mcahogarth

Group Read is Live!

Here's the link for the group read!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XBRkEvIfPD0Rxi3p6Z5ZD3ZJhovohhAWluuPZny3qr8/edit?usp=sharing

If you'd prefer to wait for the edited version, the direct sale shop will have it November 15th! Or you can preorder it at retailers (street date for retail is 12/15) here:

https://www.amazon.com/Exile-Amid-Stars-Shieldmatron-Book-ebook/dp/B0DLV9R2KT/

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/an-exile-amid-stars-m-c-a-hogarth/1146509881?ean=2940180670793

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/an-exile-amid-stars

https://books.apple.com/us/book/an-exile-amid-stars/id6737742483 

Beta Reader Alert!

I'll be finishing the draft of Surela 2 tomorrow, and will probably wrap up my personal revisions on it by the end of the week. Which means if you're interested in being on the beta reader team, you should clear the decks for the beginning of next week!

My recommended re-reads going into this one are Surela 1 and FireBorn's Legacy.

Wiki spoilers will probably start going up this week as I finalize my edits and start adding things to entries so that first readers can do research/double-check things, so be advised!

If you prefer to wait, I'm guessing this one will be available for direct sale (from my shop) by mid/end of November, and at retail in December. I'll have a pre-order page up probably by Nov 15 at the latest.

I know I've been quiet and putting all the things on hold, but the book was only 25,000 words long at the beginning of September and it's now 100,000 (and still going). I've dropped everything to get this done in time for a 2024 release, and it's been eating my brain to the tune of 3000-5000 words a day the past couple of weeks. I'm so fried! But once it's in the bag I can look forward to catching up here with my various dropped projects... so as usual, stay tuned. And beta readers: prepare!😁

Meta-Conversations: Wisdom

            “There are two ways to fail the trials that deliver a priest of Shame to the full use of his powers.”

            Shame—no, Mercy—sits beside me on the driveway, and looks up at alien stars through the branches of my storm-battered oak. The First Servant’s stole is gathered in the crooks of his elbows, hints of peach and flesh just visible thanks to the faint light shed by the sidewalk lamp near us.

            I feel like this conversation started a while ago and I missed a great deal of it, and yet all of it is implied in this question and, no doubt, about to be explicated. So I say, “I assume one way is to be incapable of bearing it.”

            “The other,” he says, “is to bear it all, and fail to learn from it.”

            This statement strikes me as nonsensical, but Kor is never nonsensical. So I sit with the words, and maybe my confusion is too evident, because he continues.

            “What did you spend a great deal of time denying this week? To your parent?”

            That conversation is so close to the surface that I’m not surprised he spotted it. “She said I was wise. But I can’t be wise. I’m not old enough to be wise.”

            “What is wisdom, then?”

            “I don’t know,” I say. “But it can’t be me spouting the same eternal truths that are so self-evident they’re repeated throughout human history in verse and aphorism and story. I said those things when I was a callow maiden, and again as a tempestuous young adult, and I’m still saying them and nothing in the words has changed. How can I be wise when I’m repeating other people’s wisdom? Which I haven’t ceased to do since I was very obviously not wise?”

            “Because you’ve lived those truths. You can hear a scar described, qirini, and be warned of the pain that created it, and imagine that pain, and even describe the scar and the pain to others accurately, if you listened carefully to the account. You can even surprise others with your knowledge if you combine it with observations of your own, of how that scar affects others, how it healed—well or poorly—and how it changes the person carrying it. But you don’t understand the pain and the change and the effect and the healing until you’ve experienced it yourself.” When I am silent, he says, “You read a great deal about sex. Were you prepared for it when you first had it?”

            “No.”

            “Pregnancy?”

            I say ruefully, “Not in the slightest.”

            “Childbirth?” I shake my head. “Devastating and abrupt injury? Physical insult?” A pause, and he continues, relentless but gentle, “The betrayal of a friend? The loss of a loved one? The confrontation of emethil?”

            I hug my knees. “And yet, the words I speak about these things are the same words I spoke before I lived through them.”

            He returns to studying the sky. “When a prospective Shame cannot bear the pain of the trials, Thirukedi ends them, and he becomes a priest, but with fewer tools to his hand. But when a prospective Shame endures the entire spectrum of Corrections, but does not inhabit them, take the experience into his body, make those experiences his… when those experiences do not link him to all those who came before him, but cause him to set himself further apart, then that person cannot be mantled as a priest at all. One can deny experience. One can live through it, and never stop living in it, and never be changed by it, and never gain perspective. When people say you are wise, datyani, it is because you now invest those timeworn truths with experience, and that experience has connected you to people, instead of setting you apart.”

            “Sometimes young people are wise….”

            “When the young are wise it is a tragedy, or a miracle. And before you say it, not all old people are wise. They never move through an experience. Wisdom happens after, not during, an encounter with the truth.” These are deep waters, and I feel like I’m drowning. He looks at me over his arm, and his coronal eyes are uncanny in the dark. I can see the shadows of his lashes on his irises, they’re so pale. “Tell me what you truly fear. Is it that you do not want to grow old?”

            “I don’t know who I am,” I say. “I only know that there is so much still to learn. I can’t possibly be wise, because I’m not done.” And then, I laugh. “And now you will say ‘none of us are done until we’re gone.’”

            “And we are perfect, and imperfect, thereby.”

            “I still think humility is the better part of…” I trail off.

            “Wisdom,” he says, and there’s a glint of humor in his face and it’s Kor now, again. “There’s no escaping it.”

            “It sounds intolerably conceited to make any claim to wisdom, though, so if it’s all the same I’ll continue denying it.”

            “A compromise,” he said. “Say nothing. Denial makes a mockery of other people’s feelings. Agreement is—to you—intolerably conceited. Say nothing. Or thank them.”

            “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation,” I say, exasperated.

            “I can’t believe you needed it. But it is good to see you again, qirini. I am glad you listened to your community.”

            I rest my chin on my knees, listening to the trilling of frogs. “They say there’s nothing new under the sun. It feels wrong to think that your experience of something eternal is sufficient to make you wise, when so many people before you have passed through those gates.”

            His laugh surprises me out of my gravity. “Qirini, have you heard nothing I’ve said? It’s not the experience that makes you wise. It’s the perspective you take away from it.” At my scowl he touches my arm, and his voice is low. “It truly bothers you.”

            “Help me, Mercy,” I say. “I really don’t know what’s going on this time.”

            “You are walking and the path is unfamiliar to you.” He squeezes, and I feel each individual finger, gentle but firm. “Keep going.”

            “It will take me to Kherishdar,” I say.

            “Then go there.” A smile, and it’s mischievous, and I can’t help smiling back. “But when you do, be there completely.”

            “If you were not Mercy,” I said, shaking my head, “I would cuff you.”

            “But I am Mercy, and also the Calligrapher’s ajzelin, so I will say: look up foshaf.” He stands. “And come home, soon, qirini.”

            I stay outside a while longer, just in case someone else descends on me; I’m a little glad that no one does, because that was certainly enough to chew on. Eventually, I go inside, and look up the word. And I think about ishan, and ishanjzal, and about priests of Shame who are, in the end, put through the trials as a way of compressing the wisdom of experience into as short a span as possible, so that they can bring that experience, distilled, into their perspective on other people. I had assumed that trial to be about other things. As usual, it was more than I knew before I understood it. And he called me wise! I hardly know what I’m doing.

            But I do know that I’m on a road, and I’m walking, and it’s going to take me home.

foshaf

[ foh SHAHF ]

noun

tracks; the literal sense takes the second declension ending, but a second, metaphorical sense, using the first declension endings, refers to a person's body of work, implying that one can "track" that person's development from beginning to end in their works or acts.

ishan

[ ee SHAWN ]

noun

appreciation of fullness of a thing's span, from its inception to its ending; implies that it is worthy at every moment of its existence, and acknowledges that it is different in the beginning from how it is at its peak and how it is at its end, and that this too is part of its worth.

ishanjal

[ ee shawn JZAHL ]

adjective

perfect as it is', with the understanding that what is, is incomplete. Recognizes ishan in everything, and finds it beautiful

Fireborn's Legacy Book Doodles

People are starting to receive their hardcovers, so I can share some of these! I got some interesting prompts this time.❤️

All Clear, and Roof

We have come through the storm! And our roof already needed replacement, and now that I am picking pieces of shingle out of the yard, it seems a good time to sell more things. Here is a discount code!😅

https://studiomcah.com/discount/NEWSHINGLES

If you have bought all the things you want, leaving reviews is helpful, not just to new people making decisions on buying, but to me. It lifts my spirits!

That was legitimately one of the scariest things I've been through. Certainly the worst hurricane I've ever experienced, after decades in hurricane country. Wind sucking at the sliding glass doors, things flying through the air, sideways rain... for hours. Basically from about 8 pm until 3 am. Horrifying. But over! And we are all right, and only lost one tree and the roof is still on but needs some love, and we have power. Truly grateful.

I'll probably resume work on the final Kickstarter packages... uh... tomorrow? I don't know if there's mail coming through yet, though, lot of local flooding and trees down. But certainly by next week.

Back in Time Tuesday: Prayer Beads

I don't remember who this elf is, because this gouache piece is at least twenty years old, but I seem to recall him being a priest? A lot of similar imagery led eventually to the character of Amhric in the Blood Ladders series, though, so I would call this a predecessor to the eventual holy-king-of-elves archetype. Unusually for me, this piece is far more visual than narratively-driven, in things like the choice to make the interior of the character part of the background. Maybe that's why I still like to look at it. Dunno!

Hurricane Milton Impact

Don't want to belabor this, since there's no knowing the impact of a storm until it arrives, but this one is likely to create some issues for me personally. In that spirit:

• I won't be shipping any Kickstarter packages this week.

• I have set my Etsy shop to vacation mode until I can resume mailing from my location.

• My direct sale shop is not affected; you can continue to buy audio/ebook/paperbacks from it since all those are supplied by third parties.

• I think I have content scheduled here for this week, but I doubt I'll be posting in realtime.

Some number of you will kindly ask how you can help; for now a couple of things:

• If I'm able, I will be reading any reviews left on my direct sale shop, and those will seriously boost my spirits (as well as help the shop be more compelling and helpful to new readers);

• And now is a good time to recommend my work to someone. If you don't have science fiction/fantasy readers in your sphere, my business books, or my material for younger readers, might be a good fit.

Thanks for your patience, and your help, and your good wishes.

--M

NecronomiCon 2024

Last weekend I decided to return to my local convention, NecronomiCon, after over eight years, to see how things had changed… and also because I missed in-person socializing. Fortunately, the con didn’t mind my signing up at the last minute, and put me on panels and sold me a writer’s alley table, so I was able to go all three days and sell a few books.

Briefly, about Necro: 2024 is its 43rd year, and it's never missed a year, even when they were forced to do a zoom version. It’s a nonprofit con of the old science fiction style, with panel programming, gaming, an art show, and a dealer’s room. In the past, it’s been fairly large, but the arrival of the enormous for-profit ComicCons have obviously cut into its attendance. The vendors I talked to said last year there were 400-500 people. This year, because of the hurricane, we probably had a quarter of that number, if that. Seven of the guests canceled because they couldn’t physically reach the con, and in fact, the committee wasn’t even sure if they’d be able to run it until three days before they were scheduled!

But it did run, and I’m glad it did, because it was a low key and relaxing event… less like a con and more like a weekend spent catching up with friends. Prior to my hiatus, I was a regular at this con, and was surprised how many people remembered me from back then; the woman who started the con came by to reminisce about how young and shiny I was when she first met me, and since she met me in the 90s, this was a legitimate observation…!

This brings me to the fact that the con skews a little old, but there were more small children than I’m used to seeing at cons, which was nice. (Especially after the tantrum some of the local furry cons threw about requiring attendees to be 18+). Since the hotel’s on university property, I talked with one of my table buddies about posting fliers on campus to attract some new people. The game room ran 24x7 all three days with tabletop games, roleplaying, LARPing, and an enormous library available for checkout so people could try something new. There was even a miniature painting contest, and the minis and paints were all supplied for you, and you got to take your figure home. I have to imagine that would be a fun thing to do over a weekend with friends: “let’s get together and play games and socialize”? Sounds like a good time to me!

The rest of the con is more modest in size, but I have to think that’s an opportunity, especially for younger people just starting out. The dealers’ room had maybe 20 vendors, and there were maybe 10-15 writers in the writers’ alley depending on the day. The art show’s panels had many vacancies, also. Though some of that was certainly due to the hurricane, I still think attracting some young adults to step into the shoes of the people who (probably!) want to retire from con-running would be a good idea.

I participated in three panels and one reading, which were almost entirely empty because of the low attendance, but that made it more fun in some ways… you can chat with the audience directly when there’s only a handful of people listening. My topics were “Redemption Arcs in Media,” “Writing the Short and Long of It” (about how to decide how long a story should be), and “The Fascination of the Other,” where I ended up impromptu moderator since we’d lost ours to travel disruptions. These were all companionable discussions, and the other pros entertaining company. I hadn’t planned to participate in the reading but got talked into it by the head of programming, because of the cancellations… so I read the first scene of “Leadership Lessons,” from To Discover and Preserve, because Vera is fun to perform. I tend to prefer funny material for readings, because it raises the energy level of the audience, and gets them responding.

Also good: absolutely no political talk that I heard at all, and the one time someone strayed onto it on a panel, I said, “Let’s not do politics… we’re here to escape,” and the whole audience did a ‘hear hear.’ I also saw signs of heterogeneous beliefs among the attendees, which was great. I’d like to return to a time when fans came from multiple beliefs and united over their shared love of dragons and spaceships.

I spent the entire weekend, when I wasn’t on a panel, behind a table. One of the good things about such a small attendance was it gave me a chance to test my in-person sales procedures. The new Shopify hardware worked perfectly once I figured out how to use it, and 2/3rds of my sales were credit or Apple Pay. One of them was even for an ebook, and the woman who bought it started reading it that night, which was gratifying. The physical set-up wasn’t bad; my new banner is great but I think my table could use some fancifying. I also very obviously need a cart to haul things because Daughter and I carried the boxes of books in and that was not ideal. Lessons learned!

I also feel, based on this con, that I probably wouldn’t be a great fit to sell at the ginormous 40,000-person cons, because what I enjoy is chatting with people and there’s not much chance of that in the crush of a megaconvention. I could be wrong, but people seem more likely to buy from me after talking with me a while. Gambling on numbers over personal connection reminds me too much of the “advertise to large numbers of strangers on Amazon” strategies that never worked well for me. I should probably try a ComicCon to be sure… if I can even get in! Those enormocons have waiting lists for their $700 tables.

I did really enjoy the talking. Two people had already heard of me; one of them bought Mindtouch on sale, and liked it, and another was on my mailing list already. I also received a compliment on my new mcahogarth.org website, which was unexpected. I stripped that site down based on my own frustration with web 2.0… I guess I’m not the only one tired of endless, hyper-polished Wordpress sites.

My sales covered my table and a little more. A third of my sales were of the business book, which makes me happy because I like to think of helping people realize their dreams. The other third were either Mindtouch or Earthrise, and if even one of those readers goes on to read the rest of the series, that’s a serious win. But I wasn’t too focused on making back my expenses… as Daughter observed, “This was an advertising expense. If you made money, that’s on top.”

I’ll be back next year, definitely. If you’re local to Florida, it’s worth considering if you love gaming and like relaxacons!

Birthday Jaguars

I wanted to say something deep and thoughtful, but it's a sunny day and I have coffee and an apple turnover, and people on Discord are telling me about their first experiences with my art or writing and other people are leaving reviews on my store, and I get to share the planet with so many interesting people and it's a grand adventure, isn't it? Is there really anything deeper and more wondrous than that? I'm so grateful. Thank you all for being part of my journey. Many of you for decades! I appreciate you all.🧡

Meta-Conversations: Children of the Fire

            I am sitting on a bench, looking out over a pond, when he slides onto alongside me, and even without looking at him I sense the tensile energy of him, so like his father’s. But there are deep waters there, more like his namesake’s. I can say that, can’t I? It is his name. “Shame.”

            “Datyani,” Kef says cheerfully. “I’m glad you go outside now and then. Exercise is good for you.”

            That’s very specific in Ai-Naidari: not ‘you’ as in ‘all people,’ but me in particular. I snort. “Is this Correction, then?”

            “I don’t know,” he answers, eyes sparkling. “Is it?” When I laugh, he grins, and it’s easy. “Now I wonder if you know the answer to that question.”

            “I don’t,” I admit. “I can’t imagine accepting Correction from you. I saw you grow up.”

            “Which is why I can only do it with a child’s blunt honesty, a child’s unexpected perspective, and a child’s transparency… things that remind you of the moments when your own child brought you up short, made you question your certainties, really think about how society works.” He wiggles his brows so much like Ajan that I laugh again. “This isn’t an act. But few people see Shame this way, the way you need to.”

            “You’re good at this job,” I say admiringly.

            “What else? I was trained by Kor Nai’Qevellen-osulkedi.” He lets the ebullience fade, and I see then a glimpse of the Shame that contemporary Ai-Naidar must see: the siren with the malleable, singing voice, and the sinewy strength in the limbs, and the intensity that feels like the point of a match held against a wick. “But you were thinking of other things than my role as Shame.”

            “You have a sister and brother,” I said. “Much younger than you.”

            “That’s true.”

            “Is it strange?”

            He smiles. “No. We’re like that… big families, odd-for-aunera generational gaps. If anything, it’s strange that I don’t have more siblings.”

            “The fire,” I guessed.

            He nods. “The fire will always live in those of us who witnessed it. To some extent or another. Some more than others. But many of us it damaged, and emethil suffered.”

            Emethil is the chain of generations, and hearing him say the word I can sense it: how the disaster that befell the capital of Kherishdar disordered so many people that they could not act the way they’d been taught to. Like Kor, they feared to give more hostages to fate… or they lost someone and could not move on from it.

            “We are the ashlishin,” he says, and for a moment I hear ajzelin, but no… it becomes clearer when I focus on it. Ash-lishin. The people who were burned or etched. “The children most of all. People like me and Shan and Aish.”

            The new Exception must be one of them. “Is that why the Exception is so different from the old Exception? Haraa said she’s less rude, more whimsical and erratic.”

            “Maybe,” Kef says, smiling. “Who can say? The Exception is the Exception. She is always singular.”

            I glance at him, see the young man who grew from the child I met in Ajan’s arms as a baby. Smiling, I say, “Does she let you Correct her?”

            “Shame never Corrects the Exception, because she cannot err. We find her, that’s all.” He grins. “But I do talk to her the way I do to you, datyani. As if I were her son.”

            “Is she so old?” I ask.

            “No,” he says. “But it irritates her, and that amuses us both.”

            I shake my head, imagining it.

            “I like to talk to you,” he says, thoughtful. “With you, I remember a little what it was like before the fire. I laugh the way my sister and brother do, who never knew it.”

            “Did it make you who you are today?” I ask.

            His father would have hopped onto the bench and danced off it. He slides away the way he arrived, without drama. Like a friend, because Shame is a friend, and Kef in particular is family. “A thing’s ending is implied in its every moment of existence, yes, datyani? Ishan. You should look at the pond.”

            “And walk,” I guess.

            “And walk.” A twinkle in those peachy-rose-colored eyes. “It’s good for you.”

            I am Corrected. Smiling, I get up and amble on.

Meta-Conversations: Taming

            “Me? Tame Kherishdar?” Tsevet’s laugh ripples, but like music on the verge of cacophony. “I’m hardly less wild than it is. Whyever would I want to tame it? Render it clawless and vulnerable? No! Never!”

            I hold up my hands. “Apologies, Eker.”

            “Yes. You owed one for that. Tame it!” He is still simmering with it: mockery, outrage, mirth. “Make it less vital! What a sin. What would we be without our passions? What good would living do us? A nation of obedient slaves, the way you people first imagined us. The spirit beaten out of us. No, aunerai. I did not tame Kherishdar. I freed it. From the stranglehold of countless, erratic, useless laws that did not serve us. One master, not thousands.”

            “Is that freedom?” I ask, careful.

            “One master can love you,” Tsevet says. “A thousand heartless paper laws? Are both cruel and capricious. They leave you at the whim of a stranger’s interpretation of them.”

            “Some would say—” I stop and continue, more sure of myself because I catch a glimpse, hear voices. “Some did say, when you began this, that they are now at the whim of a different stranger’s interpretation of the law, and a worser one because he has Thirukedi’s imprimatur, and so, every license.”

            Tsevet leans toward me, and his weirdling eyes are laser-focused on mine, glassy, damaged, piercing. “And they were wrong. Because as you know intimately, Shame is never a stranger. He loves each and every sinner. He is father and lover as well as judge. And your welfare is his aim.”

            “And Kherishdar’s,” I say.

            “It is the same… or it is excised.” He leans back, baring his teeth at me. Not quite a grin, that. “You know that too.”

            “And did you do a great deal of excising, servant of Shame?”

            “Keep asking,” he says, “and find out.”

•             Capricious - ideijz

•             Vital - yathiq

•             Tame - vot

•             Free - sum

•             Judge - ruch

Meta-Conversations: A Younger Kherishdar

            “I’d like to meet the Measure,” I tell Haraa.

            “Because I’m likely to know her?”

           I eye her, head tilted. “Other than Shame, you have made the most study of that part of Ai-Naidari history. Out of anyone I know personally.”

           Haraa waves a hand. “As your people say: ‘Fair.’ I’ll see what I can do.”

           That takes care of that, then. But thinking of the Measure, it occurs to me to ask: “Shame found another Exception, didn’t he? Kor, I mean.”

           “He did, yes.”

           “How strange that must have been,” I murmur. “I guess she was younger than either of you. But then, by the time Kef shows up, she’s older than him. That must be even weirder, given Shame and the Exception have a particular relationship.”

           “A specific one,” Haraa allows, and that odd tone in her voice….

           “You’re not… jealous?” I ask, brows lifting.

           Haraa, who was off in her own world, is startled back to ours by this question, and she laughs. “Mother, no. She was a felt-furred girl, datyani. Some twenty-odd years to his fifty. If the Exception wasn’t so difficult to slot into any expected role, I think he might have felt himself her father. I certainly thought of her as an errant girl. She grew up well, though; I liked her better than her predecessor. Less rude, more whimsical, dreamy, and unpredictable.”

           “Less rude,” I repeat.

           “The Exception can’t help being rude. It’s part of her ishas.”

           “As my people say… fair.” I grin at her, and she grins back. I continue, “She was Kef’s Exception, then.”

           “Until he found the new one.”

           “Because Shame always does,” I say and halt, arrested. “Wait, Kef found a new one? Do they die off so fast? Oh no. They die off that fast, don’t they. The way Shame used to, before Qevellen.”

           “Not all Shames died young,” Haraa demurs.

           “But the most successful, most ardent ones did.” I think of the historical Measure. “They must have died young too. Like Ereseya.”

           “It is a difficult thing, to set oneself in opposition to all society.” This is the kind of sententious utterance that would have been at home in Kor’s mouth—one becomes like one’s family—so it is a relief when Haraa resumes sounding like herself. “But if I were to guess, and it is only a guess, then I would say that like the most successful Shames, the most successful Measures and Exceptions burn themselves out quickly.”

           I don’t love this knowledge, but it’s useful. I trade, then, by saying, “We were talking, the others and I, and we guessed that prior to the first servant of Shame, Correction was a thing enacted by nature, or the gods, or the laws of the universe, and that creating Shame-the-person was an attempt to embody that universal principle.”

           “And guide it to more merciful or productive ends?” Haraa’s ears flick sideways, as if listening to a conversation. She probably is having one with Kor in her head, and I don’t doubt she’ll seek him after I’m gone. “That seems in keeping with Thirukedi’s aims.”

           “Maybe that’s why He was open to the idea when Tsevet advanced it to Him.”

           “You’ll have to ask Him,” Haraa said, laughing. “I’m sure I don’t know.”

           “Historical Kherishdar,” I murmur. “It’s going to be so different.”

           “Do you worry you are unequal to the task, datyani?”

           “Not in the sense you’re suggesting. I know my own power. I just worry about not doing justice to the differences. It’s… colorful and wild and intense and unjust in ways people have come not to expect of Kherishdar.” I think of Haraa dancing in the public places in her costume. “Like the Trysts, but all the time. Passion, and violence. Duels and assassinations. The memory of war. Actual slaves in the slave caste.”

           “Your people have wondered how we evolved from there to here,” Haraa says. “Perhaps this will illuminate some of that mystery.”

           “I doubt that,” I say. “Because I still don’t know. But history’s like that, I think. There aren’t always reasons for why things happen. Not neat, tidy, and linear ones.”

           “Perhaps that is why you’re writing this story now,” Haraa says. “Because you say and think things like this.”

           I eye her. “And if I tell you that you’ve been around Shame too long….”

           “I will say, yes… yes, I have. And it is as delicious as it was when we first made Aishal, and I am as smug about it.”

           I burst out laughing. “Shall I say ‘there is still a fathrikedi in you’ or would that be rude, given that the past is the past, and no Ai-Naidari would say they contain all the changed selves they’ve evolved past?”

           “It would be aunerai of you, at least.”

           “So definitely rude,” I say, amused.

           “In the way that the Exception is. As part of her ishas. Unavoidably.”

           “Ah, but I am no Ai-Naidari to have an ishas….”

           “No, but you are an artist, and an artist never quite fits into her society, does she.” Haraa taps my nose, surprising me out of my surprise. “Attend, datyani. I give you some words. Starting with rus.” Silliness, nonsense, but the reason she’s teaching it to me is because the singular form, rusi can be used for ‘harmless prank’, and her booping me on the nose after teasing me counts. “And as we are discussing maidens, then ‘young’ is yin. Are there any other requests?”

           “Bitter,” I say.

           “The flavor is gun, and the noun form is the irregular agun. The emotion, though, is chaish. Bitterness is chaisheth. Old word, that one.” She smiles crookedly. “Appropriate for a woman summoning the Measure.”

           “And for the Measure herself?”

           “That, you will have to ask her yourself. I am nowhere so brave.” And with another of those mocking-teasing looks, she’s gone, and I settle with pen to write the new words, and to wait.

Meta-Conversations: The Challenge

            “What an interesting creature you are.”

            My hands flex gently on the teapot I was about to put to use… because I was trying to coax Ajan’s wife to come talk. Is this better? It will certainly be challenging. I pour. “You will like the texture of my cups.”

            “Will I?” The first Servant of Shame circles me like I’m a particularly tasty morsel. “Will they scorch my fingertips?”

            Two can play this game. “If they don’t, will you be disappointed?”

            He laughs. “Ah! You’ve grown claws since I ambushed you last.”

            “I am no longer a maiden,” I say.

            “And yet, so much yet to learn.”

            “We are not complete until we’re done,” I reply.

            That provokes another laugh. “You have been around us, haven’t you.” He slides onto the chair, feeling its edges with his fingertips, and takes the cup. As I expect, those hands caress its contours. I was using a double-walled glass piece that I like for espresso, because it keeps things warm for longer; I was hoping to find out if the Ai-Naidar have something similar for let. But I doubt the first Servant wants to talk to me about tea. He proves it with his next comment. “I like watching you.”

            Not stalkery at all. I suppress a smile. “You’ll want me to ask why.”

            “Because you hate change and long for order and routine and the expected paths, and then career off them into the weeds in search of the adventure you don’t want but that your ishas demands of you.”

            “Yes,” I say, nodding. “That would be accurate.”

            “But then, having committed to this rebellion… you remain fundamentally inflexible, and fight the very changes you are relentlessly seeking. And if you don’t guard your feet, they start curving you back toward the expected path.” He raises his brows, and I make myself meet his scarred eyes. “Still accurate?”

            “The first Servant of Shame is still Shame,” I say.

            “Oh, that’s good,” he says. “You even sound like one of us. So… since you know me so well, aunerai… why am I here?”

            “You’re about to tell me.” I shake my head and pour for myself. “I expect I won’t like it.”

            “Why do you insist on demanding that our stories fit into the expected shapes? When you yourself have flung yourself free of the strictures that require them to be that shape?”

            “Because,” I say firmly, “I am…” I stop. I know what he wants, and all my first objections aren’t ‘you’re not ready to write that’, they’re ‘how the heck would you market that,’ and ‘your other experiments in flash fiction collections haven’t done all that great.’ “All right. You’ve got me there.”

            “Have I? What an astonishing turn of phrase. I like it.”

            He is… much more of a sensualist than Kor. Or Amath. Kef’s… close, but the way a candleflame is to a forest fire. “I want to tell Mishor’s story.”

            “No doubt you will. But why must you treat Kherishdar’s story as a linear exercise? Told in chronological order? So orderly. So expected. You were more experimental in the past. It suited us.”

            That startles me. “Do you know about art, then?”

            “My work is art, aunerai. And I was…” He pauses, sensuous lips working as if tasting a particularly rare flavor. “…a pioneer. Also straying off the expected path, because my ishas demanded it of me.”

            “You liked it,” I pointed out.

            He grins, and it truly is ghoulish with his eyes… messed up… the way they are. “Unlike you, there is no conflict in my spirit. You might ponder the source of that conflict, if artist you truly are.”

            “Shame,” I say, “what do you suppose I’ve been doing in my art all my life?”

            He laughs again, pleased, and taps his fingertips together. “Very good. You are old enough to meet me on my own ground. The only question is: will you? And no, don’t tell me ‘at some time.’ Be honest. Art requires honesty.”

            “Honesty as radical as yours changes worlds,” I observe. And before he can regain the upper hand, I say, “Did you love it, even when it hurt?”

            “I loved it, especially when it hurt.” He raises a hand. “No, don’t tell me you don’t understand. Or I’ll wonder if you’re now too old to tell my story. Tell me, aunerai… are you? Or are you artist enough to remember how quick the blood flows through the veins of the new? And how pain is terrible and yet you know yourself alive, feeling it? You want to go to Mishor, because you want to think about death, and infirmity, and a life circumscribed. But that would be easy. Don’t you want to do the hard thing? Aren’t you always doing the hard thing?”

            I pause, then say, “Not as often as I should.”

            “Then, artist…” He rises, still grinning. “…do your duty.”

            I think about what it would take to write the stories of the first Servant of Shame. I know a little more about Thirukedi’s history, and Kherishdar’s. But I would have to meet some people of the time. But I get the feeling that some of them might start showing up… and I wonder where that will lead. What early Kherishdar was like—the Kherishdar that was more of the body.

            He really did throw down the gauntlet. But then, that’s what he did, for an entire empire.

            He also left me a word, though I don’t find it until I’m cleaning up the table. Written in a swift hand: jen. ‘Pioneer.’

Meta-Conversation: Fasting

            “How do I not have a word for discipline?” I ask, and it is Haraa who answers.

            “You do have one, you just didn’t write it down.” She points at metkoj, “body-discipline”, which was made from the word for body, met… and therefore….

            “Right,” I say, and jot down koj. Then I look past my notebook at her: at her, the older head of Household, settled and powerful and yet…. “Why are you the one talking to me, when you’re a generation behind the story that comes next?”

            “When you are ready to write the story that comes next, those Ai-Naidar will talk to you more,” she answers, unperturbed. “Until then, you get me.” She raises her delicately arched brows. “Or am I not welcome? Hoping for more exciting company? I could get Kor.”

            I laugh. “No, that’s fine. Though I miss him.”

            “He was good for you, and the others I see over your shoulder as well. Mishor will be too, once you meet him. Now… what is it that Kijzuni Evrauthendari wanted?”

            “A word for fasting,” I said. “Which I haven’t been able to find….”

            “Because you associate it with religion and self-denial,” Haraa says. “We don’t. We associate it with cleansing.”

            And just like that, the word arrives. “Ah,” I say. “It’s formed off qil, for purity, for cleansed.”

            “Yes. It was probably ‘to cleanse the body’ but lost some of the syllables and became qilem. The noun, a fast, is qilimet. Accordingly, qilith is purification. And if you wish to be delighted, which I suspect you do, then the beverage that you drink while fasting is a qilivit, which you’ll recognize, if you have been diligent, as including the word for essence, -ivit. We attach it to meat, or fish, to make various forms of ‘broth’. While we now also use it metaphorically, originally a qilivit is anything you drink to facilitate cleansing of the body. We do that, mind you, in an attempt to hear, or translate, the needs of our bodies, which is the verb mishmetel: to attempt to hear what your body needs by attending to it fully.”

            “But… don’t you consider fasting difficult?” I ask.

            Do former fathrikedi make indelicate noises? I suppose they do when they have moved on to osulked. “Do you consider it difficult to bathe? Brush your teeth? It is a relief, rather. We use different words for abstinence.” Before I can ask, she says, “Otoq, to abstain. Kojotoq, abstinence. You’ll note the word for discipline shapes that noun form. Koj is the verb. Kojem is the noun, and kojan is the adjective.”

            “You return to Kor,” I say.

            “You do, at least.” She grinned. “We would call him ashkojan, someone who is disciplined as part of who he is. Those of us who must labor at it might hope to call ourselves kojandar, now and then. But an ashqilimet, someone who is habitually clean or pure, is less associated with fasting and more with a cleanliness of purpose… and frankly, with a person who is not entirely tethered to the world.”

            “Are there qilemdar, then?”

            She chuckled. “When we fast, we are fasting people. And most of us are fasting people, though some castes fast more than others. I did frequently as a Decoration, and I do it more than I need to as a Public Servant. Guardians also tend to fast frequently, and priests. But if you’re the sort who seeks frequent cleansing, you are likely to have been placed in one of those castes so, as you would say, it is hard to say which comes first, the chicken or the egg.”

            I think about it. “Are there abstinent people? Ashotoq?”

            “There are, yes. But that is a word we reserve for those who must abstain to fulfill their caste duties. People who must refrain from something given to us, like marrying or having children.”

            “Or food?” I murmur. “I love food.”

            She laughs. “Yes. I admit food can be pleasant. I still prefer exercise.”

            “Can you abstain from exercise?” I wonder.

            “Sometimes. More a matter for priests than me, though. You can ask Kor if he comes by. Or one of the other Shames; I’ve seen their shadows in your eyes.” She taps my notebook. “Attend. You have an entire list here you haven’t filled in.”

            Accordingly, I take dictation, until we get to the word for ‘lame’, which causes me to exclaim, “Seriously? Lame is ‘un/not-walking’? Are you sure that’s not a joke?”

            “Completely. The first person who tried to describe someone who couldn’t walk probably framed it as best they could, as someone who wasn’t walking effectively.”

            Hhapash still feels like a child came up with it. But then, maybe one did. On the other hand, “seizure” is jefledeq: ‘thoughts-stop,’ more or less. I ask, suddenly, “Is the next story really about death?”

            “About making peace with it, maybe,” Haraa says. “But aren’t all stories, at some point, about making peace with mortality?”

            “I don’t know,” I say, startled.

            “Maybe that’s why you need to ask.” She pauses at my expression and grins. “Artist.”

            I sniff at her. “You’ve been living with one too long. It’s not fair. You know all our weaknesses.”

            “Come by more often,” she says. “And bring the rest. We’ve missed them.”

Back in Time Tuesday: Willow, the Night, and Moon

My first big original sale, this gouache piece is of... I think? an old RPG character? I can't remember? Mostly I wanted an excuse to paint hair, though, and paint hair I did! So much hair! XD

Chimerical Update, September 6!

It’s September and as usual I have no idea how that happened. So much stuff happening! Let me tell you all about it!

FireBorn’s Legacy is now out on retailers! So if you were waiting on that because you prefer to buy that way, you can go get it (https://books2read.com/qora). It already has a rating! I am so delighted. The Kickstarter’s about one-third done: I’ve got paperbacks and a new hardcover proof heading to me next week, probably. I am trying to sit on my excitement about being able to ship all the things, but I love shipping all the things…!

If you didn’t participate in the Kickstarter and you want a copy of the stretch goal novella about Bryer meeting the bird of his dreams, it’s up on the store (https://studiomcah.com/products/harriers-choice). Or you can wait—in about a year, it will probably end up in a collection. But the ebook version of the novella has lots of Phoenix art, so if you’re into that, pick it up.

In the bedlam of the Kickstarter ending, the gamelit serial went on unplanned hiatus. Don’t worry, we will return to Nick and Amanda and Galatea! I have an outline for their story so I know where we’ve stopped and where we’re going next. I should probably do up a cover for their book, in fact, because once I get back to it, it’s going to happen fast. But the other reason I’ve stopped is…

…because I am about 25% done with Surela 2. (For reference, we were 16% done at the beginning of the week). That one’s writing itself and I don’t want to get in its way! For now, all my writing energy is getting dumped into that, and I have to fight pretty hard for writing energy because it is both ragweed-and-storm season here, and I feel like the days I don’t have a headache outnumber the ones I do by about 5 to 1. I wish I could flee to some less tempestuous climate for the summer, but we make do. 

There’s so much going on with my website stuff that I don’t even know where to start… I’ll summarize by saying I’ve converted my mcahogarth.org site into a linktree (which I hope to pretty up with a graphic next week), and moved its most useful content over to the store. I have a lot of thoughts about how internet/technology/AI culture is changing (again) in regards to online presences, and I can talk through that in a separate entry for people who want to hear it. But the short of it is that if I’m selling something through my website, it should look like a store. If I’m not, I don’t want it to look like it came out of a marketing department.

My store now has excerpts for every book, and there’s now a review system in place! So if you want to leave a review, that’s where I hope it goes (even if it’s cut-and-pasted from Amazon).

I’m also gearing up to sell at my localcon, as a test of my new card reader/store, so if you’re going to be in the area for NecronomiCon, come by and say hi.

There’s a lot going on in my head about changes (relating to that website stuff, among other things), but I think that deserves a separate business post, written when my head isn’t throbbing in time with the developing thunderheads. So you’ll get that as soon as I can think straight. XD

And that’s everything for now. Tell me what’s on your mind!

Proto-Taylitha

Going through my old files (and tossing a lot of them, yes, even the art), I am stopping to scan some of the more notable pieces. This one, from 1990, is one of those, because it's one of the first pictures of the character who would become Taylitha, in what was the start of the Fleet uniform... you can see the color is about right, and the front panels. It's just the side panels that aren't right yet, and the sleeves.

But apparently, proto-Taylitha has retained her everywoman "let's just get through another day" attitudes for 34 years...!

book book book book

The kickstarter's funding period is over! The staggered launch continues!

• Backers have their ebooks/ai-audio already;

• the author's edition is now available on my direct sale store

• retail edition launches September 6th

• the group-read thread for the book (which is currently full of screaming) is on discord at channel #peltedverse, thread Fireborn's Legacy Group Read

• the wiki is updating now with multiple pages about the new book (so spoilers, if you worry about those)

We continue!

Changing Mental Gears: Launching Direct

           It’s been a while since I did a business post, so here we go! and it’s about my decision this year to shift focus to direct sales. I’m not sure I ever explained that decision fully, so let’s jump back in time to Jan/Feb or so. The idea of direct sales had been floating in my head—by most authors standards, I was halfway there with my patreon-locals/etsy/kickstarter constellation. I’d been resisting the idea of focusing and consolidating my efforts though, because I was nervous about the set-up.

            Listening to Joanna Penn’s podcast is my Monday ritual when I’m commuting, and I’ve been going through the backlog, which is how I ran into to this episode with Russell Nohelty, recorded in late 2023. And he said something that went through me like a lance:

Catalog sales are very different to direct-to-customer sales. When I say catalog sales, Amazon is a catalog, Sears is a catalog. So if you remember actually getting—like I'm old enough to actually remember getting the Sears catalog, the JCPenney catalog, and the Macy's catalogs. And when you're flipping through, the goal of the catalog is to be just like the other things, like to be the blue shirt that they want. They've already curated that Macy's can curate for them, and so whatever Macy's wants, like says that they should buy, that's what they're looking at.

           That's how Amazon sales works. That's one of the reasons why people say every paranormal romance should look the same, everything with the same subgenre should look the same. It's because when people are looking through the catalogue of Amazon books, they are picking the one that looks most like the one that they have already read.

           When you're talking about direct sales, it's the opposite. It's really people who are trying to find a unique and different experience.

            I thought: that’s me. That’s why I keep floundering. I’m so stubbornly unwilling to look like everything else. The thing that people keep telling me about my work is that it’s not like other things. That’s WHY THEY LIKE IT.

            So at that point, everything else crystallized: why I’ve always had more success with more personal approaches, why I’ve always done better when I’m interacting with my audience in some form (whether it’s Mucks or Livejournal or Discord or streaming), why I love the Kickstarter experience and why it has always felt natural to crowdfund my efforts, even before crowdfunding was formalized by corporations that wanted to streamline the process.

            After that, it was obvious that I needed to launch myself off the cliff and trust the wings would unfurl before I discovered there was a bottom to the abyss. That’s when I started putting my head down into figuring out the Shopify store... which I started with in March! And didn’t launch until June! So it was a lot of effort and a significant learning curve, but I think I’m approaching happy with where it’s at. It wants more effort, but it’s already functional and earning money, and that’s Minimum Viable Product right there.

            But that brought me to the second part of the equation which was to consider whether my existing way of launching books rewarded that personal and interactive connection, or whether it was a relic of the retail strategy (you can guess the answer there). I asked then, ‘what does a direct-sales-focused launch strategy look like?’ And that’s how I fumbled onto what I’m doing right now, with FireBorn’s Legacy. I got part of it right: I am making the launch a fun event everyone can participate in and feel excited about helping with; and I’m making special editions that will only be available to people who buy direct from me. But I messed up the timeline; I wanted the Kickstarter version to be in people’s hands before the retail launch so they would be in the know before everyone else. But I didn’t push the retail preorder date out far enough, and when I ran into unexpected delays perfecting the hardcover, I couldn’t compensate. Fortunately the KS finishes the day of the retail drop, so at least people won’t get it later! And it's still an author edition with art, so it'll still be special.

            So some things go through my mind as I learn from my first attempt to do this:

• First, my old way of launching was more efficient from a time perspective: when the book was done, I put it up for sale, emailed people a few times, and was already moving on. This kept finished projects from taking up my attention, but it also meant less money, less fun, less visibility, and less reward for my long-term fans, some of whom have been with me for decades. If I visualized my production schedule as a pipeline, then it was a long period for production, a very narrow one for preparation-to-market, and then a nearly nonexistent period for launch and distribution. Very lopsided!

• Second, granting that I want to continue doing these audience-first launches, I need to plan them much farther out. That means I might finish a book and then have to sit on it for a few months while I prepare all the various launch activities, or (better), I start building up a backlog. The goal would be there’s always a book in some stage of the pipeline, and those pipelines are roughly equal in length: production->prep->launch->distribution.

• But third, this seems like a sane way to run things; it means my fans can expect and plan for projects more than a few weeks in advance. I know many of them will appreciate that because I’ve been told I’m too precipitous before and will probably be told I’m too precipitous again until I get this figured out.😅

            My immediate goal, then, is to get FireBorn’s Legacy fulfilled (probably wrapping up in late October/early November, since the hardcovers take a long time to produce) and do another test project to figure out how to better manage my timelines. The most likely thing is an art book for the Blood Ladders trilogy, because it’s mostly done already and it’s just a matter of finishing and prototyping. That’ll give me a not-fiction project to continue finetuning my production processes while I finish up at least one or two novels and get them ready for next year.

            As usual, I’m grateful to all of you for your patience while I learn radically new things! In the past five months I’ve tackled everything from hardcover layout (not minor!) to international shipping set-up to backend sales triggers/delivery systems. It has not been boring!

            All very well and good, Jaguar… show me the shinies! Okay. How about some test layouts for the art book?

 Color Layout

 Some Sketches

           I'm excited about this one! I have so much art! I can put in the conlang stuff! There will be fancy coated paper! I'll get practice doing art books, and I want to do more art books!

           But yes, that's where I'm at. Learning a lot! Enjoying myself more than I expected! I hope you are too.

BIRB

I did this one for the Kickstarter (seven more days!) as a cover image for the bonus story... and thought everyone would appreciate seeing the full-size version without the text. Bryer (on the right) and mate!

Back in Time Tuesday: Guardian of the West

This seemed a good one for stormy August: my picture of the Le'enle Silent Chain, the Emperor of the West of the Compass Rose. His sash is the Le'enle-sa word for knowledge, because that was his aegis! But he was a bit of a tempestuous personality, Silent Chain, thus the backdrop. (Then again, knowledge is not always easy!)

State of the Jaguar, August 2024

What a week! Things are crazy here so I wanted to bring you up to date on it before we crash into the weekend and the new school year, which starts Monday.

 First of all… it’s August. When did that happen. I am not prepared.

 Second of all… our roof is leaking. Into the house. So that’s a thing I was also not prepared for. Florida do be like that, what with all the tropical storms, but still. Replacing the roof was not on my wishlist for 2024.

 Third of all: still no job. -_- Won’t belabor that. I’m still looking.

But on to the creative stuff: so we have about five months left in the year and my plan, tentatively, is to publish two books: FireBorn’s Legacy, and Surela’s Book 2, An Exile Amid Stars, which is about 10% done right now. I would have liked to finish more work this year but there’s no pushing it; in 2024-2025 my focus is absolutely on being mom because this is an important and busy year. So I’ll finish what I can, and focus on bringing in new readers as my stopgap for money since my art/writing income continues to be our sole income at this time.

 I actually think the ‘bring new people in’ thing is slowly working, because I am seeing new names float by… courtesy of my shift in focus from retail sales to direct-to-audience sales (through Kickstarter, Patreon, and Shopify).

 Aletsen, the Shopify store was a tremendous amount of work to set up (like four solid months of work) and even now I’m only calling it half done: the ebooks, audiobooks, and paperbacks are now available, but I have yet to touch artwork/merchandise. But what a return on that investment! It is truly rewarding to be able to keep nearly all the money I make through the store; to be able to choose how much I earn; to be able to run sales, or bundle books or series the way I see fit. To see names! Every person who buys through the store makes me light up a little when I see their name and address and imagine them on the other end of the transaction. So cool! I love that connection, no matter how fleeting.

 I also love the feeling of breaking free from Big Retail and its algorithms. How I hated having to play the algorithm game… like walking into a casino, knowing the house always wins but you have no choice but to play. It’s also fun to feel like so many of my sales are now sliding under the radar. The sales I make directly to my readers and art-lovers are never reflected on some bestseller list or in sales rankings. I don’t have to play that game either. You don’t have to keep up with anyone else, because no one knows what you’re up to. I suddenly understand why my cat is so excited about finding a new blanket to hide under. You’re king of the world when no one knows what you’re up to…!

 So that’s honestly been one of the most delightful things I’ve done this year, and I’m so glad I went for it.

The other thing I’m trying this year, as most of you probably already know from the Kickstarter, is bespoke special edition hardcovers. Having my work in hardcover with foil dust jackets and colored endpapers and all the other fancy things that only bestselling authors usually get has been a bucket list item for me all of my life! I wondered if producing it myself would make it feel less legitimate, but it turns out that being able to make them look exactly the way I want is far more important than feeling like someone else thought I merited the special treatment. FireBorn’s Legacy is the first book I’ve designed, and it was definitely a learning curve to figure out how to set up the files, design the covers and endpapers, do the interiors, etc. But I feel like it's nothing but upward motion from here. I want to do a fancy release like this for every book in the future, and get to the back catalog too! It’ll require doing extra art for every book, but… what’s not to love about that?

 I’d be happy to produce a hardcover edition just so I can buy it for myself, but it turns out that lots of you also want it, because the Kickstarter skyrocketed when I added them as prizes earlier today. I am a little staggered. In a good way. But you can ask my family I’ve been calmly hyperventilating most of the day. XD

So that’s where I am in early August. My plan for the remainder of the year is as follows:

·      Wrap up and fulfill the FireBorn’s Legacy launch

·      Continue writing the serial for Patrelocals

·      Finish writing and launch Surela 2

·      Run one or maybe two more little sticker Kickstarters

·      Continue building out the shop

·      Continue reaching out to new readers (and rewarding longtime fans!)

And now I’m going to go back to staring at this hardcover. So shiny. Literally!

Oh, right, links:

Kickstarter (running now): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mcahogarth/fireborns-legacy?ref=3casnk

Shop: https://studiomcah.com/

The Kickstarter for Qora's Novel is Live!

And we're already at the "vote for stretch goals" phase! There are art tiers and book tiers and "I've never read your work, help, where do I start" tiers... just about anything I could think of. So far, so good! Come join the fun!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mcahogarth/fireborns-legacy/posts/4168142

Gamelit 33 (just where you left me)

            Ray’s phone woke him up, which he didn’t appreciate because anything before 10 in the morning was too early, and 4 am definitely counted as too early. He dragged it over the comforter and squinted at it until it unlocked. Seong? Seriously? Man probably hadn’t gone to bed yet. But seriously?

HEY LOSER

get to work we have material

            What the heck. Ray tossed the phone aside and pulled the cover over his head. Nothing was that important. Even if Seong had bothered to text him about it. Probably had to do with Tankydoo. And Donner’s Beck. And Bard Boy. Whatever. It could wait. What could possibly matter?

            The text alert went off again. With a groan, Ray rolled over.

KILLZ CAME

            Ray dropped the phone and was out of bed so fast he didn’t remember the trip from bedroom to computer. Jamming on the headset, he logged into the Omen streamer keys and skated backwards until he discovered what had set Seong on fire.

            “Literal OMG material.” Ray sagged into his chair, staggered. He hadn’t expected Killz to find out about Donner’s Beck so quickly—had, in fact, been worried about him hearing about it too quickly and ruining things before they had a chance to develop. Instead, Killz had shown up and delivered a spectacle worthy of an epic movie. The one-on-one duel with Tankydoo–“white knight vs evil rogue”–was full of absolutely stunning shots just waiting to happen. Then there was that enigmatic moment with Pony Mom… oh, Ray could just hear the fan speculation now. Why had he spared her? Was this a hint of a change in heart? What were the villain’s motivations? Was Pony Mom just that special? When would they meet again? Because surely they would, or there wouldn’t be an arrow stabbed into the ground next to the sapling, like a challenge.

            Then the absolutely fantastic sequence with Killz and Goldie firing the town while Pony Mom did her valiant damage control, up to the finale where Killz departed, and Pony Mom cheerfully said ‘that’s life, time to fix things’ and gone at it while literally singing. SINGING.

            “I don’t know what I did to deserve this,” Ray told the universe at large. “But thank you. Or Thank Killz’s sense of drama. Something.” He bent to the keyboard, beaming.

***

            For the first time since he’d been accepted into the beta, Nick did not want to hurry awake and into the wireset. It was nice to be alive and in a world where Mom wasn’t in a hospital. He thought about it while scrubbing his hair in the shower: that he could think about it now, from a distance, because it was over. He’d craved excitement, adventure, and drama all his life… and now he’d had an experience that most people would call dramatic. Was he happy about it? Mostly, he was relieved it was over. Maybe that’s what it was like for everyone?

            If that was true, then why did people long for adventure? Did all the people who wanted it spend the entire experience wishing it was over? The way he had?

            Dropping onto his bed, he checked his messages. His girlfriend had left him one about the series they’d been watching for a while, about the latest episode. The group chat was going strong, mostly from Falcón complaining about the summer reading, because he’d done it assuming he’d be in the regular class but he’d just found out he was in the AP version instead, and they had different assigned reading. ‘Now I have to read an extra two books!’

            Blythe had sent him a message, too: ‘you okay? Want to do coffee?’

            He’d typed ‘yes’ before he thought better of it, and it was too late then to take it back. Was coffee alone with Blythe a date? She probably wanted to know how he was, that was all. And she was the only one he wanted to talk about the experience with, because she’d been there, sort of. He tried to imagine explaining it in the group chat and failed.

            He did want to talk about it. Maybe. Or not. He was so confused.

            The smell of bacon was wafting from the stairwell. Halfway down it, he could also smell pancakes. Both his parents were in the kitchen, laughing, and the sight was so familiar and so gratifying that he tried not to overthink things. “That smells great!”

            “I took the day off,” Dad said. “So I could make my special pancakes.”

            Mom smacked his arm lightly. “You took the day off because you need a day off.”

            “Right. To eat pancakes. You want blueberries in yours, kiddo?”

            “Sure. Can I help? I can make stuff now.”

            “Perfect. Go sit down, Amanda, the men are taking over.”

            “God help us all,” she said, laughing, but she also sat.

            Nick took over at the stove, overseeing the bacon, while Dad managed the griddle. The bacon was mostly done, though, so he rescued it from the pan and then went into the refrigerator. “Want eggs, Dad?”

            “Sure, two would be good.”

            Just like that–‘sure, two would be good.’ Encouraged, Nick took the pan off the heat until the bacon fat stopped trying to throw hot drops at his face, then cracked four eggs in. One of the yokes broke, but the other three stayed intact and fried themselves perfectly.

            Mom set the table, and ten minutes later they were passing around syrup and pouring coffee, like it was a normal morning. And it was a normal morning. He was grateful.

            “So while you all were sleeping,” Mom began.

            “Wait, you were up while we were sleeping?” Nick said.

            “You have no idea how boring it is to be stuck in a hospital bed.” She paused, fork dripping syrup. “I really hope you never find out how boring that is. But anyway, I decided to play Omen! And I’m afraid that guy came back and torched the village again. But I got pretty far in putting it back together. Oh, and he left your tree alone. I asked him nicely.”

            Nick wasn’t sure what was weirder: that his mom had popped out with gaming talk at breakfast without being prompted… or that it took him a hot second to remember why any of that mattered. When he did remember, it rushed back to him but somehow the sea of outrage and confusion wasn’t as extreme as he expected. It still mattered more that everyone at the table was alive, and that pancakes were delicious, and that his dad had vacuumed up the eggs with an approving noise. “Uh… maybe you should back up and start over.”

            “With more detail,” Dad added.

            Mom obliged, and that story struck him as whacked. Why would Killz come back? Why would he bother with some grand duel? Why set fire to Donner’s Beck again, when there were other things to do? Unless he was doing it to troll… but if he were trolling, why didn’t he kill Mom, too? PVP trolls loved to corpse-camp pathetic lowbies who couldn’t fight back.

            Something wasn’t adding up. Or maybe he had the equation wrong. His algebra teacher had been fond of saying that if you got the wrong answer, it was either you failed at executing the process… or you used the wrong process entirely because you didn’t understand the question. He felt like he didn’t understand any of the questions today. Like he’d woken up with a different brain.

            “I’m impressed,” Dad was saying. “It’s like the setup to some movie.”

            “It is, isn’t it?” Mom said. “I totally understand why you love these things, Nick.”

            Rousing himself, Nick said, “Do you?”

            She started to answer, then laughed. “All right. Maybe not completely. But I’m starting to see it.”

***

            “Is it permanent?” he asked Blythe later at the coffee shop.

            “No,” she said, as if he hadn’t spent several minutes fumbling through a disjointed description of his mental state, one so bad he wasn’t sure he’d conveyed it. “It’s just that right now you’re not in the extreme world, and you’re not in the normal world. You’re moving from one to the other.”

            He stopped stirring the sugar sludge at the bottom of his black coffee.

            “The way I see it,” she continued, “is there’s the normal world we spend most of our lives in, where things are basically okay and we make up things to be excited about, or depressed about, because nothing’s exciting or depressing. Not seriously. But we need to be excited or depressed to feel like we’re alive, so we pick the stuff that looks close enough and hype it up.” She tapped her chest, and Nick tried not to stare. “But here in our hearts, we know it’s not really that important. That’s why a lot of people are sort of dissatisfied and don’t know why. But then there’s the extreme world, which is when something actually exciting or horrifying happens. Like people we love dying or… uh… winning the lottery, I guess. Or falling in love. Or fighting a war. Then our emotions about those things are real, and match what we’re going through, so we’re not only feeling those things, we’re also feeling like it’s right to feel those things. We know when those things match, and that’s good for us.” She frowned at her mocha. “Sometimes if the extreme world sticks around long enough, I think the opposite process starts happening: instead of finding normal things to make more hype, we start looking for ways to make the hype things feel more normal. It’s like what we need is change, otherwise we can’t do compare and contrast and figure out if our perspective is janky.” She smiled. “Long story short, the transition between the worlds is trippy but it wears off.”

            “So in a few days, I’ll go back to thinking Omen’s beta is the most important thing in my life.”

            “A few days, a few weeks… but yeah.”

            He frowned. “What if I don’t want that? There’s got to be some happy medium between ‘my life is so boring I’m stuck pretending a game is as important as real life’ and ‘my life is so exciting that I’m desperate for normal again.’”

            She cocked her head. “Maybe that’s the real use of games? Maybe games are supposed to give you some contrast, normally. A way to live briefly in the extreme world, so that you can come back and appreciate the normal world better?”

            “Except like you said, you know it’s not real so you feel bad about feeling real feelings about it. Or at least, I do now.” He rubbed his forehead, embarrassed. “Except she wasn’t almost dead, it turns out. It’s stupid to be this freaked out when it was nearly nothing.”

            “It wasn’t nearly nothing,” Blythe said. “Just because it was easily fixed doesn’t make it nothing, Nick. That’s a reason to be grateful for modern medicine, not a reason to beat yourself up. I would have freaked if my mom had passed out and not woken up when I tried to wake her up. And my mom’s not even pregnant. That would have been even more scary. Scarier. Um, whichever one’s right.”

            He glanced at her, then said, hesitant, “You said something about having family in and out of the hospital…”

            Her smile was sad. “I’m not sure you want the story. It’s a long one.” She tried smiling brighter. “You have a beta to play, after all. You quit in the middle of an epic quest!”

            “I did,” he agreed, “but I’ve got time for a story. Even a long one.” He eyed his cup. “And maybe something else to drink.”

            She giggled. “But drinking it black is very manly!”

            “It’s how my dad drinks it, but I don’t know how. I’ll be right back.”

            “I’ll be here, just where you left me.”

Just For Fun: Redraw, 32 Years Apart!

I found this breezy-looking sketch from 32 years ago of my first D&D character, a half-elven rogue, riding a weird hippogryph-unicorn thing I'd designed, and thought it would be fun to redraw it in the same spirit (not too rigorous, quick, with markers and ink). A fun exercise!

Gamelit 32 (just a game)

           She hated hospitals, and her diagnosis had been so minor that every hour she’d been trapped in one had felt like punishment. But they’d refused to release her until her obstetrician visited and confirmed she’d fainted from anemia, and it had taken forever, or felt like it. Her poor family had been so grateful to have her back, and so exhausted from their worries, that after their reunion they’d collapsed. Even Nick was sleeping like someone had knocked him out. But she’d just spent most of two days lying on her back in a hospital, and she was not even slightly sleepy. She wanted to do something, and without making enough noise to wake up Felix or her son.

            Who knew a game would be so useful in that regard?

           The world of Omen Galaxica appeared first as stars behind her closed eyes, stars that gleamed on a sky that saturated from black to a purply-blue that wouldn’t have been out of place on a girl’s poster of floating unicorns. Amanda stared up at that sky, marveling, then sat up. She was still sitting near the firepit in what remained of the inn… which gave her an avenue for addressing her case of the fidgets. She would have preferred to cook in her actual kitchen, but clattering in it would do no one any good, so a fantasy kitchen would do.

           Apparently no one slept in a fantasy town, because there were some centaurs on guard who were happy to find her supplies. While they trotted off on their various errands, she flipped through a mental cookbook… and to her surprise, a dialogue box opened that looked like a book, with recipes. The stew she’d made the very first day was there as “Pony Mother Stew,” which tickled her. But she didn’t want to make stew again. Too many of the entries on this virtual cookbook were empty. Maybe she could make something with shredded meat? The centaurs had flour… that could be turned into tortillas, if there was a baking powder equivalent, and there must be.

           This time the centaurs brought her pork, and she wasn’t complaining. Within short order, she had her supplies and a plan… and the fact that she could do this without having to stir from bed or disturb the household… so nice! Could she sing? Yes, she could. She wondered if she was whispering the words aloud, or if it was completely in her head, and hoped it was the latter.

            The boar meat was browning and the first of the vegetables—it looked like a parsnip but smelled like an onion—was mostly chopped when footsteps distracted her from her makeshift cutting board. Hooves, she’d learned to dismiss, but boots? When she looked up, it was into the flat, helmeted face of a human in full plate armor, like something out of a museum. The pieces were scuffed and in places dented, but the tabard strapped over it was pristine. Who did laundry in a game? And how did they make white look so very white? She imagined an army of grumpy centaur wives bleaching linens—wait, did centaur children wear clothes?

            With a creak, the man pushed back the visor. “I can’t believe it! Mandypony, online, and cooking!”

            Amanda’s mouth worked but no sounds came out.

            “What are you making?” he asked, enthusiastic. “My roommate tried your roasting technique and almost burned the apartment down! It was wicked, I got to use the fire extinguisher!”

            She found words then. “How… how did they manage to do that? Was the oven broken?”

            “Oh, no, he made a fire so we could try to do it exactly like the video. That turned out to be a bad idea, but it was hellafun! Very excite! I’m talking like a meme again, oh man.” He crouched, or tried anyway… his armor made it hard, and he settled for falling onto his hind end with a rattle. “Sorry, I’ve never met a streamer I actually cared about meeting. My name’s Carl.”

            “Hi, Carl,” Amanda said. “If I asked you to turn the meat on the spit, would you fail disastrously?”

            He started laughing. “No! No, I promise.”

            “Then help a pony out, will you? I’m almost done with this.”

            “Bet you don’t want to let me near a knife after my intro. I swear, I’m not totally useless.” He proved it by dealing with the meat. “Anyway… this is so cool! I love your videos. I swear we’re learning to cook from them. Much more fun than the reg.”

            “I guess these are on our channel?” Amanda said. “I had no idea people were watching it.”

            “Hell, yeah! Why not? Everyone’s watching the beta channels. That’s why I’m here. I wanna help you and Thorol defend this place from Killz! My partner’s scoping the perimeter now, checking for him or Goldie. You just know they’re gonna come back and stomp this place flat again if they find out we’re trying to build it back up.”

            What on earth was she supposed to say to any of this? When so little of it mattered? It didn’t, did it? She couldn’t make it feel serious, not after coming home from the hospital. “We appreciate the help. And I’m glad I’m accidentally teaching people how to cook.” She imagined herself as the Wolfgang Puck of gamers and started laughing. “What a weird thought that is!”

            “Tell me about it. So what are you making? Looks like fajitas!”

            “It was going to be burritos, but fajitas are probably closer. Too bad there’s no cumin in the game… is there?”

            “Got no clue, Pony Mom, what even is cumin?”

            “It’s a spice made from a ground-up seed. Here, hold this pan over the fire and shake it one in a while. So, you’re in the beta too?”

            “Yeah, so cool! My roomie’s been running a big game news site for almost eight years now, and he’s on board, too.” He thumped his chest, which made a metallic sound. “I’ve been playing Omen since it came out. Minmaxed the best stats for the argent cavalier class, that’s what I am. And knights gotta knight, you know, so what better thing to do than PVP against an actual villain?”

            “And your friend?”

            “He’s playing an outrider… sort of a cross between a hunter and a rogue, you know?”

            Amanda didn’t, but she nodded along anyway.

            “He likes the solo gameplay, which is cool because it’s a challenge to be playing a tank who doesn’t have any DPS, you know? He can bring the deeps but he has to be around. But as an exploring duo, it’s been awesome, especially since the game feels a lot more immersive now with the wireset.” He tapped his temple.

            “It really does,” Amanda agreed. “Also, shake those until they flip over, or they’ll burn.”

            “Right, right. You really are a mom, aren’t you? I can call you Pony Mom?”

            “Absolutely.”

            When the fajitas were done, she knew more about Carl’s life than she expected to know about an internet stranger – that he was in college, that he had a dog and was feeding a stray cat, that his roommate liked pie but he liked cake and they tried once to make a pie-cake by buying a pie, scooping the filling out, and putting cake in it. “It was great,” Carl said. “Especially with the filling on top.” More importantly, she knew Carl yearned to be a hero, that he wanted to do the right thing not because people would appreciate him for it, but because he wanted to be like the “cool characters” in the stories he grew up watching or playing—watching or playing, because he wasn’t much of a reader. He’d consumed most of his stories through games and movies. He was, she thought, a young man with a good heart, doing his best. It was hard to blame him for finding outlets for his energy in games, when real life didn’t seem very heroic. Especially, she thought ruefully, to the young, who wanted extreme experiences and obvious battlefields.

            Carl was a dab hand at baking tortillas. She had a great time, cooking with him, and together they put together a feast fit for… well, more than two people. Setting out the meat, Amanda said, “Can you call your friend in? No reason to waste all this.”

            “Heh, yeah. More incentive for him to burn the kitchen down! No, seriously, I like experiments. I’ve told him to come by.”

            Amanda scooped the filling into a tortilla and rolled it. Would it taste as good as real food? Wasn’t anything better than hospital food? She tried it: hearty, meaty, a little minty from the parsnip thing that had smelled like an onion but now had a parsnippy flavor, perfectly browned tortilla….

            “This is so good!” Carl exclaimed.

            “Too bad it’s your last meal.”

            Carl, still holding his fajita, said, “The footsteps behind me weren’t my dude, were they.”

            Amanda looked over his shoulder at the thin figure shrouded in black leathers with the deep black hood pulled over his face… and the long knives in each hand, gleaming with greenish fire. “I… don’t think so.”

            She assumed the assassin-looking man was about to slaughter her companion, but Carl leaped upright, whirling. A sword the length of his body appeared in his hand, and then the two clashed with a screech of metal and hissing flames. Her snack grew cold in her hand as they battled, because Carl kept fighting, and not dying. It was like watching a cobra attack a rhino—for a while, she wasn’t sure who was going to win. She was, in fact, not sure who was going to win for at least five or six minutes, because they kept rushing one another, parting, circling, attacking…

            …but Carl was tiring, and his opponent never stopped being faster. One solid hit might have shattered him, but the cavalier couldn’t land one. And then a knife cut through his throat and out the side with a spurt of blood, and he was down, and one he was down it was done. The assassin stuck a greenish blade straight through his armored back and killed him. “Get more good, newb.”

            He turned to Amanda.

            “Would you like a fajita?”

            Had she said that out loud? She had. The words were hanging there in the blood-soaked air between them. The stranger’s blades flickered and spit, like a fire spattered with water. Would she feel them when they killed off her character? What would that be like? Would it be good practice for actual dying?

            “Sure, thanks.” The assassin sheathed his blades on his back and dropped onto the ground near her. “These look good. You made ‘em?”

            “Yes. With Carl’s help.”

            The stranger glanced at Carl’s body. “He’ll rez once his timer’s up. Hopefully he’ll come back smarter.” He accepted a tortilla. “I’m KillzYourFase.”

            “I see that.”

            He paused, guffawed. “Anyway. I’m gonna eat this and then—sorry—I’m gonna raze this place again.”

            Why was he explaining any of this to her? “So you did it the first time?”

            “Yep.”

            “Why?”

            “Because it’s a game, and if I bother to play games, I win them.” He ate half the fajita in one bite. “Hey, this is great.”

            “Thanks…?”

            He chuckled. “Don’t worry. I don’t kill people like you. Just stay out of my way.”

            “I will,” Amanda said, meaning it, but went on to say, “If you’ll leave the tree alone.”

            “The wh—” Killz twisted around until he spotted the seedling in the center of town. Did he hesitate? “That thing? Hardly worth stomping.” He finished off the rest of the food and stood. “Thanks for the meal.”

            “You’re welcome.”

            From the darkness came a call. “Hey, Killz. I did for the outrider, you got the tank?”

            “Yup.”

            A second player appeared, saw her, did a double-take and pulled an arrow from a quiver. Before he could nock it, though, Killz held out a hand.

            “Let’s go. We’ve got some buildings to set on fire.”

            “That’s Thorol’s par—”

            Killz overrode him. “She’s not a gamer.”

            Amanda wasn’t sure whether to characterize the next half hour as comedy or nightmare. The invading players jogged around, torching what little had been resurrected of Donner’s Beck, and she cantered in their wake, hauling buckets and trying to put out the fires. Once in a while, the second player, Goldie, started toward her, but Killz always pulled him back with a sharp command. By the time they were done, Donner’s Beck was once again a ruin… except for the tree, marked now not only by the fence her son had erected around it, but by an arrow Killz plucked from Goldie’s quiver and stuck into the ground alongside it. A warning? A sneer? A signature? ‘Killz and Goldie were here.’ She put her hands on her hips and watched them depart, melting back into the dark.

            “At least, he didn’t kill everyone this time,” said one of the centaurs behind her, subdued.

            “No,” she said. “Well, let’s get to work. Those fires won’t douse themselves.”

            “But if we put them out, they might come back!”

            “Then let’s build a big enough bonfire that it looks like something’s burning.” She patted his shoulder. “If you’re worried, I an handle it on my own.”

            “No! We’ll help.”

            “Then I’m glad.” She smiled. “Cheer up! We can have a party afterwards. Roast marshmallows.”

            Glumly, the centaur said, “All our work….”

            “Oh this?” She shook her head. “We were barely started on it. It won’t take long to get back to where we were. You’ll see.”

            With Killz and Goldie gone it was actually satisfying to start work on the town again. She supposed she could be angry about it, but it was, after all, a game. In the real world, she had a husband and a son, and another baby on the way, and she’d been released from the hospital with nothing more than a prescription for iron supplementation. How could she be mad about a made-up fantasy world that would vanish when someone decided to pull the plug on it? And in the meantime, her pony body could haul wooden limbs she would have had to cut apart to handle as a human, and that was satisfying.

            She even found herself singing.

Just for Fun: Fan Poetry

While going through old papers, I found this poem about Lisinthir by Elizabeth Barrette. Enjoy!

MidJuly News

FireBorn’s Legacy is done! I’m currently hip-deep in prep for its Kickstarter, testing my new “launch via kickstarter/direct sales, then go to retail” strategy. In support of that, my direct sales version—the one you can get via the kickstarter or on my shop—will have extras in the form of color interiors and an art section (14 pages!). I’m trimming those for retail to keep my delivery/paper costs down there.

All editions of the book are complete, and I’m currently waiting on the proof copy of the bespoke hardcover… the first time I’ve done a fancy hardcover edition! I can’t wait to see it! And while I’m waiting, I’m working on stickers and prints for add-ons. I’ve done this Faulfenza dancing, and I’ve got a Zafiil-specific one next. Then either Sediryl, or another dancing Faulfenza because you can’t have enough of those!

I’m anticipating a July 29th kick-off. Here’s the prelaunch page, where you can sign up to be notified: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mcahogarth/fireborns-legacy

That’s going to take up my attention for probably the next two months, but in the meantime I’m trying to figure out where I am in the 2024 timeline. I didn’t anticipate needing this long to write a single book, and hopefully it was an outlier. I want to get to Surela 2 this year, and I haven’t forgotten Peradventure! But if I can squeeze in one more finished project (other than the ongoing serial), I’ll be pleased. I’m not sure if I will, though. I have a bunch of partially completed short story collections, and a few partial projects like Coracle 2, but it’ll depend on where I am, mentally.

My other task, which has become necessary, is wading through the enormous piles of old artwork sitting around the house and dealing with them, since I no longer have storage space for them. I anticipate much "photograph-and-toss” in my future, which is a big deal in a lot of ways, and perhaps a relief… to let go of old things, recognizing that there’s only so much space in my life and my head for them.

I’m also still job-hunting, though admittedly with less energy than before. I’ve had four scam job offers and no legitimate ones, and I’m beginning to feel like my profiles on job sites aren’t reaching actual employers, only villainous cretins who want to take advantage of people like me. :,

Oh! And I also have a story coming out in Raconteur Press’s All Will Burn 3 this Friday, and it’s a funny one about Guardkin. If you need cheering up, that’ll be a good one.

That's everything on my plate right now! Newsletter goes out later this month.

Gamelit 31 (convergence)

            When the alarm went off at 7 am, Mollie was still under her froth of pale blue blankets. The scent of espresso wafted from the direction of the kitchen, which made sense because the coffee maker was programmed to go off at 6:35. What didn’t make sense was that she was in bed, instead of already up, thumbing through her email on her phone.

            She’d done a good job painting around the crown molding when she’d moved in. She congratulated herself on that, since she was currently staring at it instead of getting up.

            It had not been her idea to work for a gaming company. She liked people. She liked marketing. She had gamer friends growing up, because who didn’t? It had been Larry who’d pointed out how big a business games were. ‘You want to get rich doing your job? Then this is the industry you want to be in,’ he’d said, and of course since it had been Larry there were graphs and charts and for a week straight he’d sent her every article he ran across talking about the gaming boom. Since he’d been right, it hadn’t been hard to find fresh ones. She remembered asking him why he was pushing her in that direction so hard, and he’d said… what? Something about being passionate about it, and wanting everyone to be as passionate as he was.

            That had been what convinced her, when she’d been browsing internships. She’d wanted to work with people who really believed in their product, and in gaming she’d found an entire ecosystem of people creating new games that created gamers who created new games. It was like discovering the hydrologic cycle, but with people. She would never lack for work in an industry that was continually creating its next generation of users.

            Once she’d waded into it, she’d gotten swept away by the enthusiasm. She hadn’t lied when she’d bubbled at the AI about how exciting the conventions were, and the costumes, and the fan art activity… it was all incredibly awesome. Marketing things people weren’t hyped about was challenging, but also inherently sad somehow. Like talking to someone who wasn’t as into you as you were into them. Struggling to sell furniture to people who mostly wanted to get a couch and go home, and no, they weren’t interested in your upsell, thanks… no, she hadn’t wanted that. Other industries had different problems—like fashion, which seemed entirely based on making people who wanted desperately to look attractive feel bad about themselves by accident.

            But gaming was wholesome! Family fun! A way to bring people together!

            Until the AI had asked her, she hadn’t thought about the fact that she’d never played the game she’d spent her career promoting.

            And then there was Jonah.

            Mollie pressed her palm to her forehead. Jonah. Totally not her type. She liked tanned, athletic, confident guys. Tall guys, because at 5’9” she’d been looking down at people most of her life and not enjoying it. And then Jonah had exploded into her office, and into her life, and he was short, undersunned, not athletic, and did she mention short? The only box he ticked was confidence, and he took it to such extremes he came off as arrogant and didn’t care who was bothered by it. Honestly, he had the look of a trust fund kid who’d never been told no in his life, and it had been hard to stop thinking about him. A guilty pleasure, because the Marketing VP falling for one of the company founders sounded like a bad romance novel plot, and she didn’t want to lose her job because she enjoyed her job.

            That part, she was sure of. She enjoyed her job. She believed in Omen Galaxica.

            But she didn’t play.

            She was busy, of course, but….

            The alarm went off again—no, not the alarm. That was her email dinging, because after 7 am notifications went audible again. Reluctantly, she rolled upright and retied her ponytail to get her hair out of her face. Coffee smelled good. And a shower. No, shower and then coffee. She paused on her way to the bathroom to wake her phone and her eyes caught on the last notification.

From: Marvelous Assistant Avery

Subject: Hey, this one’s from one of the beta testers

            Opening it revealed another of Avery’s succinct notes: ‘better read this one’, and then a forwarded message. Mollie glanced at it, then stopped walking to the bathroom, read the whole thing, and flipped to her contacts.

            “Hey boss. You’re up late.”

            “I know,” Mollie said. “Don’t worry, I’m still picking up your chai on the way in. That beta tester email…”

            “I did the research. It’s the from the mom-and-teen pair.”

            Jonah’s Choice. Mollie tried not to flinch, because she was not super—all right, she was superstitious, and it had to mean something that the duo she talked the senior execs into allowing into the beta based on her extrapolation of Jonah’s tastes… now wanted to talk to him in the hospital. “So the boy.”

            “Yep. I’ve got their info if you need it. They’re on the other side of the country so if he wanted to do this chat, the way he’s suggested is probably the only way. Unless you want to prop a phone up next to Jonah’s ear.”

            Mollie chewed on her lip. “Any reason the hospital wouldn’t okay it?”

            “Don’t think so, but I can call them and ask.”

            “Do that. And while we’re at it, run the idea past Legal, make sure we’re not opening the company to something.”

            “Got it. Anything else?”

            Mollie started to say ‘no, thanks,’ and paused. “Do you play?”

            “Pardon?”

            “Omen. Do you play?”

            “Oh sure. Not seriously, though. I can’t keep up with it. But I like doing the pet collection stuff. I’d be doing that on some mobile app if I wasn’t doing it on Omen, and this way I’m not paying for the gatchas.” Mollie could hear her assistant’s grin. “Our artists are good at cute when they decide to do it.”

            “They are,” Mollie agreed. “Thanks for this, and I’ll see you in a bit.”

            Half an hour later, Mollie was on her way to work and thinking again about how she didn’t play Omen Galaxica. When she tried to imagine herself doing so, she couldn’t, because it wasn’t real.

***

            “So when’re you gonna go back to your adoring public?”

            Lucas threw the basketball at Mason, who snatched it from the air and feigned a dodge that Lucas ignored, because his brother had been faking him out all their lives. “When I’m bored of winning against you.”

            “Hah, you haven’t won yet.” Mason tossed the ball over his head and into the hoop at the end of the driveway.

            “That’s what makes it interesting.” Lucas jogged after the ball, scooped it up and ran hard at the hoop. Mason went for him and they struggled, but Lucas managed to drive it in anyway.

            “Now it’s war, little bro.”

            “It’s always war, decrepit bro.”

            Mason laughed, and they did another four points before their mother interrupted with a tray of lemonade. Then it was time to lounge on the chairs and enjoy the sun, because hell if he became a pasty gamer just because he made bank selling his adventures to the terminally online. “So how’s the working life?”

            “No change,” Mason said.

            “Still sucking.”

            “Yep.”

            They drank. It was ridiculously oversweetened, just the way Mom always made it.

            “How’s the college life?”

            “No change.”

            His brother grinned. “Boring, except for the money?”

            “Boring, except for the money.”

            “Like being home for summer?”

            “Eh. Saves money. Dorm life—”

            “Sucks,” they said in unison, and laughed.

            “Well, buck up,” Mason said. “It’ll be over soon, and then you can spend the rest of your life being miserable in a cubicle, like me.”

            “Not a chance,” Lucas said. “I’m going to roll around in the sweet sweet streaming dough and watch it multiply in my investment account. If I stick with it for another few years, I might be able to retire.”

            “I can’t believe the crap thing you started doing because you were bored one day is paying off this big,” Mason said.

            Lucas smiled tightly. “Yeah, well. Some things have a life of their own. But don’t worry, bro, you can live with me anytime.”

            “I’d rather not be there when you get doxed and your adoring public comes for you,” Mason said with a guffaw. He put his empty glass on the tray. “Ready for another round?”

            “Let’s go.”

            Mom had a big dinner waiting for them, and watched them eat it with a bright smile. She didn’t eat much, but she hadn’t been a big eater even before the divorce. After it… Lucas had been little, but he couldn’t remember ever seeing her eat. He had hated leaving after high school, but he’d also been going crazy. With Mason gone, it had been the two of them, and it had gotten too hard. Not that she ever complained, or clung, or did anything wrong. In fact, she was so good it made him feel bad. Well, that and enraged, because how could Dad have left someone so good for that bimbo? He hadn’t even kept the bimbo long before replacing her with a new one.

            No, he was nearly sure he imagined the air of tragedy that hung around the house. Nearly. But it had been real enough that he’d put all his anger into games. He thought it had been that anger that had made him turn on the mic the first time. Like he hadn’t cared if he self-destructed on camera. And it had been cathartic to have someplace to put the rage.

            Now… now it was the money. Because with enough money, he could tell the world to go to hell, and that was mostly what he wanted anymore. To be left alone. To make the world leave his family alone. To get them out of this house with the ghosts of the past that kept drifting through the rooms, reminding him that they’d once been whole.

            “I hate having a villainous origin story,” he told Mason later, when they were drinking in what passed for their backyard. “It’s a cliché.”

            “At least you turned your villainous origin story into a cash cow,” his brother said. “You souring on it?”

            “How can I sour on something so lucrative?”

            “Easy. That’s another cliché, right? Guys selling their souls for their careers. You gonna make a career out of streaming?”

            “Hell no. The only thing more pathetic than being a streamer at 20 is being a streamer at 40. I’ll quit while I’m ahead.”

            Mason mmmed. “And how will you know when you’re ahead enough to do that?”

            “Hell if I know.”

            After his brother had wandered off, Lucas flicked his set-up on and checked his channel stats. Revenue was up. Numbers were good. People were liking the direction he was going. They weren’t bored—which is good, because he’d gone off on this crazy direction to avoid boredom. His own schtick was old to him, but it was also what people expected, and breaking off to make an entire new identity and rebuild the audience… no. Way too much work, and with no guarantee of return. Another year or two of this kind of cash and he could turn off the faucet. He was pretty sure. He could walk away from money. At least, that’s what he was telling himself.

            It was in the referrers that he discovered that a lot of his traffic was leaving for some rando’s channel… and why. He clicked through one short, and then another… and then a video… and another… and with every minute that passed, he got angrier.

            “Oh no,” he growled. “I did not tear down that town so that you could steal the story from me. I’m the star of this show.” He tapped his messenger client.

GOLDIE WAKE UP

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT DONNERS BECK

Back in Time Tuesday: Shaft of Sunlight

A rare and interesting piece for me, because it's a B&W piece in marker that's handled like it's watercolors, and I really like the effect! At the time my backyard was a wilderness and had tons of trees in dappled sunlight, and I was sitting on the patio when I did this one. A Tam-illee, though who knows who it is. The composition's good for something so quick, too, with the framing branches!