Queer Fantasy and Weird Tales for the People
“After everything, and considering the end of the world, you might as well call me Berend.”
Isabel takes this into consideration and decides that she won’t.
The Book of the New Moon Door
We’re 3/4ths of the way through the book, and our protagonists just might be becoming friends. You can read this latest chapter on Patreon.
Tuvaband, “Everything We Do Is Wrong”
Happy Monday!
I’m finally back on my regular posting schedule. There will be a new chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door on Patreon tomorrow, if you’ve got some downtime during the holiday, and the latest chapter of Journey to the Water will be here on Wednesday.
Also, mark your calendars: Brooke and I will be returning to What the Hex Witches Market! The Summer Market will take place on Sunday, July 16, at Dresden Castle in Cudahy, WI. Admission is free, and the market is open from noon until 6. Here’s a link to the Facebook event for more information. I’ll be signing books, and Brooke will have her new mermaid-themed cards available!
Thanks for stopping by! Be safe and have an excellent week.
“Do you promise me that?” I asked, more to the shimmering air than to the figure beside me. “A home in the city, and my love exactly as I remember him?”
Chapter XXXVII: Within the Illusion
As promised, there is a shiny new chapter of Journey to the Water available on Patreon. If you have a spare $3, consider subscribing! If not, this chapter will be available to read here on the blog next week.
Florence + the Machine, “King”
Good morning!
It’s the last week of the month, which means the newsletter is coming out–noonish my time (Central US Daylight) on the 30th (Friday). You can sign up here if you haven’t already. Be sure to check your inbox afterward for a confirmation link! This month’s newsletter will include garden pictures, updates on The Book of the New Moon Door, and pictures of my cats.
There will be a new chapter of Journey to the Water on Patreon tomorrow. I’ll be back to my regularly scheduled nonsense (one chapter on Patreon, one chapter here) next week.
As always, thanks for being here. Happy Pride, and may rain fall on your garden but not your parade! Stop by again soon.
Choices
“I’m sorry,” Isabel mutters, her eyes sliding from his face down to the mist-shrouded earth between her feet. “I’m glad you’re alive.”
It looks bad, Berend admits—a whole swathe of the city is gone, swallowed up in dense gray fog streaked bloody with the strange red sunlight. The sun should have set by now, he’s fairly certain, but the light lingers dim and cold over the wet landscape. He can just make out the sharp, flickering shapes of broken ghosts, gathered at the edge of what’s left of the cemetery. The solid, heavy shape of the Temple of Ondir stands firm and untouched at his back, but it doesn’t offer much reassurance. It doesn’t have Isabel in it. She’s out here, instead, which means she has already been inside. It’s the first place she would go—church folk are predictable like that, and Isabel is a particularly churchy sort of church folk. And she’s not still inside where it’s safe and dry and relatively warm, and where there are a few people nominally devoted to the safety of the city and the maintenance of the terribly abused order of the world, so something must have made her leave.
Whatever it was, it doesn’t bode well for Berend’s immediate future. As bad as things look, here at the edge of the familiar world, he’s sure they’re actually much worse.
Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Three, Chapter Five”Rhiannon Giddens, “O Love Is Teasin'” (Traditional)
Hello! Happy Monday! I hope you’re well on this fine morning.
ETA: Happy Juneteenth! I didn’t realize what day it was.
I regret to inform you that there will be a minor disruption to the normal posting schedule. Between travel and recovery from travel, last week got away from me, and this week looks similarly busy between my cats’ annual checkups and several home improvement projects. There won’t be a new chapter of Journey to the Water this week, but the latest chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door will be up here on Wednesday. I should have a new Journey chapter ready by next week, so your regularly scheduled nonsense will resume shortly. I’ll also have an update on New Moon Door‘s editing progress soon.
As always, thanks for being here, and have an excellent week.
I had been tied to the iron ring in the stone more securely than Fenin had been. Though Svilsara’s priests had accepted my repentance all too easily, having never encountered an outsider with no faith in their serpent, some suspicion as to my motives remained. In a way, I was grateful for the rope chafing my wrists. The people of Svilsara were like children, naive, trusting, and unable to imagine that another person might not share their belief in the benevolence of their god. If they could doubt me, then perhaps they had within them the capacity to break free of the serpent’s hold.
That, however, was a concern for later. The blinding desert sun bore down upon my head, its heat like a burning iron weighing down on my face and the exposed skin of my arms. My thin traveler’s robe did little to protect me, and I could feel my flesh redden and burn.
“Come on, you foul creature,” I shouted into the burning expanse. “I’m waiting.”
Continue reading “Journey to the Water Chapter XXXVI: The Sacrificial Stone”This is a problem for theologians, nether-world researchers, and the high church fathers in their southern palaces, not some washed-up mercenary and a disgraced, low-ranking Sentinel. He’d much rather let more qualified minds handle it, and wait out the apocalypse in Lady Breckenridge’s feather bed. He’d be happy no matter which way the end of the world turns out, and that seems to be the best outcome he can hope for.
The Book of the New Moon Door
Things are bad and only getting worse in the latest chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door, which you can read now on Patreon. If you need to catch up, all the previous chapters are available for free under the Stories tab above (under the Menu if you’re on mobile).
Genesis, “Jesus He Knows Me”
Good morning! I’m posting early because I’m traveling today. Also, this is the blog’s 500th post!
Editing of The Book of the New Moon Door begins this week. In the meantime, I’ll have a new chapter of that on Patreon tomorrow, and you can read the latest chapter of Journey to the Water here on Wednesday.
I’m also excited to announce that I’ll be at What the Hex Witches’ Market again on July 16! More on that later.
Thanks for stopping by, and have an excellent week.
Empty Road
Berend leaves Warder in the nurses’ capable hands. He’ll be back later, when he’s found his things and a safe place to sleep, and maybe something resembling a meal. It’s not like Warder is going anywhere.
Bodies in varying states of decay clog the stairwells, lying piled against the doors and draped over the edge of the stairs. Some are fresh, their wounds raw and crimson, dressed in bloodstained nurses’ uniforms or fresh bandages. Berend steps over a gray-skinned body, naked except for the torn remains of a shroud clinging to its shoulders, its arms broken off above the elbows. He finds the missing limbs a few steps later, clutched in the hands of a fresher corpse, the back of its skull smashed in from a fall. Blood slicks the steps, sticking to Berend’s boots.
They were tearing each other apart. Behind the sleeve he put up to shield his nose from the haze of disinfectant and decay—so thick he can almost see it—Berend grimaces. A horde of undead isn’t an army; there’s no loyalty or camaraderie. They’re a haunting by another name, a manifestation of the pain and rage of a spirit who can’t accept that it’s dead. Losing limbs doesn’t stop them, nor does smashing their faces against a stone wall. A little collateral damage wouldn’t make a difference.
Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Three, Chapter Four”
Space Whales Press 