j.m. avants

No more leaning on lovable characters - my plot has to come through and pull its weight too.

Woke up feeling recovered enough to try and get to my writing cafe before work and start my chapter 1 rewrite. This is gunna be a push, since the first scene will be fresh, different from the outline and previous draft. What I’m aiming for should be more compelling, story wise.

A boardwalk zigzagging through a marsh at sunset. In the distance are rolling hills covered in pine trees. (Don't fall into the marsh, Smeagol isn't here to pull you out 😅)

We're still walking, and to the right is a small forest on an island. An old fellow once told me that the island is home to some Swamp Soggers (octopus-like creatures with human heads) but you shouldn't believe him because everyone knows that the Swamp Soggers actually live in the water 🐙

Now we've left the boardwalk and we're heading up a little sandy path that cuts between some pines 💕

Hey #writesky let’s take a little walk to a haunted beach together 🥰

First we walk through this marsh… (1/4)

My protagonist of my first fantasy novel wip is bisexual, since that’s what I know best from personal experience, and the deuteragonist light mage is gay. Their friendship is fun to write - protag is quite the clamshell, and social butterfly deuterag makes it her mission to pry her out of her shell.

“Now let me get this straight. … We hired you to babysit the kids, and instead you cooked and ate them both?”

“Now let me get this straight. … We hired you to
babysit the kids, and instead you cooked and ate them
both?”

A photo of a table display. There are various rabbits, owls, and ravens in frames.

I wanted to give a quick heads up that I'll be posting Halloween originals that I still have on hand over on my patreon today!

patreon.com/fallenlights

Give it a follow, and you'll get a notification in email :)

Sometimes I do post publicly!
#Halloween #bsnm #DarkArt

Looking at portfolios to find some covers for the next few months. Not going well. So much slop. When I finally manage to avoid it, everything is so dark and shadowy. Color and light and detail appear to be gone from the world. (I may need to start doing this in shorter bursts.)

“some people abuse SNAP” your soul is rotten

Drawing of a wide-open eye with thick strands of something nearly obscuring it.

Here's a tiny tale of mine that is perfect for #Halloween vibes.

A small Gothic body horror story that is entirely more melancholy and metaphorical than gruesome. For those who have felt alienated within their own physical selves.

www.helenwhistberry.com/cathedral

[Enter Ghost.]

Twenty years ago a class partner and I once made a Loreena McKennitt/Starflyer 59 (our mutual favorite music artists) fansite in a website design course in community college. 😎

my god, what a paragraph

(from tonight's @hcrichardson.bsky.social)

I love those comps so much!

Love how to get the character’s personality across in just a couple sentences, and that spooky moodboard! 🙀

THE KNIGHT AND THE MOTH X THE WOLF AND THE WOODSMAN

Time and Time Again.

Vampire Ishmael longs for peace but after being exiled by a corrupt magical council he vows to end their cruel reign. To his delighted horror—his newest ally is the reincarnation of a past love.

#GhostPit #A #F #PN #LGBT

Square of nine images. Top left to bottom right: a girl running away barefoot in the grass. A woman and child holding hands. A field of flowers in a dark forest. Bright curtains at sunset. A quote reading “beautiful places hide hideous pasts.” Four girls sitting in a field happy and talking. A woman’s hands reaching from dark water. Pile of old Polaroid photos. A dark graveyard in a forest.

Spirited Away x Shutter Island

Reality and fantasy blur when an anonymous invitation sends a burnt out chocolatier spiraling to hunt down a serial killer she thought she made up as a child.

#GhostPit #C #A #F #T #H #G 👻

Summer and winter moodboard

After tragedy and family drama broke them up, Jasper and Brett moved on with their lives. Ten years later, they reunite for a wedding in the place they fell in love and fell apart. Has their dormant love story reawakened or are they just yearning for nostalgia?

#ghostpit #a #q #wf #r

The Cryptic Parade & A World Unfurling by Dan F. Bispo A horror flash fiction collection.

To celebrate spooky season, my horror flash fic collection "The Cryptic Parade & A World Unfurling" will be free to download until November 1st. Make sure to snag it while you can!

Scares! Humor! A pretentious title! It's got it all. Check it out!

barrows.itch.io/the-cryptic-...

#WriteSky #Horror

Go read my newest short story featuring gay witches and grotesque demons!

Stoked to be sharing an issue with an Angel Azrael story. Starstruck!!!

Well, me and my kid are both sick today, so I should probably take a break from my wip, but that my brain is like “get up, what are you doing?! Let’s write!!” feels good anyway. Haven’t been this motivated and obsessed with my wip in years.

And... It's only 99p until 4 November 👀

Amazing review, thanks James!

Cool premise, and that excerpt! Well done.

Outlined text over a dark blue ocean. The horizon is obscured by fog. Arrows point to words scattered across the image. The text reads: From the Sea Fret. Revenge. Queer Transmac MC. Cosmic horror. Paranoia. Thalassophobia. Creepy small town.

Underwater, over a coral reef, rays of light shine through the water. A few fish swim through the reef. Text reading "From the Sea Fret, Comps" is bordered in the centre. 5 arrows point towards posters. The poster are: Dredge by Black Salt Games, Old Wounds by Logan-Ashley Kisner, The Lighthouse by Robert Eggers, The Fisherman by John Langan, Blood in the Bayou by Just Roll With It

A moodboard consisting of 5 pictures, each outlined in navy blue. The 5th picture is in the centre. A foggy wooden dockyard at night. The inside of a tackle shop. Nets, buoys, and fishing paraphernalia hand from the wall and ceiling. A pile of grey fish. A hand reaching out of grey water, the sky above is overcast. A fishing boat on the ocean. Seagulls swarm it in the air.

Underwater, over a coral reef, rays of light shine through the water. A few fish swim through the reef. A sheet of paper with text on it is centered. The text reads: From the Sea Fret. Excerpt. My thoughts were snowballing, adding up all the bullshit I’ve dealt with since moving to Perne, and my heart was beating faster at each uneasy memory that passed behind my eyes. I was gripping the wheel with white knuckles, forcing myself to breathe through clenched teeth. The rope on the net creaking from strain pulled my body into automation. The thoughts momentarily shut off as I set about pulling the fish in. With each haul on the rope, I took a little bit extra time, as I knew what would be in the net. It seemed like no matter where I turned, things were waiting to fuck with my mind. The word 'forcing' is underlined.

🐟FROM THE SEA FRET🐟

Callum Point moves to the dead-end town of Perne to scrape together a new life. He’s hoping to get what he always wanted; peace. Unfortunately, what greets him is a place rife with secrecy, conspiracy and creatures beyond comprehension.

#GhostPit #A #H #Q #LGBT #OWN

Door in the Fernwood: In this magical Irish bloodline, poison runs deep.

When sixteen-year-old Quinn puts on an ancient ancestral ring, it shatters the protective binding spell her family cast at birth—awakening clairvoyant powers she should have inherited from her Irish magical bloodline. But the ring also makes her visible to Neris, a Victorian sorceress who hunts Quinn to steal the ring. Hidden away in an Oregon enchanted forest with extended family, Quinn must master her powers before Neris destroys not only her, but their entire family tree.

Portal to another realm, plant magic, elixirs and poisons, romance subplot, magical artifacts, time travel, magical baking

Quinn gripped her camera and leaned forward, her shins pressing against the greenhouse ladder. Face to face with her majestic corpse flower, she held her breath as its infamous, putrid odor spilled from the curling burgundy folds. After years of careful cultivation, she couldn’t afford to miss a single stage of its first bloom. The camera’s shutter clicked one final time as she aimed into its central chamber. Satisfied with her shots, she climbed down and switched on the exhaust fan. Through the greenhouse glass, she watched her elderly neighbors on their back deck, gossiping as usual, completely unaware of the olfactory surprise heading their way. Right on cue, Vera’s voice rang out. “Woo-ee! Who died?” she screeched, sniffing the air. “Nobody croaked,” her husband Artie grumbled as he sipped coffee from his John Deere mug. “It’s that young girl next door. You remember she invited us over to look at some big, stinky flower tonight?” “Well, I’m not goin’. Bet you I’d pass out if I got any closer,” Vera said. “You know her mother keeps her locked up in that backyard doing the strangest things. It’s just not normal for a girl her age.” Although the comment stung, small-town judgments like this only fueled Quinn’s retreat into her own backyard utopia, where she propagated plants from all over the globe—the carnivorous, poisonous, endangered, the beautiful, the ugly, and the common. She sketched the rare or interesting ones—charcoal drawings lined the interior walls of her garden shed wherever she found a blank space. She collected their seeds, dried their leaves, made teas, salves, and medicinal remedies.

A teen outcast from a secret line of Irish plant magicians must harness newfound powers to protect herself from a poison-wielding ancestor who hunts her family across time.
🍄 Plant magic
🌿 Poisons + elixirs
💌 Romance subplot
🎂 Magical baking
🚪 Portal to another realm
#amquerying #GhostPit #ya

The Angry Noodle - Posts for the speculative, cooked to al dente. *noodle noises* The home for writers, lovers of speculative fiction, and all-around angry noodles. Posts available when I'm cooked to al dente.

Hi.

I can't find my old post about it to pin it, so fuck it, we making a new one.

I write about a mix of speculative fiction and social issues, as well as writing prompts, worldbuilding, and the occasional review of books or TV shows.

Link here if you're interested. 🙂

theangrynoodle.com

Lightning! Book covers arranged 7x4 in a grad and lying at an angle so they look really exciting but are hard to head. Happy Halloween FLASH SALE, over an image of a pumpkin. $9.99

28 spooky stories for TEN BUCKS?!
Usually costs $85?!

That's downright scary.
Now through Halloween
🩸📚
itch.io/b/3311/hallo...

Very nice premise! Sounds amazing.

A misty forest. A raven. Trees and a cloudy sky. A fence. A person using an umbrella in a forest. The back of a woman.

NAUSICAÄ X FF7

A young woman is blessed with magic that could restore life to a dying world. Allied with a mentor who thinks the world should burn, a ruthless noble with her own agenda, and an enigmatic prince, she must evade enemies and learn if she is meant to save the world.

#ghostpit #Q #A #F

That premise sounds amazing!

WhereTheDarkStandsStillxPowerless

A knight enters a perilous forest to find her godfather, but instead, she finds a shadow beast immune to her blade and a cursed sorcerer whose magic can slay the monster if she can convince him to leave his manor

✨Big 5 editor interest x2✨

#GhostPit #YA #RF #WIP