Category: Newsletter

New Year, New Resolve

January 4, 2023

Hey peeps, it’s been a lifetime, huh?

Sorry. It’s been difficult to reach out, difficult to face this shit. I had really high hopes that the ADHD meds were going to give me my brain back, but after some more scans, more info — more time — things are proving to be complicated.

For some of you, this might be the very first newsletter you get from me. (Who the fuck is Sadie Sins? Wait, is that the writer of The Paranormal Academy for Troubled Boys? Demon Bonded? That really weird monster fuck fic?) Yeah, I still live. I used to write these things weekly. I used to be a very enthusiastic, fuck it all and write a ton of words, oversharing everything type of person. Life has just kept knocking me down though, and I’ve become rather, I dunno… disheartened, if I’m real. Quiet and cautious. But it’s a new year, my mind is set on hitting some writing goals already, and yeah, we’ll see how it goes.

The Good, The Bad, The Medical

So… where to start? I guess we can do a good news, bad news, good news thing. Try to balance shit out. I guess good news would be… fuck, I honestly don’t know the last thing I updated with you peeps. Let’s see… Okay, so let’s start with the BEST good news. We adopted 2 kittens!

Caught! Harley and Mal caught wrestling on a decorative bedspread.
Harlequin chewing on a paintbrush
Malachite wide eyed and adorable

Harlequin is the ridiculously precious pink nosed tabby, and her brother Malachite is the handsome tuxedo. It was a gift to be able to adopt siblings (my twin brother and I were adopted together, and although not cats, I know that going through big changes like that is much easier with a friend.) They came to us slightly feral, but now they’re cuddlebugs (with boundaries) and are getting along well with our two senior cats. These babies have really been magical. They make sure I’m awake at the right time of day (food time) and then let me sleep until they want to play. They needed a lot of attention when they came to us as kittens, and it’s been worth it. They really are the sweetest.

Badish news would be… the adrenal insufficiency. We figured out it’s secondary, meaning my adrenals are still currently functioning, just that my pituitary isn’t sending the info to produce cortisol. The end result is the same — lifetime of low cortisol — but yeah, the treatment is working and a lot of my fatigue and anxiety has been resolved.

Also, they found a cluster of cysts in my pituitary. No clue if they’re what’s causing the lack of communication with the adrenals, but it’s something to watch just in case other issues start happening that could be caused by the cysts changing size.

Some amazing news is that I’ve taken down the clean room! My allergies are under control, and the reactions I have are nothing like they were when they were knocking me out or causing screaming pain. I still have issues, but as long as I’m not exposed to anything so extreme like the house being taken over with mold, there’s no reason to believe that my symptoms will ever be that bad again.

I’ve been arting a bit, getting into sculpture lately. I started because when Halloween hit, I didn’t want to deal with the mold allergies when carving a pumpkin, so I carved a foam pumpkin — which I think came out pretty damn cool.

monster pumpkin with wicked tongue carved out of foam and foamclay and dripping in uv resin, surrounded by festive squash and corn

I’ve been trying to get a couple of other things made, but it’s been more difficult. I think I’m not so good with small art, fine details (even though I love details.) I worked on this painting for a bit, doing a mix of acrylic paints and posca markers.

I want to finish it, but to be real, traditional painting needs certain lighting I’m not sure my eyes can handle atm.

Fox hiding in shadows as a mouse sneaks among brambles and raspberry blood dripping teacups

As for why it’s not going as planned, aka, the worst bad news…

This is actually really difficult for me to talk about. I’m still processing it, trying to face what it means for me long term. It’s basically why I haven’t had an update for nearly a year now, and a reason for a lot of issues when it came to art and writing, reading too. I was hoping time would solve this. That getting the adrenal insufficiency dealt with, and the ADHD treated would result in this, just, going away. Because why would all this shit hit at once, you know? But it hasn’t been fixed. It’s actually gotten worse in some ways.

Exotropia

I guess the basic explanation is my eyes are fucked. It’s a condition called exotropia, where both my eyes are turning out toward the sides of my head. It’s like being cross-eyed, but in a reverse, lizard-esque version. There is no cure, no surgery option offered (and there’s a lot of mixed info on if surgery actually helps), no thing to pinpoint and resolve that will then fix this. I had hoped — and hope is such a fucked concept when I think of it — but I had hoped that it was the cysts in my pituitary putting pressure on the optic nerve because, hey, that could be something solved. But no. This is just genetics. I hit 40 and my eyes expired.

It’s not completely new — I was in an eyepatch as a kid — but it has progressed into something worse than what they thoughts was a lazy eye back then. My first true understanding of the symptoms was about a year and a half ago when I went in to get my eyes checked because 2 dimensional objects were looking 3 dimensional with certain colors floating above the surface. I was getting clear blind spots in my vision, and weird panic attacks in the car when driving and as a passenger. My brain couldn’t track the movement of the vehicles properly, and for whatever reason it was triggering anxiety and causing overwhelm.

And that’s the root of the issue here: this eye thing isn’t just messing with my vision; it’s fucking up my executive functioning, exasperating the ADHD. Because my brain is struggling to process the data coming in from my eyes, it’s failing to record things into memories at the same time, failing to work at a speed of thought I’m used to, failing to focus on tasks, etc.

There are some treatments I just started that have helped. Eye drops, closing my eyes for half a minute throughout the day, gentle washing of the eyes, using a humidifier. I take migraine preventive meds every morning — because the eye strain leads to migraines that can last for days otherwise. I wear prism lenses that help focus my eyes forward even if they’re looking sideways. I need to get a proper set of screen glasses that are basically like reading glasses, making my prescription slightly lower to help with eye strain. When I first clipped a pair of reading glasses over my glasses, I started to cry. It was such a relief, almost like every muscle in my face relaxing for the first time.

I’ve currently been experimenting a lot with my environment, altering the color and intensity of the lights, painting and moving things around to make my room less visually cluttered. Because I struggle to visually process with my eyes going in different directions, too many things in my field of vision can lead to overwhelm, and from that overwhelm comes all the executive dysfunctions. And it doesn’t take much — I might not even notice it as it’s happening, such as the angle of light creating a glare on my glasses — but the consequences are pretty intense. Even with the migraine preventative routine, the pain still starts up, nausea and photo-sensitivity hits, the eyes grow tired super quick, and I can lose the day.

To make things pretty much shit, screens cause an extreme amount of eyestrain for me. The color of the light directed at my eyes, the brightness, movement, any flashing of images, slowing of blinking. I currently can’t see my cursor as I type this — chasing it to edit is maddening and causes pain. I actually wrote this on the 1st, and then it took 3 days to be able to try again, with me first changing the fonts, colors, and font size of the writing app just to make it easier — but they do help. There are things to help, even if it can’t solve the problem.

The blunt reality is, I spend a lot of my time with my eyes not focusing on anything. I didn’t know it — my normal has been to have this condition be less intense and to just end up in a horrible mood and be exhausted up until now. I used to get a lot of migraines, but I had no idea of the connection to my eyes, to the digital art, to the writing/editing. I have somehow managed to see the world around the edges of my vision most years and not notice. It’s only when I’m asked to truly focus — like on a computer screen when typing or making art — that my eyes are moving as directed, focusing on detail, and it fucking hurts.

Resolutions

So, that’s where I am right now. I’ve basically finished the reference database — it’s empty of data, because I’m going to have to read my old stories to be able to fill it in, and reading has been misery for years now — but it’s mostly complete. I feel so much better physically and energetically since getting the allergies and adrenal insufficiency treated. My anxiety is damn near gone. I can join the world again — not at night; I’m painfully photosensitive in the dark and with blue/intense light. Now it’s just facing this one giant, life defining thing and trying to find a way to say fuck you to it so that I can be creative again.

I saw a neuropthomologist only a month ago, and kind of had to shut a lot of things down to get through the holidays. Even though I’ve been dealing with the condition for a long time now, I feel as though it’s all new now that I’ve gotten the answer. I had hope before then. Fuck, I had hope after, thinking if I just didn’t strain my eyes, I’d be able to go back to doing my thing. I left that office with so many tools to help my eyes. Then I tried to make some computer art for the holiday after a few weeks of following the eye treatment protocol, and the pain I went through for a simple line art — still haven’t finished the damn thing — was so intense, lasting days after, I was just crushed by it all. It was only minutes looking at that screen before the pain started. I’m probably never going to be able to make another book cover again…

And that’s absolutely heartbreaking in a way I can’t fully go into right now. Because before I was a writer, I was an artist. Digital art was the most affordable, ease of use route to go, and I miss it so much. If I had known about the condition back when I stopped making art, maybe this would have been easier. Back when suddenly I couldn’t handle the bad mood I would always end up in, the headaches, the tension in all my muscles while making art. When I just couldn’t be interested in making it anymore, aka, I couldn’t focus on the task… maybe I would have seen how it was the same with how I stopped reading years before then after being a reader for the majority of my life. My brother has ADHD and he can still read, but I just assumed my ADHD kept me from focusing on reading. Nope, it’s the eyes turning.

But would knowing have helped? Or would I have just felt like all the things I loved were being stolen away starting in my teens? I got to believe that I was just bored by the stuff I used to love, that I was chasing novelty. I didn’t understand that novelty was the only way to help me override the way my eyes were glitching out. I needed something to drive me into the struggle of seeing; I needed a new challenge to stay with the pain.

And really, I don’t know any other way after so long.

So, fuck it. This is the one life I’ve got. There is so much shit I’ve never chosen for myself that I’ve had to deal with. I would much rather deal with the consequences of the things I do choose for myself, such as to write even with fucked up eyes. So I’m problem solving, as I do, experimenting, and just letting my inner rhino blindly push forward no matter the mess I make.

My eyes are fucked whether I use them or not; doing the thing isn’t going to make them worse. It’s just going to hurt and turn me into a grumpy ass with a migraine most days. Fine. There are so many people out there who hate their jobs, and feel like shit as a result. I love my job and if I feel like shit, that’s just part of being a person with fucked up eyes who works.

Learning How

Balancing life with creativity just isn’t something that comes naturally to me. Maybe, in some twisted way, this eye thing will force me to learn. I’ll have to take breaks. Sure as fuck can’t do this for hours upon hours a day like I used to. I’ll have to work with the speech to text software. I’ll definitely have to invest in an editor if I ever want to publish again; I can’t do that sort of eye strain to myself. Editing is hell — editing this newsletter is hell, and as hard as I try, I know I’m fucking it up and getting too tired to care. But it’s a newsletter. Expectations are far lower. If I have weird headers every few paragraphs to help my eyes organize data, no one will call me out on it the same way as if I tried that when writing a novel.

Really, I have nothing left to wait on; I got my answers as to what’s been happening to me. It’s time to get back to creating. I need to finish painting my room and hiding any visual clutter. I have to get proper glasses for screen work, but the clip ons are enough to get started. And as I go forward, I’ll be adapting, looking for the right lighting, timing, computer set up, etc, to allow me to write with as little pain as possible.

But really, I need to break the habit of the last 3 years where I fail and give up whenever I’ve tried to sit down and write. I have my answer, I understand why it’s not easy, and I need to accept and push through to get a win. It’s partially why I’ve been arting again. Every win matters, even if when my mindset is low, I just see the pile of things I can’t finish. But just because art is hard, doesn’t mean I can’t art. Just because the screen is impossible to work with doesn’t mean I can’t sculpt. I just sanded and varnished a tabletop yesterday and installed it as a new desk — seeing with my hands, working in space helps. With the right lighting in my room, I can paint, even if it’s not close to the same as my digital art. It’s art in a different form.

I think, starting out, I might spend some time on an easier story, something that doesn’t require me to remember a lot to move forward right now. Reading through hundreds of thousands of words to catch up in Demon Bonded or PATB might just break me if it’s where I start after all this time.

Like, it’s been years, and shit as I want to admit it, I don’t know if I can do this. Writing used to be my escape from the pain happening around me. Now I’m… what? Choosing pain to be able to write? That’s the blunt fucking reality of it. This isn’t actually ever going to get better. If creativity wasn’t a part of who I am at an essential level, rationally I would never choose this. Rationally, this is a self destructive path where I should instead be looking to accept my limits and live a different life. But this is who I am, and is the only way I can truly be fulfilled, so, yeah. It is what it is.

I’m probably not going to talk about it much going forward. Maybe if I find something that really helps, I’ll share the good news. But this is going to be my default. It’s been my default the last 18 months, and I’ve suffered every damn time I tried to do basic shit with my eyes. (I currently feel like my left eye, left top teeth, and right temple are twisting in my skull just from trying to navigate this webpage to do a final edit and post this.) I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it. It has to become background noise, otherwise that feeling of fragility is going to win. I can either be resolved, or I can feel victimized; I can’t be both, and only one option allows me to continue to create the stories I love.

A Fresh Leap

I self published my first story back in November of 2015. I had no idea what it would mean for me, what this writing thing would become for me. Hope. Self empowerment. Connection. It became a part of my identity, and I wasn’t prepared to deal with losing it so suddenly after the mold hit in 2019. Writing has been my lifeline through an intense ride of chronic illness, and even as I know that treating the ADHD, adrenal insufficiency, and allergies has solved the chronic fatigue and pain, to think that I could still lose that lifeline after solving so many problems is just… the worst.

I have been waiting so patiently, trying to do things right, trying to make sure I don’t fuck up everything I’ve built. But that’s also a big problem with me; my stupid brain thinks there’s a “right” way to do things. Such madness we embrace every time our thoughts feel like universal laws. So I’m here in 2023 to fuck it up — to take a chance just like I did in 2015, and hope for the best. I had no regrets then. That leap into the unknown brought me everything. I have no reason to believe it will be any different this time. There’s always so much more to gain than lose.

I hope through the good and bad of last year, you’ve found something that is driving you forward. I guess I’m a grow towards the sun type of person, even when feeling like shit is so much easier. It makes a difference — it brings change when things are unbearable if they stay the same. It’s good to shake off the stagnation and create a new path to follow. So here’s to a new year with new paths, new hopes and joys, even if they might not look like what we expect. It’s still joy.

Happy New Year, peeps, and I hope life is kind. And if it’s not, I hope you can still find kindness to direct within and without. Peace.

I’m Back! ? With ADHD. ?

January 19, 2021

Hey peeps

It has been a super long time. I never actually wanted it to go this long between newsletters, but the topic of this newsletter is basically also the explanation of why it took this long: ADHD. And with this topic comes a lot of emotions that need to be processed, and a lot of research I had to take on where I needed to understand exactly what it all meant. I can’t even claim that I am past this process, only that today I feel in a good enough place to be able to talk about it and face these really complicated feelings of vulnerability that come with it.

I’ve never been one to hide what I’m going through, or even just hide facets of myself. That’s not really who I am on any level. But I think partially that comes from this place of being happy with who I am; I’m proud of the things I’ve accomplished and overcome and how I’ve grown to be a better person as a result. These are not feelings that I remotely associate with learning that the struggles of my brain for so many years has to do with ADHD.

I’ve read a lot of people who are in a very positive mindset about it, are likely much further into their journey of processing their ADHD, and they talk about it as a gift as they focus on all the things they can do as a result. I am not there. Not remotely. I am angry with my brain for not working the way I want it to, and I’m angry with myself for not being able to make it work the way I want it to. I have lost so much time that I could have been putting toward writing or making art or building my business or just anything — living my life! — all because dopamine and norepinephrine aren’t getting into the exact parts of the brain they need to get into, resulting in these life disruptive symptoms.
 

for starters, my brain wasn’t working in the cleanroom…

So, I came to learn about my ADHD in a somewhat roundabout way. It was a couple of elements that honestly were built on a lifetime of how the fuck did I miss this. When I first realized I had a huge problem was actually this year after I completed building the cleanroom and I was no longer being bombarded with allergens. I was seeing huge improvements in so much of my health, but something was seriously wrong. I couldn’t focus or remember, I couldn’t keep my mind still on a subject long enough to pin it down. And when it came to writing, I couldn’t load the information in my brain of the books I was working on long enough to then take that information and creatively move forward into the story. My working memory was failing spectacularly, and I had no idea why.

I thought it was brain damage from the last mold attack, but I couldn’t understand it because my brain seemed to be working better during the time of mold hitting it compared to when now I was free of all allergens. I thought maybe there was a leak in the cleanroom or something, where allergens were still getting in — something I missed. But no. So I decided to deal with it, the way I always do, and problem solve and find a solution. The first thing I needed to do was figure out how to do basic tasks in my life. It took me hours to start my day, hours, and not just because I was fatigued all the time but also because I couldn’t remember to do simple shit. Couldn’t remember to take my meds or my supplements. Couldn’t remember to eat, never mind make food. Couldn’t remember to wash my face, or brush my teeth, or water the plants, or to get dressed, or to clean up around the house.

I ended up getting a smartwatch and set up all these notifications to remind me to do basic things. It worked for a bit, and then it didn’t work at all because I started to ignore the notifications. This thing that I literally set up to remind me to do things, my brain was now actively ignoring, and I couldn’t figure out why. So then I used these dry erase notecards and created tasks which I set up around my room as a visual reminder, because visuals were working for me as long as they were in my space. I couldn’t remember to look at my phone, or pay attention to my watch, but if this big card was right in front of my face I could remember to look and focus on it. But that wasn’t working much until I realized I needed to start writing down the times I did my tasks, to help me make time real to me. Because it was just slipping by. My brain wasn’t recording the minutes, and life/hours/days were just slipping by with me not getting basic shit done.

While struggling with this and attempting to create a structure that I could turn into a habit to just do basic things during the day, I was also looking for supplements to help. Brain boosters mostly, omega oils, neuron growers as I feared that this was some level of brain damage, and supplements to help with focus. I didn’t really have a name for anything that I was dealing with at the moment, ADHD wasn’t even on my radar, but I stumbled across a supplement that was used by individuals with ADHD who were trying to naturally deal with their ADHD symptoms after the stigmatization of their medication. The one I tried was specifically for focus and attention, and wasn’t really a supplement but a prescription drug in other countries but available in the US as a supplement. It seemed a little sketchy, but I was desperate, so I tried it — and it worked.
 

a little pill called aniracetam

It was like a light turned on my brain again, and I could write. Not only could I write, I did write; that was when I wrote the first two scenes of Demon Bonded Apprentices. And I thought this is it, this is the solution. I’ll just take this drug for the rest of my life, and my brain will work, and I’ll be able to write again. It had a very short half-life, which required three doses a day, and it was expensive, but it was still my answer and I was ecstatic.

Except this drug didn’t just do what it was supposed to do, it also impacted my serotonin levels. For whatever reason, this is not an aspect of my neurochemistry that can be raised without severe agitation and depression. SSRIs are extremely dangerous to me, and this particular focus drug didn’t just raise dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain, but also serotonin, making it unusable for me.

So the light in my brain turned off again. And my desperation and depression grew. I’d had the answer, but the side effects were too dangerous to pursue. And I couldn’t find anything else like it. I could learn enough about the drug to realize it was raising dopamine in the brain, but that was it. Then I came across a random YouTube video about executive function disorders connected to ADHD, and it all clicked into place.


 

executive dysfunction disorder courtesy of ADHD

In the video were explanations of what I was already doing to function in my life by creating the visual cues of the notecards around me to create a structure that I could rely on to remember to do things. As well as the focus on making time concrete through timers and writing it down to check in. The more I learned about what executive functions were, and what disorders in these functions look like, it was clear to me that this was exactly what I was struggling with. So I had found the names for the problems finally, and I had found the cure in regards to the need to get dopamine and norepinephrine into a certain part of my brain along with positive habits, and I also had a name for this condition, which was ADHD.
 

ADHD is highly heritable

The funny thing is, if it hadn’t been for me finding this video linking the very things I was doing to executive function disorders connected to ADHD, I wouldn’t have believed it. Because my twin brother has ADHD, and our behavior has never been the same. He was a hyperactive child, and I was not — well, I wasn’t hyperactive around other people. It’s apparently rather common for young women to repress hyperactivity as they follow social cues from the gender role they are placed in, while young men are not given those same social cues. And I also learned that ADHD doesn’t always present with hyperactivity. That ADHD can be overlooked in intelligent people because they’re very good at getting around the symptoms of their illness to a point. And it’s only once they reach the level where they can’t fake it anymore, that it all falls apart.

So how was I faking it? Well for one, I was writing term papers overnight and getting As on them. As long as I could get the work done, school wouldn’t notice HOW that was happening. And when I couldn’t get things done and school did notice, it always seemed to come back to the difficult childhood I’d had when in foster care. I wasn’t being held to the standards of my potential, which is why it was missed that my capabilities were limited in ways that matched the pattern of ADHD.

And honestly, being diagnosed at the same time as my brother when we were kids probably wouldn’t have done much. Our adoptive parents didn’t see his ADHD as something that should be medicated — our mom was afraid of the medication. And as my twin grew into adulthood, wondering why he couldn’t seem to feel or want things, he couldn’t motivate himself, he couldn’t focus on things outside of his hyperfocus of reading or video games, couldn’t seem to pull himself out of the depression that had followed him for so long, he never once connected it to his ADHD. And it’s only now, as I watched my emotions turn off, my motivation turn off, my spark for life and novelty and joy just disappear as dopamine failed to reach the correct part of my brain, that I can fully understand why everything was so much harder for him. Your brain is working against you, and everything is so much more effort than it should be, and eventually you just want to give in and stop trying.
 

the allergy link

There’s a bit of a dark irony in all this, as I came to understand why my symptoms were getting worse instead of better now that I was living in the cleanroom. The allergies were helping me focus. The overstimulation of my immune system as it was pushed into fight or flight mode every time I took a breath, was pushing my adrenals to flood chemicals which helped to transport dopamine into the brain. I grew up in a moldy basement from the years of 5 to 27, and when I left that house my immune system was set to critical as it had over targeted practically everything because of that long-term mold exposure. So even as my body was overreacting to everything and gaining huge amounts of inflammation and having these histamine responses that were draining dopamine from other parts of my body to give me Parkinson’s symptoms, the adrenals were using the stress response to get dopamine into the brain enough to get my executive functions to work.

This is why I didn’t become a writer until I was bed bound and sick from all these allergies. The only way I could overcome my ADHD enough to write books was by being in a body that was so overwhelmed and in a state of stress that it couldn’t move anymore. Before that point I could never stay/think still long enough to be a writer until in a body that was basically dying. It was the most horrifying realization, one that truly made me wonder if there would even be a future for me if ADHD treatment didn’t work.

I am currently in the middle of a 1 to 2 month long assessment by a psychologist who will decide if I have ADHD or not. At the same time I’m helping my brother get his health insurance finalized so that he too can start this process, get the assessment he needs, and finally get medication to treat what has completely interrupted his life. I am full of doubts and uncertainty, a lot of fear that at the end of this assessment this doctor will fail to see what is so clear to me after just the minimal amount of research — and I never stop at minimal when it comes to research. I’m scared that the medication won’t work, or that it’ll have a frustrating side effect like the other drug I tried that raised my serotonin levels. I’m scared of a lot of things because I see not just my life and future hanging on this diagnosis and getting access to appropriate treatment, but also a fair amount of my identity as a writer.

Writing was the first thing I’d ever been able to succeed at. I’ve been good at things before, but never consistent at them. Of course, now I see why — how ADHD has impacted so many facets of my life is almost impossible to count now that I can see it clearly. But that doesn’t mean these frustrations with myself, these feelings of failure to not do what I know I can do if only that damn switch will flip in my brain will suddenly evaporate just because I know about ADHD now. My nervous system still needs to believe it, and that is a much longer journey of processing.
 

estrogen is required to produce and transport dopamine to the brain

I’ve had one really amazing twist in all this, which was trying estrogen supplementation. Apparently as women age, their ADHD becomes more prominent as their estrogen levels lower. Hyperactivity can increase if there is an imbalance and testosterone is higher than estrogen, as well. I knew I was in perimenopause for some time now, at least for the last five years, but I didn’t think it was something that would be addressed until menopause itself. But after listening to a podcast directed at women with ADHD, I bought an OTC natural estrogen replacement cream from Amazon, and the changes have been amazing.

Not for my focus — I am possibly more distracted than before. But my working memory, my energy levels, my mood, and spark for life have all returned. I get up every morning feeling happy, and do all the things that I need to do, and I’m more aware of time and how it passes. And if things get a little complicated, I know how to just add in a visual cue to remind me of what to do that day, or set a timer or reminder for future events to keep me on track. And when my day is done I actually feel tired, and I can fall asleep for a change, and then actually sleep through the night. My back pain is mostly completely gone now. My quality of life has improved, even if certain aspects are still a struggle such as writing. That has been amazing, and I’m really grateful for this discovery.

I wish I didn’t live in this place of frustration with myself, and I know it’s going to be a while — maybe a lifetime to stop looking at this like some ridiculous failure. When I look back at the times I could write, I see the mad dash it was. The last book I wrote was in 10 days; for all the times I was telling myself that I could do this, I was missing the stress and anxiety that was fueling me as I ran for some arbitrary deadline just to be able to function. I’m hoping as I move forward that I will have a better relationship with myself about this. It’s funny, because I know I did this with PTSD; I learned to love myself after facing terrible trauma and the very natural survival instincts we have. I don’t know why it’s so hard to not feel betrayed by my brain, but that’s where I am right now. Even as I know that I have no control in this, I still blame myself for not having enough willpower to somehow overcome what is literally a structural disorder in the brain itself.
 

I hope you’re all dealing okay during this long pandemic, and if you’re in the US, the shitshow of watching a bunch of fascists try to take over the Capitol because half of them can’t understand that easily debunked conspiracy theories aren’t founded in reality. >_> Self care is extra important during stressful times, and I hope you’re all remembering to take care of yourself.

 

resources

If you find yourself interested in this and want to nerd out, here are some playlist — because reading is really difficult for me, even though I’m a writer, and videos/audio help:

?New Demon Bonded Scenes To Read?

August 15, 2020

Hey, babes!

So, some cool shit. You can read the first 2 scenes of Demon Bonded: Episode #12 up on the free part of the website. That page will be updated every time more of the story is, so feel free to check in whenever.

Wendy has a new book out, just released, that’s looking damn cool. It’s in KU for all you peeps who enjoy that program during these tough times. Check it.

 

Omega Chattel

At Zilly’s Chattel Farm, Alli is seen as an upstart Omega. But in reality, he is the victim of a brutal house-dad who wants to control him. Threatened with being institutionalized when he turns eighteen, Alli runs away.

Tarin is an Alpha who runs a small school from his own home for wayward Omegas. Three or four students at a time are all he can handle and his home is full. But when he meets Alli on the streets, he is compelled to bring him home.

Alli wants a better future for himself, better than selling himself on the streets, so he agrees to be a student, when what he really wants is Tarin himself. Tarin doesn’t sleep with his Omega students, and the one exception he made broke his heart.

But Alli is persistent. And not only does Tarin have a weakness for broken young men, there seems to be a spontaneous bond forming between them. The combination is turning hotter faster than they can keep up.

Non-shifter omegaverse, fated mates, age gap, virgin, knotting/bonding, high steam, HEA.

 

Back to Writing

I’m starting up writing again, and gonna be real, it’s a bit like wrestling my brain to focus… through barbed wire… while on fire. >_> While jumping back into Demon Bonded, which has been ignored far too fucking long, I came up with a super cute story focused on the apprentices. It’ll be a little mini side story… er, spin off? from the Demon Bonded world.

See, I had this really fun Liem story where he finally chooses a demon after being burned with his experience with Fido/Brave and that douchebag Tobias, but it was its own thing, you know? It felt more than a bonus story, more than just a little side thing, and it was going to be long enough to be multiple episodes—something I’ve never done with a bonus story. And, as we jump into the Aeternum, where Ky meets the apprentices of the time, I realized I really wanted to make a thief apprentice there to mad steal from the sorcerers of Blackstone Falls.

So, I thought, hey, why not just make it all its own thing where, well, Demon Bonded Apprentices are the focus. Liem can be his sadistic self as he tries to be a better person (while being a total asshole to the more dickish apprentices) and winning over a rather wild, violent relic who is very reluctant to trust anyone, and we could also have this super cute Cade sorcerer come in, playing dumb as he infiltrates the apprentice mentor program, while looking to get everything he can from the peeps running a demon slave trade out of the small town.

I don’t think it’ll be a super long story. Like, maybe five episodes tops… but it’s hard to say. You never know, sometimes characters do their own things and surprise you. Cade definitely has his eye on someone, and I’m pretty sure he’s going to steal him too by the time it’s all written. <3

Right now, I’m clinging to the creativity I’m feeling to help pull me through the damn misery of trying to organize my brain to write again. I was working on the interactive choose your own adventure, but realized it was only becoming this loop where I didn’t know how to move forward, so I decided I needed a more linear story to focus on for the moment. This mold thing is fucking hard—it’s like every time it hits, I have to remake my brain all over again to function the way I want. But fuck, it beats looking at the damn news and predicting a horrendous future, so yeah, gotta do the work. Gotta push through and just keep working at it until things flow again. I’m hoping I’ll be myself by the time I finish the Demon Bonded/Demon Bonded Apprentices episodes to jump right into the 3rd PATB episode.

 

Office!

Oh, shit, I finished setting up my office! It’s so weird to realize I haven’t done a newsletter in so long. @_@ Uh, I basically set up these dry erase note cards all over my office. One set is the completed outline of the next episode of PATB—yeah, I’m on that shit, just waiting for my brain to show up. (The energy needs some tweaking in the first part of the episode, just kinda dragging right now.) The other is focused on Demon Bonded, while I got an entire wall divided between fanfics, WIPs and audiobooks.

I realized this summer that not only did visuals help me comprehend what I had on my plate creatively, but it also made it more manageable. I’ve been doing a lot of things to find ways for anything but my brain to hold onto the info I’ve been juggling all this time in my head. With the way dopamine is lowered from allergy response, and the brain swelling and plain old neurological scrambling that comes along with mold exposure, having external constants where I can just reference my own notes about my books makes writing so much easier. Which I’m learning the hard way this week when writing Demon Bonded and realized I gotta stop and make an actual reference, otherwise this just isn’t going to happen. I already did this with PATB, which is why I was able to bang those two novels out—I had reference at my fingertips. But of course I forgot that was why until I failed to have that reference for Demon Bonded. @_@

It feels like this annoying busy work keeping me from what I want to do, but at the same time, I know if I don’t create a reference, I’m not going to move forward. (fucking adulting for a scrambled brain.) I hate it—it is so boring taking notes of my own stories—but I seriously can’t remember enough to not do the work.

So, yeah, that’s me. My cleanroom bubble is working, and as long as I stay out of moldy buildings, I’m pretty much 100%. It’s just getting my brain to remember the neurological pathways to do the shit it’s good at. Started up bullet journaling again, too.

Honestly, I watched my dad go through dementia, and I had to follow after him, you know, just see the trail of consequences of having a brain that just doesn’t want to do what it needs to do when his kidneys started failing. I am doing everything I can to not default there. It’s not fun. It is always going to feel like work. And if it’s easier on my loved ones, then yeah, I will do the damn work every single time. It becomes a series of habits to keep your head straight after something like this. Ideally, those habits will become default. But if they don’t, they don’t, so it’s better now to build a life where those habits are normalized and set into focus to get the best chance you can at healing.

 

Peace

Hope you peeps are doing well. I could tell you a zillion horror stories of all my fears since the US Congress decided they didn’t have to protect and support the American people during covid 19 and they just took a fucking month long vaca while letting unemployment insurance drop when our numbers are at a world wide worst, but yeah, with my brain the way it is, I gotta focus on less upsetting things. (but if a revolution is happening anytime soon, count me in.)

Shit’s tough. I think I get by helping others the little that I can. There’s something about feeling part of a community during a time when you see every thing working to divide us that feels a positive rebellion of its own. A smile is a rebellion against the assholes of the world. I don’t know when it became ‘everyone for themselves’ in this country of mine, but it’s a pretty disgusting, sociopathic mentality that has no place in crisis—it has no place in the future of humanity. We’re all in this together, whether we like it or not, so better to show up and be good to each other. At least, that’s my motto of the moment. 😉

Hope you’re all safe, all healthy, all happy.

?Of Cleanrooms, Interactive Novels and Politics?

June 22, 2020

Hey babes, I’m alive.

It’s been over two months since I checked in. >_> Sorry. Things are actually pretty good. It’s hard to put it in perspective because of how the country has been so crazy — I’m in the US with covid cases jumping up again as we ‘reopen,’ (why yes, we’re run by morons) and we’re in the middle of some long needed and 100% justified civil rights protests to support Black Lives Matter. It’s kinda hard to want to write anything about myself right now, because I feel like a grain of sand in the middle of these huge moments in history.

I’m a doer, a problem solver. When something breaks, I immediately think of a million ways to fix it, and then I experiment until I get the solution that works. So it’s hard to live in a country where fixing things isn’t a thing. We talk about innovation in the US, but all we innovate is how to part money from people’s wallets. It’s never about real change, and this place becomes ugly and decaying and stagnant as a result. There are so many in pain, living on vapors their entire lives who are never heard, never represented in this country. Sanders being brought down by status quo Joe Biden, the most conservative mouthpiece in the Democratic party — it breaks me every time to see how pathetic this country is for what we settle for while claiming we’re revolutionaries. (The revolution of sitting on our asses bitching about pointless shit. :/)

I’m really proud of the protests, of the changes being demanded, and I truly hope they don’t stop until real change comes. I have no love for the police, and even less respect or trust. No one’s life should be put above another, and no system should be in place to do exactly that.

But yeah, speaking of solving problems.

 

I made myself a cleanroom/bubble…

image of plastic wrapped shelves and zippered doorway to cleanroom

plastic wrapped shelves

image of plastic wrapped bedroom, no furniture

bedless, furnitureless bedroom

image of plastic wrapped office

the office, plastic wrapped and tubbed

I transformed my moldy bedroom and living room into an allergy free zone by building an internal structure out of PVC pipe and wrapping it all in plastic sheeting, basically a bubble inside the room. I ensured there was enough space all around so that the bubble didn’t touch the walls, creating a channel of air where the AC and heater could continue to temperature control all around the bubble. Also sectioned it off from the rest of the main house to ensure that any of that moldy air wouldn’t mix with the non cleanroom living space.

image of air scrubber connected to vent system

air scrubber for the win

I then used an air scrubber to pull air in through one intake into a sectioned off area in the bubble (basically zippered it off) where the air is then filtered and pushed out into the cleanroom through these really simple vents I made with the plastic sheeting. It creates the positive air flow required to make this work, (because air scrubbers naturally create a negative air flow that would readily pull all the moldy air from outside into the space if not careful.) There are two exhausts of the filtered air, one going into the office area, and the other into the bedroom area, that way, each room can be shut off from each other just in case the worst happens and one is compromised with mold/allergens. And if it is contaminated, I can just unhook the air scrubber and run it in the infected room to suck up the allergens.

(Note: Air scrubbers have been sold out for months because there’s false information going on out there that they can filter covid out of the air. They cannot. If you are seriously worried about covid, there is a cheep, effective solution in the purchase of an ozone machine. I’ve used them to break down allergens for years now, but they also kill coronavirus, including the covid-19 strain. Read the instructions; ozone is dangerous to health and lung function so don’t breathe the shit in. But yeah, ozone– cheep machines versus throwing big money down on shit that won’t even work. I don’t know why people keep getting info wrong, but damn, it keeps fucking up my ability to get basic stuff for allergy survival. @_@)

image of office wall with notecards and pens

just waiting for inspiration to strike

Anyways, I now officially have an office, all focused on my writing and art. I can turn a wall into my outlines and no one will complain. XD Oh, I missed having my own room. Living on top of people (messy people, at that) can get tiring really quick.

I’m waiting on a latex mattress for the bedroom. They’re supposed to be really good with people who have allergies and multiple chemical sensitivity. I had to throw out my old mattress years back when it was destroyed by the black mold. But even this, just having the cleanrooms and spending most of my time in them, my health has bounced back. I can read again. Like sit down, and get lost in a book, and not have it feel like my brain can’t focus. I’m looking forward to seeing how that translates to editing, actually… I’m not ‘cured.’ Aka, a lungful of mold still knocks me on my ass, same with me having insomnia and itching all over if the cats so much as jump on a place I end up sleeping. But I recover much faster, and am able to hit *okay* instead of *less sick* when I do recover.

The landlord had sent in a mold remediation crew a couple months back, but my allergies were just too far gone by then. I think some bodies just build neurotoxins up and can’t clear them out after a mold exposure the way others can. I gained so much weight when the white mold took over, it really is like the body can’t let anything go. The dust, the cats— everything was setting me off. I was living in the car, and reacting to any air that got in. It was pretty shit, all in all. But this worked. And it’s not just the way my health is better that’s been so awesome about this, but how it’s lifted a psychological weight from me.

I know mold is everywhere. The wind blows and there’s mold; I might as well be allergic to air. I have never lived in a house or apartment free of mold, and I was seeing this narrow path of misery laid out in front of me of trying to run from mold and gaining only small moments between being knocked out. But now I know I can build a cleanroom anywhere and create a bubble of fresh air. It’s not horrendously expensive, and it’s portable. It’s like being given the keys to my own life, and I’m full of so much gratitude for having found this solution.

 

Interactive Novels

(aka, adult choose your own adventure books)

Having a space to literally breathe has changed everything, and I’m being deliberately slow in getting back into life as I try to adjust. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve got plenty to be distracted about. My PTSD is on high alert with all the news, so I’ve been tasking myself with finding ways to have fun —more importantly, remember what fun is. @_@ I’m currently outlining an adult choose your own adventure.

I realized as much as I want to do a visual novel, there are just too many elements that were overwhelming me and keeping me from even trying to move forward. Art, coding an entirely different medium— it’s a lot for my mold bruised brain. But a simple choose your own adventure? Way easier.

I doing the dragon gangbang story, using it as one of the paths to multiple different opportunities and storylines. And it’s been crazy fun just to plot out. Like, once I decided on areas in the underground, on specific dragon species in each area, certain required items needed such as a crowbar, an amulet, a flashlight, it was so easy to start coming up with all these different ideas. And I don’t want to talk too much about it, because I don’t want to give anything away! XD I’m doing a secret, bonus branch that you can unlock that will take the reader on a totally different route!!! Gah, it’s so fun just thinking about it.

Focusing on trying to fit as many taboo sexy scenes/scenarios in there as possible has been half the joy of this. It’s really the strategy of creating the story and trying to design something fun as fuck for the reader that’s been the most interesting part. Here’s a little idea of my outlining process. I’m using Scapple, which has been so perfect in conceptualizing and organizing it all. (the text should be too fuzzy to read, but it’s all early stuff, so if shouldn’t matter anyways.)

Interactive Novel outline in Scapple

What else… Oh, I finished the Hellcat audiobook which members of the site can listen to. Also did the same for Fox Claims Vince, and finally made a cover for it. I’m still doing the audiobooks while working on the interactive story. It’s really important to me that I make the site more accessible. Now that I can read again, I realize just how much I lost during that time, and I want to make sure anyone else who might be struggling in such a way has a ready option.

Fox Claims Vince cover art

Fox Claims Vince cover art

I do this thing where I stress myself out with these lofty goals every time I get healthy again, partially because I see me not feeling sick as these little windows that I have to sprint through or they’re wasted. But when you’re healthy, life is more a marathon, and I don’t really know how to balance my time or set appropriate goals that won’t burn me out. It’s something I’m going to have to learn. Don’t get me wrong, I love the ambition and the challenge of my work and doing things like writing a novel a month, but this is also in the middle of a global pandemic and civil rights movement months before one of the most consequential elections of my lifetime to date. Will the US finally get a vote by mail system that’s accessible to all, or are we watching what’s left of democracy crumble into the ocean?

 

Figuring out how to survive this political shitshow

July is quickly approaching when the covid 19 unemployment benefits of, you know, basic living wage that has been like a lottery in my house will run out, and I’m looking at all the bills I deliberately didn’t pay the last months because I knew the moment covid hit, that this cliff would be inevitable, and it’s better to have enough $ now to eat than throw away on bills early on, no matter the debt accrued. Covid has not magically cured itself or disappeared with the hot weather. There is no 100% guarantee that a vaccine will be viable, and if it is, not for 6 months to a year. It’s a really stressful time, as I’m sure lots of people are experiencing right now, especially those without financial support.

If you’re not up to date, or even better, if you live in a country who cares about their citizens, Congress is basically leaving us to die in America. More than half of the people in Congress are millionaires who have no perspective to the wealth inequality they’re creating. Those with enough money to work from home have no idea what it’s like to have a job where you’re asked to go die so that other people can have groceries or gas or fast food. For every person who readily wears a mask, there is another who refuses to, will walk into businesses, get into people’s faces and will not be stopped from coughing or sneezing or contaminating others, including the workers who have to be there.

Our government should be paying us to stay home and uphold the public health to prevent an overburdening of hospitals, but instead they looted our taxes and handed it to the largest corporations in the country to bail them out, and they’re letting the citizens fail, ensuring that we will not be economically sound enough to do the job of staying home and upholding public health. Partly why some people want to go to work right now in America is because they don’t have any food, they don’t have any income, and they have no way to get it. They’re being kicked out of their houses and apartments because they can’t pay to stay there. They have kids who need to eat, and have nothing— losing school meant losing the school lunch program for families in need. Entire states are refusing to pay unemployment benefits because they don’t want to give the tax money collected from citizens back to their citizens. They want the people to go to work like a global pandemic isn’t happening at all, no matter who dies.

And as stark as that is, it’s leading to a larger, even worse problem, because the economic classes are being divided greater than ever before. Wealth has changed hands exponentially where the stock market and fortune 500 companies have seen their greatest gains in decades while citizens are kicked out of their homes and lost businesses and jobs. The mismanagement of covid relief from the government is leading to hundreds of thousands of small businesses shutting down completely because little to nothing was enacted to support their payrolls, to ensure workers would have jobs to go to after this is all done. And larger businesses gobbled up the money whenever a loophole was available. Even when the big businesses gave the money back, that went right into the government’s pocket, not to the small businesses that needed it. Fresh graduates have no jobs to go to, unless they want a pittance and to risk their lives and the lives of their families as an essential worker as they clutch their expensive degrees.

My country is looking at a cataclysm of wealth inequality that will be felt for the next decade, easy, with businesses who don’t uphold human rights like Amazon taking over our infrastructure (pretty sure we’re going to see the Post Office destroyed and Amazon put in place) and Bezos looking to be the first trillionaire ever. All while small businesses are wiped out and those running them won’t be able to get credit or cash to revive them because the banks are playing favorites and no one is stopping them. And we’re given a joke of a candidate against Trump, a man who wants to turn things back to 4 years ago to a time that led us to exactly why we ended up with Trump and the wealth divide we have. The government is infested with corporatists wearing either blue or red political signs and claiming they’re going to fix things while they keep bleeding the American people dry.

The reality is, we have a government who doesn’t care about the lives of their people. And it’s not a new problem. It’s why health care only goes to those who can afford it in the richest country in the world. Why you need a fucking job to be allowed to have healthcare—how insane as millions upon millions of Americans are removed from their employment and they lose their healthcare all in one go during covid. They did nothing to stop it from happening and they don’t care that in a global pandemic Americans can’t afford to go to a doctor. This is why drug patents are paid for by our government and then handed for free to pharmaceutical companies who then charge gigantic profits on every American who needs that drug. My diabetic brother is getting a first hand lesson of watching his insulin prices jump up during covid — when people have less money — all because the pharmaceutical companies are allowed to gouge us until we’re literally dead. It’s why minimum wage is not a living wage, and hasn’t been for years. It’s why black individuals can be shot and murdered by police again and again while they try to survive in an economic genocide that’s been going on since slaves were freed centuries ago. It’s why our prisons are for profit and not for rehabilitation.

Our government doesn’t care if we live. And when that’s the reality, the next best thing you can get is for your government to be terrified of the people. The protests are important, and even more so are the riots, and I am happy to support whoever is going out there risking attack by equipment and strategies made for war as unarmed protesters fight against the tyranny of their militarized, tax funded police force. The government shouldn’t be comfortable— no one should be comfortable right now until every single person is allowed to be as safe as the most wealthiest among us.

Change can happen, but only if we’re willing to be uncomfortable, and willing to let go of our collective apathy.

So yeah, shit is grim. I don’t have any glasses rose colored enough to make this not stink like the shit it is. And because my brain is far too aware of exactly all of this, I need to find coping strategies like focusing on how to have fun. And once this adult choose your own adventure book is made, maybe it will help others have a little fun too — because fuck, we all need some damn fun. Revolutions aren’t won in a day. This fucking battle for equality has been going on my entire lifetime and far longer before it. We gotta live, even as we continue to fight the good fight.

Oh, and if you have issues with an erotic author speaking about politics, you can suck my clit. I don’t care about your minuscule discomfort when people are out there literally being murdered for existing while black. If you haven’t figured out what I stand for yet, see my bluntness as a gift.

Hope you’re all safe. Hope you’re all healthy, and being smart, and not risking you or the lives of your community by being fucktards mid global pandemic. We’re all in this together (whether we like it or not.) We are only as strong as our willingness to raise up the weakest. This pandemic is because of our horrendous approach to environmentalism, an approach that will be repeated no matter which candidate in the US is elected because they both don’t give a fuck about the changes that need to happen. So hopefully we will find some real problem solvers to step up, because this apathy and looting of the country as it decays just isn’t working. Enough is enough.

So what does sexy sound like? ?

April 16, 2020

Hey peeps,

I wanted to check in and let you all know that I have some new audiobooks up on the website, many of them free. So far there’s

Demon Bonded: Demencious Saga

Demon Bonded: Apprentice Saga

I’ll Tell: A Blackmailing Stepbrother Romance

The Autumn Prince (members only)

I’m recording Hellcat: Mated To The Demon Prince atm. One of the longer novels, I’m hoping to have it on the website soon depending on how well I can keep my focus. I’m also eyeballing certain tech and having different ideas about how to proceed. I stopped to try something different with I’ll Tell, where I attempted to alter the voices so that they would sound like different characters… but I don’t think it really worked because of the synthetic voice base.

Oh, Wendy has a new book out! It’s a continuation of her Omega Misfits series.

Alpha’s Embrace

I am Misha.

My name was given to me at birth by the doctor who delivered me. I have never known my parents. I live in a ten by ten space with one window, a sink and toilet, a bed and a locked door. Once a day I’m taken to an outdoor exercise area. I am allowed a limited access tablet and tutored online by computer programs. I have one friend I talk to through a tiny crack in the wall. His name is Cedric and he has trouble keeping himself quiet. When he isn’t talking to me about monsters and demons, he screams all the time.

Why is my life so isolated and depressing? Because I am a Sylph. Sylphs are the byproduct of illegal Omega to Omega matings. We are all beautiful, but 99.9% are born insane. The rarest of Sylphs, like me, show no outward signs of madness or brain damage, but we live in institutions because we cannot be trusted.

All of us Sylphs who have lived long enough to pass through puberty have hypersexual disorder which makes life even more difficult for us, let alone our keepers. It is like something Alphas call the Burn, a mating urge Alphas experience once every couple of months.

But we’re Sylphs, not Alphas, and this Burn thing? We experience it all the time. It’s a huge problem and why we are kept isolated. Most of us don’t survive through our teens because of it.

One day, a handsome Alpha comes to interview and study me. He calls himself the Chief of Staff but his real name is Geo. Like magic, I fall in love with him instantly. I do everything I can to seduce him. He will have none of it because touch between an Alpha and a Sylph is taboo. But I have plans. No matter what, I intend to bond him and make him mine. Forever.

 

catching up

So after a month of me living in the car, things have finally been settled between the landlord and homeowners insurance, etc and we got some mold people to come in and clean things up. They started yesterday. Won’t be 100% done until Monday (I think.) I’m having some misgivings about the whole thing, one being that no one found out how water got in the house and therefore we have no way of knowing if there’s a leak or something. >_> And one mold group said there was mold in the insulation under my bedroom, while this mold group says there isn’t, and, yeah… since they won’t remove the insulation, that might be a serious issue, depending on if it’s moldy or not.

I don’t know. I don’t understand half-assing something like this. No inspector to figure out how water got in — I don’t understand why someone would spend thousands while not actually ensuring the job is done right to prevent needing to spend thousands later. I’m thinking about making a bubble in the house once the mold peeps are done, see if that might be useful… >_>

So yeah, that’s the news I woke up to and just shit I gotta deal with. Being sick has made it really hard to advocate for myself in a reasonable way—I want to yell a lot. It’s like my default. My brain is swollen and all I want to do is yell about shit. And don’t get me started about what’s happening in the world, cuz I got plenty of rage for the ineptness and stupidity and criminal ignorance that has led to such shitty responses to the virus. But I’m not going to talk about that shit— or much shit at all, because I’m just angry and tired and broken about everything.

Anyways… Err…

I haven’t been able to write, but I’m enjoying making the audiobooks. I found some cool software to try different voices, but my Internet connection just doesn’t seem to be steady enough for it. I can’t believe Hellcat is nearly done — it felt like such a big project but it really didn’t take too long. I’m just being slow cuz of the edit. The synthetic voice pauses a lot on commas. Like, to the point the phrasing just sounds wrong and confusing, so I’m literally going in and shortening certain dead air to make things flow… (because I’m a crazy person. >_> ) I’m not sure which one to do next… maybe Heat and Bite from the A Mate Of His Own Series… We’ll see. I’m holding off on the PATB books, only because I did so many freaking sound effects and growls and shit @_@ and I’m not sure how to get that to work just yet. Like, should I try to overlay a weird wolf growling to get the effect or a hissing noise? Hmm… that might actually work instead of trying to get the synthetic voice to hiss…

So yeah, that’s been my last month. My brain goes in and out of severe inflammation. Focus has been shit. Emotional stability shit. But I’m, for the most part, perfectly fine. The car is comfy. I’ve got a mini heater for the nights. We wet down the ground and driveway so the dust and mold in the yard doesn’t fuck me up when I’m in the car at night. I have little to no routine—showering is extremely scarce. Stare at the phone screen a lot wishing my mind would focus… uh… yeah. It’s not death. Pain comes and goes. Getting over a tooth infection — because of course it got infected again. Yeah, just stuff. Not much worth mentioning except maybe, soon, I’ll have a mold free house back.

Hope you’re all healthy and safe, and that this virus hasn’t reached you. The privilege to be able to social distance when some people live on top of each other in small apartments just to have a roof over their heads is rarely talked about. Those forced to work right now (my bf is working >_> ) when we all know staying home and put is the safest… it’s a lot of bullshit to have to face. Essential workers are paid the least— have been for decades— and are also taken completely for granted. And this has not changed that at all. The lip service while workers still aren’t paid a living wage or even given adequate safety equipment, while congress refuses to get money to people to ensure they don’t need to go into work or starve— all while you have rich celebrities and media talk heads and congress people videoing in from their fucking mansions while not doing shit to help anyone… *sigh*

 

I don’t really want to talk about it…

This is shit, babes. Like, the world is going to hell, I’m watching my government’s ineptness and corruption lead to the worst consequences for everyday people, and it’s just enraging. It’s one thing to see common sense and question things on a small scale, but when you just watched 4.5 trillion dollars be handed to corporation in a bailout they don’t deserve because they inflated the stock market with stock buybacks instead of being responsible and saving their money for later so they could bail themselves out?

When you watch a shitty candidate be installed as the Democratic nominee by the DNC — a choice between rapists, that’s what this election has become. >_< All because the DNC is terrified that a populace candidate will steal their power away (and this is how they use their power, by not helping the working class who can’t pay rent, who are the ones forced to work at grocery stores and in shipping without any appropriate safety equipment for the shittiest of pay) and they won’t even give them single payer healthcare, won’t give them free treatment for coronavirus, won’t pass a moratorium on rent and utilities — let me just say how fucking pathetic the US system is where they think capitalism is going to save us when we can’t even get a company to make us fucking masks or life saving ventilators right now. The people running the show from the corporate mouthpieces posing as government to are actual government are greedy, inept, selfish, and they’re using this global pandemic as an opportunity to grow fat while the American public wonders if they’re going to have food or if hospitals will have enough supplies to keep us alive.

Yeah, I’ve got anger and I don’t want to turn this newsletter into me bitching about the shit that is the wealth inequality that is highlighted and growing because of Covid-19 right now. But it’s what I’m thinking about. A lot. >_> Sorry, I thought this was going to be about making audiobooks, but nope, just lots of rage lately. Stay safe, stay healthy, and tell anyone who wants you to risk your life for some rich assholes who aren’t brave enough to work a hospital or grocery store or delivery truck job for minimum wage to go fuck themselves. Life is worth more than $$ (but if you have to risk your life for others, my fuck, pay people enough to make it worth their while.)

…

 

…I think I’m freaking out a bit. Hope. It has been years running from this mold thing, and yet here we are, some weird, sudden promise that it’s going to be fixed in less than a week. That I can have a stable home that doesn’t make me sick and as a result, a stable life where I can do whatever I want to do. I think it’s a bit like being on a rocking boat all your life and suddenly standing on solid ground. It’s unsettling and I’m nor sure how to deal with it all just yet…

Sorry. This is a weird newsletter. Weird times. I truly do hope you’re all well — I know some aren’t. I know a few who already got the virus. But hope, yeah? Tomorrow can be better.

Peace, babes.

 

Whelp… found out why I’m so tired ⭐

March 8, 2020

Hey peeps,

So, this is a tough one, but I’m trying to not have it be a tough one because attitude is pretty much everything these days. There’s mold in my place. White mold– less toxic by default than the black stuff that took over my bedroom and living room a couple years ago. It’s in the basement this time around– we discovered it when some random ceiling tiles fell down. There’s a mini bathroom down there, unfinished, and the ceiling tiles suddenly fell and knocked a shelf sideways. And I guess there’s been moisture building, and mold growing for a while, and with the tiles down it’s all exposed to the air…

Teh landlord is working with us to ensure it all gets cleaned up, but it’s going to take some time. and I… well, I already broke. Let’s be real. The exhaustion of late from the mold growing under the floor was suddenly joined with brain sparking once the spores flooded the air, and I’m just struggling to pull myself back together. Dystonia has started up again, my limbs unbearably heavy, head hard to hold up, brain fucked– it doesn’t matter. It is what it is.
 

A break

I’ve stopped working on the books for now. I can’t do it– I can’t watch my brain slip away all over again after I fought so hard to get here. I can’t force myself to walk a path my body and brain can’t survive like this. I spent over two years pouring the little energy and focus I could muster into writing these books, only to get my brain back and rewrite them each in a month– its not fucking worth the effort to write when my brain is broken. I only exhaust myself while somehow feeling like a constant failure.

So this time I’m resting– I am bored out of my mind, but I refuse to contribute to the destruction of myself by trying to get this broken brain to do what it can’t do. Mold is tough enough on me without me being an unrealistic psycho as well.

Uh… but I decided on a project for the moment so the boredom and bitterness can’t creep in and overtake me. I had another reader approach me about the fact that they can’t use text to audio technology on my site to hear the books, and it got me thinking how hard it has been for me to read since my brain got scrambled with mold. So, while I’m waiting to get the mold removal peeps in to survey and figure out what’s going to happen next, I’m starting to make some basic audio books of the completed stories on the site. That way subscribers can choose to read or hear the words, and for those who struggle with reading a screen or wall of text (I get it, it swims after a while) will have an option that works for them.

It’s hard to stay awake. It’s hard to have my mind when I am awake. The world is filtered though inflammaiton right now and doesn’t fully make sense — and the fact that the most competent candidate for president in the US dropped out because America can’t see a woman as electable is just as insane. So fuck it all — gotta let the insanity play out as it will. I will survive this. I already have, and I damn well know the books will be awesome once my brain is in working order to finish writing them, and yeah, this is a break. A pause in the journey, and while on this pause I can create something useful for people who need better accessibility to my site.
 

… sorry in advance

I don’t know if I can handle whatever people want to say in response to all this, gonna be real. I definitely can’t handle pity, barely disappointment, well wishes– seriously, I feel like acknowledging the potential shittiness of mold over taking my house in the middle of winter when I should be safe is just too freaking hard right now. 2 months — I had two months of a working brain, wrote two books and it was stolen away just like that… >_> You guys are awesome and it’s totally not your fault I’m a psychological mess over all this, and I apologize now because I doubt I will respond to emails. I’m tired, and this has broken me in a way I don’t want to think about right now.

This will be easier to heal from — I know how, now. I know I can. I know this isn’t the end I feared it was each time it hit. But there is this frustration with realizing how damn fragile I am, where the other people in the house go through their days like nothing has happened while I once again am trapped in a body that doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to think. And it’s just the way this body is. Mold will alwasy be out there and my body is always going to react like this, no promise of any stability or ability to plan.

And currently, I can’t get a face mask to save my life with everyone buying them up with the coronavirus fear — face mask only theoretically prevent you from spreading the disease if you have it, btw, you can still catch it while wearing a mask. Coronavirus can survive outside the human body for up to 9 days, and in colder temperatures, up to a month. (Aka, practice good hygiene and don’t lick anyone.) And maybe get the facts straight on how to clean it up while you’re at it. And if you find yourself with sudden conjunctivitis, it could be coronavirus and it is contagious by eye.

So even though masks won’t save someone from getting coronavirus, proper masks prevent the brain sparking inhalation of mold spores for someone like me, and I am shit out of luck. I’m grateful this hasn’t turned into multiple chemical sensitivity like last time — a good sign the spores this current mold is releasing aren’t as bad as the previous one. But people who need those multiple chemical sensitivity masks to be able to not feel like they’re going to die in unbearable pain 24-7, I’m sure they’re struggling more than ever now because of this ignorance of others about face masks. Ignorance + panic rarely helps anyone. :/

Hope you’re all safe out there, and your week is going better than mine. There’s never a bad time to remember all the people you love and spend a little extra time with them, yeah? Even with the world gone mad, it’s good to remember what matters.

?A PATB Prequel?

February 23, 2020

Hey babes,

This week, I thought I’d try something new. I was thinking we could do some character prequels for The Paranormal Academy For Troubled Boys Serial. But… I wasn’t sure where to start. I thought since we’re in the Demon Arm Saga of everything, we might focus on either Wylie or Dorian. For Wylie, I want to start where he meets Beck, how they kinda drift towards each other when Wylie starts school after placed in the detention home. Then go into how Beck eventually gets Wylie interested in the gang because of Beck’s personal problems at home as he tries to escape a really oppressive/abusive home life. For Dorian story, I wanted to go into how he had his accident, all set within his very difficult home life of being a sorcerer expected to live up to a family name while he just wants to be a normal teen. When he rebels, and seeks hope with Alastor, that’s really when it all goes to shit for Dorian, and he ends up at the Academy a little after, where, three years later, Wylie shows up. So Wylie’s story would be much more recent to events, while Dorian’s story is a more detailed account of his power origin story.

So because I’m too close to this, I thought I’d leave it up to the fans to decide which story they would rather read. I’ll probably end up writing both eventually, but for now I just want to do one. This prequel will be 100% free, btw! So I’ve made a poll where people can click which character story they would rather read first as a prequel. Check it out and let me know what you think.

So I am in the middle of writing episode #3 of PATB serial, and it’s kind of exciting because we get a really good inside look at Academy life for the shifters. I love being able to expand on the world so much more this time around, and really start fleshing out the characters and their experiences. Wylie and Dorian are also going to have more moments as they try to figure out if what’s sparking between them is more important than the warnings the Academy Masters keep giving them. I get to start on one such scene on Monday, and I’m excited about that. <3

What I’m realizing as of late, is just how hard it is to juggle writing and having a life – still! I thought feeling better would make it easier. I made a point to take the weekend off, and that’s more of a joke to me in a lot of ways because I did so much work this weekend! I have so much work that I didn’t finish this weekend! @_@ But I did make a point to go outside both days before coming home and getting more work done. I would like to be able to pace these sorts of things during the rest of the week so I could actually have a weekend off, but that might be like trying to bend the reality of time in some ways. The truth is, there’s just a lot to do.

I wanted to let you guys know that I have been reading all the comments about what your fan fav taboo subjects are, and I am definitely looking at writing a new episode of Demon Bonded – well, at least fleshing out an episode – for March. I don’t want over promise anything right now. My main priority is the PATB serial, and I do want to get one out a month. But I know the fans of Demon Bonded have been ravenous for more, and me being sick and unable to write the last year has made the anticipation for the next episode certainly much worse. So I want to make sure I get some word count in there for you guys.

Also, I seriously have to get to emails and comments tonight. I have been ignoring my inbox outside of any website issues the last… 2 weeks? 3? It’s another thing I need to figure out how to juggle and squeeze into my day in a more effective way. I got so many ARC readers responding and sharing their reviews—you peeps are awesome and I loved every one!

I’m really not good at task switching. I definitely can’t multitask at all. My brain just will not. So I gotta figure something out because this stuff doesn’t get easier the more I write – if anything it gets more difficult as I put all my attention into writing, and fail to be able to balance with the rest of the world. But I’m enjoying my weekend off, of sorts, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to be able to have some time to think about how I’m just always rushing toward a goal instead of planning things better. Doing things doesn’t have much point if you don’t enjoy the journey. I can always get something done, but I won’t remember it as being worthwhile if I didn’t enjoy the process. It’s important. I should treat it as important as it is.

I hope you guys are having a great weekend; the weather here has been amazing. Well, as long as we don’t think of it is terrible climate change creeping up on us. @_@ I’m trying to keep the real world out of my newsletters as much as possible, because I need the escape I’m pretty sure just as much as we all do. So for today, I’m focusing on the wonderful weather and the nice, comforting cup of decaf coffee I’m drinking. Happy reading, and don’t forget to vote for your fav prequel idea!

?Wow, I really wasn’t expecting that! (plus coffee obsessions)

February 16, 2020

Hey peeps,

I had ideas planned for this newsletter but I just… well, I got sick. I am feeling ragged, run out, just doing too much. I had hoped that I would have recovered by now, but my body is telling me very persistently to rest, and I am foolishly fighting it even now. (Btw, if you emailed me, I will get to you. Just being slow atm.)

So maybe we can do some catch up? I know it’s been a while. I’ve been pushing the books hard—speaking of which, the latest PATB Serial book hit #1 in New Releases for LGBT Fantasy Fiction!

Yay! If you missed it, it’s out and gorgeous. We finally catch up with Dorian, who has spent the last 3 years at the Academy trying to get his shit together, only to fall madly head over heels (in as resistant a fashion as possible) with Wylie-fucking-Doe and his hissing inner dragon. Check it if you missed it. It’s in KU for you kindle unlimited readers.

So yeah, there’s that (yay!) Uh, I threw together a cover for the next episode but it’s a draft atm because—guess what? I decided the episodes needed title names and not just numbers. I was kinda super lazy doing the bare minimum there and realized it was a disservice to anyone who wanted to try the books out and had no clue about anything inside. So now, titles! (Once I can figure out how to arrange all the elements so it doesn’t look like I just crammed a ton more words in there. @_@ These are some rather busy covers already…)

Fox and Forest rocking their own cover <3

I’m not doing a preorder yet. This month has kinda proved to me that I’m ignoring my limits, and I need to figure something out with how to go forward. It might be that I plan to release a book every 6 weeks instead of every 4, or maybe even a book every 9 weeks—I don’t know yet. All I know is that I’m struggling with my current pace and I might have to change things up as I go along. There were definitely perks to having a preorder with a deadline. When the days started creeping up and I saw the deadline looming, I got shit done. 10 days and bam! Book! But there were other issues, like me totally working beyond my limits to make that deadline. I’m a very all or nothing person and it can be pretty self destructive if I’m not careful. For example…

Let me tell you about my short love affair with coffee <3

So, for the last two weeks coming up to when I got this book published, I did some big changes. One of those big changes was removing all sweeteners from my diet. Even the good, healthy, natural ones. I cut them all out because I suspected (and was unfortunately right) that they were setting off my immune system and triggering the autoimmune. Removing them was great. I could focus again, I could write, everything was flowing and I felt so good. But there was the drawback of a lot of the things I enjoyed had some sort of sweetener in it.

My morning routine would be to wake up and eat a Questbar before sitting down to write. Easy, simple, uncomplicated. But when I saw even stevia and erythritol were making me jittery and stealing my focus, suddenly I had to figure out what breakfast was without feeling, well, bereft of my treat, I guess. I’m a sugar addict. It was my comfort as a small child and I have been seeking some sort of sugary flavor my entire life. Going cold turkey was really the only way I could make this work given my nature, so I chose a different addiction to seek out (of course I did—don’t give me that look XD) and it was coffee.

I was crushing hard on coffee this month. I started with instant—you know, the bare minimum—but as I felt like I was losing without having that sweet flavor, I started really throwing myself into the hobby of coffee. I got a mini 4-cup French press, got a milk frother thingy that mixes everything up, even some protein powder and powdered goat’s milk to throw in there in the morning. It’s been good, really good. Except at some point, I forgot that my adrenals are still iffy, and the caffeine I was drinking every day was squeezing the life out of the poor little buggers, and yeah, I crashed, hard. Funnily enough, shortly after I finished the book—like, by days. It was like my body was only allowed to break once I was done; I’m really a monster to myself like that. @_@

I realized I must have been ignoring the signs that I was working so hard, masking it by reaching for caffeine and just pushing past my limits. Not good. So I have discovered decaf—which is fucking awesome, btw! I can now have coffee whenever I want while also going back on my adrenal meds for support until I get myself back to healthy. I’m still off sweeteners, which is also great. There’s a lot of things I’m probably not going to be able to have again, if I’m real about it, but I guess time will tell. I’m excited to have stopped my immune responses so well that now I can notice when I screw up and eat something wrong and get sick, instead of being sick constantly and not knowing why.

I have been so excited to be able to write again, to just be in the flow of it all, that I did that thing I tend to do, which is kick my own ass going after a goal. I have to reevaluate some things, see if I can pace myself better to avoid what happened last time, etc. I think I don’t want to actually put the preorder up until the book is 100% written like I did with episode #1, giving me a chance to do the publishing side of things during that week before it goes live. I guess we’ll see. I’m feeling a bit like a long distance runner; I need to plan everything so differently from my old mentality of just sprinting like mad at a goal. It’s a different kind of strategy that I’m still learning—one I’m sure that will be super worth learning once I do.

Hope you’re all having a great weak—and don’t miss the reads below. There are some awesome books there this week, including Wendy’s new take on the Alpha/Omega trope that people are loving like mad!

MM, LGBTQ and RH Reads

Trust No Alpha

It’s a world gone mad. The Alphas are out of control.

When you discover you’re not who you thought you were, the nightmare begins.

KRIS

At age eighteen, life as he knows it is over for Kris. A secret to his nature he was not aware of has been revealed.

Now, kept as a prisoner in a locked room in the mansion of his wealthy father, Kris is at the mercy of Alpha laws and Alpha domination.

Things take a turn for the worse when his own litter mate threatens him, and his father starts behaving strangely around him.

Escape is his only hope. But where can he go in a world that allows him no rights?

THORNE

Marked as a dangerous Alpha, and living a secluded life alone and unloved, Thorne still grieves for the mate whose death he feels responsible for. Years have passed, and he refuses to even try to function in normal society.

One day he discovers a young man on his property, disheveled, desperate, and scared. He acts like a runaway Omega, but he doesn’t smell like one.

What is this boy? And why does Thorne feel an immediate need to protect him? To bond him? To make him his?

A non-shifter, Omegaverse love story of rescue, first time, fertility issues and an HEA. Standalone read. 65,500 words. (While Omegas are birth-fathers in this universe, there is no on-page mpreg in this book.)

 

Cat Escort

A night of passion with a Cat Shifter escort becomes everything for a man with poor self-esteem.

To mend his broken heart, Seth purchases a date with a Cat Shifter Escort. The sex was so amazing, it let him forget his pain. Seth never expected to see him again.

Nao couldn’t forget the client who’d cried in his arms, so destroyed from love gone wrong. He wanted nothing more than to help the beautiful, broken man.

Their night was supposed to be a onetime thing, but six months later, everything changed when they met again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Vampire’s Honor

Years ago, the true king of the vampires sacrificed his throne and his fated love for the common good. But it wasn’t enough…

Rune knows the Adini Treasure is real, and he wants it. With the treasure, he’ll have the power to crush his enemy—the Adi ’el Lumi—forever.

Isaac longs for love but is sick of waiting for it. When he witnesses the murder of a strange vampire with an even stranger map, he isn’t sure what he’s found. But he isn’t letting it go. Not even for the swoon-worthy vampire prince who comes to claim it.

When a witch’s calling card leads Rune to a snarky vampire with secrets and a sassy human with a treasure map, he takes them on a perilous hunt into the forgotten vampire cities. His worst fears and darkest desires await him. With everything at stake, he’ll have only one chance to either fulfill his destiny… or save Isaac, his fated love.

Don’t miss the exciting, heartwarming conclusion to the Ellowyn Found trilogy!

 

 

Fake it ’til You Make Out

Heath
It’s a classic story: Boy meets girl, girl breaks boy’s heart, boy pretends to be gay to get back at girl, girl outs boy to everyone on Facebook…

Okay, maybe it’s not that classic. But it’s what happened to me.

When I bump into my cheating ex and catch sight of the moon-sized rock on her finger, there’s only one option to save face: pretend to be dating my gay best friend, Declan.

And when she outs me on Facebook and everyone I know sees it, there’s still only one option: keep pretending to be dating Declan.

And when Declan and I have to kiss to keep up the ruse and it turns out there’s actually a spark between us (more like a blazing inferno, if truth be told) there’s once again only one option…

Warning: this book is not appropriate for anyone who doesn’t like laughing, anyone who doesn’t like dogs, or anyone who doesn’t like hot men having a lot of sex…with each other.

 

 

Don’t Call Me Kid

Falling in love with your brother’s boyfriend and pining over him for a decade? It can’t get any more complicated than that!

Van found the man of his dreams on his fifteenth birthday. And promptly lost him on the same day when he realized Parker was dating his older brother, Taylor.

Ten years later, Van still nurses his unrequited love, but Parker and Taylor are no longer together. Too bad Parker only sees Van as an inexperienced kid, or a friend at best.

If Van plays his cards right, he might get a chance to tell Parker how he feels. With their complicated histories and Taylor wanting his husband back, their situation is as difficult as they come. Will Van finally get his man, or will he have to give up his teenage fantasies once and for all?

Don’t Call Me Kid is the first novella in the Just Don’t contemporary gay romance serial. If you like your romances on the angsty side and with a touch of complicated family dynamics, then this first book will have you craving for more in no time.

 

 

Crimson: Secrets and Lies of a Living Vampire

An isolated mountain estate. A hidden lab. A dark secret that threatens the entire vampire race.

When vampire Emilie takes a new nanny job at the remote mountain home of Dr. Owen Bennett, the last thing she expects is to be thrown head-first into a dangerous mystery.

After spending the last hundred years believing she was alone in the world, the undeniable chemistry with handsome and eccentric Owen⎯who she suspects may also be a vampire⎯promises a future she never thought possible.

But…things at the Bennett house just don’t add up.

Owen’s ex-wife has seemingly vanished, he refuses to divulge who he works for, and he keeps his research under lock and key.

Determined to uncover the truth, Emilie discovers a secret that holds severe repercussions for all her kind.

When dark forces intervene, Emilie is forced to make an unthinkable choice – between newfound love or what she knows to be right.

 

?Sneak Peek of Episode #2 of PATB

February 1, 2020

Hey peeps,

So I’m flying through getting the final draft of episode #2 of the PATB serial ready for Valentine’s Day. Aka, you guys are getting a sneak peek!!! (and I don’t have to write a newsletter XD)

I thought I’d introduce you all to one of the new villains. Elie has quickly become a fav of mine—likely because he’s fucked in the head (always so fun. XD) This is the first inside look into skinners in the series, they’re mentality, interactions and goals. You can read the excerpt below. ^^

I’m starting a new reference area for the PATB serial, stuff that will be filled out as I go along and can snag some spare time. You can find it here! Wylie’s bio page is filled out so far, and I’m planning on doing everyone’s by the time it’s all done. Right now you can find some fun facts, and more digestible facts of the magic, tech, and lore stuff.

I eventually want to get some PATB focused quizzes up—stuff like, which character is your best match? Or what type of paranormal would you be? That fun kind of stuff. But for now, I’m off to edit! Hope you’re all having a great weekend. <3

Excerpt from Scene 5 of Episode #2 of PATB Serial:

“Evelyn, run. Just fucking run,” Elie gasped, his chest heaving as he watched his sister pull herself up from her sprawl on the ground. Blood was thick, smeared down here face where it had smashed against the ground unprotected. Her eyes were focused though—Evelyn never wavered even when the world was falling down around them. It had a lot to do with the drugs she took before every hunt, a mixture of potions made to keep her from feeling panic or pain. Normally he would have found his sister’s steady presence reassuring, but she stank of death. It was a heavy perfume in the air, one that appeared since he watched Edsel fall to the crimson haired killer.

“Don’t be a fool, Elie. I’m not going to leave you here to die.” Evelyn wiped the back of her sleeve carelessly across her face to sop up the blood and stumbled forward, her left leg dragging at her side where the knee refused to hold her up. “Just calm down, stop your fucking freak out, and relax your muscles enough for me to get you out of this trap.”

Elie’s leg had grown stiff in the snare, but he still managed to flinch away once his sister reached him, her hand bloody with bits of bird sticking to it. It had happened almost immediately. The moment his foot had stepped down into the magic infused loops of wire, three points of enchanted tipped blades had slashed into his leg, numbing the muscles and nerve ending while also filling him with the illusion of intense pain. A sadistic trap, Elie’s body was flooded with adrenaline and his mind overloaded with the horrendous sensations of his flesh being ripped from his bones, his jerking movement of escape only pulling the wires in tighter and trapping him more complete.

The illusion left him wanting to scream in agony, but every time Elie looked at his leg, he could see it was intact. The flesh would only entropy if he was caught too long and the wires were pulled tight enough to cut off his circulation. Not that it mattered. Elie already knew he’d be dead long before that process could start.

“You’ve tangled this completely around you,” Evelyn hissed in frustration, blood threatening to drip past her eyebrow and into her eye. “Fuck. All you had to do was sit still!”

Elie watched his sister’s nimble, gut splattered fingers dance around the wire encasing his leg. “Do you feel it?” Elie asked shakily, his teeth refusing to stop chattering. He might have been cold, but Elie had long stopped feeling the high winds blowing at their altitude that October evening. Shock was setting in, his body already at its limit to this torturous trap.

“What, the wounds?” Evelyn shook her head sharply. “If you were trained enough, you could drink the potions too. But right now it would only make you high and even more useless.”

“No…” Elie avoided his sister’s sharp gaze. “Do you feel it when all your familiars are killed?”

Evelyn growled under her breath and gritted her teeth. “You are the worst. Stop talking and focus on holding still.”

Elie nodded and let his head fall back on the raised edge of the roof that marked the end of the building. “I’m sorry I’m useless.”

“Me too.” Grunting, Evelyn held her hands over his leg and Elie’s gaze darted down as he watched his sister weave her spell into the air and his flesh.

“I’m sorry I got him killed…”

“Shut up! Your words are a curse to us all.” Snarling, Evelyn slashed her arm forward, and a blade tore through Elie’s pant leg. She pulled the material down, growling the entire time. “I’ll take the fucking leg if I have to. Shut up and let me work!”

Elie’s impulsive retort froze on his lips when Evelyn’s magic washed over him and his body was forced into a temporary paralysis. The snare could only be released if he didn’t move long enough to prevent the wires from pulling tighter and tighter. But Elie hadn’t been able to focus past the pain to do the spell, hadn’t been able to do anything but cover his screams when the snare bit into his leg when he was caught.

Elie’s thoughts only felt more frantic as his opened eyes stared out into the dark around them. He couldn’t hear their hunter, but he knew he was still out there. A skinner, obviously. No basic sorcerer or hunter had skills like the monster lurking out there. He felt like a monster; every time Elie caught a glimpse of the crimson haired warrior, something in his brutality spoke of animal, monster, demon. The skinner must have been hunting for years, soaked in the blood of his kills until he didn’t know what it was to be human.

Elie shuddered internally, wishing he could close his eyes as his mind filled with visions of the monsters that came for him whenever the dark was complete. So many dead, generations of blood and power carved into him and ingrained in his mind from every dark story his parents taught him from the moment he could listen. But the monster out there wasn’t from his mind, not some far away fairytale or ghostly visage from a past kill. No, this was Elie’s worst nightmare come to life, a man powerful enough to kill the strongest person he knew—his brother, Edsel—and suck the very life from him.

“Finally!” Evelyn hissed as she pulled the broken wire from Elie’s leg, her fingers getting pinched from the sharp edge and releasing droplets of blood to glitter in the low light. “Come on. Get to your feet.”

The moment Evelyn released him from the spell, Elie grabbed her arm, his eyes wide with fear. “He’s an energy eater, Evelyn. He drinks…”

“Stop it with your fucking nonsense.” Evelyn pulled his hand roughly off her arm and glared into her younger brother’s eyes. “Get the fuck out of here, Elie. Don’t make me tell you again.”

Elie shook his head, his lips pursed in stubborn refusal even as he saw the rage sparking in his sister’s eyes. “He’s dead. There’s no point in staying. They’re all dead and I don’t want you dead too!” Elie’s plea was wasted; he could see the resolve on Evelyn’s face, her intimidating makeup and streaked blood making her look more like the monster out in the dark than the girl she was.

“You’re a fool if you think he’ll stop,” Evelyn said tightly. “You’re too inexperienced, Elie. You don’t understand how we operate.”

Elie’s shoulders sagged. Maybe that was true. His parents had only begrudgingly started to train him before they were killed on a hunt gone wrong—his first hunt. His parents had treated him differently from Edsel and Evelyn, his mind so fragile to them… Deranged.

Elie blinked, his gaze focusing on Evelyn’s angry expression. “Don’t let him get your blood. He will suck the life from you.”

“Spare me your demented visions,” Evelyn snapped as she pulled the chameleon coat up from where she had folded it on the ground. “You should have stayed in college.”

“Stayed with the weak, soft things that are hunted, yeah?” Elie forced out, his teeth chattering as he struggled to move his leg. “Things you hunt. Kill. Murder. Subhumans to the slaughter. No, college was an insult.” Blood was pouring down the limb from where the wires had cut deep, but he simply wrapped it in a bandage that congealed the wound, then gave some of the material to Evelyn, who snarled when he made an attempt to touch her.

“Better an insult than to get your parents killed.”

She muttered it under her breath but Elie heard, his eyes widening minutely. He nodded, for it was true. His parents should have left him in college. Deranged. Their choice term for him behind his back. But at college he was clever, innovative, useful, even if it was only to a bunch of powerless subhumans. “A god among swine,” Elie whispered bitterly, “Or fool of the slaughter?”

“Save your mad ramblings for someone who gives a fuck,” Evelyn growled and pushed up from the ground.

Elie looked away when Evelyn approached their fallen brother and ruthlessly went through his pockets, stripping anything of use. He wrinkled his nose, certain he could smell the rot already sinking in, or perhaps seeping out. Edsel was full of such ugliness, such disgusting filth that reached levels Elie couldn’t bare to think without a part of his brain screaming in protest. He grasped his head, fingers digging into his scalp as he listened to his sister clean any magical remnants that could be used to trace back to them from Edsel’s body.

Edsel had forced the family business on him. Once their parents had died, fallen to their fragile son’s mistake in battle, Evelyn had demanded he be sent away, exiled to another type of life for softer, weaker creatures. Edsel had refused; Elie was already marked as a Briargrave. He had dragged Elie with him everywhere, forcing him to learn the art of hunting, catching and slaughter no matter his protests or poor skills. His older brother didn’t care if Elie vomited during every kill; he would see all his siblings skinners to ensure their family legacy lived on.

His sister adapted to Edsel’s leadership, but that was to be expected. Evelyn was always so detail oriented, so methodical. Always full of plans she would break down in ways that would be seen through to the very end every time. Product was always caught. Product always got to where it needed to go. Payment was always received. Evelyn was the brains behind the business, the will to insure that they were more than just a family of shifter hunters, but that they profited.

Elie’s gaze wandered, daring to dart to where Edsel’s corpse stretched, blood and semen cleaned away with spells now, his tattoos burning away under Evelyn’s spells as she worked. Even that night while his sister’s illusions dazzled and confused the sorcerer hunting them, Evelyn had spent most of her time erasing their tracks and setting up protection. The sharp eyed skinner with red hair had yet to strike a blow against his sister, and Elie felt bursting with pride just thinking of it. Evelyn never ran, never hesitated, but set trap after trap while erasing their presence from the world around them. She even used his designs; while Edsel mocked Elie’s adjustments to their legacy weapons, his sister had seen the value of his innovations enough to take them into battle.

Elie managed to get enough sensation in his leg to stand when Evelyn stalked over to him and grabbed him roughly by the jacket. “Listen to me,” Evelyn hissed as she pulled his coat from him and forced Elie’s hand into Edsel’s chameleon skinned coat. Elie tried to flinch away but Evelyn wouldn’t let him, grabbing his other arm to push it into the jacket’s empty sleeve. “Do not look back, Elie. Just walk the fuck away and don’t look back. You aren’t strong enough to win—you will never be strong enough to take on this lifestyle. Do you understand me!” Evelyn demanded when Elie continued to cower, refusing to meet her eyes. “You have always been clever, Elie, the smartest of us three. Use your brain! Walk the fuck away from all this! Tonight. Forever!”

Deranged. It was always the same. None of them accepted him.

Elie licked dry lips, his hand coming up to grasp at his hair. “I-I… Evelyn, I can’t. With Edsel dead, I’m the last male heir. I have to take over—”

“Don’t you lie to me, Elie Briargrave!” Evelyn screamed and wrenched him by the lapels of the chameleon scaled jacket, forcing him to meet her blazing eyes. “You wanted him dead! You wanted him dead, and now he is! You wanted mother and father dead, and you said it, and they’re gone! And when you look at me…” Evelyn glared at him, her eyes burning into his. “I know what you’re thinking, Elie. It’s all over your stupid, crazy face!”

Elie stared back at her silently, his chest heaving for air. He couldn’t deny it. He wanted Edsel dead. He hated him, and he wanted him dead, and had said it aloud only a day ago, daring any wayward spirit to hear it and comply. Looking at Evelyn, the rage twisted on her face smeared in black makeup, he couldn’t say that he didn’t want her dead either. In her face he saw every one, every spirit carved into her flesh and tied to her soul forever. Tied to him…

Elie tore his gaze away from the death in Evelyn’s eyes. “I would never say it,” he whispered. “Not you, Ev. I would never curse you like I did them.”

“You didn’t curse them, you idiot!” Evelyn shouted and pushed him back with a disgusted look on her face. “You don’t have the ability to will magic, Elie. You’re just fucking crazy.”

Deranged… Too fragile for our legacy of slaughter… A curse on the bloodline… Cursed.

“Still,” Elie tried, his voice pitched softly to avoid enraging his sister further. “I would never wish you dead. You… It’s different.” When the voices came—when the faces swarmed his vision, haunting him for being trapped in the flesh of the Briargraves—Elie never listened to the ones who wanted Evelyn dead. They didn’t know her. They didn’t know that she was good inside. She cared. “You… you came to save me.”

“You fucking fool.” Evelyn swung before Elie could react, and he screeched and fell backwards as colors burst behind his eyes and pain exploded through his face. He grabbed his cheek with two hands and gaped up at his sister, blinking dumbly from where he ended up sprawled on the concrete. “Did that hurt?” Evelyn spat as she stepped over him and glared down. “Dying is going to hurt a fuck ton more. Run, Elie. Run the fuck away and let this life go. You were never one of us.”

But he was! He had the mark, had it all carved into his flesh before he could even walk or speak or understand the monsters waiting for him in the dark…

Elie’s eyes widened when a grimace of pain crossed Evelyn’s face. “You’re hurt!” He scrambled up, seeing for the first time the thick layer of blood sticky on her leather boot where a sword had slashed deep. Her blood was only in place because of the crisscross of magically enhanced bandages Evelyn had placed along the artery. “Shit, Ev. If that bandage goes…”

“Run! Fucking run, you dumb, weak, useless little nuisance!” Pelting him with her familiar, childhood curses, Evelyn dragged Elie up by the arm and set him on his feet. Before he could flinch back, she pulled a dagger free, slashed the blade across her palm, and smeared her fresh blood into the dark green scales of the chameleon coat. The blood soaked in and the magic activated, the scales growing clear and bending light until all that could be seen of Elie standing there was his face and hands not covered by the shifter pelt. Evelyn raised her hand to paint Elie’s face with blood to hide him completely. She froze, her body went rigid, and she exhaled in a sharp gasp.

“Ev?” Elie stared at his sister, a scream clawing at his throat when she didn’t breathe again, her eyes bulging and body motionless. “Evelyn!” He grabbed her hand, trying to get her to respond, only to cry out in alarm when his hand grew wet with her blood. Elie dropped her like she burned to the touch, and went to wipe the fluid from his fingers, only to freeze when breath broke free from his sister in a long, soft wheeze.

“You can’t win.” Evelyn’s words were like dry paper on her unmoving lips as she struggled to speak. “He’s an old one… using ancient blood magic… There is no winning.”

Thud. At the noise behind him, Elie whirled, a blade jumping into his hands that he held up defensively. He squinted his eyes, peering at the far side of the barrier shrouded in shadows where a raven fluttered wildly on its side, streaking blood along the rooftop as it tried to get to its feet. While Elie watched, the bird began to shrink. Its chest caved in, growing thinner and thinner, and feathers fell away and disintegrated like ash. Thud. Elie’s gaze dart to the right when another of Evelyn’s familiars dropped down from the dark sky and collapsed, its beak open wide in a death scream it never released. Its body shuddered and collapsed, the bird’s muscles growing tighter and tighter until they snapped completely and the air, magic, and life force were sucked straight out of the creature.

Thud. Thud! “No,” Elie whimpered when another raven fell, then another, then another. Evelyn’s familiars rained down from the sky and crashed to the rooftop, their feathers flaring into bursts of ash before disintegrating completely. “Evelyn,” he croaked as he turned back, his eyes wide in horror when he found his sister’s chest sunken in, her limbs spindly thin and growing thinner.

“How do I cut the connection?” Elie shouted, but he knew it was too late. Evelyn’s beautiful hair was disintegrating, the golden strands breaking away into a glitter of crushed stars quickly stolen away by the wind.

“Run.” Evelyn’s voice hissed out. “Don’t waste this moment…”

“I didn’t wish it, Evelyn! I didn’t!” Elie insisted, rushing toward his sister, only to stop short when one of her bones snapped. “Oh no… No! I don’t want you to leave,” he pleaded. “Not like this.” Tears welled in Elie’s eyes while he gazed at his sister’s face at it twisted and distorted, her energy being sucked out of her.

Evelyn’s body wrenched, her back arching unnaturally. When her voice wheezed out, it sounded older than dust. “You never should have come home… Be clever and run… Run.”

Deranged. His father’s voice called to him, accusing, damning as Elie fought back tears. He hadn’t wished it. He hadn’t! He never wanted this!

Don’t forget to preorder episode #2 of PATB serial! It releases February 14th where we not only meet villains, but the paranormal patients at the Academy, including Wylie’s soon to be deadly obsession, Dorian Black. ♥

?Magic, Tech, & Lore of PATB pt.1

January 25, 2020

How does magic work in PATB?

So, for starters, this is a paranormal story, not a fantasy, so all my magic is made to work in a world similar to our own. Physics apply; limits apply—there is no breaking reality but bending the rules in place to make room for the paranormal. Magic is an energy—a paranormal energy—that occurs side by side with our normal energy, very similar in every way except for a few key differences.

1) Magic is energy that can be manipulated through will.

2) Magic is solely created in the bodies of paranormals.

3) Magic, unlike energy, does not experience entropy. (oh yeah, I fucking nerded this shit up. XD)

4) Magic needs will and/or to be connected to a paranormal, otherwise it becomes inert.

5) Inert magic requires a lot of energy to activate, the only exception being elemental magic users.

So what does that all mean? For the most part, people can’t will energy outside of action. You can think something, but unless you actually do something, very little is going to happen to reach a goal. But with magic, that changes. Magic can interact with normal energy and matter, manipulating what’s around the user to change the world as willed.

Magic can transform like normal energy does. It can be potential energy, willed by a sorcerer to be stored in wards/charms without any energy loss, therefore usable once the spell is triggered. It can be kinetic energy, willed by a sorcerer into spells/sorcery to alter the physical world. Because it doesn’t entropy once triggered, magic can be far more powerful than normal energy, a little going a long way. But it isn’t limitless; without a will to direct magic, it becomes inert, just existing in a potential but nonreactive form, spreading out in the natural world and eventually infusing with whatever it’s around. This is how elemental magic comes to exist in the PATB world.

 

Magic is a byproduct of paranormals

The biggest thing about magic in the PATB world is that it only exists in active form because of paranormals. Their bodies can run on magic, produce magic, or both. The distinction is important. Some magic users are also made up of magic where they cannot function as a biological being without magic, while other magic users are merely capable of manipulating magic but cannot produce it. If a being needs to run on magic, that doesn’t automatically mean their body will produce any extra that can be used in sorcery—but it’s at least a very good sign that they will be able to will magic. Shifters transform the normal energy they get from food into magic to fuel their inner beasts—which is why they eat so much. And for all shifters, their flesh—alive or dead—will always have magic in active form.

This is really the core of how the paranormal hierarchy came to be. In some ways, magic is set by birth, aka, there is little changing a person’s biological makeup to allow them to produce magic if they don’t, control magic if they can’t, or create more magic than their bodies naturally create. But magic can be stolen and stored. A magic user can drain a sorcerer dead, stealing whatever magic their body might be running on at its core, and storing it for use later—but it’s a one time score. Once it’s used up, the magic is gone, inert and a total bitch to make usable again. But a shifter? A magic user can kill and preserve every part they want of that shifter and use their magic for decades. And if it’s a rare shifter like Wylie, whose body holds far more magic in it because of the nature of a dragon shifter, he could power a magic user for centuries, or his flesh could be used in energy intensive spells that otherwise would be impossible.

And Wylie wouldn’t just be a battery for a sorcerer. They would also be able to steal his paranormal traits, like heal by harvesting his saliva, use a spell to activate his allure that’s in his flesh, or have super strength and deadly scales if they stole his skin. A dragon shifter is a fortune of opportunity to the right magic user who is ambitious enough, which is why although shifters are hunted, it’s the magical ones that tend to be hunted to extinction. Magic users aren’t hanging out in graveyards, looking to steal the corpses of shifters—well, not as much anymore. >_> They go and either hunt and kill shifters, or they pay someone who does it for a living, aka, skinners. And in case you didn’t guess, that means hunters have found uses for the more everyday shifters as well, keeping them alive so that they can fuel the magic they want instead of killing them outright. The shifter slave trade started as a way to harvest shifters for their magic, and then evolved from there.

 

Nullifiers and anti paranormal tech

So we’ve got this amazing energy source controlled by will that doesn’t break down or entropy in the hands of a few select beings on the planet. Just what in the world do the normal humans have at their disposal to protect them from magic?

Visdevor and electrified visdevor, for starters. Humans discovered if they chemically bonded steel with visdevor (a synthetic compound I made up for this series) and added a current of electricity, they could create a field that makes magic inert, taking that once active and willable magic and turning it into an inactive form. Pretty badass.

They use this on howlers, cursed humans who have been taken over by the werewolf virus—because, yeah, we have magic based viruses in this world. The only issue is, a nullifier requires a ton of energy to create a nullifying field that can suck the magic out of a paranormal and turn it inert. Otherwise it’s only useful on contact, mostly only capable of burning the skin. This means normal energy that can entropy is being used to fuel a weapon against paranormal energy that doesn’t entropy, and depending on the source, magic can also activate inert magic at the time of casting, creating a chain response that can be larger than anticipated. Aka, to contain magic, you need a lot of energy, and fuel to provide that energy.

Nullifiers can either contain or kill paranormals depending on their exposure and how much of their biological body requires magic to live. This is the interesting difference between shifters and howlers: a shifter is human when in his human form, and therefore when hit by a nullifier, it will only damage their inner animal, requiring them to consume more energy and transform it into magic to recover. A howler, on the other hand is a biological being who is being taken over by a magical virus. In the early stages of the virus, nullifier technology could potentially ‘cure’ a human of the curse. But as a human’s body is taken over and replaced with para-biological parts, contact with a nullifier will turn off processes that can lead to the death of a cursed human. Once a human is full howler, nullifier technology can kill them. This is why the giant electrified visdevor fences work against the plague. When the magic is being sucked out of a howler, it is sucking out their life force.

This is also a problem for halflings, who are beings whose bodies are part paranormal and part biological based. What might be a nuisance with nullifier tech for a shifter or sorcerer whose human forms don’t need magic to survive, will be a crisis for a halfling whose life can be in jeopardy just from coming in contact with visdevor or a nullifying field. And if they’re a demon, or have full paranormal biology? Their magic going inert can kill them.

This is why Collin McPherson has been leading research into the field of paranormal safe nullifying technology and has created the null-collar. It is still in developmental phases but he hopes that he can one day create a long term solution for howlers where their paranormal viral side can be suppressed without killing the host.

 

Is magic conscious?

So, there are some interesting things when it comes to magic in the PATB world that raises the question of if magic might actually be conscious. For starters, we have shifters, where the magical side of them has a completely different personality than the human side. The inner beast can like different foods, can want different things—it can even fall in love!—all autonomous to the human side’s interests. That magical side can even take on its own form, a body of paranormal biology that can be shifted to at will. When it comes to shifters, it feels like the paranormal side has a will of it’s own!

Then we have the howlers, aka werewolves. With a human infected by this magical virus, a distinct personality and physical traits occur. At the full moon, a howler’s viral paranormal side gains power over its host, and when it does it seeks to spread its infection and take over more humans. This magical virus doesn’t just seek to survive, but it manifests a personality of its own in its human host, one that battles with the person it’s trying to take over. There are some who believe the magical virus—being all the same strand—is manifesting the same consciousness into every howler out there like a hive mind or a pando colony.

If you talk to Dorian, he’s happy to point out how people with magic are usually more beautiful, more charismatic and alluring, as if the very magic itself is trying to change a host to make it more viable to mate and then create a better host. It’s almost like magic is trying to reproduce in the same way biological beings do.

Then there’s the fact that magic can be manipulated by will—in some ways, is an extension of will, an extension of the physical body inacting change on the physical world with paranormal energy. Dorian would ask what a shifter really is: a human body that then created a shifter animal, or was it a conscious shifter animal acting like a parasite in a human body as it grew, using the biological basis to build enough energy to gain human form?

Adam, our sneaky tech sorcerer, has a different theory about magic based around how magic doesn’t decay and it doesn’t transform into normal energy even though it can be created by energy. It’s only active with will. He thinks that magic is an extension of consciousness but not necessarily conscious. William, the resident elf halfling at the Academy has a different theory. He thinks magic originates from outside the known universe and is mimicking the life that it finds here, not necessarily consciously but consciousness being created as it mimics conscious beings.

There are a lot of different theories in the PATB world as to just why magic is the way it is and where it came from. This is one of those questions that no one really knows the answer to, the same way we don’t really understand what consciousness is or how it comes to be in our world.

So, what do you think? Did I nerd it up just a little too much for something as simple as ‘magic did it?’ XD

 

What is Theodore Howld’s goto magic?

Theodore, our badass grown up dragon shifter is usually seen using his beast magic, which is basically his dragon’s preferred default. This includes allure to draw prey in, extreme force by manipulating air molecules to crush and incapacitate his prey, and an amazingly powerful energy drain that can feed/heal his dragon and kill his prey all in one go. Sever, the name of Theodore’s dragon, is an apex predator, partially in response to so many paranormals having been hunted down and wiped out by skinners. I like to think of Sever as what nature/magic created to adapt to being hunted.

Curious what Theodore’s sceptre might look like in real life? A little bit like this, but it packs more than an aura punch. XD

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