All about the books we love

The eye barely hurts and the swelling is down enough that I can open my eye. It's blurry still but getting better.

I will NOT be doing fandomtrumpshate this year. I missed that the sign up was basically 10 days, no other warning after the first and I was too busy with my pro stuff but you know what I am okay with that. I can bid on people to help out and that is one less fan thing to distract me from stuff I get paid to do. I feel more relief than disappointment.

In the good news department The Owl House lives again in graphic novel form. I'm super excited for this




Here's the fandom meme I've been wanting to do. I got this from [Unknown site tag] who mentioned there are two versions of this meme: one where you post the FIRST line/s of the FIRST posted fic of each month and one where you post the FIRST line/s of ALL the fics you've posted in a year. While I am making this a fannish 50 celebrating ME and my contributions to fandom (which I think we all should do from time to time) But since I will be here til next week trying to do ALL my stories, I shall go with the first story. Enjoy. Read if you're so moved.

January - Why Do Fools Fall in Love Hazbin Hotel, Angel adored the flying pole Husker had installed on his stage.

February Where Fashion Sits Hazbin Hotel, There’s more to her than anyone thinks but, in most ways, being underestimated suits Velvette just fine. (ha this is one of my halfamoon stories from last year


March Sisterhood Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The thing about being a Watcher was Dawn never knew what would come next.

April Ephemeral Hazbin Hotel, Angel heard them ‘whispering’.


May Never Hazbin Hotel, “Are you really sure you wanna know, sweets?” Angel drawled to Charlie, as he squirmed in his seat next to Husk on the couch.


June Somebody’s Eyes The Owl House Edalyn folded up the door into its briefcase.


July Tear Up This Town Hazbin Hotel, He should have known it would end like this.


August Hurt So Good Hazbin Hotel, Angel stretched his legs out in front of him on his bar stool. NSFW


September Pushing Up the Ante Hazbin Hotel, This was supposed to be a friendly game of poker, something he’d tossed out there without thinking it through at the last overlord meeting.


October The Porn Star Murders Hazbin Hotel, “Thank you for calling me.” Rosie’s flat tone sent a shiver up Angel’s spine.


November Someone in the Dark Hazbin Hotel, Husk leaned on the bar, pain lancing through his back.


December Forget Our Memories, Forget Our Possibilities Hazbin Hotel, Dear Husk,
I’m sorry for everything.


Now back to watching my mystery still wishing that John Bacchus would disappear. Today he brings misogyny, islamaphobia and racism. Whee. (the saving grace is Gently takes it out of him every time he does this and I've been told he gets better. Hope that is soon)
s

It started out well. Students showed up, did what they're meant to and meeting a prospective student went well.

and then the day fell off a cliff. I was insanely busy.

then I can't find the agars I need to my research students. And when I finally did I don't have the budget for this. sigh.

Then the roof started leaking. Everywhere. I mean everywhere. every lab. every classroom. people who building flat roofs in a snowy area should have their balls kicked repeatedly

My building has issues before this. Got an email. We need a list of what needs fixed in your lab. by tomorrow. well thanksI

Then the online stuff stopped working again just like last year

Then I was reminded my first thought today was I wish I was retired or at least I never did my sabbatical because it was a taste of retirement

Came home. everything is now ice because it was 60 and all the snow is gone but the ice was too thick for that. Looking forward to my death tomorrow

I haven't been wearing my contacts lately because I can't see to read any more and since I read a lot all day it's not worth the reading glasses headaches. Had them in today. Was doing great. Took them out around 7 without a half hour my eye was beet red and I haven't been able to keep it open for nearly 4 hours. I have NO idea what happened. The contact came out easily. it feels more like it rolled up under my eyelid. Flushed it with both my steroid drops and saline but nope. Going to bed early and hope this heals up overnight. Do not want pink eye. Do not want to go to urgent care tomorrow.

Was going to do a cool writing meme but since it feels like someone is removing my eyeball with sandpaper

I was listening to this the other day about endings

And had several thoughts: 1. I suck at ending things. I never want to say goodbye to the characters. If I don't finish it I have to say goodbye. But that's not the problem mentioned above. That's for people who finish things

2. Have I been guilty of any of them?

3. I might be guilty. My 1980s monster hunter toes the line for the unearned happy ending. Maybe. Sort of.

It's hard to talk about it without spoiling the ending and it probably IS something that would be better if a beta reader looked at I could discuss it with them.

So why am I worried? there are multiple monster in this (maybe too many, that's a problem for another time). One monster is there at the end but it also did the work for the heroes and I'm wondering is that a good pay off? Dan and Howell (the two characters with issues that need to be resolved) get to their ending so there's that. It's probably not as bad an ending as I worry it is.

How about you? Have you worried about your endings?

Open Calls


Trollbreath Magazine Speculative fiction, poetry, and non-fiction of all kinds with a particular fondness for slipstream and fabulism in all their delightful forms

What Elegant Stars: Queer Tales of Impossible Style Space opera stories involving style, fashion, and society with a queer theme.

Astrolabe Stories about how we seek out, discover, and grasp onto connection in all genres with a particular fondness for anything that moves beyond realism in form or content or spirit

Hearth Stories Speculative fiction that explores connection, family, relationships, comfort, and the natural world.

Tea or Coffee, Stars, and Gravity Stories must include the 3 title elements: 1. Tea or Coffee, 2. Stars, 3. Gravity.

Nine Manuscript Publishers Open to Submissions in February 2026

40 Themed Submission Calls and Contests for February 2026




From Around the Web

Does Your Novel Just…Stop? What Makes a Good Ending (I swear I didn't plan this but the article is here...)

How to Write a Book Pitch That Gets Replies (With Examples).

Metaphor Fatigue: When Imagery Stops Working


From Betty


Words pull us through to the future

Five Ways Gods and the Afterlife Change a Fantasy Setting

How to Craft a Satisfying Reveal

Should You Cut Your Novel Into a Series?

Six Ways to Keep Characters in the Danger Zone

The Dos and Don’ts of Blogging for Writers

Think Music As You Write Words

Seven Decisions That Can Crash Your Story Onto The Rocks.

Five Things I’d Go Back and Tell New Writer Me

Is Single or Multiple Viewpoints Best for Your Story?

Bookshop.org Teams with Draft2Digital

When Should You Stop Querying a Book?

How Writers Should Take Advice: Knowing When to Play It Safe and When to Take Risks.

Finding Inspiration to Write: How Body, Mind, and Soul Work Together


Publishing Paths for Writers: Understanding Vanity Presses Before You Sign

Why Writers Should Take a Daily Walk to Boost Creativity and Writing Output

Story as Cosmology: Understanding Story as a Framework for Meaning

The Greengrocer Writes a Fantasy Novel

So Random

I woke to zero no snow. It was due in at 2 AM. It starts instead exactly at 930 but friday is now a half day for me. I leave at noon. In those 2 1/2 hours it had snowed about 3-4 more inches. I can't see the road in town. Worse, I can't see it on the major highway but traffic is moving...until 1 1/2 miles from my place. Ahead of me I see two 18 wheelers skid, jack knife and bump into each other. I pump the brakes and naturally I'm not stopping. Worse, the 18 wheeler next to me also can't stop and he begins to jack knife. Luckily I DO stop without hitting anyone or skidding out. The 18 wheeler stops without taking me out.

No one behind me hits me. I'm like well a) glad I wasn't crammed and hopefully that stays that way b) I'm gonna be here forever c) I forgot my ereader. I call my parents to have something to do and then realize after dad says 'go grade something.' oh right I DID bring 6 folders of grading to do. that kept me busy for the next hour and 10 minutes. The truck drivers came back to be sure we were all okay. So no one was hurt. the big tow trucks come and the road is opened on one side and immediately the chucklefuck in the pick up behind me starts BLARING his horn at us. Dude, the cop is still in the road. When he says we can go we will.

I finished that vampire story about 800 words over. I might leave it that way because they said they'll read a little over and that's not that much.

I wrote something for halfamoon Here you go

Title: Bad Girl Gone Good

Summary: Cherri finds herself doing things she never imagined herself doing like writing letters and thinking about changing her ways.

Rating: teen

Notes:Written for spikesgirl58’s 6 word challenge. The words were Tangible, Imaginary, Patch, Sheet, Persuade & Breakable and halfamoon's prompt of the outlaw

( at the above link or under here )

And here's my friday fannish 50 recs


14 Days of Valentine's Day Hazbin Hotel

The Hazards of Being Jack O'Neill Stargate Atlantis

Battle Of The Library Torchwood

When In Rome Stargate SG-1

Return of the Hale Pack Teen Wolf

Late Night Arrival The Owl House

Lost Love, Lost Life Torchwood

the Love Songs of the Urban Borahae Bird 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS

Weirder Weather Torchwood

Episode 2: Exist Ugly Dolls


Vulcans Don't Feel Guilt (Usually) Star Trek: Enterprise

Not Everyone Gets a Second Chance Inspector George Gently

talk (let's have conversations in the dark). Merlin

Wait for Back-up Prodigal Son


The heart on the right side. The Nightmare Before Christmas

Consequences 9-1-1


honesty is the best policy 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù


nightmares The Amazing Digital Circus

Ombrielle The Amazing Digital Circus

In the Know Teen Wolf

Resting MCU

Which is better title than Rocket is a shit (but he is) So I called my bank. They called both phones...to sell me INSURANCE!?! I was too stunned to say anything other than what? Oh all kind but health. WHY would you not have just said that in the message? I hardly slept last night thinking I was hacked and cleaned out because you left me two messages on two phones to call you.



It's a beautiful snow on my road. It was really pretty, at least to me. And then I got to the top of my hill (in the opposite direction of the hill I'm looking up for this picture) and the accident is still there. An 18 wheeler jackknifed and went over the guard rails. That metal plow on asphalt noise I heard must have been the guard rails failing. It was still there 14 hours later when I went to work. Luckily the cab seems to be whole so hopefully the driver wasn't too badly hurt.




It's not a great pic but there was a whole crew up there and I didn't want to seem ghoulish.

And Rocket IS a shit. He wanted out this morning. I tried to put him back in when I left. He refused and ran. Fine you'll be in the snow for hours buddy. I come racing in because I needed to do something in Jackson and then had a faculty meeting. I'm sitting here on Teams after Rocket races inside He immediately jumps in the litter, throwing it everywhere and poops. Well then. I guess he's decided that he likes to poop in a box and make me clean it (after 4 years of hating that box) or more likely he can scratch thru the ice to poop.


What I Just Finished Reading:

Cooking with Monsters - a graphic novel about monster hunting chefs.. ha. It wasn't bad.

What I am Currently Reading:

When the Moon Hits Your Eye - weird and I'm not sure I like it

The Final Problem - mystery set in the 60s

Dark Life - YA book (so far so good)

The Parable of the Sower graphic novel (this is not the right time for this dystopia but if fulfills a reading prompt)

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier - liking t his better than I expected.

What I Plan to Read Next: La Grand Familia Zombie Day Care and something by Alison Bechdel about being superhuman. Oh joy an exercise memoir. Nearly done.

Luna Park history - it was an amusement park in Pittsburgh around 1910. Mostly interested because it feels like a place to set a story. I mean a lion escaped from it and ate a woman.


And have I mentioned that I'm doing the American Cancer Society February readathon. You can see more about it here on facebook.

Now I haven't lost my mind... maybe. I'm looking at the weather for tomorrow and it says rain and then snow. Excuse me? It's been under 30 for nearly 2 weeks. Let's leave it there. I DO NOT WANT RAIN and then snow. holy shit the ice is thick enough. (the poor grounds keepers were watching me trying to get across the ice floe apologizing. We can't get it off!) Snow, go for it. Rain first, go fuck yourself Mother Nature. No one wants that.

Speaking of DNW, my students some day. So I've been preparing to flip my lab to mondays. We talked about it in Dec. We talked about it the first two weeks. Today is the first day we did it (snowed out last monday) and one of the students goes 'i have class in that time period. OMFG. WHY did you wait until now to tell me? I'm speaking with the chair/dean because in the original position upwards of half the class will miss every lab. If I move it only 1 misses, the one who didn't tell me about this class. I'm gonna go out and sleep on the ice.

I'm at the point in my reading journey where I'm not liking a book but all my friends love it and now I feel pressured.

I made a real milk hot chocolate. At least this didn't have the same weird taste to me BUT my lactose pills did nothing. Someone is playing cat's cradle with my stomach. Way to fail me



it's music monday 30 weeks of music. This week's prompt is 12 A song from the 90s. Share your faves too.

( I'm breaking this into two under here, the rock-pop ones and the country )





here's the whole prompt list

( it's under here )


And I have decided to do a new declutter project but rather than talk about what I'm tossing, my plan is to pick ONE thing a day to red up. Some things will get tossed. Others will be put away correctly. Etc.

today - cleared up the top of the dresser. Found many earrings that had been missing. My mother mentioned a friend of hers in NC has an abused women's shelter that takes jewelry and clothing to get these women back on their feet, give them something to wear to job interviews etc. I wonder if I have something like that hear because I need to dump half of these earrings and I don't want to toss them in the trash

My imbolc was...frustrating. Before I launch into my writerly ways, let me tell you my tale of woe because what would a day be if something annoying didn't happen. I opened my email to find

1. my hotel was canceled
2. that gown I paid for, the email can't be delivered.


So 1. the hotel. It's for the loveland frogman festival. It's the hotel they use for their guests and festival goers (the conference center is a golf club without a hotel) I call them to find out WHY they canceled. me. She goes , 'oh, the state shut us down.' and hung up on me. I'm wow. how BAD do you have to be for the state said no more. A friend suggested that maybe it was because of ICE because didn't Hilton do that it in Minneapolis. Yes but that doesn't seem to be the case here. Now I'm looking for a new hotel AND wondering will the festival get canceled?!?

2. When recollection clothing was on Etsy I bought a beautiful walking dress for my steampunk and in June I bought one for my steampunk/cosplaying Rosie. She's no longer on etsy. It was meant to be delivered in August. it took a couple emails to get a response that she was struggling to get the cloth but she was on it. I've emailed every month since. No response. Now I can't even get an email through. Either she pulled up stakes entirely OR she blocked me. I need to go check the web page to see what's going on but I'm betting that's 200$ I'm never seeing back.


So writerly ways. I have nothing much to actually say, ha. BUT I stumbled onto an offer that was too short of a turn around to share it and it was all about taking a chance (literally it was a random lottery) to get pages of your novel read by a pro editor (like 3 pages) and they asked what turned out to be a shockingly hard question that I thought I'd pose to all of you.

What do YOU struggle with in your novel?

Part of me wanted to say description, ever since a particularly bad writers' group but then I thought eh, that sounds not really like I know what I'm doing. My real problem is my characters pull the story down rabbit holes I'm not sure it should be going through and evil little dog helped me put it in a more coherent way, enough so that one of the editors popped in with an answer (something other than buy my book, which there was a regrettable amount of that) He called it shiny object syndrome which fair. I've called it that myself not knowing it's the right term.

I get distracted by the newest shiny idea outside of the novel and within. It's something I need to work on. How about you?



Open Calls


Views From The Overlook I've shared this before. My story is ready (another beta read wouldn't be bad) I'm sharing this again because they have made a lot of changes to the open call (making it more fair honestly) and the pay is up to 2K for the story. I'm still taking my slim to none chance.

After the Hurt This one is weird. It wants stories that are 'after the whump' the weird part is they have categories from micro fic to novelettes but the PAY doesn't change, just ten dollars or a paperback of the anthology. Given that I wouldn't give them more than flash fic

When the Base Goes Dark: Holding the Line at Home Original horror fiction written exclusively by current or former military dependents

Eye to the Telescope Theme: Paying Tribute

Vampires Anthology Spine-tingling Short Stories of Vampirism in All Its Forms. this is one I'm writing frantically for but it just occurred to me I DO have steampunk vampire story (but it might be too short).

Untitled Suburban Gothic Anthology Suburban Gothic by Canadian authors

THE PING ANTHOLOGY

35 Magazines Accepting Literary Fiction



From around the web

Battling “Shiny Object Syndrome” as a Writer: How I’m Staying Focused on My Novella this was the advice I was given

Short, Sharp, and Hungry: What a Lifetime of Novels Taught Me About Writing Short Horror

Radical Immersion: Becoming Your Character

How to Sneak Clues Past Your Readers and Keep Them Guessing

Change Requires an Engaged Community

The Author's Guide to Instagram.

Five Top Tips To Smash Your Writing Goals

The Timely Sentence



One I think a lot of us should listen to


also interesting



From Betty

Five Ways Authors Sabotage Their Story’s Tension

How Big Should Character Problems Be?

What Actually Scares Me About AI

Three Ways to Develop Characters in Fiction


How to Craft Accurate Fight Scenes - Part 2

This Book Brought to You By

Coping Mechanism Thesaurus Entry: Negative Self-Talk

HOW TO WRITE AN 'I HAVE A BOOK COMING' EMAIL

Why Writers Should Stretch: Simple Ways to Reduce Pain and Stay Healthy at Your Desk

Why Writers Need Good Friends: 5 Powerful Reasons Connection Fuels Creativity and Calling

Dipping the Quill Deeper: Honoring Elders by Preserving Their Stories and Legacy

6 Reasons Writing for Change Requires an Engaged Community

I Meet the Villain Last

Writing Without Trying to Manage the Reader

As I said, I canceled school today and went down to the library to get books/return same, cashed in my Mexican restaurant freebie (another free soda, luckily it could be tea) and had my mammogram. The tech was the first grad from the program back in 2003 and I mentioned teaching them and she gave me things to think about that I hadn't. Like how could I forget they do enemas of barium? Or that I personally have used them IN surgery? I want them to know it's more than taking x-rays and this is WHY they need to know anatomy.

My psychiatry visit was virtual and I guess I'll be needing a new one. I like her and she swears she's staying with the hospital system but her husband had to relocate to FL and all our visits have to be virtual. Yeah like she's really going to stay. Ah well

here are a couple of stories I wrote to threesentenceficathon

( good old days, hazbin hotel )


( James Bond He's Not, Hazbin Hotel )

( Fannish 50 Friday Fandom Recs )