new year’s reservations

Everyone makes much hay about new year’s resolutions, whether they’re new year, new me-ers, or resolutions-are-for-loser-ers. It will likely not surprise you to learn I am a member of the latter club.

I don’t do new year’s resolutions. If I want to do something, I do it. If I don’t, I don’t. If I should be doing something and I’m not, I’m being lazy. If I shouldn’t be doing something and I am, well, that’s my problem. I try not to let the shimmer of a new calendar (although I do love a calendar, like, the physical item) suggest to me a path in life I wasn’t already considering. I spent an unfortunate amount of my youth and young adult years telling myself that tomorrow, I would change my life. Next week, I would change my life. On Monday, I will change my life. Things will always be better later. The world will be brighter in the morning. Guess what? I didn’t, they weren’t, and it wasn’t.

Weeks ago, I was cleaning out my closet in my childhood bedroom. I came across some diaries I wrote, ranging from about 12 - 15 years of age. During previous visits home, I have often paged through these and never quite had the heart to toss them. Even at the time I was writing them, I loved to go back and re-read what I had written (the author egomania starting nice and early!). It made me feel cool and interesting and like I was writing a story. In the early days, it was pages and pages full of friend drama, lists of boys I had crushes on, hating my parents, loving Twilight, attempts to start writing an actual fiction story with zero success or planning or depth, pretty much everything you would expect from a somewhat precocious tween/teen who was also a budding fandom loser and writer.

As time went on, though, even when I still wrote about the above, the tone started to shift. Not to put too depressing of a point on it, but I became deeply, agonizingly sad. Every page was full of melancholy, along with my exhaustion and exasperation with myself for feeling that way. Body image was a huge one. Even before puberty sent me on an emotional nose dive, I was constantly writing about how fat I was, or how ugly, or how I was going to stop eating because I was going to paddling camp this summer and didn’t want to be fat in a swimsuit! And, y’know, there was also the crippling depression. The pain I outlined in those pages was immature and childish and rife with a clear desperation to understand the adult world before I was ready to. Simultaneously, and conversely, there was a budding emotionally destitute you-are-going-to-be-a-very-mentally-ill-adult pain that I also didn’t understand, and also wasn’t ready for.

For years, when I was revisiting these diaries, they were easy to laugh at— who doesn’t love a good Three Days Grace song lyric to close out an entry? Even in my earliest journals, or the ones I wrote in school as an assignment, I couldn’t wait to be an adult. It was an incredibly romantic prospect to me. I daydreamed of being a harried brunette like in the movies, returning to her beautiful city apartment with a brown paper bag full of produce. I had my endless, fruitless list of crushes, my top five every week. I talked about the boy I was dating when I was 12 who wanted to meet in private after a school dance, presumably to kiss, though I never actually found out what his intentions were because I literally sprinted to my mom’s waiting car the moment the dance ended to escape. “I’m not ready to kiss anyone. I don’t even think I wanna kiss anyone,” 12-year-old me wrote, in lovely cursive and delighting in my adult-esque angst. In much less careful print, a few weeks later, while relaying drama with a different boy, and having described my own imaginary perfect partner as a result, my final lament was, “I don’t think I’ll ever find my perfect guy.”

In these diaries, I don’t talk about liking girls at all, despite knowing from about 13 onwards. All that pain already on the page, but this particular type of pain and confusion wasn’t to be tolerated, apparently. I was sick to my stomach scared of it. I do, however, remember having the distinct thought at about that same age that I was going to put it away and it was going to be a problem for future me. And, well, I guess it was, because I didn’t start dating until I was in my mid-20s. If only I had known when I was 13 that I was going to grow up a misanthropic lesbian, I probably could have saved myself a lot of trouble.

I currently spend a lot of time in the thrall of misery, and I have spent a lot of time there, as well. And I think my repeated failures to change my life, my documented inability to stick to a resolution, regardless of what the calendar says, speaks well to my aversion to new years and new me’s. Cause let me tell you, I’ve been around long enough to know there is no “new me” coming down the pipe. God, I wish there was. I wish that one day I will turn a corner and feel the sun on my face and realize this is what being alive actually feels like. I wish I was the protagonist in a difficult, yet cathartic lesbian novel about finding contentment in a world you hate that hates you right back. I suppose I realized my dream of becoming a harried brunette living in an apartment at one point, but I think we all know the majority of that produce I brought home in my brown paper bag ended up sitting in the fridge for weeks, slowly turning to mush, before finally embracing the sweet relief of death as I tossed it into the compost.

In the only relationship I’ve ever been in, there were times I would lie in our bed, stare at the wall, and think, this is not my life. I’m watching this from the outside. I would think, I’m about to wake up, sixteen again in my childhood bedroom, and go to school, and my life is the thing that happens at some indistinct point after that. Life happens… eventually. I figure it all out… eventually. It will all be okay… eventually.

And then, in the spring, the life I claimed not to have blew up. Funny how that works. How can something so insubstantial explode? And yet, there I was. Fleeing one coast for the other on Easter weekend, 2024. Packed up everything in a week (entire life in a few boxes—pathetic). Gave my job five day’s notice (so easily replaceable—pathetic). Hardly a soul to say goodbye to, after almost a decade of living there (do I have to explain this one— pathetic!). Still, though, the worst part of it was just the utter waste of it all. All those years… for what? All those late night fantasies younger me had about changing my life, only to do absolutely nothing about it in the cold hard light of morning, or only try, very briefly, and then give up— old habits! Teenage me saw the writing on the wall. She knew. She warned me, in print!

When I moved-stumbled-tripped-crash-landed back here with my tail between my legs, I tried. I thought the break-up brought clarity. I thought the break-up brought dreamed-of freedom. I put myself out there in ways I never have before. Hey, I started a blog! I got on Tinder! I joined group hikes! I actually spoke to the vendors at markets! Finally… life was happening! It was, it really, really was, I told myself, over and over, which is so funny, because I can so easily believe the bad things I tell myself over and over, but somehow the lie that I’ve got it all figured out never quite gets its claws in.

I have not been shy about saying that 2024 has not been good for me. I’m not the only one. No year, everyone seems to agree, is good. We evacuate every year like a building on fire. I can’t think of one year I’ve ever looked back on and thought, yeah, that was a good one. I don’t look back on my relationship with fondness, or my old jobs, or my old apartments. At the tail end of my 20s, I have only shed things; partners, pets, apartments, jobs, friends, belongings, cash, car, hair, hell, the stress even knocked a couple pounds off me.

And these things that I so easily sloughed off cannot be so easily reclaimed, minus, of course, the pounds. Someone get 12 year old me on the horn and tell her the true secret to weight loss is simple: complete emotional anarchy!

I wish luxuriating in misery was not the only true hobby I had. I wish the concept of enjoying things didn’t only underline the fact that I so rarely do. The problem is me, and I don’t have a solution for it. You may be thinking, what about drugs? Therapy? Surgery to remove your head from your ass? Drugs: tried. Therapy: tried. Surgery: I don’t believe in cosmetic procedures.

Writing (both fiction and this blog) is a blessing and a curse. It amplifies some of my worst personality traits: self-interest, inflated ego, need for validation, superiority complex, arrogance, and an embarrassingly lacking vocabulary. However, writing is also the only way I can connect with people. In the real world, I don’t really emote… normally. I do what I need to do to get by, and for the most part I think people who interact with me wouldn’t assume I struggle in the way that I do, which… is great! For them. For me, who feels every minor social interaction like a splinter, it sucks. I can bloviate for years in a Word doc or a blog post, but I really struggle to force words out of my mouth if I haven’t had time to prepare, or I don’t know the people I’m talking to well, or I know them too well.

Being alive is hard for me. I was exactly the right type of person to get sucked into the fandom world for as long as I did, because I fucking hated this one. As someone who is interested in cults and cult-like communities, I always liked to brag that I would never fall for one, while completely missing the fact that I was so desperate for community and fitting in and connections that I spent years convincing myself I was in the right place, with the right people, and that I thought and said the right things, and in return, I was rewarded with attention and validation and reassurance. Is fandom a cult? No. Was it an insular enough community that my specific personal experience with it damaged me immensely? Yes.

The respite I cling to in all the noise is that I am far from the only one who views my twenties as a complete wash. You see all the time: “your 20s/30s/40s/X0s are the best years of your life!” Well, they can’t all be, so which one is it, random online listicles and tweets that claim such things? This answer, obviously, will be different for everyone. Our lives can’t be measured in good decades and bad decades, or good years and bad years. Even when it seems like a string of bad things have happened, or a string of good ones, it’s not like there’s some objective, existential tally of the events that happened to you, a singular person, during one rotation of the earth around the sun. Sometimes it feels like trying to measure up periods of your life as anything beyond “still kicking” is a fool’s errand best left to the eternal losers trying to make order out of the chaos, aka storytellers.

Even what I’m doing now, here in this blog post, about as inartlessly as one can, is bundling my own personal never ending existential dread, neuroses, and misery into a narrative for you. What I am presenting here is a filtered version of the truth, same as what every other person speaking publicly about similar things is doing. I’m not calling these people liars. But they’re not telling the whole truth, because the whole truth is just reality, which can’t be encapsulated in an Instagram post/tiktok/Youtube video. There are no themes or motifs in reality. There are no universal lessons or hard truths to be learned. We package our lives up,— wins, losses, hurts, struggles, hopes, dreams, expectations, pros, cons— edit them, and sell them back to an audience with the false promise of replication and resolution. “If you do X, you will be happy!” “Here’s how I stopped being miserable and started enjoying life!” “I am a motivational speaker and I will motivate you to get rich, happy, skinny, blah blah blah blah blah.” When I write a blog post and wrap it up neatly with a bow… I am lying to you! It’s not wrapped up with a bow, because I have to wake up the next morning, too. When motivational speakers go home at night, close the door behind them, and shut the curtains, do you really think they’re practicing what they preach?

I am so intently zeroed in on narratives. We all are, to a degree. I would argue the difference is that while I’m drawn in by them, I also create them. When I’m working on a story, even when I’m not physically at my computer writing, I’m in the narrative. I don’t mean this in a super intense method acting way, like I don’t become the characters or think I’m part of the story or anything. I just think about it a LOT. And it’s not always “good” stuff, either. I’ve mentioned before how I dreamed up a whole-ass fanfiction concept for Don’t Worry where Wren joins a bigfoot-hunting group in southern Oregon. For Rat on a Horse, I daydreamed about the relationship drama that ensues when Rat has to disappear for days/weeks at a time during wildfire season and Lily goes out of her mind about it. In my current manuscript, when I’m not actually editing it or thinking about the changes I still need to make, guess what, I have a goofy cryptid-adjacent concept for these characters, too!

None of this is… relevant. But it eats up space in my mind palace like no one’s business. I’m consumed by this stuff, and being consumed by it means it seeps into other aspects of my life, too, as much as it can be said I have one. I expect life to be something that happens to me, that is artfully crafted and pieced together with love and consideration and care, because that is what I do with the lives I create. Call it a demented God-complex, but I live like this, and sometimes it hurts my feelings that I put more care into creating fictional life than the universe did into creating me. It’s comforting to know someone is always there to hold your hand. No, the characters don’t know that I’m there, dictating their every move like an evil puppetmaster, but I’m there nonetheless. What I put them through is all in service to a greater purpose— The Narrative. They don’t know it, but they’re being carefully guided through a series of obstacles, each increasing in difficulty, until they cross the finish line, triumphant, and then their existence is over, their growth encased forever in amber, to be displayed on a shelf in my mind palace’s library.

The population of global atheists is growing. People are replacing religion in their lives with other institutions, other belief systems, other understandings of the world. If I could convince myself to believe in god, I probably would. If I could convince myself to believe in anything other than a cold, dark nothingness, I would. If I could convince myself that some benevolent higher being wants to hold my hand and guide me toward a specific-to-me eternal happiness? Damn, I sure would. But I can’t, because these things don’t exist and aren’t true. So, instead of becoming a pagan or a wiccan or a “witch” or joining a cult or an MLM or another fandom… I just created my own… everything, I guess. To compensate for my lack of religion, I create my own new belief system, inside my head, with every story I write.

For what it’s worth, I had the above personal revelation in real-time as I wrote it, which was harrowing. The dangers of endless self-reflection are immense.

As usual, I’m of two minds about it, “it” referring to being very sad. Mind one: Everyone feels this way sometimes, I am just une bébé who can’t handle the cold hard reality of the world. Mind two: There is no way everyone feels this way as often as I do, because otherwise, everyone is walking around keeping a skyscraper without safety rails in their peripheral vision at all times, just in case (no crisis numbers in the comments, I’m exercising my creative license). I actually don’t know what I would prefer, to be honest. I want less people to be miserable, and even if number one is true, I have been unable to find someone to commiserate with on that level, like, ever, so I guess I default into the socially beneficial option.

Near the end of my relationship, when I was really circling the drain, I said at one point that I didn’t think I was ever meant to be happy. It was quite a bracing slap in the face when my ex’s answer was, “I think you’re right.” Sic, I guess. My memory is terrible. However, the Artic cold-plunge of that exchange did crystalize my understanding that relying on someone else for something as fundamental as your own happiness is never, ever going to be successful. So, not only did I strike out on the ability to make myself happy, but I can’t even convince myself, like most people do, that being in a relationship, no matter how miserable, is the answer to my problems.

So… if I can’t make myself happy, and nothing else can, either… what do I do?

At the most basic level, there are only two options: keep truckin’ or don’t. The only goal of all life on earth is to continue. In that way, I’m no different than a fish, than a plant, than a virus. No matter how bad one day is, no matter how bad things may stay, I will continue. Life doesn’t care if it sucks— it only cares that it hasn’t been snuffed out.

Instead of pushing that rock up that infinite hill, happiness sitting smug and untouched at the top, why don’t I just let it roll? How much more miserable do I make myself by constantly beating myself up over the fact that my happy muscle didn’t form correctly in the womb? My pinkies are all fucked up, too, and I don’t waste near as much brain power on them. It feels defeatist to say that I just accept it. At the same time, you gotta know when to call it. Had I been able to incorporate this mindset into my life earlier, I wouldn’t have wasted so many years trying to force a square peg into a round hole, when the true show of growth and integrity would have been to say goodbye, move on, and move forward. I think I’ve linked this poem before. I don’t like poetry. This is my favorite poem.

In the spirit of moving on and moving forward, I have made strides. It’s easy to feel like I haven’t, starting from scratch like I did this year, but that’s not true. I’ve accomplished things— I posted one novel, and finished (the first draft of) another. I got a job. I got a loose five year plan. Outside of accomplishments, I’ve had way more opportunities to explore hobbies than I’ve had in years, so even for the ones that don’t stick, I can at least say I tried. I started this blog— trying to encourage dialogue about the process of writing, offer insights into my own process, and hopefully meet more writers along the way.

I’m still working on the people part. I suspect that will forever remain my struggle. Speaking of accepting myself as I am, unhappiness and all, I am also trying to accept that I’m just not a people person. Maybe there is at least one people out there who I will become a people person for. If I ever meet her, that will be cool. Otherwise, though, I will continue to talk into my yellow void. If you’ve engaged with me at all on this site, whether it’s leaving a comment or emailing me, that means a lot to me. Thank you for indulging the weirdo who wrote a few Supernatural fan fictions half a decade ago and now whines about being sad on a text-only website that looks like the most boring of the 90s Geocities offerings. There is an IP tracking function in Squarespace that I found one day while clicking around on the back end that allows me to see where visitors are coming from, and of the millions of hits I of course get per month, they come from all over the world, which is very cool. Also, the IP tracking is a built-in feature, not, like, something I turned on for data harvesting purposes, promise.

As for what I hope you can expect in 2025: health, wealth, peace, love, great sex

As for what I hope you can expect from me in 2025: I’d like to get some more short-form writing out, in a similar vein to Rat on a Horse. I had a ton of fun with it, and it was a great palate cleanser when I needed to take a break between edits for the “real” manuscript I’m still working on. Once I have a query-worthy draft for novel 2, I expect to document that journey— I talk about being miserable now, imagine how cooked I’m going to be once I have to figure out comps. I had a great time putting together that decorate-for-Christmas-with-me post, so there may be more of that. If you don’t care about decor, well, SORRY, it’s my yellow void, not yours. I just want an excuse to waste hours browsing the kaleidoscopic technicolor hurricane that is the internet for lovely pictures of interiors that aren’t soulless AI scrapes. Until traditional publishing realizes what it’s missing, I’d also like to find a way to expand my audience, which sounds dangerously close to “work on my personal brand”. I’m thinking more like seeking out other online avenues or demographics that may be interested in my stuff, or finding sites like AO3, geared more toward original works, that may open some doors. And yes, I have considered Kindle, and yes, I haven’t completely ruled it out, but I certainly haven’t completely ruled it in, either. Not going to lie, my association with Kindle-exclusive books is not particularly flattering.

I shredded those old diaries, for what it’s worth. It wasn’t like it was super liberating or anything, and now that the ghost of 12 year old me isn’t hovering over my shoulder at all times, I can finally be free. Mostly, it was just nice to free up the space in my closet. I will say, though, I definitely didn’t need to hold onto those reminders of the lingering sadness of my youth— the very current sadness of my adult years is more than enough to carry on its own. Goodbye, move on, move forward, right? Time may be an illusion, but my limited storage space is not. 12 year old me may have gone through the shredder, but 29 year old me is still here to give it a shot.

Thanks for reading, guys— seriously, thank you. Happy holidays and hope to see you in 2025.

🎀

let’s all take a load off and decorate for christmas

Don’t worry, despite lulling you into a false sense of security and Christmas cheer with the title of this blog post, I still promise to engage in my signature, grating commentary on insignificant things that infuriate me. For example, you ever see those fanfiction-blue LED Christmas lights that physically hurt your retinas? How could you not. They are impossible to unsee, like, literally. Try blinking after you look at them. Try blinking after you see them out of the corner of your eye. Try driving after you make a turn and they are unexpectedly in your direct eyeline squeezing the life out of someone’s bushes like an anaconda. They are eternal. They are inescapable. If fanfiction-blue environmentally friendly Christmas LEDs are the only things keeping this planet from boiling alive because of climate change? Fuck this rock! We deserve to burn.

If you’re unfamiliar (please trade lives with me), this is what I’m talking about:

Anyway. I don’t like those. But I do like some holiday decor, and I do watch a lot of interior design YouTube, despite not owning or even renting a single interior space within which I could… design. Because I don’t have a lot of money. And things are expensive. But that is what Pinterest and Google Images and middle-upper class homewares stores like Crate & Barrel and Williams Sonoma are for.

In my head, my perfect holiday decor is traditional, but not cloyingly so. I can handle a bit of cheese, and even sometimes enjoy it, especially around this time of year. For example, I am currently sitting in front of an armchair by the fire, with a cup of hot chocolate and a burning holiday candle and a lit Christmas tree in the vicinity. I am surrounded by my family’s goofy Christmas decor. This is pleasing to me.

Shall we set the scene? We live in a house. Preferably, one with some character. We’re talking medium and dark toned wooden beams and flooring, custom millwork, built-ins, solid foundation, brick fireplace or woodstove, craftsman-esque, solidly made furniture, plaid, quilts, texture, vintage, and warmth. Our normal colour palette is earth tones, greens and browns, along with goldenrod and rust and burgundy. To brighten things up a bit, I will allow a dash of warm-neutral cream tones. There are slight, charming touches of whimsy throughout. Also, this house and I (we) live together on a large swathe of private property encased by woods. Think misanthropic lumberjack.

What a beautiful home. Let’s decorate it. Some ground rules:

• As much real greenery as possible (caveat will be discussed later)

• NO WORD ART (this is a 24/7/365 rule, not just Christmas)

• Handmade (by someone else) is preferred. Mass produced factory junk will be evaluated on an individual basis. DIYs that actually make sense are acceptable.

• Common spaces are most important, because this fantasy takes place in a world where I am flush with love and romance and friends and neighbors and community and everyone wants to come to my house during the holidays and share seasons greetings and warm tidings and other assorted text you see in holiday cards.

• NO BEADS ! NO GNOMES !

• Nothing movie or book themed. No Elf, no Grinch, no Home Alone. You get it.

Let’s outline. The colour pallete of the house is already warm, so we’re off to a good start. With the season, I want to bring in wine reds, forest greens, soft creams, and rich golds. Materials include wood, brass, knits, greenery, wool, and plaid. Tasteful sparkle/glitter is allowed, and in small doses. View my vision boards:

We’re getting a real Christmas tree. No gods no masters no fire codes. We’re keeping it watered and far away from open flames. Our tree is an appropriate size to our space. I once had a fake tree that was thin like a pencil because the terrible apartment I lived in was long and narrow and it was the only tree that would fit. Real Christmas tree also means real Christmas tree smell, and as a longtime candle lover, carcinogens be damned, smells are incredibly important to the overall mood of a space. I get this from my mother. People constantly walk into my parents’ house and comment on how nice it smells. Much like the Big Bang, getting that occasional Christmas whiff right to the face may actually create something (joy) out of nothing (no joy). I want my Christmas tree to be full and bountiful and without flaw, though part of the authenticity of getting a real tree is that real trees, much like me, have a few sparse patches up top. And the thing is, once it’s decorated, it’ll look great no matter what. That’s what I tell myself every time I put on a hat, anyway.

The rustic, homey nostalgia of a pine/fir tree scent is great, but I do love other scents as well. I might even consider one of my main hobbies going to craft fairs or Bath and Body Works and smelling the entire spread, every time, no matter how many times I’ve smelled it before. My preferred Bath and Body Works scents are almost exclusively from their autumn line (Leaves represent!!!) but there are some other winter-y ones in the mix that are nice, including the one, fittingly named, Winter (white woods, pine needles, sparkling clementine and spiced clove). One of the ones with “Christmas” in the name I liked from my most recent sojourn, but for the life of me I can’t remember which one. I’ve gone through my musky phase (yes, I was into Mahogany Teakwood for a while), but if you’re still in yours, I recommend Flannel (fresh bergamot, heriloom mahogany, and soft musk). I also went through a phase where I was obsessed with their eye-wateringly strong Balsam Fir scent.

I buy local as well. I won’t be naming any of the local companies I like just for privacy’s sake, but I will say I have bought some incredible smelling candles from them, accepting the approximately $30 price tag with just the smallest of tears in my eyes. Bath and Body Works candles are almost $30 regular, but I only ever buy them on their half off sales. The local one I most recently burned has notes of blue spruce, precious wood, and, wouldn’t you know it, musk. Basically anything that isn’t overwhelmingly sweet I can get on board with.

You can do more than candles, too. I don’t like artificially sweet smells, but obviously I love the smell of baking. Great news, since that’s a common activity during the holidays (I have gingerbread oatmeal cookies in the oven right now). Or, chuck some meat and potatoes in your slow cooker and let er rip. Sweet, savory, doesn’t really matter as long as it’s actual food.

See also: potpourri… simmer pots, if you don’t mind wasting a bunch of your produce and herbs… pomanders… wax melts… essential oils NOT from an MLM… cinnamon/star anise decorations… there are so many options to make your home smell good during the holidays.

Okay, with scent covered, I also want to chat music before getting into the actual decor. Retail workers are exempt from this paragraph because I think by Christmas most store employees have heard Jingle Bell Rock so many times they’re ready to go postal. Fair enough. Music is important! I am on the record stating my dislike of pretty much all modern Christmas music. I don’t want to hear Justin Bieber or Mariah Carey or Ariana Grande, or whoever else is doing either original Christmas music or pop covers of vintage Christmas songs. Strangely, though, I am neutral on Michael Buble. My mom loves Josh Groban and my dad has a penchant for the Trans Siberian Orchestra, so I guess those get a pass on nostalgia alone. I was actually just thinking today that of all contemporary singers I am aware of (admittedly, not many) that Adele has an incredible voice for Christmas music. I’ll call her up when I have a free minute and suggest it. I’m also a sucker for those “oldies playing in another room” genre of Youtube videos. They have vintage Christmas versions too, and they are very effective nostalgia traps. Obviously, you can play any music if you’re by yourself or having people over during the holidays. But I do think Christmas music evokes a very specific type of warmth in people. As for the people who hate it? Sorry, I guess! Christmas comes but once a year, stay strong. Home for the Holidays by Perry Como is my favorite Christmas song, if your favorite Christmas song can also be the one that makes you cry every time you hear it, no matter your circumstances, including working at the local grocery store as a high schooler and browsing the candle section at Homesense as an adult, which are definitely not embarrassing real-life examples.

Now that we’ve covered smell, sound, and a little bit of touch (texture), let’s actually get to the point. Sight! As for taste, I guess I mentioned I was baking cookies, so we’ll just check that off to complete the sensory bingo.

As mentioned above, plaid is already in the mix. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t add in some more. As the years have worn on, I’ve grown picky with plaid (leftovers from being in Supernatural fandom). The material it’s printed on/made with, yes, but also the granulation of the pattern itself. For example, the plaid on these ornaments is wrong. It doesn’t taste good in my mind-mouth. Plaid shouldn’t be smooth and hard.

The plaid on the ornaments below, though? Even though plaid is technically only a pattern, it really feels like that soft, rustic texture is an integral part of it. I’ve had versions of these ornaments from Walmart in the past, actually. It was a couple bucks per ornament and they worked just fine and if I hadn’t left a huge amount of my belongings behind when I moved earlier this year, I would probably still have them for this Christmas. And I deem this an acceptable DIY, especially when the whole point is that they look rustic, cozy, and handmade (this unleashes an entire new world of the types of ornaments you can DIY, hindered only by your local fabric store’s selection).

Here are some more ornaments I like:

Obviously, this is a large assortment, many of them statement ornaments, not all of them stylistically compatible, so I would not put them all on the same tree. One of the things I’ve found as I’ve delved deeper into my own personal design style is that the number of things I think are cool/nice/pretty/lovely is much, much larger than the number of things I would want in my own home, even on an unlimited budget. The textural variation in a lot of those ornaments is very fun. Even if I don’t like velvet on its own, I can appreciate its contribution to an overall Christmas tree landscape. The last photo, you’ll notice, is retro-style gift tags. Those were included because before I found the set of tiny ornaments I decided on for my own little tree, I was considering buying some nice hanging gift tags and using those as ornaments instead. They’re cheap and can be easily reinforced by sticking them onto cardboard, boxboard, whatever. The ones pictured are retro-style, which I feel like I’ve largely grown out of as a design motif, but, as established, I’m not above a bit of holiday cheese when the situation calls for it. There are some really sleek modern gift tags as well if that’s more your style.

Speaking of my own little tree…

You might be thinking, that’s a pretty ugly (and fake) tree for someone who’s talking a big game about “good” holiday decor and real greenery. To that, I say… yes. But also, my promised caveat:

I bought this ugly little tree from Michael’s during the 2015 holiday season, the majority of which I spent alone and sad (and overheated, the heating was busted and I woke up on Christmas morning to a blazing hot apartment). This ugly little tree has outlasted university degrees, relationships, and even personalities. Every year I pull this miniature fire hazard out of storage and plop it down somewhere in my current residence. Every year, it’s a little worse for wear. Originally, I furnished it with cheap ornaments from Walmart. In fact, I think that frosted white one with the holly branches is an OG Walmart. The other two, though, (including the blue one in the bottom right that I didn’t get a close up of) were given to me by my mom. Would I have chosen them for myself? No. Do they mean a lot to me anyway? Yes. My mom and I don’t have a ton of overlap in our design preferences, but during the holidays especially, I find that matters very little. I still troll her a little (seeing the word art NOEL sign from the back and asking why she owns a LEON sign). But the sentimentality and the nostalgia of the season outweigh the design sensibilities. That blue ornament? Totally throws off my preferred colour scheme. To that, I say… TOO BAD. It goes on the tree anyway. I do draw the line at the text printed on the back of those ornaments, though, which is why those sides are facing in.

Here are some Christmas linens, blankets, & pillows I like. Note that some of these do not evoke Christmas directly. A lot of the broader decor is meant to be season-specific as opposed to holiday-specific, because then you have multipurpose items instead of, say, a blanket you can only use for four weeks out of the year. I mean, you could use a nutcracker print blanket in May. No one is going to stop you. But it’s not a life choice I would make for myself. Seasons and their associated decor—having the inside of your home reflect and respect the state of the natural world outside of your home— are meaningful to me, and I like the feeling of alignment and cohesiveness and serenity that comes along with it. This would be the perfect time to admit I’m into grounding. Could you imagine. Actually, don’t.

The Santa pillow is mine. I got it from Homesense last Christmas, and if you’re in Canada and like them, they have them back this year. It took me weeks to pull the trigger on that purchase. Who knew this much headspace as an adult could be taken up by internal discussions on how much Santa paraphernalia you’re willing to have in your house (and if you’re willing to pay $34.99 for it…).

Regarding the red/white woodsy tablecloth: during the rest of the year, I’m not a huge fan of Scandinavian design— it’s a little too sparse/minimalistic/neutral for my tastes. But come Christmas, I do often find myself drawn to the woodland-esque vibe of Scandinavian holiday decor, though I don’t want to take the motif too far— as stated, I love the outdoors and forests therein, but I can’t recreate one in my home better than the real thing, so why try? Just a few touches are nice. Alignment and cohesiveness, not mimicry.

I am a self-proclaimed mughead. I love mugs, but I am also extremely picky about which mugs I allow a place of honour in my cupboard. I currently own 3.5 mugs. Two of my mugs are anytime mugs. The third is a Christmas mug I got from Value Village, but the handle is too small. You know when the handle is too small and it drives you batty? I want Christmas mugs. The pickings this year, at least as they pertain to my taste, have been SLIM. Between Rae Dunn and Hello Kitty and the Grinch and Disney I cannot catch a fucking break and find a nice seasonal mug, and I have been looking.

Now is probably a good time to mention that I rarely shop online. I can’t speak for other Canadians, but online shopping here is rough. Shipping (even domestically) takes forever and it’s expensive as hell. I can almost never justify the expense for whatever junk it is I want to buy. Plus, I like being able to go and see things in person. I like being able to touch it, because texture is a big thing for me, and online sellers love to lie or mislead about their products. But if I’m going to be spending my hard earned money on something, I want to ensure it’s something that is pleasing to both my eyes and my hands. And my nose, if it smells. And my mouth, if it’s edible. And I guess my ears, if it makes noise, but that doesn’t come up much in the decor world. And I would prefer it’s good quality, but, well, you do what you can and you can afford what you can afford.

All that to say, I know there are more options online. I am simply unlikely to pursue them. I also go to local craft fairs a lot, so I keep my eyes peeled there, too. The difference there is handmade things are expensive (understandable) so I have to be very picky about what comes home with me. And in terms of mugs, convenience is also incredibly important. Unless it’s the most beautiful mug in the world, if it can’t go in the dishwasher, I don’t want it. If it’s uncomfortable to hold, I don’t want it. Same with glassware. I Will Not Hand Wash This. I’ll hand wash cookware if I must. But everything else can go to hell where it belongs (dishwasher).

Also of note: “shaped” mugs are not my thing. It always feels like the drink inside is going to spill everywhere. Also, if it’s like, a head shaped mug? I don’t want to feel like I’m drinking out of someone’s skull… or like… a tree… I also tend to reject mugs where the wraparound print ends at the handle. It looks cheap and machine-made. Then again, I don’t like when mass produced mugs/glassware/servingware tries to look handmade, either. So I guess I’m just impossible to please.

Here are the Christmas mugs I own. Note the print ending at the handle on the floral one. It was 2 bucks at Value Village, okay? Give me a break. The blue one is my favorite winter mug from childhood. I stole it (hence the .5 of 3.5) when I moved for university and now that I’m back, so is the mug. Domestic jetsetter, that one.

And, some mugs I like (including glassware and servingware, because, as stated, the mug landscape of 2024 is bleak):

And where would you be without some cute Christmas doormats? What, you want your guests to think you’re an ANIMAL who doesn’t wipe her feet?!

Would you like to see some Christmas decor that I think is bad? Just kidding. I know you do.

It looked just like that in the Wayfair listing, btw. I didn’t stretch it for comedic effect. It was also, like, $60 or something. I’m dying to know what actually shows up if you were to order it, because there were a ton of mugs like that, all stretched out and overpriced, from the same vendor.

If it’s cutesy cell-shaded art that looks like you made it on your Cricut I don’t like it. Those cups also kind of suck because they don’t hold much liquid, right?! And they’re glass so they’re going to condensate like crazy, which double sucks if it’s winter-themed and you keep having to grab the cold wet glass when you’re already cold. Also if they’re dishwasher friendly I’ll eat my hat.

Self-proclaimed Grinch? I wish you the best, keep that attitude away from me. Also, I don’t like “mean” decor in general. I don’t like when decor tells you to fuck off or that you don’t give a fuck or you think everyone around you is dumb. Also, Grinch-specific, isn’t the moral of the story that he actually becomes a nice, uh, Grinch by the end?! Didn’t his heart grow three sizes?!

And not that it matters at this point, but for the sake of graphic design, at least have the middle finger stand in for the I. “Merry ficking Christmas.” Come on, man. It was right there.

That white table runner is included because it’s sherpa. SHERPA. ON THE DINING TABLE. over my dead body.

I don’t like bottle brush trees. The texture is bad. They’re also just dinky looking.

Do I need to explain why those deer are terrifying? Modern art or the monster in The Ritual?

Scary folk art Santa gets a caveat— not because I don’t think he’s scary, but because folk art like this always makes me a little uneasy but like, in a way I like. Would I have this in my home? God no. But I appreciate folk art in general. For example, I love Johanna Parker despite the fact that very little of her work makes sense with my design style.

The minimalist smooth Christmas trees look like sex toys. I don’t enjoy that. These aren’t even the worst offenders.

Things that have initials on them: why? Do you not know your own name? I am unsure why this seems to be more of a trend amongst women than men, unless you’re my dad, who owns a mug with his first initial on it. I suppose I never drink out of it, so maybe there’s a use-case for an initial mug. Maybe I have such an outsized hatred of personalization because of how flooded Etsy is with low-effort personalized everything. Do you really need your name laser engraved into a cutting board? A picture frame? A necklace? A “chocolate hazelnut spread” jar label?

The plaid pitcher is another example of why “hard” plaid is bad. But also, there’s something that looks so unfinished about that specific pitcher— I think because the outline/inside is white. Did you forget to put the pattern on the rest?

The thing about a shaped pillow—especially one as shaped as that snowflake— is that it doesn’t function as a pillow anymore. I do not like when something functional, like a pillow, is manufactured in such a way that it looses that function. That would take the place of an actual pillow that you could lean against! Is it just me?! I imagine leaning against that and shudder. It’s not like it’s sharp, except for the fact that it is. Unrelated to Christmas decor, but I feel the same way about spherical pillows. I hate those things.

Santa at the beach is a no from me. Remember what I said earlier about honouring the world outside with your interior design? This is the opposite of that. This is a level of fun and whimsy and quirkiness I cannot abide. If you’re in the southern hemisphere and celebrate Christmas? OK, maybe this makes sense for you. If the Australians want board shorts Santa, they can keep him.

Back to good stuff. Well, one good stuff. Christmas lights should be warm white. I will also allow green-and-white, red-and-green, or red-and-white alternating lights, like so:

Scratch that, I couldn’t find any pictures I liked. You’ll just have to use your imagination, or come see that one house in my neighbourhood that apparently had the only string of good red-and-green alternating lights in the world. By this point, I doubt it will surprise you that my preferred outdoor Christmas set-up is traditional; greenery, red/burgundy bows, warm white lights. You really don’t need to go crazy outside. Candles in the window are also very good. All red makes you look Satanic. All green (especially the neon green you usually get with exterior lights) doesn’t evoke the spirit of the season at all. And if you own these monstrosities? That are on every third house for some godforsaken reason?

You’re dead to me. “They’re LED and environmentally friendly!” Please. I don’t want to hear it, but you know who does? The 12ft tall inflatable Minion in a Santa hat in your front yard. I’m sure the preservation of the earth’s resources is top of his mind as hydro pumps him full of air for six-eight hours every night before you go to sleep.

At the end of the day, I think a lot of my design and decor preferences stem from that image, actually. Um, not the Minion in a Santa hat, but a warm candle in the window, beckoning you in from the cold. It’s a straight line to so much of what I love about writing, too. The catharsis of a long journey undertaken, well-ended in a chair by the fire.

… Well, it makes sense to ME.

The above are kind of the bits and bobs I had leftover from the, frankly, HOURS I spent sourcing images for this blog post. However, you may be like, why do those last three pictures look kind of washed out and sad? That’s because they’re mine, lol. No, I didn’t choose the world’s most boring paint colour, it was like that when I got there. Anyway, I think my various and underwhelming personal pictures and decor scattered throughout this post is a really good reminder that what I save on my pinterest boards is not at all equivalent to what my real life looks like. Those red truck lights, sitting right on my windowsill, kill me because they are SO ugly. But at the same time, I got caught up in the Red Christmas Truck phenomenon a few years ago, and that’s the result. And they’re fun and cute. So like, whatever.

Something that occurred to me while writing this post is that I have probably contradicted myself multiple times. I say I like or don’t like something, and I’m sure, scroll down a bit, and you’ll see me claiming the exact opposite. I’ve found that sometimes, with interior design, I like something because I like it or I don’t because I don’t. As in, you can’t always explain what moves the spirit. My tolerance for a certain type of cheesy decor may be higher than the next for no reason beyond: It Just Is. (For example: I said no word art EVER. Yet, how many times have I drunk coffee out of a mug yelling JOY at me already this holiday season? Granted, I don’t own the mug, but still.)

I love looking at the shiny baubles and the new, goofy ways people come up with to depict Santa. Most of it is ugly, mass produced shit, but to me, that’s kind of the fun in all shopping— finding the diamond in the rough. Sorting through the ugliest, tackiest decor you’ve ever seen at Homesense, only to find the one good thing they’ve managed to source this year. Or the one nice piece you allow yourself to splurge on at the department store. It can be an overwhelming prospect, and sometimes I do get existentially angst-ridden by the amount of STUFF that exists in this world (the one and only time I went to an At Home store in America I feel like I walked out with a mild case of shell shock). But, that comes with the territory. I thrift a lot, too. At the same time, I rarely buy anything. I’m very picky, and no one is allowed to buy me home decor because I probably won’t like it, or I’ll be annoyed I didn’t get the chance to pick something out myself.

Christmas is the one time of year I try to stow the cynicism and the pessimism and just enjoy things. Most of my recent Christmases have been spent in a self-proclaimed Grinch environment, with ironic trees and disdain toward local holiday events and a proliferation of Amazon shopping, which was always difficult for me, as it implies losers like me are sheep-brained morons for getting into the spirit of the holiday. But the thing is, like with most things, Christmas is what you make it. Tapping into the warm nostalgia of holiday decorations and cooking and baking and gift giving (as someone who enjoys shopping for others) is intrinsic to my enjoyment of the season. The time and thought I put into sourcing gifts for the people in my life is basically the only avenue I have of expressing my feelings for them. I was far from a perfect partner, but you can bet I showed up when it came to gift-giving occasions. It’s not about the money, is the thing. I never bought anyone the most expensive anything, but I did do my best to source gifts that would bring people joy, or make their life easier, or more fun.

It has not been a good year for me, and I have not been able to show up in the same way I have in years previous. So, in a way, writing this goofy little blog post has helped buoy my spirits. If nothing else, you can always brute force some holiday cheer by looking at overly curated pictures on Pinterest and spending days sourcing pictures of ornaments you think are pretty. It’s not a gift, per se, and I am not showing any person affection by writing this. However, I have carved out a little semi-private nook where I can exercise my care and enjoyment of the season in a way that brings me joy, and maybe the few people who read this some as well.

At the same time, I feel strangely melancholy about it all. There is something incredibly lonely about curating My Perfect Christmas in a digital snowglobe as opposed to embracing the authentic spirit of the season. As I so often am, I feel torn. Even when I was young, though, I felt this way. The day itself was nothing compared to the anticipation. When I was eagerly awaiting Christmas, anything could happen. When it was Christmas, well, then it was just Christmas again. Just another day. I have always been searching for a way to wrap my arms around every possibility at once. I have always been searching for a way to hold everything at once, and let nothing slip through my fingers. I have always been searching for wholeness, and contentment, and arghhhh catharsis, it always comes back to catharsis! No wonder it’s all I write about. Such a cruel aspect of human nature, to only want what we can never have. To only want it because we can never have it! Because as long as I don’t have it, it will be perfect! But the moment it leaves the realm of possibility, and enters the realm of reality, then it’s just reality, and reality is imperfect! Waghhhhh

Maybe the true takeaway from this exercise is that perfection is a curse and catharsis is unattainable and life is not meant to be anything, and instead simply is. That is, meaningless and inexorable and nothing more.

And with those warm words of comfort, I wish you a joyful Christmas, whatever that looks like for you. Even if that includes hugging your personalized blue LED lights and sherpa snowflake pillows and plaid red trucks just a little closer tonight because someone on the internet was mean about them.

Merry ficking Christmas, everyone!

editing novel 2

While editing Don’t Worry About It, I was so invested in wrapping up Wren and Ashley’s relationship arc that I dropped the ball on the actual plot climax. While reading it back, I came to the conclusion that, unfortunately, I had to rewrite it. The first draft barely even had a climax, to be honest. In the first draft, Wren never goes on Brighton’s talk show. The article goes live while she’s still at home with Ashley after they hook up and Ashley sees it on her phone and shows it to Wren. That was it. In a story that focuses largely on how Wren (and Ashley) are perceived by fans and the general public, and how that is at odds with who they actually are, it made almost no sense to focus a climax on an intimate moment between the two of them. As dictated by the story, in order to have a relevant and meaningful ending, Wren needed to get her ass handed to her in public. Sorry, Wren. Needs must.

For novel 2, I did it again. Like, to a weirdly specific extent. I was too lost in the sauce on the resolution of the main pairing to give the actual plot an actual ending that justifies what came before. Just like with Don’t Worry About It, I spent a few weeks being like, nooo, it’s fine, it’s fine the way it is, I definitely don’t have to do any major rewrites, it’s not even like this one is as good or literary as Don’t Worry, remember that one lesbian romance you read years ago that still haunts you because of how bad it was and THAT one still got published, somehow? It’s fine, it’s fine…

Turns out, it is NOT fine. And now I have to rewrite the ending. And a bunch of other fiddly little pieces. And that’s really just how editing works, that’s the whole point, but man, there is just something that grates when it’s not perfect the first time. I suppose because the first draft feels the most “pure”, in the sense that it’s the most authentic expression of my vision for the story. I had an idea and I put it on paper, and that’s art. Isn’t there a legend in the writing world that Jack Kerouac wrote On The Road in three days? (No, there isn’t, I just looked this up lol). Isn’t that how ART works?! You think it, create it, and it’s done?

My approach to editing in this way is definitely tied to my experiences writing fanfiction. In fanfiction world, it rarely matters how good or cohesive the writing is. If it depicts the main pairing in a way that is pleasing to the reader, then it’s deemed good (note I didn’t say this depiction was necessarily accurate). The accolades you receive for writing imperfect fanfiction can easily lull one into a false sense of security that there is little more to “good” writing than getting the most vociferous reader feedback. If people claim to be frothing at the mouth over your writing, then it follows that colours how you approach the art of writing original fiction. If I could just be a bit funny and a bit cheeky and a bit silly and a bit when is a monster not a monster in my Dean/Castiel or Wangxian fanfiction, then it was enough.

In real writing world, despite the onslaught of terrible novels that keep getting published, that’s just not true. Even for my self-proclaimed not-as-good-as-the-first second novel. Unfortunately, I owe a decent edit to the story and the characters I spent months creating. They deserve better, and because they are me, I deserve better, too.

Which is just a bloated and pretentious way of saying I have to keep editing this fucking manuscript, UGH. I have to make more stuff up after I’ve already made it up! Editing is so deeply inefficient, like, why couldn’t I just do it right the first time? If I had to back into a parking spot this many times to get between the lines, they wouldn’t have given me my driver’s license.

I highly doubt every writer feels this way, but for me, I find it incredibly difficult to pull at the seams of my story, which is often something you have to do during the editing process. A lot of the time, like I lament above, my mindset is, “Well, if it was supposed to be there, I would’ve put in the first time!” In fact, multiple times over the course of my writing “career”, I have been in editing mode, added some small detail to a paragraph (we’re talking something about a smile, a sensory detail, an errant thought, that kind of thing), only to run into the exact same thing a paragraph or two later. I really am on the same page as myself a lot of the time, which is overall a good thing, I think, except then, alas, the seams.

From my end, adding things into subsequent drafts is akin to adding a neon sign above it that screams, “SHE ADDED THIS AFTER THE FACT! IT’S NOT ORIGINAL TO THE STORY!!!” Which is an absurd way to look at editing, and I’m not sure why I feel this way. Maybe I get too caught up in other forms of art that require less editing. For example, a painter can only paint over so much before the canvas itself becomes unworkable. From a numbers standpoint, there just isn’t as much to edit when it comes to a poem or a painting or a piece of pottery. Not saying those artists don’t sweat the details or “edit” in their own way— I’m just saying it’s a different, and objectively more voluminous beast when you’re staring down 75,000 words and expected to make it all work together.

Maybe it’s because, to me, editing is not writing. It’s admin. It’s necessary, but boring busywork. Awkward sentences, incorrect dialogue tags, a paragraph that works better here, not there, all of that to me is boring as hell. In my writing brain, I just want to gesture to the story as a whole and say, “But, like, you get where I’m coming from, right?”

I’ve discussed this before, but I don’t write on a sentence-by-sentence basis. I would never consider myself someone who “constructs” sentences. I don’t sit down and agonize over paragraph structure. I do spend a fair amount of time hunting down words, but only because I only vaguely remember the definition, or forgot a word entirely, or need to laterally think my way into a synonym. If I contemplated every single word I wrote, I would never write anything. If I assigned the same level of importance to every sentence, I would still be in chapter four of Don’t Worry. I might have the wrong impression of this because that’s the most common way for media to depict the art of writing. A character types out a sentence… second-guesses it… deletes it… re-writes… deletes… on and on. I’m not saying I’ve never done that— I absolutely have— but I am saying that’s not all there is to it. So much of my writing just happens. Thinking is secondary. There is a goal in my head, and everything that’s happening on the page is a means to an end. The finished product already exists in the ether of my mind, my only responsibility to it after that is to get it on paper. Writing, taken down to the studs, is a way to communicate ideas, and that is the baseline for my own creative process. I’m communicating a fully realized idea— not a sentence, or piece of grammar, or any singular image, but a whole that is meant to be taken that way. I suspect, were you to break Don’t Worry, or any of my subsequent works down into separate categories (syntax, grammar, imagery, prose, etc), they would not fit together 100% correctly, like they would for some other writers.

For novel two, the pacing was very off. My timelines were wrong, things either felt like they happened too quickly or not quickly enough, and the back third or so of the novel all takes place within the course of a week, while the first two-thirds of the story take place over the course of a number of months. It’s an interesting conundrum, because I like the idea of tightening up a story near the end as opposed to broadening its scope. As you wrap up plot points, you are whittling down your story to its core tenet, its reason for being. When writing Don’t Worry, that process involved snipping every social tether Wren had to other people, like plucking leaves off an already scant branch. A bit evil of me, sure, but eventually, she was on her own, and alone with herself, and breaking her down to the studs was the whole point of Don’t Worry. However, the end of Don’t Worry broadened its scope in the sense that time sped up, a decision I am still not fully sold on. The last chapter skips ahead by a year or so, whereas for novel two, everything slows down at the end and happens in a week. Technically, the latter option offers a much more intimate look at the payoff. With Don’t Worry, I was confident enough in my set-up that I could deploy a year time skip. With novel two, do I hold the same confidence in my set-up, that it can handle the extreme scrutiny that a week long climax brings? With the pacing originally so off… no. With some more tweaks? With a new, more relevant plot wrap-up and adjustments to the timeline that make more sense and give the story more time to breathe? … maybe.

I said this one was a romcom. That was a lie. I said this one was an attempt at writing a generic romance that would be more likely to cater to the broadest possible audience that is interested in lesbian fiction. That… also might have been a lie. Thinking back, even during my fanfiction years, I’m not sure that romance was ever my first priority. Which sounds nuts, because I exclusively wrote Dean/Castiel and Wangxian, and their relationship was almost always center stage. But at the same time, thinking about the worthwhile fanfiction I wrote for both pairings, none of them ever easily fell into the romance genre. Romance was always at the forefront, much like in Don’t Worry, but never the main thrust of the story. Hell, even Rat on a Horse, goofy 30k lesbian erotica I just put out, was more about the protagonist coming to terms with what she really wanted out of life. There was sex, and her love interest was fun, and it was silly and goofy and an enjoyable little piece, but even that, man, I don’t know. Maybe I’m being precious. Maybe this is one of those things that’s so obvious it’s unspoken, and I’ve just badly misread how others approach this topic. But I just can’t seem to crack whatever code it is that allows people to write broadly enjoyable romance. I kept telling myself I could definitely do it. Then, one day in the Homesense book section (yes they have one of those), I cracked open one of those cell-shaded romance covers that’s like, “She’s a klutzy goof and he’s a hunky hockey player, can they make it work? Read the #steamy #romcom that #Booktok can’t stop #tokking about!” and I paged through it for a few minutes, and I was like… I don’t actually think I can do this. This sounds like I’m being a huge asshole, like this is something so bad that I could never reach such a level of… bad. And, like, yes, the book is bad. But that’s not exactly what I’m talking about. I literally do not think I could write a book like that. I thought I could, and I have been humbled quite resoundingly. I will just never be able to write a book that appeals broadly enough to an audience, or maybe even an agent, and my writing can be worthwhile and funny and interesting and… still not be worth anything— monetarily. It is entirely possible no one will ever lay eyes on my work, and think there is value in it, and reliably tell me that, yes, there is a living to be made, here.

It’s sad. It’s a tough pill to swallow. I don’t know how long I can create “art” that no one wants (I know a few people read my original work, and fewer read this blog, and I hope I don’t have to explain what I mean by “no one” in this particularly mopey instance). I don’t want to fully psyche myself out— it is entirely possible no one will want book 2, but you never know. Maybe someone takes a chance. Maybe someone uses the right hashtag. Maybe I can embark on a path in life that allows me to feel like I am actually contributing to society with my art, instead of relying on the goodwill of internet strangers who read my Destiel fanfiction in 2017.

I’ve thought about quitting writing. I don’t have any plans to do so— but I’ve thought about it. I’ve often thought about what would be left if I left behind all the parts of me I wanted to sell. I was always fascinated by the romance of the random internet personalities who just up and left one day. “Where is she now? I’m sure she’s busy, out there enjoying her life in the real world!” Or that one friend from middle school who you only think about once every five years. Or the neighbour down the street whose lost dog you found in your yard and returned, and that was the only time you ever spoke to each other. The fantasy of what happens when people disappear from your life is exactly that— a fantasy. You can even see my fascination with this in Don’t Worry— after Wren hightails it from LA at the end, she overhears people gossiping about her whereabouts. Where could she have gone? Where did she go?! Well, she went to starve in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, Oregon, and then she was just in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, Oregon, is where she went. Probably not near as glamorous as any rumours made it seem.

In the real world, though, those people, like, just keep on trucking. They go to work. They go home. Unless they’re Wren, they eat dinner. I used to think the same about random fanfiction writers— where is she? What’s her life like? It must be sooo cool and awesome since she’s such a cool and awesome writer!! Let me put it this way. A handful of people, in a very specific corner of the internet, thought that I was a cool and awesome writer at one point, and occasionally wondered as to my whereabouts. While they wondered such things, I was likely at my shitty job, or curled up on the couch in the fetal position in my apartment because I hated that couch and that apartment, or smoking weed or drinking or overeating or whatever I felt like I needed to do at the time because I was so miserable. Small victories, but I’m finally rid of that couch and that apartment, and smoking weed or drinking in this economy? Please.

I was driving home tonight and I realized I wrote novel 2 about the most boring character in it. This must be a holdover from writing Lan Wangji POV. This isn’t really something editing can fix, and frankly, I don’t think it needs to. I think it is very, very funny. Chaos erupting all around and inside her and the protagonist is like, good thing I’m well adjusted and this barely rocks me! I mean, it does rock her, but it doesn’t. I feel great affection for both her and her love interest, despite the fact the story they exist in is not particularly inspired. There’s some verisimilitude for you. Sometimes life, even the exciting falling in love bits, are just a bit boring. I won’t be leading my query letter with that, but, you know. One woman’s boring is another woman’s most scintillating fantasy, maybe.

Finishing projects is difficult for me. Not in a literal sense— usually, the emotional shape of an ending becomes clear to me before I reach it— but in an existential one. It’s funny of me to say, because usually by the time I’ve mentally finished the novel—the emotional arc is complete and I know where I’m going, it’s just a matter of getting there— I’m already looking forward to the next one. The next character I can sink my gnarled little claws into and shake between my teeth for a bit. But at the same time, losing the emotional weight of a story I spent months on, regardless of quality, is really hard. It’s hard to let go, and it’s hard to prettily package and try to sell off wrapped in whatever the current trendy buzzwords are in the publishing industry, and it’s hard to accept that no one might want it, and it’s hard to accept that other people’s acceptance is what designates “art” from “something I wrote for fun”.

I’m almost exactly halfway through editing this novel. It’s going okay. I left myself a fair bit of room in the word count that the story has a bit of room to grow, whereas with Don’t Worry, I was constantly looking for places to trim. I’m going very slowly, which is both good, because I don’t burn out, and bad, because it can be hard to get back into the editing headspace once I leave it. The problematic pacing will likely remain as such, even as I approach something resembling a final draft. I suspect once I pull the disparate threads a little tighter and iron over the seams a little hotter, I will feel better. I think getting an outside perspective, which so far I haven’t had with this story, will help. I’ve had a number of small breakthroughs during the editing process so far, which pleases me, and I hope to have more as I move along and get to the meatier parts of the story. Or maybe, I’ll just feel better knowing I reinforced the base of the narrative enough to withstand everything else I piled on top of it. Much like I hope anyone who reads my stories feels, I’m curious to see how it all turns out.

the ballad of lilian and ratricia

This blog post is about the writing of this “novella” I just posted on AO3.

First off, I hope you enjoyed it! It was meant to be fun and dumb and hot and I think I covered my bases pretty well. As I mentioned in the author’s note on AO3, I wrote this to help me keep my distance from the completed first draft of my second novel, as I wanted to give it (and me) some breathing room before I came back for revisions and edits. Also, I hate editing. Also, the closer I get to a finished product, the closer I get to having to query again, and that makes me shrivel up inside like a raisin.

Writing Rat on a Horse was probably the most fun I’ve had writing in… years. I wrote it in just under three weeks. I’m not trying to sell it or impress anyone. I’m really embodying my old fanfiction mindset of “write what you want because no one can write what you want better than you”. There was so little planning and so much “teehee, wouldn’t it be funny if Lily tried to climb out the window” or “why shouldn’t Gardenia be a Royalist freak for no reason other than it’s goofy”. Rat’s name is Patricia because “Ratricia” is the funniest joke I’ve ever told.

At the end of the day, Rat on a Horse is fun lesbian erotica, not meant to light the world on fire. However, in the name of fun, I am going to talk about what I do think it has to offer; goofiness, lesbian sex, and dynamic characters.

GOOFINESS

More women should be goofy. There are goofy women out there, but there should be more. The reasons why more women aren’t goofy make me sad. When I am not mentally unwell, I would consider myself a fairly goofy woman. Thinking about the “goofy” people in my life growing up is also sobering, because they were all men. We all have the funny uncle, right? The one who’s just a big kid himself, and all the adult women in the family roll their eyes at him but, like, in a good natured way? How many people have a goofy aunt? We are not socially conditioned to allow women to be goofy, because they’re the ones who have to mind the goofy men. Women aren’t allowed to be goofy, because they’re busy, like, taking care of their families and houses and smashing the glass ceiling and stuff. Even when women are goofy, they’re seen as cringeworthy and embarrassing. I would know, because I often think that way about those kinds of women. It’s so deeply entrenched it almost feels biological. When I was a kid, I told my mom I thought women just weren’t as funny as men. It’s so ingrained into us I am still constantly fighting my preconceptions and picking apart my motivations when it comes to judging other women. You see a lot of lukewarm discussions about the double standards between women and men, but so many of them are painful to watch #girlboss moments lacking even the slightest semblance of nuance that it feels like they never really discussed anything at all (“You think a girl can’t shoot? Well, mr sir, I grew up with TWENTY-SIX brothers” bangbangbang bullseye and damn she’s still so sexy!!). Maybe I am just soft like clay and everyone else is impervious to this and I’m just emotionally weak and susceptible to outside influence and also a raging misogynist.

The funny thing is, after a lot (some might say too much) self reflection, I realized that being terminally goofy myself had started to make me feel like I was unable to take myself, my work, or my feelings seriously whatsoever. Like I had to brush everything off, nothing was allowed to cut too close, and that became dehumanizing and dissociative in its own way, as if I was more of a one dimensional character than an actual human being. It sucks, too, because I say this knowing that at the same time, goofball men are still taken seriously when it’s time to be serious. There’s nothing eating away at them, warning them that they’re trying to run away from themselves and all of their complicated feelings because they like to play little pranks or make stupid jokes or honk their girlfriends’ boobs or whatever. It’s really hard to gauge how gendered this phenomenon is versus how I, as a human, am lacking in general.

All that to say, I like writing goofy women. I like giving them airtime in my stories. I feel like I have a pretty good goofy baseline from the fandom world, along with my to-the-beat-of-my-own drum sense of humour. I liked writing Rat because she’s cool, but I really liked writing Rat because she’s an annoying goofball who enjoys trolling her loved ones. I’m not sure cool people actually exist, but if they do, they’re probably quite one dimensional and boring.

LESBIAN SEX

I enjoyed writing that phrase in Header 1 all caps. I was going to just put in this section, “need I say more?” but it’s me, so I will. I enjoy exploring the different types of sex and turn-ons and attraction and libido women can have/feel. Despite all the supposed “empowering” sex tips out there for women, the landscape of female humans getting down together often still feels weirdly barren and unsexy and lacking tension. Not saying I’m out here to educate or write the most true-to-life lesbian sex. Just cause it’s two women having it (doing it?) doesn’t mean it’ll be good, unfortunately. In erotica-world, though, bad sex (generally with someone else first) is just a precursor for GREAT SEX between the main couple later on. That wasn’t actually the case with Ratricia and Lilian, because Rat’s sex life prior to Lily isn’t mentioned and Lily is a loser virgin <3. But again, that’s kind of the point. The likelihood of sex with a twenty-five year old lesbian virgin who’s never even jerked off being mindblowingly good the entire time is like, mmmmmmm, okay, not SUPER likely. But at the same time, isn’t it fun to imagine a world where being so super into each other (even when one half of you doesn’t realize it) and both of you going off like rockets in the back of your car in the parking lot of an auto insurance broker is possible? And doesn’t result in an indecent exposure charge?

I also really enjoy exploring romance/fanfiction tropes between female characters. You see so little of it in general that it’s fun to play with those expectations in an environment both steeped in and deeply resistant to the socialized and gendered life of women. For example, playing with the trope of “character doesn’t know they’re gay,” is a very different experience if the character is female or male. Personality-dependent, absolutely, but also sex-dependent. Dean Winchester’s relationship to masculinity is not the same as, say, Ashley Bonnie’s relationship to femininity (does anyone even remember that’s Ashley’s last name? No? That’s okay, it’s mentioned literally once in Don’t Worry, I forgive you). But also, IT IS! Both of them are characters who are quite married to the gendered expectations they grew up swimming in. But but also also, those same gendered expectations and how they impact a person are very different. I really enjoyed exploring that relationship while writing m/m fanfiction, so I suppose it only makes sense that I feel similarly exploring the same themes with f/f. Even though Rat on a Horse is just goofin around, you can still see this theme play out, in Lily’s character especially. She has quite specific ideas about shaving and how men/women should do it, all based on what she’s been told by the world around her, while also barely adhering to her own rules. Her expectations of “proper” society are essentially arbitrary, tied up in the media she consumed growing up and her own difficult, homegrown personality. Even very cool very sexy Rat doesn’t escape unscathed, when she talks about growing up as a tomboy who decided chores were for girly girls, and then Ms Arbitrary Lily and her should-be-shaved-but-isn’t pussy shows up to remind Rat that the gendered division of labour means very little in a single-sex household.

Anyway. I thought it was fun. I like riding the line between “realistic” sex and “fanfiction” sex, I guess. Adds a little verisimilitude without fully watering down the fantasy. Like, for example, the fact that shower sex really does mess with lubrication and having sex in a gym shower is SOOOOOOOOO GROSS. Oh my God, especially Rat pushing Lily up against the wall. Disgusting. Disgusting! Good for them.

DYNAMIC CHARACTERS

I like Lily and Rat and I think they’re both weird and interesting, even for the scant thirty-thousand word world in which they live. Heck, I think the same of Gardenia and Gina. One expectation of the romance genre I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to succumb to is the blank slate protagonist for the reader to project onto. Maybe it’s because in the fanfiction world, characters come with built-in personalities, so it kind of forces your hand into working with characters with at least some semblance of depth. Obviously, one of the mainstays of fandom is misinterpreting the characters so badly that by the time the tumblr machine is done with them, they’re barely more than a name and an archetype and a catch phrase, but I’m speaking only for myself, as someone who really enjoyed having the dollhouse pre-built so I could come in and start throwing wrenches into things immediately. I like a character I can sink my teeth into. I like that Lily, with her oddness and her peculiar way of speaking and her hypocrisy and her tetchiness, is not a blank slate. I like that Rat is hiding a very goofy, silly, and earnest personality beneath her gym bro cool lesbian exterior. “Dynamic” doesn’t necessarily mean a character is the complete opposite inside as they are outside, just that they are interesting, active, and stand out on the page. It also doesn’t mean they aren’t relatable in any way— I actually find Lily quite relatable in some ways. Distressingly so, one might say. I also share some characteristics with Rat. Sometimes, I think it’s good to make characters contradictory. It’s another way of adding verisimilitude to a story, because most people, including myself, are contradictory and hypocritical in some ways. It’s all part of the complex and annoying soup of humanity.

RANDOM POINTS OF POTENTIAL INTEREST

Sometimes I write something that is such a blatant personal fantasy of mine I can only laugh. Living in a quaint (PAID OFF!!) cottage in the woods with a whimsical golden bedroom and a beautiful garden and a cozy nook and a well-stocked kitchen full of hearty homemade meals in a town known for its natural beauty, and also your wife-to-be is a hot firefighter. And you drive a civic. What more could you ask for???

There was no reason Rat on a Horse was set in Smithers besides the fact that I had heard of it before and wanted a relatively rural setting. The people of Smithers are called Smithereens, which is hilarious, and I wish I had gotten a chance to work it into the story. If I ever had the chance, I would absolutely visit, it looks like a beautiful place and Lily definitely doesn’t do it justice during her guided tour. There is really an ICBC on Murray Street, though. And, not on Murray Street, a Safeway. And a Subway. But no Walmart! I actually checked because I was going to send Lily there for her gym clothes, but alas, t’was not to be. Not that it would have mattered if I conjured a Walmart into the fictional version of Smithers, but for no good reason, I often stalk Google Maps while writing and am always checking if this or that is “realistic” or not. That habit is a holdover from my Supernatural days when I would constantly be mapping out the road trips and travel times of the Winchesters. I mostly got a break in Wangxian fandom for obvious reasons. Even for Don’t Worry I was skulking around on Maps, especially to help me visualize LA, a place I would rather die before visiting. I also used a lot of Google Maps for novel 2, as the protagonist travels often for work (how else could I accurately describe what it’s like driving on the I-5!!!!!!). It’s especially funny when I realize how little I pay attention to geography/travel time as a reader. Unless you’re a weird internet detective or Game of Thrones post season-5, literally no one cares how accurate your fictional travel time is, or if you said a Walmart existed where it doesn’t.

I also wrote in past tense for the first time in… YEARS. All my fanfiction was in present tense. Even in university I was constantly writing in present tense because of my screenwriting specialty. I remember my terrifying first/second year fiction instructor telling us how people always thought writing in the present tense made things feel more urgent, but actually, the real use-case for present tense was…

I forget the end of her argument, lol. Sad. All I can say is, I wrote in present tense because that’s just how most fanfiction is written. I wrote Don’t Worry in present tense because it was what I was used to. I wrote novel 2 in present tense for the same reason. I thought it would be a good chance to dust off the cobwebs with Lily and Rat, and figured if I missed a tense or two it wasn’t the end of the world. Though someone did mention in the comments I typo’d “barely” as “barley” which is such a me-mistake, but also a good reminder to watch your wiggle words. If I torched the majority of my adverbs like I should’ve, I probably would’ve been safe. A terrifying thought, but one of my most-formed and most-likely-to-be-written-next ideas is in FIRST PERSON. Mama mia.

No more drawing it out. Ending the blog post now because Rat on a Horse has to be done so I can return to book 2 and try to churn out some editing juice. Can’t afford that early 2000s Civic on an ao3 writer’s salary!!

beleaguered by horror novels

Note: In this blog post I talk about a horror novel that involves childhood sexual assault

Okay, I had other plans for the next blog post, but it’s Halloweek so I’m talking about horror (novels) instead. This post also brought to you by the fact that I’m reading yet another horror novel that isn’t good. Quelle surprise.

Before I make an example of Devil’s Creek by Todd Keisling, I would like to say: the cover is sick. Perfect font choice. Colours and art are great. It’s also textured in a way that makes it nice to hold. Thumbs up on the design!

For transparency’s sake, as I write this, I’m about 75% of the way through the novel. I doubt my opinion of it will get better, but it’s definitely possible it will get worse (update: not all the way done yet, but it’s getting worse).

Quick recap: Devil’s Creek is a supernatural horror novel set in the present day in the uber religious town of Stauford, Kentucky. It follows six half-siblings who share a father. Said father was a Christian preacher-turned-satanic cult leader in the 80s who convinced his congregation to worship the devil, and the six protagonists were the offspring he conceived with different women in said congregation. The main plot follows his resurrection and subsequent return to Devil’s Creek.

If you’re familiar with the horror genre at all, you’ll recognize the “haunted town” trope. If you’ve read IT, you have a pretty good handle on the general framework. If you don’t, novels like this almost always have multiple third person POVs and very short chapters, with a huge cast of characters to draw the reader into the town’s story. The villains are often cosmic/supernatural in nature, as a human killer is a lot less able to support the goal of narratives like this: take a lovely town, flip it upside down, expose it (and, subsequently, humanity’s) dark underbelly. In theory (!) I like stories like these. However, a common stumbling block they face is how deeply characterization suffers due to the breadth of the subject matter. You could argue the town is the true protagonist of stories like these, but that doesn’t change the fact that the pillars holding it up are paper-thin and archetypical characters with no nuance or complexity. It makes it very difficult to emotionally invest in a story whose characters are no more than, say: Tortured Artist, Every Man, Nympho Lady, Cool Girl, School Bully, Slimy Mayor, etc.

Speaking of IT, one of my most pressing issue with horror novels in general: why are we all trying to be Stephen King? Money, fame, fortune, I know. But Stephen King is already Stephen King. The position has been filled! I can’t count how many horror novels I’ve read that are blatant King ripoffs. Maybe it’s a pop fiction thing in general, but the blandly descriptive conversational tone of his prose is something I immediately clock when someone else decides to ape it. It’s not a particularly unique style, but he’s famous and prolific enough that any horror author who tries it is going to suffer comparisons. More specifically, the way the villain in Devil’s Creek contacts/possesses/speaks to his victims is so reminiscent of Pennywise in IT that it’s almost laughable. Like, man, way to steal your schtick from an interdimensional alien clown. I’m someone who strongly encourages artists to steal what they love from other artists and use it in their own work, but when we get into the “Can I copy your homework?” / “Yeah just get a few wrong on purpose so it’s not exact” type exchanges I think that’s where some creative reevaluation may be called for.

Something I found very interesting about Devil’s Creek was the content warning at the beginning, something you rarely see in traditional publishing. This novel, unlike many others (GRRRRRR), has an in-depth summary on the back. This novel is also not pretending to be anything other than a horror novel. So, why, exactly, it has a content warning escapes me. If you examine the exterior of the book, it’s pretty clear what you’re in for, even if you don’t know specifics. The content warning, however, almost reads like a breathlessly overdone A03 tags list. The author seems to take pleasure from informing the reader how icky and yucky and horrifying the novel’s contents are, while simultaneously patting himself on the back for his unflinching portrayal of the darkness lurking within us. It’s a strange mix of wanting to have your cake and eat it, too. You get the shock factor of portraying societal taboos like incest and childhood sexual assault without any of the potential backlash, because you pre-empted your novel with a hand-wringing “Don’t like, don’t read” warning. Maybe it’s my years of severely misplaced stress and anxiety over tagging my own fanfiction properly to ensure I don’t cause a single person anywhere ever a single second of disquiet, but I feel compelled to remind readers that when they pick up a novel, they are assuming a certain amount of risk that they will come across content that upsets them. Everything we do involves risk assessment, including consuming art.

I read a lot of horror. I know what I like and what I don’t. If I make an error in judgement and read something I don’t like, that’s on me. I’m not going to go wag my finger at the author and demand restitution (though I may write a rude blog post about them, as is my RIGHT). However, in our current cultural climate, people seem to take perverse pleasure in doing exactly that (which I’m guessing is what prompted Devil’s Creek’s content warning, along with the general cultural cache of being such a Good Guy that you tagged your horror novel as “horror”). Not horror related, but I once got in hot water because I dared to not tag “Alcohol used as a coping mechanism” and “recreational drug use” (separate instances) on Dean Winchester Beat Sheet. I don’t think the commenters actually gave two shits about the story, they just wanted to call me out for not tagging miniscule things because in their eyes, I was doing crimes and they were tripping over themselves to give me a citation. I bent to the alcohol tag (still a bit absurd, frankly, considering the contents of the source material where Dean drinks like a fish), but couldn’t bring myself to content warn for college students smoking the devil’s lettuce. I’m sure you understand.

So in that sense, I understand a horror author wanting to cover their ass. People make a hobby out of cherry picking you and offering up worst-faith interpretations of everything you write without any interest in the actual content of your work. I’ve been there. I get it. But I think doing such a thing in a horror novel is a bit goofy. You can’t claim you’re writing with unbridled edginess (the author does make a point to say he went balls-out on this one and didn’t pull any punches) and in the same breath sheepishly dig the toe of your shoe into the dirt while aw-shuksing about what a nasty bad boy you are. Own your work or don’t, dude.

The funniest thing about this is that the book isn’t even that spo0o0o0o0oky. Like most “Dead Dove: Don’t Eat” fanfiction, a lot of horror authors think that just checking off the full list of sex/murder/sacrilegious taboos is enough to count as scary, when really, they’re just unpleasant, and not in a fun or interesting way. A lot of horror is edgy but not scary, offering up a whole lot of talking points and phrases that kneejerk generate outrage and upset without any of the necessary substance. For example, the six half-siblings in Devil’s Creek were molested as children while they were still in the cult. Obviously, that’s something that can cause severe emotional issues. The fact that they went to therapy is brought up a few times, but to be honest, it mostly just reads as texture. Just a checkbox to ensure the reader knows how evil and terrible the cult is, without any real care or thoughtfulness dedicated to what happened and how it emotionally affected the children beyond: wasn’t that soooo fucked up! And then my next line of thinking is: okay, then why include it as all? It would have been just as spooky to have the kids not be assaulted— all the other creepy cult stuff was still going on. But then, the author couldn’t have included how one of the female kids grew up to be a slutty incestuous nympho who “seduced” her brother when they were teenagers and can’t wait for daddy to come back from the dead and fuck her! Another funny thing about the trigger warning: the author self-importantly warns the reader about a lot of the disturbing content, but not the deeply misogynistic choices he himself made as a writer regarding many of the female characters. What an interesting oversight.

For fun, I would like to share some of the funniest parts of this novel with you. No, this novel is not meant to be funny. That did not stop me from laughing out loud, multiple times, while reading:

“Tyler had everything he wanted, or so he thought— until the day this beautiful silver-haired queen walked into his life.”

“Tyler tried not to stare but found he couldn’t look away. Even with the imperfections, the wrinkles, sagging flesh, and darkened spots of age, she was beautiful in his eyes… Twenty years ago, the look would’ve set him on fire. Even now, it set his heart ablaze, but this old machine was nearly out of gas.” (This is an especially funny passage because the woman in question is a few months out from dying of aggressive pancreatic cancer, so, like, she’s not looking so good on account of the CANCER, but this guy still somehow manages to make it about how yucky old women are in general with their (!!!) wrinkles (!!!).

“He wasn’t going to fuck this up, no sir, but he still needed to know if he was on his own.” (One of MANY examples of the King-isms that are just fucking rife through the whole novel. Not only that, but more than one character POV uses this quirk of prose, and it’s so distracting, like, yeah, you can be voice-y, but this novel is already a LOT, please, have mercy.)

The phonetic southern accents are a lot. I’m not against all phonetic accents, I think there are ways to do it, but the amount of “darlin’” and “ya”s present are… a lot. And do not convey a particularly “authentic” southern experience, says the very non-southern non-American who definitely knows all about an authentic southern experience.

“Satisfied Genie’s grandson wouldn’t die on his watch, Tyler turned his attention to the bleeding bitch [Genie’s daughter] on the other side of the basement.”

There are sections from a character’s journal, which include newspaper/academic articles, photos, drawings, etc. For some reason, the character who wrote the journal… signed some of her entries. She signed… her own journal entries. Almost as if she was a character in a novel who expected them to be used as a storytelling device… hmm…

“‘Go spread the gospel as you once spread your legs, child.’” (This one really got me, I well and truly LOL’d. The overuse of the word “child” in this novel to refer to religious congregants is so trite and embarrassing, it’s like an actual child trying to write their version of a Grown Up story).

The religious jargon. I sleep. Lamb, hallelujah, amen, son, virtue, flock, sin, lord, suffer, prophet, atone, child, blah blah blahhhhhhhhhhhh none of it means anythinggggggggggggg. I don’t even know if annoying fictional preachers need more or less thesauruses. If I thought the author was using this endless snooze-fest proselytizing to satirize how empty religious doctrine actually is, I would be on board. As it stands, every line of dialogue spoken by the bad guy is just those words shaken around in a hat and plucked out at random. None of it means shit, amen 🙏

This novel was nominated for the Bram Stoker award, if you were curious.

The edginess vs spookiness is one of the reasons I gravitate toward ghosts/the supernatural over other subgenres. Even if the novel sucks, it doesn’t lend itself to edginess in the same way religious/gore/serial killer subgenres do. Kind of the whole point of ghosts is that they’re old and out of touch— the opposite of edgy. That doesn’t mean there aren’t goofballs writing supernatural horror— just that their goofballery is harder to display. Actually, this discussion brings to mind another terrible “haunted town” religious horror novel called Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky (yes, that Stephen Chbosky). The only time I ever wish I still had my Goodreads account is so I can revisit how much I hated a certain book, and YES SIR, I hated that one, too. I should probably quit while I’m behind on this subgenre.

My problem is I really believe that good, hard-hitting “haunted town” horror should be a thing. I keep trying to will it into existence. It’s not a forgiving genre, for some of the reasons described above, and countless others. Placing an identity onto an entire town makes no logical sense. You only have to go to one trendy microbrewery in one trendy city or suburb to know they’re all the same. No matter how quirky the local artisans try to convince you otherwise, Williamsburg is no different than Scmilliamsburg halfway across the Midwest. I feel very similarly to Canada and its desperately crafted national identity— say all you want about Canadians being polite and Tim Hortons and hockey and lumberjacks, Schmanada is never far behind. Also, from someone who’s lived here her whole life, don’t believe it. Canadians are assholes and Tim Horton’s is not worth your money.

I also rebel against the idea that these narratives often push, of darkness lurking just beneath the surface of every person. It’s just not that simple, and this is coming from a certified misanthrope who thinks everyone sucks. What’s funny about these narratives is at the same time, they often suggest that corrupting influences are entirely external (possession, something in the water, some kind of spiritual influence or magic, etc), and have nothing to do with the individual person. Like “bad” is a switch we can flip inside us… just like the vampires on the hit CW show, The Vampire Diaries (but only sometimes, it’s complicated, or just inconsistent, hush).

Horror novels so often rush to brand themselves as adult content due to their graphic nature, when in reality, their perception of the world is entirely without nuance, rendering them deeply immature and uninteresting. Religious novels especially seem so deeply unwilling to engage with the complexities and personal nature of spirituality that it’s like… what’s the point, dude? Devil’s Creek is convinced it has something to say because the majority of the townsfolk are very religious and conservative, and they hate anyone different than them (classic Us vs The Other). This is explored through two main channels: racism (the town has a history of KKK activity) and… being a punk. I don’t think I need to explain the impact of the racism part. Being a punk, however… well, there actually is a lot of pain in a world where you grow up as an emo goth myspace loser in a square town. I’m making light of the concept, while at the same time acknowledging that with the right story and author, a teenage punk feeling confused and out of place in a world defined by rigid social roles who rebels against them as a result is a compelling narrative, if done right. Any narrative can be compelling… if done right... if ya write it good. Devil’s Creek just reads like prose written by a fully grown adult who got teased because he wore a shirt with a skull on it to math class when he was fifteen.

I haven’t written a lot of horror, but I’ve written some. It can be a powerful genre to write, and powerfully cathartic. It’s like a good rant or a good journaling session or finally plucking out a bad splinter. It feels good to get the bad out. Unburdening yourself like that does not leave a lot of room for nuance, not when you’re so lost in the sauce and exorcising the demons of your past (or present). Am I going to be even-headed when unloading years of nightmares and traumatic experiences into a Word doc, or am I going to puke it up in one great heave like I just overindulged on deeply discounted November 1st Halloween candy? To me, it’s going to look like a Van Gogh; all that pain, that I am intimately familiar with and have spent years nursing, on display! But, vomit is vomit. And if your agent/editor doesn’t have your back? Or if your target audience has terrible taste? Finger meet uvula, here we go again.

(Speaking of editors, the editing in this novel is terrible. I don’t know what the hell is going on in publishing the last few years, but, much like a haunted town horror novel, SOMETHING must be in the water, because so many editors absolutely suck at their jobs. This novel alone forgot italics multiple times, has incredibly repetitive sentences, is way overlong and samey, and in one memorable instance, left a random, stray letter ‘z’ at the end of a chapter, like someone sneezed while they had the final draft open and accidentally hit it.)

I’ve written before about my own journey on overwrought emotionality and the concept of Muchness. As I allude to in that post, this concept has proven very important to me in my understanding of the horror genre. More of something— more blood, more gore, more murder, more sex, more general nastiness— is not always good. It’s not a simple equation where “1 blood + 1 blood = 2 bloods and > blood = > scary”. It’s not necessarily scarier for a character to get murdered with ten axe swings as opposed to two.

If I may, (and I will, because I can), allow me a comparison. In Devil’s Creek, after all the “apostles” (townspeople) are forcibly infected by the devil’s goo (ichor? sludge? who cares), they parade in the street, get naked, and start bangin! They do other stuff, too (infect others with the devil’s gooichorsludge), but a great deal of attention is paid to the fact that full grown adults are, like, having sex. Some of it is rape-y, but at the same time it’s confusing because they’re also all in evil rapture about it? It’s weird in the sense that when you think about it, the book is basically saying… sex between adults is bad? I get you don’t want to see adults having sex in public, and you certainly don’t want to see non-consensual acts being performed in public. But sex, on its own, is just sex. Also, the devil preacher calling women sluts and whores, but also condoning incest and public orgies (and homosexuality, weirdly enough? The devil doesn’t mind if you’re gay, but if you’re a woman? Fuck You.). I’m confused. I think the trick is as long as you hate women, you’re clear? What the cult actually believes in this novel is incredibly ill-defined, especially for how much page space gets wasted on marshmellow-mouthed religious mumbo jumbo.

In a moment on the lips (the anti-famous MDZS horror fic I wrote a few years ago), sex also plays a huge role. I would argue that sex playing a huge role has a reason beyond “sex bad” or “sex societal taboo”. Wei Wuxian has had very specific sexual experiences in that fanfiction that haunt, and, well, bedevil him a bit, and drive much of the plot. His trauma from his time in the Burial Mounds is explored, lending depth and meaning to his actions after he finally emerges, manifesting as hypersexuality, misogyny, disordered eating, etc. Obviously, those are generally modern concepts to apply to a story that takes place in a fantasy period of far-flung history, but I like to think I did an okay job melding everything together regardless. I was very intrigued by the idea of writing something hard and unpleasant, but not without merit. Not to fluff myself up too much, but a lot of horror misses the “merit” part of that.

I also find the baldness of horror quite interesting. You see it in other genres, but I think it rears its shiny head in unique ways in the horror space. Writing plainly may seem exactly that, but it’s not that simple. Barren, stark prose has its place. It’s punchy, meaningful, rustic. Bluntly writing something like:

“‘You should drug me so I can’t move at all. So that I’m barely conscious. And you just fuck me. Is that your plan? I couldn’t escape or say no. You just rape me so hard, and I have to take it. Because I’m weak and you’ve kidnapped me.’”

Was a very specific stylistic choice I made for Wei Wuxian in this story. On the face of it, this isn’t so different than, “Go spread the gospel as you once spread your legs, child,”. Dialogue so blunt you can only laugh. However, I would say the main difference here is how this baldness is paid off. Wei Wuxian’s endless stream of nastiness is a) a spin on how he runs his mouth in canon, b) a product of his trauma, and perhaps most importantly, c) a projection of his trauma, as much of the reason he speaks like this to Lan Wangji is a result of hallucinations/experiences he had with an evil facsimile of Lan Wangji while he lived in the Burial Mounds (the existence of which Lan Wangji isn’t even aware of… aw). Preacher Go Spread is just like… a bad guy. He’s just a bad guy swanning around being bad, hating god, loving the devil. Depth of a teaspoon, that one, just like the rest of the characters.

There’s more to writing than good characters. There’s more to writing than complexity. According to the pull quotes on the Devil’s Creek covers, this book is the scariest book you’ll ever read. According to the little awards emblem on the front, this book was good enough to get nominated for a fairly prestigious genre award. Sometimes… I just don’t know, man. Maybe I’m a born hater. But I do like some things! And a lot of the things I like aren’t even objectively (or subjectively, lol) that good. Maybe the truth of the matter is I’m just really, really good at working myself into a tizzy over random things that don’t matter, and then mediocre novels like Devil’s Creek just happen to be in my line of sight at the time.

Or maybe, unlike the characters in Devil’s Creek, I’m a complex person who can’t be summarized by my character archetype alone.  

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Hey, happy Halloweek! In honor of the season, it’s time for some drive-by horror movie recommendations. These are specifically geared toward scaring the shit out of yourself, so if that’s not your preferred type of scare, KEEP OUT!!!!!

• Insidious

• The Conjuring

• Ouija: Origin of Evil (I know, trust me)

• Grave Encounters

• 1408

• Hell House LLC

• Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (if you want to feel deeply unsettled and bad inside)

• The Poughkeepsie Tapes (also if you want to feel deeply unsettled and bad inside)

Despite my grave existential misgivings about the genre as a whole, I do love horror. There is something incredibly delicious about going to see a horror movie in theaters, sitting through the previews, and the moment the opening credits start, sinking down into my seat and asking myself, why… have I done this. Just to feel something, anything at all? Maybe. No need to interrogate it too much.

I don’t tend to celebrate Halloween beyond watching scary movies, and I will proudly be continuing that tradition this year, but it’s actually more like I’m doing nothing special at all because I can’t bring myself to scrape the bottom of the horror barrel anymore. The amount of half-watched z-level horror movies in my various “continue watching” lists… there’s the true scare of the season. I have rewatched Grave Encounters and the Hell House LLC series already this year, but I haven’t watched 1408 and daydreamed about having the same job as John Cusack’s character in a while…

anyway. I have three more horror novels in my stack from the library, so I guess cross your fingers for me? They won’t be good, because they never are, but they might not be so bad they fill me with the wrong kind of despair! Tyler’s life may have been changed by a silver haired queen, but he’s got nothing on my silver linings.