ever growing list of projects I want to do, I separated them into different categories: short term, long term, then by the types they are such as short stories, TV show pitches, scripts, board games, etc.

It's not to organizing my creativity, because that'll just take all the joy and fun out of it. Moreso that I don't feel like I'm falling behind on working on thing if it's a long term project.

Right now, sending in submissions for zines and magazines while working on my board game and debut novel is my priority!

#avian crows

[avian-writes]

"A yearly tradition of telling legends around the campfire; of a world once stood by gods and those who held all and no fear."

#self reblog

[avian-writes]

"A yearly tradition of telling legends around the campfire; of a world once stood by gods and those who held all and no fear."

#writeblr #short story #fantasy #original

[avian-writes]

Random Worldbuilding Questions

Are there any foods with symbolic meanings that are eaten on special occasions (e.g. katsudon for victory, or new years oranges for luck)? How did the tradition get started?

We all know about weddings and marriage, but are there any ceremonies that symbolically / legally / magically officialize a different type of relationship in your world’s culture? (Adoption, apprenticeship, friendship, etc.)

What’s a rule or social norm that is widely followed in theory, but in practice everyone knows it’s not a big deal and breaks it all the time?

Are there any trades or hobbies whose practitioners are stereotyped as weird or extraordinary? (E.g. the “mad hatter” trope.) Why? How true is this perception?

What are some cliches, tropes, and/or plots that commonly appear in stories written by your world’s inhabitants? What were they inspired by? Why are they popular?

What is a common way to subtly insult someone in your world, without crossing into overt rudeness? Gifting an item with negative connotations? Addressing them more familiarly or formally than normal? Backhanded compliments?

If you pulled a random average Joe off the streets of your world and asked them to draw a house, what would they draw? (Shape, roof style, position and number of windows, etc.)

Is there a place in your world that nobody has ever been to - the bottom of a cave, the moon, another dimension, etc.? How do people know it exists? Why haven’t they gone there? What do they believe it’s like, and how right/wrong are they?

What aesthetics are considered “advanced” or “futuristic” in your world - canvas wings, shiny chrome, smooth plastic? How has this changed over time?

What’s a fun fact about your world that you as the worldbuilder are dying to share, but nobody ever thinks to ask? 

#please ask me about my enchanted seasons world #with Aki and Amias

[avian-writes]

“Are We Dating?”

An old little short story, about an odd little couple through their friend’s eyes. But they have a cute dynamic that I miss!

Word Count: 1246

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lee was bored. Highly, immensely bored. She couldn’t find aaaaany of her friends aaaaanywhere to hang out with her and she couldn’t even drink to fill up her time; Alexander hid all of her drinks after she came stumbling through their cabin door the other night, banging into the fence, and collapsing into his bed/pile of hay. Apparently she was too out of it to collect it back up and she woke up to a newly swept floor, fresh hay, and all her alcohol gone.

Keep reading

#self reblog

[avian-writes]

Last Line Tag

Grazie for the tag @blind-the-winds ! I’m working on the sequel to A Hundred Years and it’s taking every romantic ounce out of me to write the POV of this demigod. But this couple makes me happy! So here’s a shortened version from it.

So Amias unlatched the keep where Aki harbored their feelings. Latched, because it was never locked. Never to him. An outpour of emotions, streamlined right from their heart, threatened to run him down like a tsunami. An overwhelming force that every godly being he’s ever met couldn’t ever begin to compare to.

Light, pure light that wrapped around Amias in such a comforting embrace it was as if he’d only ever felt pain in order to feel this euphoria. One only rivaled by the soft vulnerable look in Aki’s golden eyes that made him want to bring them both to their knees and cup their face.

He knew this feeling. Better than anyone. It was his entire essence and existence. What Aki felt towards him for the past 1,000 years.

It was love.

Tagging @ferrariwrites @virgosoulwrites and anyone that would like to!

#tag game