Taylor M. Smith

a person in a blue shirt is standing in front of a car in the rain . Alt: a person in a blue shirt is standing in front of a car in the rain .

This year, April showers bring May showers.

a shelf full of books including one that says ' i love you ' Alt: A guy stacking up a wall of books.

Rearranged my bookshelves last night , mostly just organizing the non-fiction books by topic instead of title. It was an impromptu system, so we’ll see if I regret it.

a pixelated axe with a red background and a yellow handle Alt: Spinning 3D model of an axe

You know, legend is full of famous swords and spears with cool names, but there’s a distinct lack of famous battle axes. Maybe they aren’t “regal” enough? Or maybe they’re out there in mythologies I’m less familiar with?

Girl in manga holding the grimoire Liber Ivonis.

Girl in manga holding the book known as the Celaeno Fragments.

It's neat how H. P. Lovecraft's "Cthulhu Mythos" has wormed itself into so much of pop culture nowadays. You wouldn't expect to find it in a cutesy franchise like Cardcaptor Sakura, but...

Had a dream the other night about a large teddy bear being kept in a closet. It seemed like a normal stuffed animal, but I knew that it was actually sentient, and capable of motion, and biding its time...

Wrote a little prose poetry piece tonight. I've written some in the past, but expect to start turning more towards prose poems & vignettes in future. They're good for putting images in words that I don't have a whole plot to go along with, and as palate cleansers when I get tired of longer forms.

I guess now that I’m a writer of both fiction and a TTRPG, I can always turn a short story idea into an RPG scenario if I’m not sure where I want things to go. Leave the plotting up to the players.

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you." - Ray Bradbury

You know how in some stories Conan Doyle mentions unnamed characters who might be Holmes or Moriarty? I read Sax Rohmer's story "The Blue Monkey" lately, and I'm wondering if its narrator and the pseudonymous "Mr. East" are actually Dr. Petrie and Nayland Smith from the Fu Manchu novels. #booksky

a cartoon character named luigi is driving a toy car on a race track Alt: Luigi on a go-kart giving us a mean look.

I turned off my Mario Kart Tour notifications today. Sorry, Luigi, but it’s time I moved on.

A winged dog standing in a battlefield.

The Aralez is a winged dog spirit in Armenian mythology that would resurrect dead heroes by licking their wounds. What a good boy!

Photo of a small crab from NOAA’s social media. It’s covered in spikes

Just making sure that everyone is aware of this crab that NOAA scientists found

Had a creepy experience after midnight a few nights back. Sounded like something was walking on my front porch. I didn’t see anything, though. Don’t know what it was, or if I just mistook another sound for footfalls. Have to include that in a story sometime.

Finally getting around to editing my latest completed story draft, "The Desk." Been a long time coming, considering I started drafting the story before I even started grad school (the latter being why I first put it on hold for so long).

a cat is laying on a couch with a white blanket on it . Alt: GIF of a cat lying on a couch that is dragged quickly off screen.

"There are breaches in the walls that you could throw a cat through." Ambrose Bierce always had such a fun turn of phrase.

a close up of a cartoon character with a big mouth and eyes . ALT: a close up of a cartoon character with a big mouth and eyes .

I'm chewing 5 Gum for the first time, and feel it's my duty to report that it feels nothing like what the commercials said it would.

I think I'm going to have to give up journaling in manuscript. I don't know if I'm getting arthritis or what, but I just can't write like I used to. Makes me sad.

It’d help to know ahead of time how big the game should be. I know I want multiple worlds instead of one big one, but how many should there be, and what size should I make them?

For my RPG Maker project I’m hoping to rely mostly on the default resources, since it’ll be my first video game, but I’m having a hard time deciding just how I want to use them.

I feel like I'm one of the few people who on average spends more time looking at posts without pictures than with pictures. "A thousand words" takes longer to digest, I guess. A lot of people skip them, but I'm afraid of missing out.

Luigi's doing that unfortunate impression again...

Cover of Casting the Runes: The Letters of M. R. James, edited by Jane Mainley-Piddock.

Partway through what is apparently the 1st published collection of letters by famous ghost story author M. R. James. Nothing too interesting yet; most of the letters are very brief and technical. But I haven't yet gotten to the period where he was writing fiction, so maybe it'll pick up. #booksky

Cover of Eyes of the God: Selected Writings of R. H. Barlow, second edition, revised and expanded. Edited by S. T. Joshi, David E. Schultz, and Douglas A. Anderson

Started reading the expanded collection of R. H. Barlow's work that I got for Christmas last night. Really cool to return to his world of Loth. There's even at least one direct reference to the "Cthulhu Mythos" in there ("Zotog-Ua" and Cykranosh). #booksky

Merry Christmas! Maybe things will be a little less crazy now and I can start posting more regularly.

12days Of Christmas Christmas Songs GIF ALT: 12days Of Christmas Christmas Songs GIF

I hear bird flu cases are on the rise. It's probably thanks to that asshole they wrote the "twelve days of Christmas" song about.

I'm sure it is! I just have so much on my plate already that I'm not sure if I can get around to it. I have so many ideas for creative projects that it's hard to know what to work on first.

Been converting a D&D scenario into a 1-shot for my invented #TTRPG. My game itself is largely based on public domain literature, but I'm kind of getting the itch to create an original world for it. Guess I'll just throw that on the growing pile of grand ambitions I'll probably never fulfill.

Need to try for like at least a post a day on here, but I'm worried that my life is just not that interesting. Uh... Oh! I narrated a piece played at a school concert tonight?

a close up of a man with long blonde hair wearing a hooded jacket Alt: Close up of Legolas from The Lord of the Rings film series

Going to start reading Letters from Father Christmas by J. R. R. Tolkien soon, in honor of the holiday. Yes, it involves elves fighting goblins. No, that is not a joke. #booksky