Human Made
I will never replace those human connections for AI. For all the ethical and moral reasons, but also because the flaws and cracks and idiosyncrasies of human beings are just so much better than the linguistic equivalent to landlord beige.
Welcome to the Thornwood
Avatar art by Sayuri Liu
Latest posts
The Coins of the Styx
In which the apprentice to the ferryman of the Styx effs around and finds out.
In Which I Rank Jane Austen's Novels as Well as Have Opinions on Class
Austen is bigger than that. She wrote books that have been beloved for generations. They're books I could have chatted to my grandmother about, and books that I'm sure I could chat about as a grandmother.
Always Look for the Helpers
"Oh," the warrior said, and he leaned close enough for Grucius to see the tannin-brown of his irises. "Damn kid, you went through a portal? That's rough."
Bisexual "Enough"
Happy Pride Month Everyone!🏳️🌈 Let's talk about bi visibility.
A Sea of Air
We humans really understand fluid dynamics and lift. Truly, planes are basically boats traversing an air current sea.
My Daily Poison
Having a chronic condition is like drinking a glass of poison every day. The poison doesn't guarantee that you get sick, but you are still forced to drink.
Guardians
Excerpt: I can feel the sting spreading through my invisible wings, feel the heat beginning to sear my back. Even as we encourage the masses to believe we are guardians, angels do not interfere, letting fate's cruelty drag people under the water. When we do...
Royalty Ages Like Milk.
I wish that we stopped writing so many damn stories about royalty.
The True King
One cannot be a true king if there are puppet strings binding them. One cannot be a true king merely because they pulled a sword from a stone.
I Need to Talk About the Demon Core
Have you heard of the demon core?
A Million Masks
I grab the gray mask—it's unadorned—for the next meeting. I never like putting this one on. It locks my emotions in a box as the price for its extreme competence and professionalism.
The Ballad of Mary Sue
Strong, good, talented, and competent main characters are not all Mary Sues (or Gary Stus), and painting them all with that label is silly.
Let's Talk About Romantasy
There's a reason that reading a randomly chosen romantasy book can sometimes feel like an exercise in frustration, because a romantasy writer is trying to balance three big things extremely well: plot, relationships, and world.
The Mycellium Eye
Tomorrow, someone will find you here, asleep to never awake again. Tonight though, now that your soul has crossed, it is finally time for us to do our work.
2026 is going to be my year 😓
Uh, hopefully.
Prisoner E93784
I live in hell. There's really no other way to describe my existence. I was born here; slapped with a number instead of a name. E93784. That's me, living under the cold bake of fluorescent lights without ever feeling the warmth of a sunbeam on my skin.
The Bard's Audience
Shakespeare's plays were meant to be a conversation with the audience! They break the fourth wall all the time and it's wonderful. Plays and art are meant to be a connection.
Goodbye, Lover
You know the one, with a bunch of pictures of just you with our dog, leaning against our car, cooking our dinner. Pictures I'm not in. Mostly pictures I took.
I Commission Art.
Commissioning art for your books not only supports human artists (which is awesome), it can provide a creative muse and a marketing punch for your project.
Filing Off the Serial Numbers
Suppose you've decided you want to go further, you want to take that fanfiction you've poured your soul into and you want to turn it into a book.
Fan Fiction is the Perfect Gateway (If You Want It To Be)
There's a reason that we are seeing so many ship-specific stories turning original, why authors who openly and outwardly started in fanfiction are becoming household names. Because writing good fanfiction exercises many of the same muscles that writing good stories exercises.
Summer, Trees, Ocean
You could always tell who was and wasn’t a tourist in July in San Francisco.
The Power of Books
There's a reason that they go after books, because they understand the power of a voice that can't be silenced. It just means that it is a whole lot harder to silence stories when all a person needs to create one is an idea.
Thinking about purity in stories
Everyone makes mistakes, and leaving people with the message that it's the choices they make each day, rather than the loss of control, is what truly defines them.
ADHD and Understanding People
Understanding the 'normal' was survival. If I couldn't pretend that my brain worked like that, I was socially punished. "Trial by fire" empathy if you will.
An Ode to the Hare
I am the hare. And I have lived in a world that tells me the right way to work is as the tortoise, and it’s a box I have tried to fit myself in for most of my life.
Immortality
I am absolutely not afraid to be an immortal
A Book About Dragons
I meant to write a book about enemies who fall in love. About kickass heroines and powerful dragons. And I did manage to write that.
Sea of Lights
She realized then, through a fog of her own despair for the future, that in that sea of light were worriers and dreamers and moms and daughters, security guards and poets and baristas and programmers.
Organization
I try to put myself into her shoes, try to stretch my brain to understand the mental weight carrying all of that must have been, and it makes me understand and appreciate how intelligent and talented she was.
Holding Off Despair in the Face of "The Horrors"
I do what I can to avoid springing the trap, and that does mean having to avoid content that is near the trigger. It also means looking at the things that inject some hope into my day. Hope is resistance, after all.
Take My Hand
“I told you,” the figure says. Nemesis. His nemesis. The villain. They’re supposed to lose, supposed to be wrong, supposed to—Comet doesn’t know anymore. “This was always your end. Always the way you were going to end. I just had not imagined that it would be via my hand.”
The Ivy Window
I hate him for that night, because his lips turned my gray world to color for the first time. His hands and touch were why the women paraded in front of me never appealed.
Just like an ankle
Think of your brain the way you think of your ankle.
The Stag
"I will help you." I don't promise to save the voice. They sound so small and so afraid. I do not have healing herbs nor magic like Mama. All I have is myself; I hope that's enough.
The Beast that Devoured the Internet
So the beast ate the internet, digesting the individual pieces curated and created with love.
An Ode to Éowyn
Éowyn is a strong-willed survivor, who had shut herself off and shielded her heart from any who would try to open it. She earned revere in her own right by destroying an enemy beyond all but the very strongest (even possibly Gandalf). And then she met her match...
A storyteller
I want to tell stories, and I have wanted to tell stories since I was a child on a playground. I am a storyteller.