[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA. Find her in her virtual home at coldwildeyes.com (temporarily closed for update). Wipe your feet before entering.]

THE PREPPERS

Hello, all! Melanie here.

When last we left our heroes, Writer X had fallen into a vibes-chasm. A vibes-chasm is when a writer creates fantastic, atmospheric moods on the page but nothing much happens otherwise. Tryxy the demon has been watching eighties sitcoms while he studies for his degree at Miskatonic Online University; he also attended his first open mic poetry night and loved it.

NaNoWriMo is approaching and the writers at Ink Black Coffee Club’s Critique Group are making plans for what they’ll work on this year. To sweeten the deal, there’s a yearly word count competition between the writers of Cradensburg and those of the town of Brokenheap.

Meanwhile, the town of Cradensburg has had a rough fall. There’s been the fact that sasquatch season came early this year, but now there’s also a sudden call for a quarantine.

Without further ado…

---

Subject: QUARANTINE!!!!!

Dear Gladys,

You couldn’t have left Cradensburg to go shark riding in Patagonia at a better time!!!! I’m not sure your cousin Blanche has given you the news yet, but your house is one of the houses infected with the Bloody Mary epidemic. Fortunately, I’m still borrowing your fridge so that has been spared a haunting. There’s nothing worse than a huanted fridge GLADYS!!!! You may want to pick up a Patagonian exorcist at the duty-free on your return trip!!!!

Hang on Gladys, I have to yodel out the window. There are two or three young sasquatches on my lawn and nothing scares them off like a good yodel!!!! My love for the Sound of Music is really paying off!!!!

Okay, I”m back.

And NO, despite what you’re thinking, this whole Bloody Mary situation has NOTHING TO DO WITH ME!!!!!! Regardless of my anonymously egging their houses last night, the town council has refused my pressure campaign NOT to enforce quarantine tonight and now the WHOLE TOWN is going to be quarantined FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS or until Bloody Mary stops predicting people’s future husbands!!!!

Anyhoo, I’m sure you’re dying to know how my writing is going. As you know November is right around the corner and that means the Ink Black Coffee Club Critique Group is preparing for our annual NanoMixalot competition against the Fantasy Writers’ Meetup of Brokenheap, New Hampshire!!!! Last year I was CRITICAL to the success of our competition, however I got no actual words written myself. That’s going to be different this year, GALSDY!!!!

Of course this means I have to make some changes. As you know, I’ve been mostly writing short fiction lately, but NanoLastOfTheMohicans requires that writers work on a NOVEL!!! Well, I haven’t written a novel since I gave up on my nine book epic fantasy saga!! Last week, when we turned in our novel plans at our writing meeting, I declared I would return to my long awaited epic fantasy saga. Little did I know that would have drastic consequences!!!!!

I instantly broke out in hives, including my fingers. When I tried to type, my hives rubbed together and became even more itchy!!!! Of course, I immediately went to the pharmacy only to discover that Cradensburg is suffering from a mysterious shortage of canning jars, cortisone cream, and toilet paper!!!!!

Fortunately for me, we have two new writers in our local critique group, Mark and Thomasina Prepper. They both write New Hampshire based near-future dystopian science fictions stories and are BOTH amaznon bestsellers in their category!!!!! We’re moving up in the world, Galdsy. Our writing group has the Preppers AND me and my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins!!!

Anyhoo, Thomasina also has a side business as a writing doula and she offered her therapeutic services to help me uncover what kind of writing won’t break me out in hives.

In fact, I’m heading to her house for my first session right now!!! But don’t tell anyone!!!! There’s an enforced curfew but no one’s caught me in my pink ninja suit yet!!!! I given Tryxy a blowgun and enough spitballs to blow into the face of any potential spies that might rat me out to the gestapo!!!!

Btw, Tryxy says “Hai!!!” and so does #bestkitten. Tryxy’s bummed about Bloody Mary because they’ve canceled open mic night and he has a new poem he had been very excited about sharing and now he has to wait until quaratnine is over. 

And besides, why should I be scared of catching Blood Mary????

xox,

X

---

Subject: The Alpacalypse

Dear Gladys,

Things in Cradensburg are getting much worse!!!! First of all, the Bloody Mary quarantine has continued, but now the mayor has also banned use of candles, mirrors, and ouija boards as they are SUPER SPREADERS. Bloody Mary has predicted at least seven divorces, outed three adults by revealing the gender identity of future spouses, and exposed twelve affairs. But what am I supposed to do with all my writing affirmation candles and mirrors????? But the most horrible thing has been THE MASS TOILET PAPER SHORTAGE!!!!!!

Hang on, Gladys, I have to spitball a sasquatch whose sticking cranberries in my tailpipe.

Okay, I’m back!!!

Btw, I had to raid your house for rolls of toilet paper because there’s no way you need them while you’re in Patagonia with the sharks and exorcists. I may have had to break a window or three.

Our house has thankfully been spared a visitation of Bloody Mary although I’m pretty sure I heard her scratching on one of the neighbor’s door the other night. Fortunately, I have made extra spitballs just in case we do see her!!!!!

Which brings me to my next update. As you know, I started to use Thomasina Prepper’s writing doula services. It turns out she lives right up the street!!! At first I couldn’t find their house because I didn’t realize that they live in that old fallout shelter next to the graveyard at the top of the hill. AFter my first session we decided that working on my epic fantasy saga wouldn’t be good for my health. However, we haven’t really figured out what I SHOULD be writing for NanoMoxy Soft Drink because we spend most of the time talking about the Alpacalypse and color-coding Thomasina’s collection of econo bottles of ibuprofen and scavenged antibiotics.

Gladys, I have something VERY IMPROTANT to tell you. According to Thomasina, we are in the beginning of the Alpacalypse. Despite the town’s quarantine, she and Mark Prepper predict that the Bloody Mary epidemic will only get worse!!!!! They say that Bloody Mary is just one of the four signs of the Alpacalypse. Those are war, famine, pestilence, and those annoying recipe blog posts that start with a short story about berry picking and a hundred pictures of the author in a sunhat.

THAT’S WHEN I REALIZED THAT THEY ARE RIGHT!!!!!! Gladys, you know how we’ve been having all the problems with sasquatch???? THAT’S PESTILENCE!!!!!   

Then there’s the toilet paper shortage. FAMINE!!!!!

And we’re always at war with the town of Brokenheap.

I forget where Bloody Mary fits into all of this BUT SHE DOES!!! She’s the thing that will bring about the NEW WORLD ORDER and meta-fascism!!!!!

This may all sound extreme to you, Gasdly, but you know that I am a very level headed person and I wouldn’t just fall for any crazy conspiracy theory. I only fall for the best ones!!!!!

Thomasina and Mark really are amazing. They’ve been preparing for this time for the last thirty one years. Mark even showed me a half finished bottle of clindamycin he saved from 1992!!! They’re so wise, gladys!!!! It’s an honor to be their friend. They’ve explained to me that I’m not like other people in the town whom they call “goatles.” That’s their name for people who stick their heads in the sand and eat tin cans. They’ve said that when I’m ready they might even show me their super secret bunker beneath their secret secret bunker!!!! Mark doesn’t show the bunker to everyone, he has to conserve his energy as he’s been fighting a sinus infection that just won’t go away since 1992. 

I’ve been thinking about the alpacalypse SO MUCH that I haven’t been able to think about writing at all. Instead, I’ve been canning things, strengthening my immune system, and whittling stakes. Today I canned some eggs, some water, and a can. I’ve also been trying to get to the bottom of the toilet paper shortage. I just know that the New World Order is behind the toilet paper supply!!!!!

I even saw Bloody Mary on my way back from the Preppers the other night. Or at least I think it was Bloody Mary. She had long, claw like hands, and her face was blanched and sweaty and she kept going up to people’s houses and knocking but no one answered the door. I was able to get away before she could break up me and my boyfriend’s relationship by revealing we’d marry other people!!!!

But what I’m really concerned about is my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer TOd Boadkins. He and I don’t exactly see eye to eye about the Preppers. He doesn’t think they’re wise at all and that Bloody Mary is just something that comes around every hundred years or so and it’ll pass. I told him he wouldn’t know an Alpacalypse if it kissed him!!! He said Alpacalypses are on Alpacafaces.

Tryxy is somewhere in the middle. He says that, being over 4000 years old, he’s aware of at least eleven alpacalacalypses—one of them he accidentally caused—and there’s no reason why another one couldn’t happen although he doesn’t think the Bloody Mary epidemic is THE ONE. When I asked #bestkitten what she thinks about the Preppers, she said “MEOW.”

Fortunately, the Preppers have invited us over to eat some of their expired MREs tonight so my boyfriend will be able to get to known them better!!! UNFORTUNATELY, we’ve been out of toilet paper for the last three days and I’m afraid that if I don’t keep a close eye on my boyfriend he’ll raid the Prepper’s bathroom and that’ll be the end of a very advantageous friendship!!! Where else are we supposed to stay when Bloody Mary eventually gets to us all????

Yes, NanoMangoTango is inching closer and closer, but how can I think about writing when IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD???? At least me and my boyfriend and my bff and #bestkitten will get through it together.   

Anyhoo, I should get going. Thomasina Prepper’s informed me that the dinner dress code is tactical casual and I have to sew extra pink pockets onto my glitter leggings.

xox,

X

---

Subject: QUARANTINE OVER!!!!

Dear Gladys,

Well, Bloody Mary has left our town and quarantine is over and we all have my boyfriend, award winning epidemic ending fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, to thank!!!!!

It all began when he and I went to the Preppers for a dinner of expired MREs. I thought I saw the neighbors watching us and had the sinking feeling that they were going to report that we had broken curfew to the authorities. But then it turns out that everyone in our neighborhood had been invited to the expired MRE dinner.

My boyfriend had been acting shifty all night, but he became especially shifty when he saw that the Prepper’s bathroom had a fresh roll of toilet paper!!!! Next thing I know, he’s poking around, sticking his nose in closets, unlocking pelican cases, and inspecting cupboards. I caught him just as he found a hidden stairwell. I would have shouted at him but then that would have given him away to the Preppers and caused a scene, so instead I followed him. He went down three floors and discovered the Prepper’s super secret bunker!!!! Lo and behold, the place was packed with canning jars, cortisone cream, camping equipment, AND ALL THE TOWN’S TOILET PAPER!!!!!

As soon as I saw this, I knew what we had to do. WE HAD TO SMUGGLE IT OUT!!!! So my boyfriend and I took turns stuffing our cargo pockets and pants with rolls of toilet paper, and sneaking out of the house and up the street where we stashed the toilet paper at our house for later dispersement!!!! On one of my surreptitious sallies I happened to run into that lady with the claw hands. Before she could predict that I’d die alone or that my boyfriend and I would marry parakeets, I asked her what she wanted. And you know what she asked for???? TOILET PAPER!!!! So I gave her a few rolls and she disappeared with a happy smile on her sharp-toothed face. IT’S WHAT SHE WANTED ALL ALONG.

Gladys, remember how we used to summon Bloody Mary at sleepovers???? Where would we usually summon her?? IN THE BATHROOM!!!!! It turns out that all these years, Bloody Mary has been showing up in people’s bathrooms because she’s been looking for toilet paper and they just want her to tell them who they’ll marry. In fact, you could even say that the Prepper’s toilet paper hoarding has caused this whole mess in the first place because if we had toilet paper, we could have headed this off!!!

Actually, not really. What initially caused the whole Bloody Mary problem was that the Cradensburg Skeptics Association were doing one of their debunking events the other week and their theme was “Debunking Urban Myths Like Bloody Mary” and I’m sure you can figure out the rest!!!!

Ah well, it was fun canning things and feeling like my stockpile made me slightly better than the goatles. Actually, it wasn’t fun and I still don’t know what I’ll write for NanoNincompoop!!!!

Pages next week, Gladsy!!

xox,

X

X LEFT

ME WITH

A BUCKET

OF HER

SPECIAL

HOMEMADE

SPITBALLS.

BARF EMOJI.

BARF EMOJI.

BARF EMOJI.

[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA. Find her in her virtual home at coldwildeyes.com (temporarily closed for update). Wipe your feet before entering.]

MARTIN K. HOOTEY’S CONFLICT DROPS

Hello All! Melanie here.

When last we left our heroes, Writer X had fallen in with a group of “literary” writers who turned out to be less than friendly. Fortunately for her, Tryxy, #bestkitten, and her boyfriend Tod Boadkins value her company regardless of how much deer urine she’s covered herself in.

Meanwhile, in Cradensburg, sasquatch season has come early with some distressing effects on Writer X’s stories.

Without further ado…

---

Subject: BULL MOOSE!!!!!!

Dear Gladys,

I’m writing to let you know that a nefarious ne’er-do-well has entered our town and is scamming writers of their hard earned money and peace of mind!!!!!! Also: I need to you to do me a few favors without letting my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, know that I asked you to do them. In fact, it’s better this stays hush hush between you and me.

First of all, do you remember that time you made that blowgun disguised as an umbrella??? Well, you’re going to need it!!!

Anyhoo, I’m sure you’re dying to know how my writing is going.

Well, to be truthful, I’ve been very stressed. There’s the sasquatches. For some reason they all seem to love my house and none of my natural sasquatch repellents are working—I even tried apple cider vinegar and all I got was a house that smells like a salad!!!!! Then there’s my neighbors pestering me about the Haunted Hills of Cradensburg contest. Just because I won the contest for the neighborhood last year by accidentally setting loose an evil warlock who had been sawed in half on a pack of kids from the local 4H club, it doesn’t mean they can expect me to do this every year!!!! Undead warlocks don’t grow on trees Galdsy!!!! They’re not anvils!!!!!

Mostly it’s the sasquatches though.

As you know, I’ve been keeping up a pretty regular writing regimen. You don’t get to be the next big epic fantasy writer of all time by doing nothing. I already tried. However, with all the stress I’ve been under, something strange started happening to my stories.

It all started when I decided I wanted to write a murder mystery that takes place in a village that a young sorceress has come to for the purpose of visiting her great aunt who is responsible for the sorceress’s inheritance. You know just the kind of story: it will RIPPLE with atmosphere. First, there’s the village with the cozy and quiet cottages with little streams of sweet smoke puffing merrily into the Scottish evening. There’s the grey rain and the bit of chill in the air and down at the tavern, Old Meggers is making her famous brown stew and golden, buttery bread.

Then, there’s the old dilapidated castle on the edge of the moor with the pale white face sometimes seen in the south tower. Then, there’s the sorceress’s great aunt’s house. It has everything: lush ivy cuddling the walls and roof, mullioned windows, a roaring fire, another simmering pot of brown stew and a cheery, whistling kettle, and a wall full of books, and a fluffy gray cat who refuses to move from her little bed in the window, and an overstuffed chair that the sorceress loves to sit in and read mystery novels about dilapidated Scottish castles on the edges of moors. There’s the wind whistling in the chimney that makes the fire dances and the logs crackle and spit. Absolutely perfect. Can’t you just feel it???

Thrilled, I showed it to my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, and he read it and said that, while he appreciates the numerous descriptions of buttered bread and the no-less-than-four mentions of the different kind of whistles the wind makes in the chimney, he regretted to inform me it wasn’t a story.

“It’s not a story if it’s just a lot of atmosphere and vibes, my love,” he said.

I don’t want to mess up my perfectly vibed murder mystery with a MURDER!!!! Heartbroken, I drew myself a giant bubble bath and prepared to lock myself in the bathroom with a case of mystery novels about dilapidated Scottish castles on the edges of moors. That’s when the doorbell rang. I dried off my soap bubbles and went downstairs but found that Tryxy had already beat me to the door. He, too, had just finished taking a much needed bubble bath and recently discovered a box of Harlequin romances from the eighties that the previous house owner left in a crawl space so was still pruny in his puffy bathrobe and shower cap at the door. 

Tryxy informed me that it was just someone dropping off flyers. There were three in all. One was a flyer for the Haunted Hills of Cradensburg, another was an invitation to Open Mic Poetry Night at Ink Black Coffee Club, and the last was a mysterious piece of advertising.

Gladys, it’s almost as though this flyer was written especially for me!!!! It certainly had my attention, but I had to be sure so I kept reading.

It was a forty dollar value, Gladys!!!! How was I supposed to turn that down????

Well, I regret ever buying these stupid drops. And the Dialogue Gummies turned out to be nothing but chocolate flavored laxatives!!!!

I showed the flyer to my boyfriend but he said, and I quote: “You don’t need that snake oil, my love. Haven’t you read enough stories? This stuff never works out. It’s like the monkey’s paw.”

But when I re-read the part about the “patented blend” and the “highly concentrated” and the “fast-acting,” something about those words made me feel certain that what I was buying was definitely not hogwash. WHY ELSE WOULD IT HAVE THE WORDS “PATENTED BLEND”?????

After reading the flyer, I marched straight down to that broke down cargo van in the alley way behind the caffeine-recovery clinic and forked over the $125 cash knowing that this would pay for itself in SPADES!!!!!

Home again, I opened up my amazing little story with the sorceress and while on the page she’s reading her novel and stroking the warm, purring cat, I carefully opened the bottle and squeezed the rubber cap to suck up precious drops from the vial. Carefully, I allowed a single drop to well at the bottom of the dropper. It was a black, shimmering liquid. I tapped the side of the dropper and the single drop fell onto the story. Satisfied, I went to return the dropper to the vial but accidentally released the rubber cap and a whole milliliter flowed out of the dropper and onto the story!!!!

ACK!!!!

The next thing I knew, the great aunt’s body fell through the ceiling of the cottage with a hatchet in her back, the cat developed an allergy to humans, and the delicious brown stew was bubbling over with—

You know what? I can’t even tell you what it was bubbling over with. It’s too bad to write!!!!! Whatever your mind thinks of, it’s your fault!!!

Needless to say, I was so frantic to erase those words, I accidentally dropped the bottle and it rolled across the floor. Fortunately, only one or two drops leaked out onto our floor, but little did I know that a hairline crack appeared on the base of the bottle!!!

The bottle was the last thing on my mind because right then the Dialogue Gummies kicked in and I had to make a run for it or else my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, was going to know what I’d been up to and possibly never look at me in the same light again!!!!

No sooner had I entered the convenience, Tryxy burst in on me and let me know that the Open Mic Night had been moved from Sunday to RIGHT NOW and that he was going down to read his best poems and, while he understood that I was preoccupied and it was last minute, if I didn’t come down to see him read his poems to the public for the very first time, he would feel nervous and a part of him would always wonder how much I love him.

GLADYS!!!!!! This is an emergency!!!!! Tryxy’s confidence in his art and his friendships is ON THE LINE!!!!!

Fortunately for me, I’m always fabulously dressed. I did what I had to do as fast as I could, but I had one other problem: recovering the bottle of Martin K. Hootey’s Conflict Drops!!!! I couldn’t just leave it on the floor for my boyfriend to find!!!!

I accidentally kicked the bottle and it went rolling across the floor. That’s when I discovered the crack!!!! Another drop leaked out and I developed a charley horse!!!!!

Stiff legged and in pain, I hobbled downstairs to get a zip lock bag to contain the Conflict Drops. I crawled into the bedroom and picked up the cracked vial without anymore of those horrible drops getting on me or the floor!!!!

Then I noticed the sasquatches were back and no less than three of them were climbing up the sides of my house, but that was neither here nor there.

Limping, but triumphant, I fell down the stairs with the bottle of Conflict Drops in hand and threw myself out the front door so that I could save Tryxy from feeling nervous and wondering if he was loved. Unfortunately, the bottle of Conflict Drops began to leak in the bag and corroded the plastic!!!!

A single, shimmering black drop fell from my hands and onto my front porch and in it’s place a BULL MOOSE POPPED UP!!!!!!

This is where you come in, Gladys. I’m hiding inside and will wait for you to come with your umbrella blow gun and tranquilize the moose. Or at least wave it away. Or offer it some snacks. Then, when the moose isn’t looking, I’ll sneak into your car and we can speed down into town and watch Tryxy’s poetry reading and THEN we’ll head for that alley with the broke down van and rattle the kettle of that no good snake oil salesman!!!!

I won’t settle for anything less than a full refund!!!

Or at the very least a monkey’s paw!!!!

xox,

X

P.S. Nevermind Gladuys!!!!! THe bull moose got in a fight with the sasquatches and I was able to slip out. MEET ME AT TRYXY’S POETRY READING ASAP!!!!!!! BRING YOUR COUSIN BLANCHE!!!!! I’LL BE THE ONE SCREAMING ALL THE WAY THROUGH TOWN!!!!

THE POETRY

READING WAS

A BIG

SUCCESS. I

READ MY

TACO POEM

AND ABOUT

NINEVAH. X

AND TOD

CAME AND

SO DID

GLADYS

AND HER

COUSIN

BLANCHE AND

EVEN

#BESTKITTEN

THOUGH

NO ONE

KNOWS

HOW SHE

GOT DOWN

THERE. I

FELT VERY

LOVED AND

THE OWNER

ASKED ME

TO COME

NEXT WEEK.

[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA. Find her in her virtual home at coldwildeyes.com (temporarily closed for update). Wipe your feet before entering.]

THE “LITERARY” WRITERS OF CRADENSBURG

Hello, all! Melanie here.

Cat Rambo, a writer with significant “literary” chops, once described the “literary” world of writing as cold and unfriendly. I’ve spent some time there and I regret to say I agree. There are lots of friendly people if you look for them, but there’s also an unnatural amount of angst and inferiority complexes masquerading as superiority. I much prefer our SFF community. It’s warm, friendly, and we have spaceships.

It’s a creative season for our friends in Cradensburg. Or, at least for Writer X. After a whole year of writing very little, she’s been typing up stories regularly. And it appears she’s found some new friends in Cradensburg! Although “friends” is a generous way to describe them.

Without further ado…

---

Subject: Turning over a new leaffv

Dear Gladys,

I am writing you a very serious and very highbrow letter, so I need you to place your college degree in a prominent place before you read it.

I have learned a new thing about myself as a Writer. Namely that I am a writer of refinement and intelligence, something akin to Tolstoy—

Hang on, Gladys, there’s a sasquatch peeling the siding off my house.

Anyhoo, I’m sure you’re dying to know how my writing is going. Where was I?? Oh, yes. Tolstoy. Someday I’ll read Tolstoy if I can find the book in movie form. But anyhoo, I am like him. As in—and I have to say this delicately—I AM A GENIUS. I know that because it’s a thing the other writers in my new friend group quietly imply about everyone who’s in our friend group. Now that I’ve met them, I know what’s been wrong with my writing life before: I wasn’t letting my true genius show through!!!!!!!

It all started when I went to the Mantra shop to pick up some more aromatherapy drops for writing dialogue. I already have a bunch of it, but I discovered that it’s an excellent replacement for motor oil and coolant, and with all the sasquatches we’ve had lately, I forgot to go get my oil changed for the second year in a row.

So there I was, buying some eau de engine coolant and thinking positive thoughts about becoming the next big epic fantasy writer of all time and I overheard three or four people complaining about the “worst garbage they’ve ever read.”

One of the gentleman had a silk scarf, a handlebar mustache, and an ironic t-shirt. He said, “Just because you WANT to write, doesn’t mean you should.”

I know you’ll think I’m crazy when I say this Gladys, but for two seconds I was afraid they were talking about ME.

I gave a tittering, self-conscious laugh and barged into their conversation. “What story was this??” I asked, throwing in some more elegant laughs to disguise the fact that I was secretly hoping they weren’t talking about my flash fiction contest winning story!!!! I am a local celebrity after all even if most people don’t know it!!!!!

Fortunately for me, they were only talking about a story from one of the other writers in their critique group.

“Sounds horrible!!” I said.

Each of their eyes lit up as soon as I condemned a story I hadn’t read. “You get it, right????” said the handlebar mustache. “Thank James Franco, SOMEONE gets it.”

“I wish she would get it,” said a woman with ironic pig tails and an eye roll. She was referring to the writer in the critique group, Galdsy, not me. “Gawd, if I have to read another word of her stupid work-in-progress! I could just die.”

“SHE should just die,” said handlebar.

Glad that they weren’t talking about me, but afraid to walk away in case they were, I hung around the circle and nodded my head whenever someone pointed out how no one can write these days and that Cradensburg is full of nothing but “genre hacks.” I’m not sure what that means, but I’m sure they weren’t talking about me.

“Are you a writer?” asked handlebar moustache.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I am. In fact, I recently won an award.” The flash fiction contest counts as an award GLADYS!!!!!!!

Handlebar’s eyes grew wide. “Are you kidding? Wow! How cool is that? You should join our writing group.” And then he covered his mouth in horror.

“You shouldn’t make assumptions about their time!” said Ironic Pig Tails.

“I know. I’m so sorry! What I mean is, you should join our writing group. That is, if you don’t prefer solitary. I mean, you just won an award so maybe you prefer solitary. But we’re a writing group and we pride ourselves on having REAL writers in our group. You know how the writers are here. They throw a spaceship and a ghost on a page and think they’re Tolstoy.” 

I mopped the droplets of sweat from my forehead with a Dunkie’s receipt I had in my pocket. Of course, I didn’t REALIZE that it was my Dunkie’s receipt until too late and I spread ink all over my forehead. When everyone’s eyes stared quizzically at my forehead, I realized what I had done and explained that I wipe my face with receipts because it’s a form of upcycling and paper is wasteful.

“It’s settled, then!” proclaimed Handlebar. “You MUST join our writing group. We won’t take no for an answer.”

Hang on, Gladys, that’s the sasquatch again. I have a tangerine launcher somewhere around here. I find that if you launch tangerines at the sasquatches, it buys you an hour or two. Not to mention the pleasing phthonk! sound they make when they hit.

I wonder what Tolstoy did to handle his sasquatches…

Anyhoo, I should probably go. I have to concentrate when I aim this thing and I already broke three windows this morning.

xox,

X

---

Subject: NEW WRITING ENCLOSED!!!!!!

Dear Gladys,

My new writing group is getting together for our first meeting tonight and they want me to bring them some of my writing. Handlebar even called with a special request. He said they’re all doing “Naturalist/Realism Journals” and said it would be “uber amazing” if I could write up a journalistic entry that’s in the Naturalist style and I said “sure no problem.”

Then I had a small panic attack.

Fortunately, I also have Wikipedia, and once I found out what Naturalist writing is, I felt MORE THAN CAPABLE. It’s just describing stuff in your life, you don’t have to have any imagination at ALL!!!! This is gonna be a walk in the park!!!! Naturalist just means you write from your REAL LIFE.

Then Handlebar went on and on about those “genre hacks” whose writing doesn’t reflect the real world or have anything meaningful to say and I still haven’t looked up genre hack yet but I didn’t want him to think that I didn’t know what he was talking about so I said, “Yeah, totally, heh.” Then he asked me what I do about the rash I get from wiping my face with receipts and I told him I put engine coolant on it and he was very quiet for almost an entire minute and then he said, “I never would have thought of that. Thank you.”

I spent my morning putting out mothballs in the garden to keep the sasquatches away and then I went on to work on something that came out EVEN BETTER THAN I THOUGHT!!!

Gladsy, this may be the best thing I’ve EVER written and I’ll share it with you just as soon as I cover myself in deer urine and roll around my yard. Between that and the mothballs, I’ll have this awful sasquatch problem resolved!!! Don’t you hate when sasquatch season comes early???? Probably because of all the rain we’ve had. Which gives me another idea for my writing!!!! BRB!!!!

*(That means Be Right Back.)

I’m back!!!! And I added some new stuff so it’s EVEN BETTER!!!!! I even whipped out a semi-colon for this one!!!!!

Untitled

by Writer X

Deer urine and grass in my nose. I’m sitting in my yard with the sense of something approaching. I try to beat it back. My heart is like a tangerine, sailing through the air, attempting to reverse the tide.

The siding on the house sags, warps, blisters. Sasquatch fingers picking at the paint. Sasquatch howls on the edge of the neighborhood. My heart is like a taco truck, thrown in the river of desire.

The trees are tangerine at the edges. Mothballs in the garden; small white stones. My lover says, “Why don’t you come in and shower? You stink of deer piss. I’ll call the sasquatch catcher.”

I know I should respond to him, but I’m here, with the world turning orange. A sasquatch howl echoes. And disappears into the night.

I CAN’T WAIT TO SHOW IT TO THEM!!!!! THey’re going to be so AMAZED!!!!!

xox,

X

---

Subject: EVERYTHING’s Fine

Dear Gladys,

So. I have returned from my first meeting with my new writing friends. And everything went absolutely fine. Handlebar was a lot quieter and considerably less enthusiastic about my being there, but I think it’s just because the ink rash on his face has made him have to cut off his mustache.

We met in a shed outside Handlebar’s mom’s house. It even had a little sign on the door that said, “We write BIRDS, not BIRDCAGES” and another that said “I write to make a clearing in the wilderness” and “NO GENRE HACKS.”

I showed them my writing. They squinted at it funny and Ironic Pig Tails finally pursed her lips and said, “I see the irony.”

Handlebar’s pale blue eyes burned into me. His ink rash looked inflamed. “Screw irony. Show me what page Tolstoy ever said the word sasquatch. Show me where Nabokov wrote about sasquatch howls—”

“Gawd, you only remember the Russians,” said Ironic Pig Tails to Handlebar. He turned his face away in a huff. “I think was Rufus is saying is that ‘Sasquatch’ is a hard word to read as a symbol.”

“Sasquatch is a symbol for chemtrails and tin foil,” Handlebar grumbled. “Sasquatch is what you put on the page if you’re trying to draw attention to yourself.”

“It’s not done!!!!” I cried. “It’s just a draft!! I was just using the sasquatches as a placeholder is all.”

Ironic Pig Tail seemed content with this. “Interesting,” she said.

“What is sasquatch a place holder for?” asked Handlebar, accusingly.

“Some other animal.”

“A werewolf?” he said. “Hmmm? Or a vampire? Or a “ghost”? Next time bring the second draft instead of the first.”

“I’m looking forward to reading your other draft. I think what Rufus is trying to say is what can sasquatches really tell us about life. About the moment we’re in. About whether we’ll have an affair or become an alcoholic.”

“Like REAL writing,” said Handlebar.

“I would just reach for another animal. Something much less…genre. You know.” Ironic Pig Tail wrinkled her nose.

And everything is COMPLETELY fine, Gladys. No, I am not questioning my self worth. No, I did not spend three hours crying into a bag of cheetos and a half gallon of rocky road. I was planning to do those things anyway!!!!

Anyhoo, I need you to read my new draft. I think it’s MUCH better.

Untitled – Draft Two

by Writer X

Deer urine and grass in my nose. I’m sitting in my yard with the sense of something approaching. I try to beat it back. My heart is like a tangerine, sailing through the air, attempting to reverse the tide.

The siding on the house sags, warps, blisters. Honey Badger fingers picking at the paint. Honey Badger howls on the edge of the neighborhood. My heart is like a taco truck, thrown in the river of desire.

The trees are tangerine at the edges. Mothballs in the garden; small white stones. My lover says, “Why don’t you come in and shower? You stink of deer piss. I’ll call the Honey Badger catcher.”

I know I should respond to him, but I’m here, with the world turning orange. A Honey Badger howl echoes. And disappears into the night.

When you finish reading it, you can find me in Tryxy’s abyss watching Golden Girls and wearing a snuggie and totally not crying.

xox,

X

---

Subject: THIS WORLD NEEDS MORE WIZARDS!!!!!

Dear Gladys,

So I went to the meeting today to show my new writer friends my second draft and discovered that the group had been permanently disbanded because some sasquatches came by and carried off Handlebar’s shed and then Handlebar.

WHICH IS FINE BY ME!!!!!

Besides, I never saw a Brandon Sanderson story with Naturalist/Realism!!!!! I never met a Brandon Sanderson book with a “THEME”!!!!! So why should my stories have them????

And you know what?? I prefer friends who don’t talk behind each other’s backs!!!!!

SASQUATCHES ARE A SYMBOL OF CREATIVE FREEDOM!!!!!!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some Golden Girls to watch with a friend who NEVER talks behind my back and everyone knows is amazing.

Pages next week, Gladys!!!!!

xox,

X

MAY

OR MAY

NOT HAVE

HAD

SOMETHING

TO DO

WITH THE

SASQUATCH

HEIST.

MAY

OR MAY

NOT HAVE

BEEN ME

AND

#BESTKITTEN

IN A

SASQUATCH SUIT

FROM

SPIRIT OF

HALLOWEEN.

WILL NEVER

TELL.

THE ABDUCTION

OF HANDLEBAR

WAS AN

INSIDE JOB

THOUGH.

[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA. Find her in her virtual home at coldwildeyes.com (temporarily closed for update). Wipe your feet before entering.]

THE GHOST OF WORDS UNWRITTEN

Hello All! Melanie here.

The SFF writing life, with all of its arc ships, singing swords, and uncanny terrors, is brought to you by Regularity.

Having dependable places to sleep, dependable food to eat, and dependable friends to laugh with goes a long way ensuring chapters are written and multi-volume sagas are slogged.

Yes, your characters may not know whether their sleep will be wrested by a band of angry goblins, but your writer should. Too little is said in praise of the banal, too few songs are sung about a regular oatmeal breakfast and an evening walking the cat. Three cheers for the afternoon when all you have to do is write 500 words in your latest short story and dry the towels before they get moldy in the washing machine.

It’s been a season of focusing on writing for our heroes in Cradensburg but with that Cradensburg flare. Just a few weeks ago, Tod Boadkins was hunted by a bow-wielding character that escaped a novelette he was working on. Writer X had hunting of her own to do: she hunted down a special flash light that reveals whether a first draft is ready for revisions or needs more time to cool. And Tryxy the demon started two things at the same time: the fall semester at Miskatonic Online University, and a strict diet and exercise program to keep the freshman fifteen at bay. But I like to think that, in all of this, things have been more regular and cozy, and that our heroes are happier for it.

Without further ado…

---

Subject: A new stor—HALP!!!!! A HAUNTING!!!!

Dear Gladys,

How are you??? I hope you are enjoying this suddenly sunny weather we’ve been having. By the way, I’m being haunted and need you to come over write away.

I’m sure you’re dying to know how my writing is going. Well, this afternoon—OH MY GOD I’M NOT ALONE, I CAN FEEL THAT I’M NOT ALONE!!!! THE SOUND IS BACK TOO!!!!! THERE’S A PRESENCE HERE GLADYS, A MALEVOLENT PRESEN

Oh, it’s gone. What was I saying???

This afternoon my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, closed himself in our bedroom away from the television to force himself into editing his novelette “Tasyin of the Wicked Watch.” He’s been dreading the task for at least two weeks and has gotten SUPER GOOD at avoiding it. Just the other week he went hunting baers and got lost in the wilderness and so had an excellent excuse for missing the final edits deadline.

It all started when he went up Shit creek, got in a fight with a baer that had been fishing for salmon, and broke his paddle fending off a swarm of woodchucks who came to support the baer (long story.) Fortunately, he hadn’t lost any of his provisions in the tussle. The canoe drifted into some marshlands and my boyfriend opened up the cooler I had packed for him but discovered he was a few sandwiches short of a picnic. This is because I had left the sandwiches on the counter and ran off to write a short story about a woman that receives a clock as an early retirement gift. The clock tells her how long she has left to live. The woman discovers that certain things shorten or lengthen the time, but at one point, she eats a sandwich and, once finished, she checks the clock and discovers she only has three minutes before death takes her.

Anyhoo, my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, being without any sandwiches for his picnic, was forced to abandon his canoe and trudge through the marshes into the bog looking for food. About that time he spied a banana tree in the distance. As you know, Galdsy, it’s not too often that you spot a banana tree growing in the New Hampshire wilderness—I really have only seen one, to be honest—and he knew he was saved!!! A few hours later, he found a path through the bog to the banana tree but discovered that the banana grew at the center of an ancient graveyard with a crumbling stone wall surrounding it.

In the graveyard, mildew-streaked headstones stuck out from the ground like weathered teeth. Occasionally, he glimpsed worn off surnames of the long dead like Luck, Charity, and Cleveland-Banksley-Bauer. Dates such as 1589 and 1703 filled the cemetery, not a year beyond 1713 on any of them. Some of the tombstones had been broken by wind and rain or unimaginable violence, the shattered edges worn smooth by centuries. No one had been in this graveyard for at least 300 years, from my boyfriend’s guess.

He came to the banana tree and, so hungry was he after the woodchuck fight, that he devoured four or five on the spot. When he bit into the sixth, he realized that the graveyard had not been entirely abandoned. On the other side of the banana tree was a freshly dug and deep grave with pale pink worms wriggling in the newly exposed earth. The edges of the grave had not been shored yet and so they sloped inward so that someone who stood on the edge of the grave might slip inside if they weren’t careful. My boyfriend learned too late that he had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.

He fell into the grave. It was far deeper than any grave he’d seen before, at least fifteen feet deep and it was a good thing that my boyfriend had attended boy scouts and learned that the safest way to fall is on your face. Still, it knocked him out for a matter of hours. When he came to, the first stars of twilight hung far above him and the darkness made it seem as though the fifteen feet of grave stretched into one hundred, then two hundred.

Then, a figure appeared at the top of the grave. A gaunt, long figure in a wide black hat. The figure stooped with its bone white hands on its knees and called to my boyfriend with a thin voice that invoked the cold of death.

“What ho, traveler there. You have fallen into my grave and so you are bound to do my will or else never return to the world you once knew.”

“What is your will?” cried my boyfriend.

“Have you seen the great wood that surrounds this place?”

“Errr…I think so?” my boyfriend replied. “Do you mean the marsh. Or the part with the baers—”

“This great and malevolent wood has claimed the thousand and eleven souls of the town of Unjust.”

“Would that be the mythological town of Unjust whose inhabitants escaped from Roanoke and came to New Hampshire because they were sensitive to sunburn, and created a place in which horrible things happened that revealed the depravity within the human condition and legend has it that a fog settled on the town for a year and shortly after the inhabitants would mysteriously leave their beds and disappear one by one into the woods never to be seen again?” asked my boyfriend.

“Anyhoo,” said the figure with a voice like the gallows. “I was the last of these souls and my punishment was to roam these woods and find the bones of each of those lost—including the parts the animals got to—and carry them back and bury them each fifteen feet in the earth’s hollow beside a banana tree. As you can see, I’ve been at it for a while and still have eight hundred more to find. Now that you have fallen into my grave, you must pay the price and I task you to help me find the bones of those lost in the fog—particularly the finger bone of Madame Cleveland-Banksley-Bauer, it’s escaped me for years—and help me until my task is completed and one thousand and ten souls rest in these cursed grounds.”

“Is there any other way I can help? I kind of like my life the way it is,” said my boyfriend.

“Bury five hundred with me,” was the gravedigger’s counter offer.

And so the man in the hat and my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, haggled back and forth until they came to the following terms:

“If I help you from this grave, you must give to me the soul of the first person you see as you leave and they will be bound to the first task they undertake or else the fog will come and take you too into the dark, into the woods, into the mouth of whatever beaver ate Madame Cleveland-Banksley-Bauer’s right hand.”

“Deal!” said my boyfriend, and they shook on it.

About that time I was taking a little break from my story with the clock and had a sudden craving for bananas. Fortunately, I knew just where to find some without having to get dressed in presentable clothes and drive down to Mr. Morgan’s. That’s when I happened to run into my boyfriend and let him know that his editor had called and the deadline for final edits had passed and when was he going to turn in the novelette?? On our way home, he told me what had happened and we both agreed that it was an excellent reason for missing a deadline if there ever was one. Then, we got home and he ate those stale sandwiches and I got back to my writing and Tryxy had gotten on to resuming his Golden Girls marathon.

That’s what I mean when I say that he’s gotten very good at avoiding his editing, Gladys. And so, when he closed himself in our bedroom this afternoon, I took the liberty of installing a deadbolt that locks from the outside on the bedroom door and informed him that he could come out again when he’s finished the edits and submitted the story. Every writer deserves someone who will lock them in a room until they finish their writing.

Anyhoo, what was I saying?? Right!!! I was telling you about how my writing was going today.

With my boyfriend working on his edits, and Tryxy finishing his homework so that he can continue his eighties sitcom marathon and #bestkitten helping by sitting on his keyboard, I was completely free to start working on a short story of my own. I know I haven’t told you about this story yet Gladys, it came to me all of a sudden while I was stuck in that stupid clock story—ACCCK!!!! IT’S BACK!!!! IT’S BACK GLADYS!!! HANG ON, I HAVE TO RELOCATE UNDER MY KITCHEN SINK SO THAT IT WON’T FIND ME!!!!!

Ahem. As I was saying, I got to the spot in the clock story where the lady discovers that she has just three minutes left to live and she has to figure out what to do to save her life or die when the minute hand reaches 11:18 a.m. and I’ve been at it for days and I can’t figure it out. So I decided to just throw it aside and start on this completely NEW short story about a child who discovers they can walk through walls and is kidnapped by an evil uncle who has learned his secret and—OH MY GOD, I HEAR THAT SOUND AGAIN!!!! IT’S A HISSING NOISE!!!! AND THEN THE SOUND OF A CLOCK!!!! AND NOW A DARK BLACK FOG IS CREEPING UNDER THE CABINET DOOR!!!!!

GLADYS!!!!! SOME LONG THIN HANDS HAVE OPENED THE DOOR AND ARE PRESENTING ME WITH A WHITE-FACED CLOCK. THE HANDS ARE SET TO 11:18!!!! THAT’S JUST THIRTEEN MINUTES FROM NOW!!!!! THERE’S SOME TINY WRITING!!!! IT SAYS “TIME UNTIL WRITER X’S SOUL WILL BE TAKEN BY THE FOG UNLESS SHE COMPLETES HER STUPID CLOCK STORY!!!!!”

GALDSY, I NE— hang on, my capslock was stuck. I need you to come save me!!!! I would ask Tryxy in the next room but he finally got settled into his snuggie and has arranged his popcorn into the perfect position on the sofa and the opening song for Golden Girls is playing and if I ask him, he’s going to have to pause the show, wipe the popcorn butter off his hands, get out of his snuggie after he got it perfect, feel like the room is super cold because of the temperature difference after being in a polar fleece snuggie, and come fight off the ghost!!!!! I can’t do that!!!! And #bestkitten just made a perfect fur circle in his lap!!!!!

If you don’t come, I’ll die!!!! There’s no way I can finish the clock story!!! It’s too hard and I’ll die before I do!!!!

Oh wait. What if I make the character…but that would mean I’d have to go back to the beginning and—

Gotta go, Gladys!!!! I have an idea for my clock story!!!!

Pages next week!!!!

xox,

X

P.S. I still need you to come over. I’ve managed to lose the key to the deadbolt down one of the floor vents and my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, is banging on the bedroom door. He says he has to pee.

IS THERE

ANYTHING

BETTER

IN LIFE

THAN

SITCOMS

FROM THE

EIGHTIES

AND A

WARM

SNUGGIE

AND A

KITTEN?

THIS IS

THE PERFECT

THING TO

GET ME

THROUGH THE

SEMESTER.

WHAT

SHOW

SHOULD I

WATCH

NEXT? 

[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA. Find her in her virtual home at coldwildeyes.com (temporarily closed for update). Wipe your feet before entering.]

NECROMANCY FOR WRITERS

Hello All! Melanie here.

Last week, Writer X and her boyfriend Tod narrowly escaped from a character that came to life and tried to kill them.

This week, it seems X prefers to do the killing.

Without further ado…

---

Subject: KITTEN SITTING!!!!

Dear Gladys,

I’m sure your dying to know how my writing is going, but could you babysit #bestkitten next week??? I want to go to this but Tryxy is going down to Miskatonic University for Spirits Week and my boyfriend, award-nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, is hunting baers.

xox,

X

---

[Click for larger image.]

[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA. Find her in her virtual home at coldwildeyes.com (temporarily closed for update). Wipe your feet before entering.]

TASYIN OF THE WICKED WATCH

Hello All! Melanie here.

It’s been a couple weeks since we last heard from our heroes in Cradensburg, NH. Tryxy the demon was getting ready for his second semester at Miskatonic Online University and Writer X has been enjoying a suddenly productive writing streak. It seems that Tod Boadkins has recovered enough from Second Book Syndrome to start writing again.

However, they have an entirely new problem on their hands as a result.

Without further ado…

---

Subject: Last Will and Testamints

Dear Gladys,

I’m writing you in case we don’t live to see morning.

There comes a time when every writer looks at their unfinished, nine-book, epic fantasy saga and wonders if the’ll live to write chapter fifty six of the first installment. Or instead, if they’ll be slain in cold blood by a muscly, scary man with a tattooed mouth before the world discovers they have lost the next big epic fantasy writer of all time before she ever became rich and famous.

Anyhoo, I’m sure you’re dying to know how my writing is going. As you know, I’ve written three AMAZING short stories—or at least I know that they’ll be amazing once I pull them out of your refrigerator.

But then THIS whole ordeal started and I began to ask if ANY of my characters were popping off the page!!!!! THEN, just when I finally get some ideas how to make my already perfect characters EVEN MORE PERFECT, I find out I’m going to be killed by this stupid archer mage launching ghostly arrows into our siding before I can even figure out what makes my character’s tick!!!!!!!

My writing and living-through-the-night woes all started two weeks ago when my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, was invited to contribute to a local Sword & Sorcery fantasy anthology. He began a novelette taking place in the same universe as his Broken Tides novel but he’s had some trouble with it and hasn’t been able to finish it.

“Something’s not right,” he said. “I can’t figure out an ending, and I think the problem has to do with the characters. But I can’t put my finger on it.”

I asked: “Did you make them sexy??? Did you give them purple eyes and white hair??? Did you make them an orphaned farm boy and/or Dursley nephew that ultimately is the creator or destroyer of all worlds????? Have you written an unnecessary brothel scene???” Of course, Gladys, I was giving him the BEST writing advice, but he’s a little hard-headed and so he just stared stupidly through the windshield like he hadn’t heard me as the rain drummed against the car.

We were sitting in the parking lot on Dead Mist Hill waiting to pick up Tryxy after his personal training session. Tryxy’s been complaining that he’s put on the infamous “freshman fifteen” and wanted to start off the fall semester with a gym regimen so that he stays “looking like a snack” as he calls it. In case you don’t know what the “freshman fifteen” is Galdsy, it’s the fifteen or so pounds a person puts on in their freshman year at college. Also known as the “freshman spread.” 

With Tryxy burning all those calories in the gym, I felt safe opening up an econo bag of cheetos and eating to pass the time until I could figure out how to explain to my boyfriend that he needed to make his character’s eyes purple.

Just as I opened my mouth to say that violet eyes are a sign of an award winning story, a flash of lightning went off, lighting up the misted hill beside the gym parking lot. The fog was shot through with white light, revealing a muscled figure with a woolen hood and either a long, savage bow on their back or a pickle ball paddle, it was hard to say.

“Did you see that?” my boyfriend asked. He squinted at the hill, but everything was dark again. “Did that guy look weird to you?”

“He looks like your ordinary pickle ball player,” I said. “He’s probably just leaving the gym.”

Between you and me Gladys, I’ve had to do a lot of emotional labor lately for my chosen family. Tryxy’s been having a hard time. He’s grumpy because he’s calorie deprived. That, and they just came out with pumpkin spice lattes and his personal trainer says he can’t have them because they’re too loaded with sugar and YOU KNOW TRYXY LIVES FOR PUMPKIN SPICE LATTES. You can’t hold his grumpiness against him. He’s still the sweetest boy deep down. Demons don’t do well on diets!!!!

I’ve also had to keep an eye on my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins. He’s been working hard at that novelette and drinking too much coffee. Now he’s paranoid all the time. Just the other day, he thought our neighbor’s cute lil’ Pomeranian was a disguised Chimera who slips outside and rings our doorbell in the middle of the night.

When the doorbell went off at 1:27 a.m. last night, my boyfriend still hadn’t fallen asleep and so he sat straight up in bed and yelled, “It’s the Pomeranion Chimera again! Those neighbors need to keep their chimera inside!” and I yelled that it was the probably a glitch of the new security system we installed to protect my beloved collection of Faberge eggs.

As you can see, I’ve had my hands full Galdsy!!!!

Now what was I saying???

Right. The pickle ball player!!!!!

Tryxy came out of the gym and threw himself in the backseat of the car. When I asked him how his training session went, he growled, “Everything hurts! I can’t even have pumpkin spice and I’m turning into a puddle!”

Then, he turned into a puddle for the rest of the drive home.

We hadn’t seen the last of the pickle ball player!!!! I saw him standing on the side of the road facing us as we drove through the covered bridge. He had black marks around his mouth as though someone had sewn his lips shut.

“It’s the pickle ball player!!!” I yelled.

My boyfriend jumped, “Where?”

I licked the cheetos sludge from my fingers and adjusted the rearview mirror so that my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins could see him.

My boyfriend’s face blanched when he saw the person in the rearview mirror. “Sh*t,” he hissed. “That’s not a pickle ball player.”

“Who is it?” I asked.

“That’s Tasyin of the Wicked Watch.”

“Who?”

I’m not sure you know this, Gladsy, but objects in the rearview mirror may appear closer than they are. Tasyin of the Wicked Watch took two deadly strides and leapt onto the hood of our car. Even in the rain we heard his deep, resounding voice invoking horrific arcane words. Turns out his mouth wasn’t sewn shut.

“Sh**********************t!” my boyfriend wailed, getting louder as he approached the end of the swear word. It’s like his foot and his vocal chords were fused. The louder he got, the harder he slammed on the accelerator, swerving this way and that, trying to throw the pickle ball player off the roof but he was stuck on there good, Gladys!!!!!!1 “He’s summoning the Wicked Watch!”

“How do you know this guy and what does he want from you???” I asked.

“He’s my character!”

We fishtailed over the bridge and up Farm Hill Road trying to lose the pickle ball player. That’s when the enormity of the situation hit me, Gladys. I clung to my cheetos. The pickle ball player sent an icy arrow through the roof. The spectral arrow head stopped just short of my favorite pink sombrero.

“Award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkin,” I cried. “Why aren’t MY characters coming to life and trying to kill us?????”

But my boyfriend was too preoccupied with trying to escape before the Wicked Watch arrived. He drove straight for Bender Rd because it’s unpaved and is the most pitted dirt road in all of Cradensburg. We bumped and lurched over that road so hard my teeth kept clacking. My cheetos were shaking all over the place, on the dash, on the floor, on Tryxy’s puddle (I think it lightened his mood a little.)

The roar of the rain turned into a lamenting, hissing wail. It sounded almost exactly when you and I were surrounded by banshees back in ninth grade.

“Sh*******t!” my boyfriend screamed. “The Wicked Watch is arriving. We’re dead. We’re worse than dead.”

Fortunately for us, however, my boyfriend lost control of the car and drove through someone’s picket fence and barbwire orchard. The barbwire orchard caught the woolen hood of the pickle ball player just as he unleashed another spectral arrow through the roof of the car. We were able to get away and drive home where we could lock ourselves in, activate the security system, and regroup.

Tryxy, of course, gave up being a puddle and stomped downstairs into his basement abyss where he turned on an episode of Golden Girls and crunched angrily on a celery stick.

“Do you think we lost him???” I asked my boyfriend after checking on my Faberge eggs.

My boyfriend was a deathly shade of gray. “I don’t think so. X, I think he’s going to kill us and add our souls to the Wicked Watch.”

I thought this was preposterous. “This is preposterous,” I said. “It’s your character. What’s his weakness?? If anybody knows his weakness, it’s you!!! All we have to do is hit him where it hurts and we can get Tryxy and go watch a movie or something.”

“First of all, Tryxy’s in no mood to watch a movie.” My boyfriend’s face became lined with something like remorse. “Secondly, I designed this character to have no weaknesses. You know how he clung to the car in the rain while we swerved over a bridge? That’s because he he trained with fighting monks in the mountains of Telekrahm.”

He began to tell me of the characters many perfections: he was immortal, he was both strong and agile, he was an adept mage who had seized the horn of Evernaught when he was just seven years old, he was humble, even animals loved him.

“What about those lines on his mouth that make it look sewn shut???”

“Magical tattoos. He can only use his voice for invocation. Every other time, it’s as though his mouth is sewn shut so he doesn’t give away the king’s secrets.”

“What about his love life???? Can’t we write a letter to his sweetheart and tell them to come and get him like when you came and got me from that horse party???”

“No sweetheart. He doesn’t love. He doesn’t need love.”

And the conversation pretty much went on like this until I said. “Why don’t we just ask Tryxy to help us???” Then my boyfriend gave me a flat look like I should already know the answer and I said, “Pretend I didn’t say that.”

I may have looked cool and calm and wise and fashionable and powerful, Gladys, but deep down inside I was shaken. Here I was with my boyfriend’s characters jumping out of his stories, BUT WHAT ABOUT MINE????

Did this mean that he was a better writer than me???? I kept seeing all of my characters dancing through my head with dunce caps on their heads!!!! I threw open my laptop and pulled open the pages of my still unfinished epic fantasy saga and scanned them to see if Fenchin was as cool as I remembered her. In the meanwhile, my boyfriend did his best to make sure all the windows were locked and secure any weaknesses in our state of the art security system including the titanium reinforced siding. 

Tasyin the Pickle Ball Player arrived. He stood in our driveway and glared up at me through our bedroom window, fingering his bow and slowly notching a spectral arrow. His chiseled face reminded me of a swimsuit model except for the black lines that ran from his nose to his chin, looking all the world like they were blackened and bloody sinews and not only magical tattoos.

That’s when I had a brilliant idea!!!!!

“Honey,” I cried. “That’s it!!!!! Your character is too perfect!!!! That’s why you can’t write an ending. You have to write some kind of weakness into him!!!! And also save us.”

I’m a genius, Gladys, but you knew that.

“What, like an Achilles heel?”

“More like an Achilles Inferiority Complex!!!! Quick!!! Get your story!!!!”

Tasyin the Pickle Ball Player launched spectral arrows into the titanium shielding of our siding. My boyfriend dug out his iPad and pulled open his novelette. His gaze zigzagged the screen as he searched for places to write weaknesses into his character—anything that would give us a chance of destroying him or sending him back to the pages of the book where he belonged.

“Have to do it before he summons the Wicked Watch again!” he said.

It was already too late. The pickle ball player began his deadly chanting. The wind began to howl.

And our neighbor’s Pomeranian began to bark incessantly!!!!

My boyfriend desperately wrote weaknesses into the character: he gave him a short temper, made him clutzy, made him susceptible to speaking pig latin rather than spells, gave him a bum right knee due to a tricycle incident (my boyfriend took this from his own life, one time this kid on a tricycle ran into my boyfriend while he was in the spice aisle at Costco and he’s never been the same.) None of it worked. The character had so many magical perfections, he threw off the revisions with a shudder of incantations and made the word processor crash!!!!!

The wind wailed. The walls of the house began to shimmer, waver, and crack. It was a deafening sound. That’s when I knew we were totally screwed and that I need to write you right away!!!!!!

I thinking I’ve got you pretty much caught up on things now except for the fact that a giant spectral hand has reached through our bedroom wall and grabbed my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, and is currently draining him of his soul.

Hang on, Gladys, he’s screaming a lot and it’s making it very hard to type!!!!!

Okay, I got him to quiet down a bit.

First things first, I bequeath to you what’s left of this bag of cheetos.

The world is about to lose the next big epic fantasy writer of all time and while it would be MUCH better if I finished my own epic fantasy sagas, I’ve no choice but to pull a Robert Jordan and call you my Brandon Sanderson—although if there’s one of us who is the Brandon Sanderson, it’s ME, I’M THE NEXT BRANDON SANDERSON, but anyhoo, I’m relying on you, Gladys!!!!! I need you to find a publisher to publish my unfinished work. Also you need to make Fenchin a more balanced character and, I dunno, give her a hobby or something, but MORE IMPORTANTLY, I am bequeathing you my collection of Faberge Eggs. My one request is that you come and pick them up now before Slingy McSlinglord demolishes the rest of the house. I also need to talk to you about the refrigerator I’ve borrowed from you, it’s got a weird

AAAAcCKKKKK!!!! Gladys!!! He’s got me!!!! The spectral hand has got me!!!!! WHY DON’T MY CHARACTERS HAVE SPECTRAL HANDS????? Oh, that hurts. He’s digging around my belly trying to find my soul but I think it was claimed by a debt collection agency a while ago. Acccck!!!! It still hurts!!!!! It’s killing me Galdsy!!!! Good bye cruel

Oh wait. That’s better.

Nevermind, Gladys!!!!! It turns out the absolutely perfect archer mage is no match for a cranky high level demon from the Void of Asheput on a diet!!!!! Tryxy heard me screaming for my life, came stomping up out of the basement, snapped his fingers, and wiped Tasyin the Pickle Ball Player and the whole Wicked Watch right out of this world.

It turns out Tryxy’s moods were considerably brightened by incinerating an arch mage and now we’re all going out to see the Barbie movie.

Anyhoo, this goes to show why you should ALWAYS GIVE YOUR CHARACTERS FLAWS!!!!! You never know when one of them will show up and try to kill you.

Pages next week, Gladys!!!!

xox,

X

P.S. Did you just ring my doorbell or was that the Pomeranian????

NO PAIN,

NO GAIN,

MY TRAINER

ALWAYS SAYS.

BUT IT

TURNS OUT

FICTIONAL

PICKLE BALL

PLAYING

ARCHER

MAGES

ARE A

CALORIE

FREE

FOOD.

[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA. Find her in her virtual home at coldwildeyes.com (temporarily closed for update). Wipe your feet before entering.]

THE FIRST DRAFT FLUX

Hello, all! Melanie here.

Over the last couple of weeks, Writer X and her friends have been busy. She’s developed a way of organizing SFF writers by sub-genre, all while parking an ark on Mount Ararat. She’s also starred as “The Lady in the Pink Sombrero” in a local film production. Writer X has even written!

X’s writer boyfriend, Tod, and best friend, the demon-drummer-now-college-student Tryxy, teamed up and built X recessed shelving. It now houses her expanding collection of Faberge eggs. Meanwhile, Tryxy is preparing to resume his studies for the fall 2023 semester at Miskatonic Online University.

Last week, X made considerable headway in writing. She wrote T-H-R-E-E new short stories in just three days, and from the sounds of it, they’re not flash fiction. For context, if you’re over at Chez Rambo on Discord, writing one short story a week for 2023 is an official challenge. One new short story a week is the kind of productivity most fiction writers at any level would find daunting. Unless, you’re Isaac Asimov.

Yet the new drafts held their own mysteries. When X re-read her stories, she discovered them replaced by inferior versions. This week, X is hot on the trail of getting to the bottom of this conundrum.

Without further ado… 

---

Subject: the perfect flash light

Dear Gladys,

I need to borrow your refrigerator for about a month. Mine are full. I was going to buy a third refrigerator, but the road to the appliance store on Seventh Hill was washed away in the flood and they’re still making a new one. That, and purchasing a new refrigerator would mean I have to talk to Brian, and since he stole my custom pink croc, things haven’t been the same so I need to borrow yours.

Hang on, Gladys. Before you throw your refrigerator into the back of a truck and install it in my backyard, I have to ask you if you’ve gotten to the bottom of that strange smell that’s haunted your vegetable hydrator since Tryxy and I last stayed over. If not, please take care of that first before you bring it here, you know how sensitive I am about smells!!!! Not to mention how sensitive my Faberge eggs are. EACH ONE HAS THEIR OWN PERSONALITY!!!!!

Anyhoo, I’m sure you’re dying to know how my writing is doing. Well, as soon as you bring over your refrigerator, things will be RIGHT ON TRACK!!!! You see, I have found the perfect flashlight. Well, I had found the perfect flashlight, but it’s a long story so I hope you are sitting down.

It all started when my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, and I went looking for a very particular flashlight, a flashlight so fantastic, it could reveal secret energetic signatures previously unknown to writers within the pages of their stories!!!!—Hang on, Galdsyu!!! Tryxy’s textbook is acting up again. BRB!!!!

That means “be right back!!!”

Okay, I’m back. Sorry it took so long, but I had to go find something nice and heavy to put on top of the book. It would have been easier if your refrigerator were here because then I could kill two birds with one stone!!!!

Why do they say kill two birds with one stone??? What did birds ever do to anyone????

Oh wait, that was insensitive of me to ask what with your cousin getting eaten by that emu all those yaers ago. Forget I said anything, Gladys!!!!

Anyhoo, I was telling you about something…what could it have been? Oh well, it’s gone forever. Wait, the book is crawling out from beneath the sofa again. Gladys, do you have a baer trap you could spare?????

Please bring it right away!!!!

xox,

X

---

Subject: Dark Ones Customer Service Center

Dear Gladys,

So I called the bookstore at Miskatonic University about Tryxy’s misbehaving book. They have very nice staff there and an extensive selection of used textbooks!!!! We drove down there a couple days ago and were able to save at least two hundred dollars on Tryxy’s books for this semester. The only problem is that sometimes these used books act up, and next thing you know, they’re opening up portals to the great city of R’Iyeh in the middle of your living room.

That’s not how I wanted to start my Thursday, Gladys!!!!!

Fortunately, when I told the bookstore what was happening, they put me right through to a call center and now a team of professors has been dispatched to retrieve the book and replace it with a less problematic one!!!! I told them not to hurry though because you were already on your way with a baer trap.

Anyhoo, did I tell you what happened with my stories???

It all started when my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, and I went looking for a very particular flashlight, a flashlight so fantastic, it could reveal secret energetic signatures previously unknown to writers within the pages of their stories!!!! Now, I know what you’re thinking, Galdsy, you’re thinking there’s NO WAY something like this exists, but hang on to your Invisibility Hat because—just like your hat—it’s THE GENUINE ARTICLE!!!!!

I didn’t believe him either at first. I told him how your mail carrier had been running off with my perfectly amazing, freshly-written stories and somehow replacing them with CRAP and that I hadn’t yet figured out how she was doing it and then he scratched his beard meditatively and posed a question.

“And what happened when you read these stories a second time? Did they stay as crappy as your first read-through?”

I told him that I had been too emotionally upset to read any of the stories more than once and he peered at me with intrigued eyes and said, “Interesting.” Then, he went back to reading his book.

When I was sure he was distracted, I dug out those abominable drafts and I read each one a second time and you know what happened????

They were good. Not great. Just good. SOMEONE HAD REPLACED THE CRAPPY STORIES WITH PASSING STORIES!!!! But this wasn’t going to solve my problem. I wrote three PERFECT stories last week and I wasn’t going to rest until I got those stories back!!!!!

I ambled back into our living room—it didn’t have a portal to R’Iyeh then—and I approached my boyfriend real casual like and said, “What happens if I read it a second time and they were slightly better?”

My boyfriend put down his book and folded his hands in his lap. “That, my love, is sounding more and more like a case of the Flux.”

And this is what he told me:

Years ago, when I had just taught myself how to finish writing stories, but didn’t yet have anything publishable, I stumbled onto a device that changed everything. I had just written a piece of near future short science fiction about AI that colonizes our world and was high off the accomplishment. Of course, I immediately sent it out to publishers and waited for the world to rejoice at the gift I had given them.

It was not to be. Instead, I received a form rejection. I couldn’t believe someone had rejected a story that had been so hard to write. So I opened the file and read the story for the second time only to discover that the story was much worse than I remembered—

“Did Gladys’s mail carrier steal your story, too???” I asked.

“Hang on, let me finish,” he said.

Confounded, I read and re-read the story many times over many days and became despondent. Sometimes the story read as unintelligible garbage, and sometimes the very passages that struck me as garbage appeared brilliant in subsequent reads. Which state reflected the truth?

I despaired. I buried myself in whiskey and white castle frozen cheeseburgers.

“But you’re a celiac,” I cried.

“Exactly,” said he. “I had a death wish.”

I became sick and my writing dreams were wasting away until, one fateful evening, I wandered into the Gas and Guzzler—

“That’s a weird little gas station if ever there was one,” I said.

…I wandered into the Gas and Guzzler and, at the back of the store alongside a floor freezer of clearance Smokey Robinson Frozen Dinners, and beneath boxes of Snackwell snack cakes.

“Smokey Robinson Frozen Dinners!!! But those were discontinued in 2009!!!!”

Like I said, this was much earlier in my writing life. Beside the freezer full of discounted frozen gumbo, there were packages of novelty flashlights that boasted that they could reveal things not visible to the naked eye. On the back of the package it said that it could show you how creative a person was just by turning out the lights and shining the flashlight on their head. I had lost my usual flashlight in the divorce, so what did I have to lose? I purchased it.

I was in too fragile a state to learn how creative I may or may not be, but I wondered what the light might reveal if I shone it on my near future SF story. I turned out the lights, angled the flashlight at the draft, and you wouldn’t believe what I found.

Then, he looked at me like I might say something, but I didn’t have anything to say.

The words on the page were in a state of flux with shifting, opalescent colors cascading over the pages. I took the light to the copy of Lean Times in Lankhmar that I always keep near. Beneath the novelty flashlight, the words of that book were static and unchanging. I couldn’t understand what I was seeing, so of course I called my friend Merv Semble-Rogers.

“He works at the DMV. Why call him?”

“You ever have a friend who seems waaaaaay too smart for the job they have but instead of becoming a doctor or an engineer, they function as a repository of everything you would know about science if you weren’t so damned lazy?”

“Of course,” I said.

“That’s him.”

I didn’t even need to tell Merv what the flashlight packaging had said. He knew just from the description of the fluctuating opalescent colors.

“Heat flux,” he said. It turns out, a junk electronics manufacturer discovered a spectrum of light not well known to anyone but for the most theoretical of theoretical physicists. Like a UV light revealing piss stains in a mattress, this light spectrum could reveal signatures of other kinds of energy. Of course, the manufacturer didn’t know how to scientifically identify what energy signatures their light revealed. After all, they didn’t have anyone like Merv working for them, so they handed the discovery over to the marketing department who got to work promoting the devices as novelty flashlights.

“But what does this mean about my draft?” I asked Merv. “Why is it giving off this energy signature when Lean Times in Lankhmar isn’t?”

“Not sure, but whatever it is, it’s heat. Maybe Lankhmar has had time to cool off.”

That’s when I understood what other writers meant when they say you have to give a first draft time to cool off. Sure enough, I put the draft aside for a few months. The next time I took it out, I put the flashlight on it, and the words were nearly as black and staid as Lankhmar.

“So then what happened?” I asked.

“I read it.”

“And???”

“It was crap,” he said. “Your first story’s always crap. Same could be said for first drafts.”

“Well, my draft isn’t crap. These are the most perfect stories that anyone has ever written and I just need to know when they’re going to stop being weird!!!!”

To that, he said, “Then we should go see my friend Donavan Donavan.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“You ever have a friend who’s a packrat, and when you go looking for something that you misplaced and haven’t seen in two forevers, you find it at his house?” Of course I have exactly that kind of friend, it’s me, Gladys!!!! “Well, that’s Donavan Donavan.”

So off we went to Donavan Donavan’s double wide at the bottom of Grim Hill and we found him repairing the circuitry of a Compac Deskpro 386 that I’m pretty sure hasn’t been useful to anyone for at least thirty years. Of course, he had the flashlight and explained to us that he had been using it to reveal spirit trails.

“What are spirit trails?”

“Footprints,” said Donavan Donavan. “When a spirit has passed through a room, it leaves behind trace evidence, just like anyone else, but until the creation of this novelty flashlight, no one’s been able to test this. Spirits have creative energy. It’s what makes them spirits. Now that the novelty flashlight manufacturer burnt down and was replaced by a college bookstore, anyone who owns one of these owns a priceless frontier of scientific discoveries in the palm of their hands.”

I borrowed the flashlight from Donavan Donavan and I set the light on all three of my drafts!!! Sure enough, each one glimmered with fluctuating opalescent cascades of red and blue. IT was all true, Gladys!!!!!!

And this is why I need you to bring over your refrigerator. My two refrigerators are full and one of them is downright frightening so I don’t want to add anything else destabilizing to the mix. I also don’t have three months to just sit around and not read my writing!!!!! So if you bring your frigerator over, I should be able to cool these stories off in at least a month, maybe even a week!!!!

And if you bring over your baer trap, I should be able to get back the flashlight!!!! After I used the light on my stories, I wanted to see what would happen if I shone it on one of Tryxy’s books. Well, I did, and a giant spectral hand lurched out of the pages, grabbed the flashlight, and disappeared back into the book. The book hasn’t been right ever since!!!!!

Pages next week, Gladys!!!

xox,

X

HAVE

MADE PEACE

WITH THE

FACT THAT

SUMMER’S

ALMOST

OVER. WASN’T

LOOKING

FORWARD

TO SCHOOL

BUT NOW

THAT WE

BOUGHT

THESE BOOKS

I’M GETTING

EXCITED. AFTER

ALL, WITH

FALL COMES

EVERY DEMON’S

FAVORITE

THING:

PUMPKIN.

SPICE.

SNACKS.

[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA. Find her in her virtual home at coldwildeyes.com (temporarily closed for update). Wipe your feet before entering.]

THE SECRET TO WRITING

Hello All! Melanie here.

Last week, Writer X didn’t get much done by way of writing, but she did park her house on Mount Ararat. I’m not sure there are many people who could say they’d ever crossed that off their to-do list.

They say that success breeds more success. After a year of writing next to nothing, X has finally discovered the secret to generating pages.

Without further ado…

---

Subject: Stakeout CANCELLED

Dear Gladys,

In case you didn’t know whose Ultra Halogenic High Performance Blind-You-And-Your-Mother Highbeam Headlights were angled into your living room all night, not to worry, it was just me!!!!

So that you knew who it was, I flashed you the SUPER SECRET signal and then I realized that us having a super secret signal was just something I remembered from a dream.

That being said, I know you SAW the super secret signal because when I hit that sweet strobe light action, your silhouette went crashing around in the dark, groping for your bookshelf only to catch hold of a Red Sox snowglobe, thusly tumbling into your television. Once you’ve fully recovered from your concussion, make sure you remember the flash pattern so that we can use it in the future and do some cool spy stuff!!!!

Did you know there’s a sale on televisions just like yours at the new appliance store on Seventh Hill? Just in time after all the damage you did to yours!!!! You can thank me later for that savings tip, Gladys!!!!

I know you probably would have wanted me to come in and say hello and possibly call the paramedic but I had an EMERGENCY and had to leave RIGHT AWAY. I know you understand.

Anyhoo, I’m sure you’re dying to know how my writing is going. I FOUND THE SECRET TO WRITING, GALDSY!!!!

You’d never believe how I stumbled on the secret. It all began with my faberge eggs.

As you know, since my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, moved in with me, I’ve been in the MOOD to write more often, but the funny thing is that I still wasn’t getting  much writing done what with the flood, the baers, and the other activities that are mysteriously wiped from my memory BUT I’M SURE WERE IMPORTANT!!!!

Since we arrived back from Mount Ararat, our house is significantly normal sized. Ordinarily, this would be fine, but as you know Gladys, I have a lot of unusual needs and my boyfriend and I have been feeling kind of cramped this last week.

In fact, just the other morning my boyfriend left his car windows open and didn’t remember until it began to rain at about six a.m. He bolted out of bed to fix it before the interior was drenched. He tried to hop into his jeans but he had no place to put his other foot down thanks to all my faberge eggs. With one pant leg on and only enough room to bounced on one foot, he hopped around the bed, out the door, and onto the landing.

Then he fell down the stairs.

Anyhoo, after all that he said, “I feel like there are three people in this relationship. You, me, and those faberge eggs.”

That’s when I knew I had to do something about our living conditions!!!! We needed our old house back!!!! The question was HOW.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, Gladys. You’re thinking that a sensible person would call customer service at Mount Ararat and tell them to mail my house back on their dime, but there was a lot of water and pig damage so we needed to start fresh!!!!

I went straightaway to a housing contractor and told them what I needed and Gladys YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE the astronomical costs of a simple 3000 square feet of architecture these days!!!! As it turns out, I didn’t have that sort of change on me so I went down to Cradensburg Savings and Litigation and applied for a home equity loan of two to three million and DO YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAID GLADYS>????

They said that my credit is bad!!!!! How is my credit bad, Gladys?? I have my credit cards completely maxed so obviously I’m good at credit!!!! So I asked them how I’m supposed to get my writing wing rebuilt and they said they have a CREDIT COMEBACK SERVICE that they run every couple of months and their next runs starts in just a week so IF I took home their fifty page financial packet and brought it back filled with my current drivers license, the signature of a notary republic, and a sprinkle of moondust, then I might get it in just in time.

You know how bad I am at filling out financial packets, Gladys!!!! My inability to fill out packets has saved me more than once!!! How else would I have gotten out of that timeshare in Greenland????

But if I didn’t do something, my boyfriend would be stuck falling down the stairs from here to eternity so I did the responsible and loving thing. I called out of work, blocked off my schedule, gathered all my important documents, highlighters, prismatic unicorn stickers, and a few packets of those sprinkler candles to make the atmosphere more inviting, and sat down to finally make myself fill out a financial packet.

And that’s when it happened, Gladys, that’s when I finally came across the secret of writing.  

It was also about that time that I started to be locked out of my house.

Up to this point, I bet you were thinking that I was filling out the financial packet IN my house. Well, I would have been, but I happened to pass by the town green and I saw that the people from the Mysterious Complex had it all roped off because they were filming a movie. So I set myself up in the burnt down gazebo in the green to get the best view as they filmed.

At first the director tried to throw me out saying that I was trespassing and he had a permit and that my pink sombrero was “ruining” the shot and “how are they supposed to shoot a movie with a wizard magically appearing in a grassy vale when the audience will be looking at the lady in the giant pink sombrero???”

I informed him of the town charter set up after the third revolutionary war that stipulates that “none shall be hindered from free enjoyment of the town gazebo regardless if they are also donning a pink sombrero” blah blah blah and that director had to eat CROW!!!!

High on exhilaration after discovering the secret to writing, I took my new, freshly written story and returned home only to discover that I had been locked out my house.

What was even more interesting was that, in spite of my boyfriend’s car in the driveway and Tryxy’s music playing in the house, nobody was coming to let me in. Also, Tryxy has to start school again at Miskatonic Online University in a couple weeks and he told me he was trying to soak up as much summer as he had left. Last year we spent all summer stuck in my closet and this summer has been mostly rain. I thought he and #bestkitten would have gone down to Not A Beach with some of their other young friends. Maybe he left his stereo on, I thought.

I figured I would let a few hours pass, and so to kill time, I went looking for you to show you the AMBSOLUTELY PERFECT story I had written while at the burnt down gazebo thwarting the desires of that obnoxious film director. That’s when I went on the first stakeout outside of your house and scared away your mail carrier when she fell across my legs sticking out of the bushes.

I was resting in the shade, Galdsy!!!!

Anyhoo, while I was waiting for you to return so that I could read you my story and let you bask in its glory, I started to read over the pages I had just written and that’s when SOMETHING MYSTERIOUS HAPPENED. And this comes to the crux of the help I am asking you for!!!!

Somehow, instead of PERFECT writing with gilded prose and a gripping, riveting plot, I was reading THE WORST WRITING IN THE WORLD!!!!! I know what you’re thinking, Gladys, you’re thinking that someone must have stolen my perfect draft and REPLACED IT WITH GARBAGE!!!!

This is still a viable explanation for what’s happened and I haven’t yet ruled out the director trying to act out his revenge for me making his movie more interesting, but I think what’s happening is far stranger and—dare I say—MORE PARANORMAL!!!!

Needless to say, I was horrified to discover that my beautiful story had been replaced with the sludge you find at the bottom of the vegetable hydrator when you and your best friend finally get out of being locked in your closet all summer. I was disgruntled. I was devastated. I was a disaster area. I cried so hard as I drove back home, I couldn’t see anything through my tears so I’m sorry about what happened to your mailbox.

Fortunately when I got home, the door was ajar so I went up to my room, tip toed over the faberge eggs, collapsed in total despair, and locked in a solid eight hours of sleep so was set to do it all again the next day!!!!

The next day it wasn’t lost on me that I still had to fill out the financial packet and was running out of time so I donned my sombrero, packed my financial packet, called out of work, went down to the burnt down gazebo where a bunch of actors in goblin costumes carrying spears were lined up in ranks, and argued with the director who had made peace with my pink sombrero but this time disagreed with the giant tub of cheese puffs “clogging up his battle scene”, and promptly got to work on my financial packet

WHICH RESULTED IN ME WRITING ANOTHER ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT STORY!!!!!!

This story was exquisite, Gladys. It has everything: romance, magic, betrayal, uptown funk, EVERYTHING. I’m pretty sure it’s going to earn me an award after I find it again because, once again, I returned home to refill my cheese puffs only to discover my boyfriend’s car in the driveway, Tryxy’s music blaring, but my door locked and barred.

So I went to your house to stakeout and startled your mail carrier after she fell over my sombrero and into a can of paint. Once that was resolved, I pulled out my draft and re-read the new story ONLY TO DISCOVER THAT IT TOO HAD MYSTERIOUSLY TURNED TO UNINTELLIGIBLE NONSENSE!!!!

The character’s names were the same. And the betrayal happened in the same place, but somehow someone had changed all of the words so that they were cruddy and half the time I didn’t even know what the characters were thinking!!!!! NOT TO MENTION TEH TYPOS!@!!!!

Today, it happened again. Only this time I got to your house much later on account of the director writing me into the script as Lady in the Pink Sombrero and changing the movie from epic fantasy to a psychological thriller about a man who imagines that he’s in a battle with wizards and goblins but he’s really pining over the disappearance of his beautiful wife, Lady in the Pink Sombrero, and sees her haunting all of his delulus.

Still, I sat down to fill out the financial packet and ONCE AGAIN, wrote a story MORE incredible than the last two!!!!! This PROVED to me that I have finally discovered the secret to becoming the most productive writer in the WORLD.

This is the secret gladys, are you ready????

The best time to write is when you are IN THE MIDDLE OF AVOIDING SOMETHING ELSE.

But now that I’ve discovered the secret, I have ANOTHER problem.

I no longer have a legitimate reason to fill out the financial packet. You see, tonight, when I returned home, the door was ajar and Tryxy and my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, were standing just inside the door still covered in drywall dust and paint shouting “surprise!!!!!”

It turns out the reason I had been locked out of my house was because they were busy installing a recessed shelf to hold my faberge eggs in one of our walls!!!!! It was beautiful and I was touched by all the work they had put into creating it but I also knew my writing run was over. With the faberge eggs having a home and my boyfriend no longer in danger of falling down the stairs, there was no need for me to fill out the financial packet and I still hadn’t gotten to the bottom of what’s been happening to my story drafts!!!

This is where you come in, Galdsy. I’ve got my eye on your mail carrier. She’s the missing link in all of this!!!! It’s entirely possible that she’s the one who’s been running off with my good stories and replacing them with these mediocre or even bad stories!!!!! Tomorrow night, I’m having a faberge egg party to celebrate my new shelf, but the NEXT night I’m free to SPY ON YOUR MAIL CARRIER. I’ll pop by your house after dark and shine my lights in your window and GIVE YOU THE SUPER SECRET SIGNAL.

It also could be aliens.

Pages next week Gladys!!!!

xox,

X

I WENT

TO NOT

A BEACH

WITH

#BESTKITTEN

TO GET

A TAN

AND SOAK

UP SOME

WAVES BUT

WE COULDN’T

GET

COMFORTABLE

IN ALL

THE ROCKS

AND ALGAE

AND THE

FISHERMEN

IN WADERS

KEPT BOMBING

OUR SELFIES.

WHOEVER

CALLED IT

A BEACH

WAS DEEP

IN DELULU.

[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA. Find her in her virtual home at coldwildeyes.com. Wipe your feet before entering.]

AN ARK OF SUB GENRES

Hello, all! Melanie here.

It’s rained quite hard here in New Hampshire. Our town flooded, a few roads were washed away, and some residents lost access to the outside world altogether. My house was mostly spared but nonetheless acquired a foot of water. Two weeks later, we’ve finally got the musty smell out of the air, although there are so many fans in my basement, I’m afraid we might drift skyward like a house balloon.

We haven’t heard from Writer X for a couple weeks, either. As it turns out, Cradensburg, NH, received significantly more flooding than we did, and her hands were full.

Remember that entire wing X hired gnomes to add to her house? I know this will come as a surprise to many, but when gnomes throw up square footage in the course of one or two weeks, there are a few architectural drawbacks.

Without further ado…

---

Subject: Ark replacement

Dear Gladys,

I would have written you earlier but I had trouble getting flights home from Mount Ararat. Ever since 2020 the airlines have become incorrigible!!!

First, we couldn’t find a direct flight from Mount Ararat to Cradensburg, NH which is just mind blowing that an airline would never think to connect these two VERY IMPORTANT PARTS of the map!!! Fortunately for us, I was able to put together a very nearly ALMOST direct series of flights that saved at least $30 per ticket. When I mentioned we’re all writers, they told us they would give us extra air.

Secondly, on the first leg of our trip from Yerevan to Hong Kong, they promised us complementary pretzels but ran out of them while we were still over Saudi airspace!!! Then, on the fourth leg of our return trip from Melbourne, Australia to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, we threw a high altitude hula party but the stewards informed us the airline has a strict policy about serving alcoholic beverages to passengers who are only wearing body paint, to say nothing of the pigs swinging around on stripper poles. You can’t have a hula without pigs, Gladys!!!!!

Of course I had to reel things in. You know how those far future science fiction writers fly. They are wild and free. But by the time our passports were returned on the tenth leg of our return trip we had worked things out.

Anyhoo, you’re probably dying to know how my writing is going. Things were going quite nicely and my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, and I were having an ordinary Monday afternoon writing in the writing wing of our house. Tryxy was also having a particularly lovely day. He had just perfected his rainy day playlist so that it was nothing but a #MOOD, and he had brushed #bestkitten, trimmed her claws, and finally removed the very last of her cat hair off his favorite terry track suit.

Sometime after that, our house began to float. First there was a loud crack as the new wing tore away from the original cape cod structure, and then we were drifting. At first it was enjoyable. Do you ever drive around and look into people’s windows? Of course you do, it’s enormous fun. Well, what if you could stay in the comforts of your own home while floating through the neighborhood and seeing whose calico cat is sitting in the window and who is watching television in dingy boxer shorts???

But after a couple hours of that, the rains fell in earnest and Main Street Cradensburg turned into rapids. The house began to pitch this way and that and when Tryxy’s statue of Lil Nas X dislodged and went flying through the house, I lost at least a third of my faberge eggs (THEY’RE MY LATEST OBSESSION, GLADYS!!!) Something had to be done, but when I threw open a window to cry for help, that’s when I learned someone else had already beaten me to the punch and was crying for rescue out there.

It was a small writing critique group who had gathered on this rainiest of days during a flood watch and there they were, stranded on top of a porch with their latest works in progress and a speckled pony. We stuck our arms out the window and rescued them all before the tidal wake of our house swept them all away!!!!

Once the writers, the works in progress, and the pony were safe indoors, we had another problem on our hands: THE HOUSE WAS PITCHING SOMETHING AWFUL!!! If I didn’t act quickly, I would lose another third of my faberge eggs and Tryxy would lose his lunch!!!

Fortunately for us, we spotted another lost soul standing on the roof of a floating SUV with their laptop held high over their head lest their short stories be wiped from the earth!!!! Tryxy made kind of life preserver from a rope and a deflated exercise ball and flung it out to that poor writer!!! The writer threw her laptop onto the exercise ball, plunged into the water, and splonked around as we drew her in to safety.

We had quite a crowd in the southern part of the floating wing what with the speckled pony and all. But there was news of another flock of writers stranded on the roof of an Aroma Joes, clinging to their cats, and the rapids were already carrying us in that direction!!!

Tryxy suggested that if there were going to be any more people climbing aboard this vessel, could we—for the love of god and hiphop—come up with a way of organizing them so that our weights were evenly distributed and we could be done with this horrible pitching back and forth.

This is when I concocted the Ark of Subgenres System, also known as the A.of S. S.!!! I sprang into action designating that fantasy writers fill the rooms to the north, science fiction to the south, and horror fill the rooms in the west. Four-legged people could take the upper floors and I installed Tryxy as Manager of that particular Mess.

But then my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, said what about Weird? And I said, What’s Weird? And he said, No, weird fiction I mean, where do we put them? And I said, You’re right, this is a disaster waiting to happen.

So then we determined that since there are more rooms on the north and south sides of the house, that some of the rooms abutting the west would be assigned to weird.

How do we know which side to put a weird writer on? North or South? By weight? my boyfriend asked.

By weight???? Don’t be preposterous, I said. If their work is weird but has things that behave like magic or is set in the past, we’ll put them in the Weird Fantasy rooms to the north. And if it’s weird but has advanced technology or is set in the future, then we’ll put them in the Weird Science Fiction rooms to the south. 

Crisis averted, said my boyfriend.

Only that’s when our floating house went spinning by a group of young writers who had congregated in a rapidly deteriorating treehouse. Most of them wrote Corrective Harry Potter Fan Fiction that seeks to undo the damage that She-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named is doing to witches and wizards everywhere so, before we knew it, the north end of the house was over populated and my faberge eggs quivered perilously from the northern edge of the display case.

There were still three writers who had not been assigned rooms and none of them knew what genre they belonged to exactly. We quickly asked them to describe their latest works in progress and, wouldn’t you know it, two of them were science fiction. I became very excited because one of them was a triple threat. He was very smart, very good looking, and fantastically fat. Unfortunately, when we came to the third of them, she announced that she wrote science fantasy and then we were stuck moving people into different rooms all over again!!!!

Science fantasy is its own genre, Gladys!!!!!

That was when we passed the pet shop. We sent out rescue crafts and quickly passed all the cats, puppies, ferrets, iguanas, birds and tarantulas into the house and Tryxy developed his own little organization system and assigned them to rooms two by two.

No one was expecting the talking pigs. We passed an abandoned animal farm on Dead Mist Hill and collected three alapacas, one goat, and six pigs whom a mad scientist/pole fitness instructor had trained to talk.

That’s when award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins said, What about talking animals?

They go up to Tryxy, I said.

No, I mean are we failing to account for talking animal stories?

They’re fantasy, I said.

Yes, but if we’re putting weird fantasy down near horror, shouldn’t we put fabulist fiction at the other end? It’s starting to tip a little westward and if we keep going this way, we’ll end up in Maine, he said.

But before we could do anything about it, one of the science fiction writers came back out and said, What if my story has a ghost? Do I still belong in science fiction?

Weird science fiction, Tod BOadkins and I said in unison.

But what if the ghost isn’t weird, what if it’s a retelling of The Christmas Carol but in space? asked the writer.

And then we had to rearrange everyone all over again. Meanwhile, Tryxy was on the upper floor in hog heaven, you know how he loves animals. However, it turns out that there is only so much pet hair a terry cloth tracksuit can sustain without become an irreversible ball of fluff and the alpacas were particularly affectionate and the goat ate Tryxy’s favorite sandals.

Before anyone had anytime to settle in, we passed a barn with about thirty writers and their cats taking refuge on the roof and two of them were slipstream and one of them wrote comic books. No matter how we arranged and rearranged, the sudden influx of wet, clingy, disgruntled cats threatened to capsize the whole vessel and we hit a whirlpool and spun clear across New Hampshire, up through Maine, and into the Atlantic.

Fortunately, we had a room with at least two Christian fantasy writers who were able to provide ark-steering instructions and I was able to gain control of things and land us safely on Ararat and book all our trips back home.

Or what was left of my home. When Tryxy, #bestkitten, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins and I got back, we were greeted by a tiny cape cod with a hole in the back of it, a statue of Lil Nas X in the front yard, and absolutely nowhere to put my remaining faberge eggs!!!!

Pages next week Gladys!!!!

xox,

X

ONCE, BACK

IN THE

ANCIENT CITY

OF NINEVAH,

THERE WAS

A FLOOD

AND I

ARRANGED ALL

THE ANIMALS

TWO BY

TWO ON

A BARGE

AND GOD

SAW AND

WAS LIKE

THAT’S SO

COOL, SHOW

ME THAT

AGAIN AND

I SAID

NO AND

GOD SAID

FINE, I’LL

ASK NOAH.