A brief back-and-forth. At last they were marched at gunpoint to the unit command post, a little muddy dugout of zigzagging trench. For a roof a canvas had been strung up on four repurposed telephone poles. For a table, a crate stamped TRANSPORT #83/0418—BOX #7 had been repurposed.
A man was currently hunching over it, giving Ksenia an excellent view of his balding head as he scowled down at draping maps, puffing a cigar.
“Colonel Siminov,” said one of the escorting guards, saluting. “These prisoners asked to be brought to you. They speak Russian.” The last was said ominously.
Siminov’s face was obscured in a cloud of smoke. “Spies are to be executed immediately."
“Yes, but these claim they have papers.”
#WIPSnips
09.01.2026 18:03 — 👍 11 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
A thin line of white powder ringed the mass grave. Lev walked to it, got down on one knee, rubbed several grains of it between ring and forefinger. “Salt.”
It was then Daniil noticed the markings etched into the dirt, just outside the circle of salt. They were crude, but not random; there was a consistency to them as though they had been traced.
Some of them he recognized—Norse runes, Aramaic. Most of them he didn’t. “I know some of these runes. I’ve seen them before. In the—” He cut himself off before he could finish. In the Vampire Wars of 1917. In a dark and gloomy castle, after we cut the owner’s head off and burned his corpse in a bonfire that lit up the night sky.
“Can you read them?”
“I can try.” His normal sarcasm had left him. “If you would read them literally—it’s all very hodge-podge, very unprofessional—all these runes form an invocation.” He cleared his throat. “To the Master we offer the key to the gates. Then there’s a bit that I don’t understand...An equal exchange. The flesh of the living turned to flesh of the dead for the flesh of the living to be turned. The binding of life blood so that blood may be bound. As above so below. As below so above.” He shook his head. “I don’t understand the rest—but if I didn’t know better, I’d think whoever was doing this was trying to make vampires.”
#WIPSnips
14.12.2025 16:02 — 👍 16 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
I knew then that one day he would love me. I could see it in his eyes when he looked at me, with that strange, languid curiosity. He had said he had met ones like me before but that wasn’t entirely true. I was new to him. I let him have me, but did not want him. I swore myself to him, but only because I hated another. How enticing must that be to a creature who has seen ages?
These are the gods: fickle as a leaf on the wind, floating by on a whim, a
dream. Chasers of light when they are in shadow, and of shadow when
they are in light. Hunters of wind and lovers of smoke; they seek to grasp
the sunlight and cry when they fail. They are children, who beg for a shiny toy, and then throw it away once it is theirs.
He would not want me if I wanted him. Just as Aratha loved Atar because she was hidden, and would hate her if he knew the depths of her heart.
To free her, I must be rid of him. To free myself, I must keep the god close. But not too close; not so close that he had enough of me.
Inquired the god in his gruff way, “Tell me what you are thinking.”
“I think of nothing,” I said, and my mind was full of blood.
#WIPSnips
A little late to the party, but here it is!
05.10.2025 00:01 — 👍 11 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
He slanted his head. “Why do you thank me? I have done nothing.”
“Yes,” I said. “I know. And I am grateful.”
“You were not born a slave, were you?” He sounded thoughtful, encased in a shell of mockery. “You were born free. Like me.”
“No one stays what they were born as,” I replied, with what I hoped sounded like finality. “Except perhaps the still-born, or the feeble-minded. Good day, sir. May your gods smile upon you. May they bless you in all your endeavors.”
“And may they bid me to leave you alone?” He called it after my back, laughing.
Yes, I thought, and picked up my pace. Yes. Yes. Exactly.
Leave me alone. Do not mix me up in your affairs; sharpen your arrows if you will, and do not have me carry them. Brew yourself up a poison as green as your eyes, and do not make me drip it into sleeping children’s open mouths. I have enough on my plate without that. I have enough on my plate to choke me.
And it was poison he was brewing; for what else could one such as him seek with one such as I?
#WIPSnips
from my historical grimdark fantasy, the word I used is sleeping
03.10.2025 17:08 — 👍 17 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
The woman laughed when she saw me shiver. “The little hare is frightened?”
“The little hare is cold,” I snapped. Because if I didn’t I would cry, I knew I would, and I had told myself I would not cry. “The little hare would like her clothes back.”
“Too bad,” said the woman, “that the little hare's wishes mean nothing to the hunting fox.” And she rolled up her sleeve, proudly, and I saw the spiraling, fluid image of a fox inked into her skin. The fox seemed to be moving to my bleary eyes, back and forth, pacing the cage of her flesh. “Not a year ago this fox walked Api’s face. Now it exists only on Tomyris’s arm. The little hare does what the fox tells her to. The little hare listens well, or dies. Understand?”
“The hare,” I said, “she understands.”
#WIPSnips
From my historical grimdark fantasy
28.09.2025 16:16 — 👍 14 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Canner was glaring a hole in his plate, looking at her from the corner of his eye as he chewed and swallowed violently. The old woman dimpled. “You should really eat, Anya.” Something about the way she spoke changed. The bones beneath the facade were beginning to break the surface, showing Canner beneath them. “You don’t want to make him angry. He’s not very nice when he’s angry.”
So she ate. The food was good: steak and roasted potatoes, a side of green beans and pecan pie for dessert. It could have been dust for how it felt on her tongue.
“Who are these people, Canner?”
#WIPSnips
06.09.2025 19:41 — 👍 13 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
He staggered; bad leg giving out on him. I stopped long enough to think derisively, weakling, and then my fists were wailing; mouth open in a scream and the blood on my tongue dripped down to mingle with the spreading crimson wetness on his face. I don’t remember taking out my knife, but I do remember stabbing him.
It is one of my favorite memories.
“I wanted to do this for a long time,” I told his crumpled skull. “It was foolish of you to give me the excuse.”
I tucked the knife in my belt calmly and wiped my hands on his shirt. In my belly the baby started to kick.
#WIPSnips
01.09.2025 18:18 — 👍 10 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
They were leaving the station now, heading for Cemetery Hill. Her feet felt half-lead, half-jelly, the weight of everything pulling on her like gravity. “And the murder. You think it’s connected to the faeries too?”
“I think they think it’s connected to the faeries, yes.”
“And you?”
“I think someone came up with a coverup so perfect an entire town would do anything to not have noses poking around in it. How’s that for good police work, Detective?”
#WIPSnips
31.08.2025 00:09 — 👍 10 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Anya remembered the way Canner’s ribs had shown through the ragged tears in his shirt as he rolled in the dirt. The vacancy in his eyes. He had always been lean despite his muscular frame, scoured of fat. Now he had looked positively skeletal, scrubbed down to nothing but bone.
Canner had done this with his own two hands, she reminded herself. He had betrayed them, betrayed her.
So why do you feel so bad for him?
#WIPSnips
29.08.2025 13:49 — 👍 22 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
#WIP #Writesky #WritingCommunity #Moodboard
procrastination strikes again! A moodboard for Canner, one of the characters from my wip, LONG DIE THE QUEEN
someone stop me
28.08.2025 15:33 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Pointy had stepped aside, chest puffed against his livery buttons as he waited; she decided that his side profile didn’t quite live up the promise his broad back and narrow waist had made.
He was kind of—skinnier, than she preferred.
Also, he had far too few eyes. Once again, she thought of Lycenne.
It has to be him coming, she thought.
Who else has the authority to visit the prison, and the desire to do so?
He must’ve made some treaty to come see her—perhaps even to free her.
Oh, it would be a fine thing to see Canner’s face as she waltzed out past him, free while he stayed here to rot. He could play chess with the memories of all the people he—well, not he, but still, he—had royally screwed over.
Anya thought she might like to get royally screwed.
In a four poster bed, maybe, Lycenne by her side, smelling of cedar wood and cinders and kissing on her neck. She let out a little moan.
#WIPSnips
Another snippet from the beginning of LONG DIE THE QUEEN! I'm on a roll. In this one, erstwhile detective Anya is being her marvelously petty self.
28.08.2025 14:44 — 👍 15 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
one thing I'm really grateful for about all my rejected queries is that I have gotten so, so much better at writing a query letter.
#querying #writesky
27.08.2025 21:00 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
a moodboard for my WIP LONG DIE THE QUEEN, a murder-mystery romp through faerieland.
I had way too much fun making it.
#writingcommunity #writesky #WIP #faeries #moodboard
27.08.2025 19:57 — 👍 6 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
She hazarded a look at the floor-to-ceiling bars behind her. At the reedy, pointy-eared guard standing impassively beyond them, his back to her, facing the blank stone wall.
No door.
Even the windows in the cells had been a concession—a compromise made between Selovian, Queen of Seelie, who’d wanted them buried alive, and Lycenne.
Her heart squeezing at the memory of Lycenne, she turned back to the window. Fourteen heartbeats now. Not long.
“Oi! Pointy!” Canner called. “You cunning folk enjoy a game of chess? Or are you too busy flaying babies for that?”
Pointy did not reply.
#WIPSnips
a lil snippet from the very beginning of the story I'm working on now, a fun fantasy murder mystery set in faerieland
27.08.2025 17:27 — 👍 15 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Library book sales are amazing. Like what do you mean I can get gorgeous, in-mint-condition hardbacks of recently published books for like a dollar and the proceed goes to the library so they can buy *more* books?
Win-win
#booksky #Library #books
19.08.2025 23:37 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
love this tag!
19.08.2025 17:03 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
“Cithara has friends, does he not?” she asked Tomyris.
“More enemies than those,” I muttered.
Otra shot me a warning look, our roles suddenly reversed. Be gentle.
I could be gentle. I kept my hands in my lap, feeling the wood grain wall scrape against my back, rough like a callous. My fingers rested a hair length from my sheathed akinakes. I could take Tomyris now that she only had one hand. I was reasonably sure of it, anyways.
“He is known to have a few, yes,” Tomyris said.
“Young men, they are, yes? Hot-headed, quick at the draw. Was one of their number named god-in-the-flesh this past year even?”
Tomyris looked like a fly in a well-honeyed trap, caught halfway between deeply disturbed and highly entertained. “I don’t know.”
“He was,” I spoke up, surprising them both. “Cithara spoke of him to me. Garanos, was it? Cithara called him a ‘milk-toothed sop with a boulder for a head.’”
“Your memory is disturbing,” Tomyris said.
I smiled and said nothing, because I would rather be raked naked over fire than admit I remembered everything Cithara had ever said because he terrified me, and whenever he spoke it felt like his next word might be my death sentence.
#WIPSnips
19.08.2025 17:02 — 👍 7 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
“Here,” she said at last, holding up the stump of her hand, like it was a dead creature she did not want to touch. “Here it is. Like what you see?”
He didn’t touch it as he stared. Didn't move, didn’t blink. “It is—this is—” he seemed at a loss for words. “This—Tomyris. You will never fight again. You will never draw a bow; you will never braid your hair; you will never weave.”
She was watching him very carefully. Like she was waiting for something. “I know.”
#WIPSnips
18.08.2025 14:29 — 👍 21 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
omg our manuscripts have so much in common! Down to a war god sleeping with a sacred virgin and being a feminist retelling of a founding myth!
Mine is about the Amazons though. Yours sounds so cool!
17.08.2025 16:09 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
#wipsnips
17.08.2025 15:54 — 👍 13 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
moodboard with ancient, feminine rage aesthetic
Spent all day making a mood board for one of the characters in the manuscript I'm querying...
#productivity
#amquerying
17.08.2025 15:47 — 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Sludgy green overgrown lake
#queerpit #a #t #cli
An ancient swamp-spirit stalks Berlin. A series of baffling drownings and poisonings lead to Fenn Lake. To save the city and her love interest, mycologist Kara Lindgren must confront the monster, and her own past.
Our Wives Under The Sea x Hummingbird, Salamander
15.08.2025 20:16 — 👍 1 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0
✅ Heists
🥵 Spice
💫 Space
Oh my!
What do you do when you're a disaster bisexual who has to get off Hecate IV before space witches steal your hyperspace treasure maps? You must ALWAYS GET IN A SPACESHIP WITH A SCOUNDREL 🚀🌈
A sci-fi romantasy
#QueerPit #R #FR #A #SF
15.08.2025 20:46 — 👍 0 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0
Ways to (hopefully!!) cure vampirism:
🔮A witch’s tea
🔮Magic coffee (with extra caramel)
🔮The most garlic-filled soup known to man
🔮A home-made spell by your very goth crush
🔮Learning that just because your life looks different doesn’t mean it's over
#queerpit #ya #cr #wlw
15.08.2025 20:48 — 👍 0 🔁 4 💬 1 📌 0
AMAZONIAN
A historical fantasy about the origin of the first queen of the amazons
Otrera, a young Greek priestess-turned-slave, will to do anything to survive her new life as a Scythian captive---including making deals with ancient gods who may or may not be in love with her.
#QueerPit
15.08.2025 20:47 — 👍 2 🔁 7 💬 0 📌 0
holy smokes I love this concept!
15.08.2025 20:43 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
SALTBURN X SECRET HISTORY
After a death on campus, the prestigious men’s club opens its doors to one reporter to observe their secret rituals but what seems harmless quickly turns sinister and she’s the only one who can see it.
Not all gods are meant to be worshiped
#QueerPit #A #T
15.08.2025 20:34 — 👍 1 🔁 5 💬 1 📌 0
A moodboard with ancient Rome images, blood, a woman with blue fire in her hands, zombies, and dragon wings.
With weak cold fire magic, Octavia can't fight her uncle legally taking her fortune. Fleeing to the Temple of the Dead, Octavia's fire raises a girl executed for murder--she knows her power at last. With an army of the dead, she will destroy the empire that keeps women inferior. #QueerPit #F #DF #A
15.08.2025 20:00 — 👍 0 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 0
A grid of nine photos, from left to right:
Top row: an eclipse in phases; text reading “Our almost will always haunt me”; all-black Converse high-tops.
Second row: a shot of healed scars on a man’s tanned back; a cathedral illuminated in red light; a house in front of a purple night sky with fairy lights in bare branches partially obscuring it.
Bottom row: a young man in a white t shirt channeling red light between his palms; a lilac-walled foyer with black and white marble checkerboard flooring; a crow looking down at a headstone it is perched on.
ALIGNMENT - come for the
🗡️ Nefarious revenge plot
🩸 Illegal magic
💥 Epic magic battles
Stay for the
🩶 morally-gray necromancer
❤️🩹 second chance romance
🌹 alleyway/mausoleum makeouts
#QueerPit #A #UF
15.08.2025 20:00 — 👍 2 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
Leah is missing, and Brooke is ready to tear their cult-like church apart to find her. (Literally.) But no one, not even Leah's own mother, seems to remember her.
Signs of sacrifice point to the truth being stranger than any nightmare.
#QueerPit #lesbian #ya #thriller #querying
15.08.2025 19:35 — 👍 2 🔁 8 💬 1 📌 0
Artist & Author of Don't get Blood in my House books2read.com/matthewking
Likes Character Design, Gamedev, 90’s, Cooking, Sharpies, Beetles, Raccoons, Wrestling, The FGC, Baki, Capcom, Boardgames, DDR
Author ✨️ Editor ✨️Fiction
Debut Novel SOMEWHERE BETWEEN LIES is out now on Amazon!
www.katehalena.com
Welcome to the positive side of Writing. Author & Author software that helps people write. My Sci-fi + MG novels. Cool, clean, fun Writing Software for all. My page, 4 me, for writing motivation, writing connection, helps me write. Creator of Storyfyre.com
Writes character driven adult fantasy.
WIP: Brother’s Keeper, epic fantasy sibling story
Lives with bipolar - @siegeofthespirit
Clinical Laboratory Scientist
Mountain backcountry horsewoman
🚫politics🚫
Every trail’s the one true home.
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#art #literature #photography #Cinefield® #music #originalcontent Multi-Media artist. Largely inspired by music. Creator of Cinefield®.
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http://www.waynewolfson.com/
Wildlife, trees, terrestrial ecology, dark skies, night, corvids, coffee, cats. | Expressive Language Disorder. AuDHD. Nonverbal. Mutism (“situational”, “selective”).
You do NOT have my permission to speak for me. Please don’t.
🚫DMs - Writer of contemporary fiction. The stories have always been there, just writing them down now.
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Daughter of a librarian. Mother of an early reader. I write horror and strive to read 100 books a year.🐊
Book recs | Fantasy | Werewolf Romance
Anime | Fanfic
SFF writer of Blerdy/geeky heroines who can't throw a punch but keep fighting for their HEA 🥰❤️
@fallingin on Wattpad and Quotev (TATM)
Don't get b/w me and an update on Ao3
Editor. Author.
2026: Black is the Sea at Night, 1816 Irish picaresque;
Lakeshore Heights, psych thriller.
Excerpts on #WIPSnips.
The collapse of trad publishing is an opportunity.
#editors
https://www.trevelyanwrites.com
I'm an author, screenwriter, and director/producer.
pjsproductions.com
Author of horror, sci-fi, dark fantasy & more. #Dis father of four. Gamer. 🇳🇱 Forever DM.
Querying DAD BODIES, a co(s)mic horror novel. (5 fulls out, Big 5 interest)
Writing MARK OF THE JESTER, a dark fantasy novel.
Born in the 80's.
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Writing a NA/Upper-YA fantasy featuring
Irish folklore, romance, fae, and found family.
I'm the author of 80+ books and an established editor who has helped more than 400 authors achieve their publishing dreams. My books include writing guidebooks, a novel, children's books and more. Visit inventingrealityediting.com