This story is my entry to The Inklings Challenge 2022. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a month-long writing event for Christian authors of fantasy and science fiction, inspired by a real challenge attempted by the original Inklings writing group. For this tumblr challenge, participants were randomly sorted into one of three groups, with each assigned to a different type of speculative fiction story inspired by their namesake. I was in the Chesterton group, so I chose the prompt “Intrusive Fantasy”: Stories where the fantastical elements intrude into the real world. There was also a prompt list of seven Christian images to incorporate into the themes of our stories. If you’d like to read more about the challenge, and read the other submissions, you can find all relevant links on the tumblr blog that is hosting the challenge!

Marcia squinted into the fog and cursed the night. Roiling storm clouds obscured the clear light of the full moon, casting shimmering beams and warping shadows over the bog. Wind whipped her short, straight hair across her face. It stuck in the corners of her mouth whenever she took a panting breath and flicked into her stinging eyes. For the dozenth time in half as many minutes, she swiped it behind her ears, frustratingly aware that it was a futile effort. The sky hadn’t opened into a downpour yet, but the freezing mist clung to her clothes, her clammy hands, her eyelashes. Any other night, she could hear frogs croaking, birds crying, and the water rippling as turtles breached, but now, only the howling gale filled her ears. She gritted her teeth and stomped forward aimlessly.

This was all Conner’s fault.

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Short Stories

“The Edge of Infinity” Audio Drama

September 23, 2022 EttaLeave a comment

What is the most dangerous thing you can do?

What do you think of art?

A digital painting of a pale woman with dark curly hair cut in a bob against a star field background with red blood splatters. She is knitting fabric in an intricate pattern, and the fabric is also woven with stars and splattered with blood. She smiles at the camera.

Last quarter, I shared a short script titled “Edge of Infinity” that asked some deep questions. It shares the conversation between a war criminal and her accuser in a prison at the end of the universe, and how they grow to understand each other. I grew to love the characters and didn’t want to leave them behind, so as promised in my last email, I enlisted my friend Sarina Socko to help me record it by voicing Merari!

Sarina is a triple threat singer, dancer, and actress, pursuing a career in the theater industry in California. She also participates in the punk/emo fashion and music scene, and makes DnD dice and jewlery. I’ve been best friends with her since I was 16 and she’s an absolutely delightful person. Be sure to show her some love and subscribe to her on other platforms!

Instagram: @seraphine_7378

TikTok: @Kavalan_Pulse

This audio drama is about 12 minutes long and is fully edited with background sound effects. Learning how to use Audacity was a fun adventure, and Sarina did most of the coaching for my vocal performance as Aella. It was a really fun challenge to branch out of a purely written medium, so I’m curious to hear your feedback! Click the link below to listen to a preview of this story.

If you’d like to listen to the full version, sign up for my mailing list at this link!

If you have any requests for website post topics, short story prompts, or would like to be interviewed for the blog, please reach out to this email ([email protected]) or shoot me a message through my tumblr or instagram. If you feel so generously inclined, you can support my writing by leaving me a tip on my Kofi or donating using the secure box below. Until next time, thanks for reading and happy writing!

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Chatting

“The Edge of Infinity”

June 24, 2022June 24, 2022 EttaLeave a comment

Is the expansion of our universe not a lofty enough calling for you? I stitch together spacetime at the edge of infinity and pry open the rifts in reality with the bloody edge of imagination itself. I pair particles into atoms and expand existence through eons of exhausting, exacting labor.
Aella

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Chatting · Runaways

Meet the Runaways Side Characters

June 10, 2022June 12, 2022 EttaLeave a comment

If you’ve been subscribed to my mailing list for any amount of time, you will already be familiar with this colorful cast from my upcoming middle grade portal fantasy, Runaways! Since I’ve launched the newsletter, I’ve been sharing exclusive short stories that give each of these characters their own format in a new, slightly strange format. Eventually, I plan to compile these free, early releases into a companion collection and release them alongside the book itself. But until then, I wanted to share these brief introductions, so you can all get to know them as well!

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Runaways

Half Switched Siblings

March 25, 2022June 12, 2022 EttaLeave a comment

Two teenaged boys with dark skin and hair cut about their ears standing back to back and wielding swords. They are both dressed in protective gear.

Hello, dear readers and happy spring! I’m not much for obligatory self promotion but I only do this every three months, so y’all are going to have to put up with me for a minute~

I’ve got a mailing list and I write new short stories and send them out every quarter! In case you couldn’t guess by the flowers that I have as my icon everywhere, this is my favorite season, and so this month I wanted to write a story that pays homage to the in-between. This short takes place at sunset on the vernal equinox between two worlds, with some characters who aren’t really one thing or the other.

Matteo and Marco are the Semivera twins, who appear as side characters in Runaways. In the book, they have a habit of bantering their sentences back and forth. They aren’t quite changelings, but they aren’t quite human. We also meet a weasel who’s smarter than your average animal, but also can’t speak. Several beta readers asked for an explanation, so I hope this helps! This story takes place about a year before the event of the major book and tells how the twins met their friend and found faerieland. It’s a wacky body-swapping changeling adventure about the Semivera Twins with a questionably experimental format, which I had altogether too much fun messing with.

If you want to read it, you can sign up at this link here and it’ll get automatically emailed to you!

Also when you sign up, you can have access to the backlog of all the other stories I’ve shared so far! I won’t flood your inbox, so I can promise this post is the most annoying thing you’ll read. Those other stories include:

A narrative rhyming fairy-tale poem about Jack of Fables – one dude from the 11th century who had an eventful (after) life
“Matter” – a magical realism/sci-fi story about a Keeper who lives at the bottom of a black hole giving a pep talk to a Traveller that falls in during their breaking point
“Brigid’s Visits” – a Christmas Carol ripoff exploring one of the side characters in Runaways, told in three verb tenses, because I enjoy making myself go insane.

That’s right, most mailing lists give you one cookie and I’m giving you the whole jar. What’s keeping you from signing up?

If you feel so generously inclined, you can support my writing by leaving me a tip on my Kofi or donating using the secure box below. Until next time, thanks for reading and happy writing!