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muccamukk) wrote2025-10-23 10:37 pm
lucymonster) wrote2025-10-24 02:59 pmsnickfic described it as "aggressively pleasant" but not life-altering, which I think is very accurate, but it won extra points with me because I am pretty much exactly the target demographic: bookish, bisexual younger Millenial women who formed a key part of their identity around Harry Potter but have since become conscious of flaws in the worldbuilding and grown to identify more with the adult characters than the kids. The Incandescent is about a teacher at a modern day magical boarding school who must battle the demonic forces threatening to devour her students while balancing her ordinary administrative obligations and her rather stunted personal/romantic life. It is drily witty, relatable to anyone who regularly deals with kids, and extremely fun if you're the kind of person who finds fantasy-flavoured bureaucratic tedium fun. settiai) wrote2025-10-23 11:55 pm
karanguni) wrote2025-10-23 09:15 pmDear Yuletide writer,
Thank you for writing for me! I'm a generally omnivorous reader and excited to read anything that you come up with – everything in this letter is optional. Have fun!
AO3: karanguni
tl;dr: I happily opt into gen, porn, unusual media types, and crossovers with fandoms I have read/written/requested before; ignore or take as many parts of this wall of text as you want! My AO3 account has gifts enabled for treats.
( Initial D, Kamusari Series, Heike Monogatari, The Bedlam Stacks, The Culture )
soc_puppet) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
queerly_beloved2025-10-23 09:50 pmcyphomandra) wrote2025-10-24 03:18 pmmistressofmuses) wrote2025-10-23 07:49 pm
lannamichaels) wrote2025-10-23 07:59 pmhekateras) wrote in wipbigbang2025-10-24 01:00 ammecurtin) wrote in fandom_checkin2025-10-23 08:22 pmHow are you doing?
I am OK
12 (63.2%)
I am not OK, but don't need help right now
7 (36.8%)
I could use some help
0 (0.0%)
How many other humans live with you?
I am living single
6 (31.6%)
One other person
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More than one other person
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kindness_says) wrote in yuletide2025-10-23 02:01 pm
morbane (even more than usual ;)) for following up on everyone's behalf; Livi and I had been having an extremely slow/distracted convo about it since early September, but as always, knowing people are waiting on us motivated me LOL. But neither of us will be your primary mod this year! It will be the lovely Helen (patrokla), who started helping out last year. <3Hi everyone! Official announcement (and thank you, Morbane, for playing go-between while we worked things out behind the scenes :)) -- yuleswaps WILL go forward this year, we hope, and we're sorry for the delay!
Indeed I (Kat/Kindness on AO3/
If anybody else was interested in running swaps, Morbane absolutely was speaking for me that we're not offended, and please feel free toDM mecomment or email (yuleswaps at gmail) if you're interested in helping out. ESPECIALLY if you are at all code-savvy/great at answering emails efficiently/bursting with ideas for future improvement. <3
You might hear from me again, or you might not! I will def be helping on the backend, for at least this year/as long as I can, and we really appreciate your patience if we're a little slow or clunky this year as we try to sustain/transition. I also apologize to anyone who didn't get fully covered after January (haven't done 2024 cleanup yet... will try if there's time)!
I have LOVED running swaps, well mostly I have anyway ;) for the past 15 (!!) years. Back in the day I did not read coal but was always charmed when friends occasionally sent me screenshots of anons thrilled about swaps, and I similarly really enjoyed skimming like...1-2 years' worth of this discord not long after Morbane emailed me (was very tempted to answer some super old questions but refrained lol). Your enthusiasm has absolutely been the thing to make all the time and headaches worth it.
<3 <3 <3
yuletidemods) wrote in yuletide_admin2025-10-24 10:08 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-10-23 08:39 pm
While some ideas get shelved entirely, some ideas are merely on the back burner for a while before becoming fully realized ideas and narratives. Such was the case for author J. R. Blanes, who kept returning to the idea that ended up becoming his newest novel, Portrait of Decay. Follow along to see how a friend inspired Blanes to have this idea in the first place.
J. R. BLANES:
A friend once asked me, “If you couldn’t create, what would you do?” Since I’ve been a creator all my life—writing stories, playing music, and any number of other creative endeavors—I’d never considered what would happen if that was taken from me. My entire identity, my life even, is intrinsically tied to my imagination. Without the ability to create, I wouldn’t be the same person. I don’t know who I would be. For all I know, I might not exist.
Now, I think what my friend was really asking was what I’d do for a career if I couldn’t create, but that first interpretation of his question stuck in my head. I was struggling with my identity as a writer at the time. I’d spent years writing literary fiction with increasingly less satisfaction and very little success. Frustrated, I returned to my roots and my first love: horror. I’d grown up reading the likes of Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe before graduating to Stephen King and Clive Barker (my biggest influence). Even after I began writing horror again, I wasn’t sure what kind of horror writer I wanted to be. I wrote some short stories—a few published, many others thrown into the trunk to rot—and hoped that one day soon I’d find my voice.
Portraits of Decay started as a short story about a young woman who travels to see a swamp witch to buy a poison that will trap her cheating boyfriend under her control. As far as story plots go, it was very thin, which was why I shelved it for a while for other projects. Yet I kept coming back to it, knowing there was something there. I just didn’t know what. I really wanted to write about New Orleans and the effect the city had on me during the years it was a home away from home while I worked for a private passenger train company out of Chicago. I yearned to invoke its culture, its traditions, and its folklore through the lens of my imagination. Still, all I had was a somewhat cliché revenge tale. I knew there needed to be more.
My friend’s question sparked a conflagration: What if I explored what happened to an artist when he no longer had the ability to create—as he slowly lost his identity (or soul, if you will) while withering into nothing? I imagined what emotions I’d feel if I was trapped with the ideas, thoughts, and anxieties in my head. The dark path I might take with no outlet to express these pieces of myself. A path that would surely lead to depression, anger, and even madness. While contemplating such an existence, I endured extreme panic attacks and bouts of intense fear. It’s with these intense emotions that I painted the main character of Portraits of Decay, Jefferson Fontenot, as he suffers at the hands of his girlfriend Gemma Landry after she doses him with a concoction from swamp witch Mirlande St. Pierre.
To ground these themes of obsession and control, I turned to another form of art well-remembered from my time in New Orleans. I remembered checking out the galleries around Royal Street, the Bywater, and Faubourg Marigny: The art I witnessed captured the vibrant atmosphere, multiculturalism, and colorful landscape of NOLA. It also captured the dark lore that ran through its streets and floated along the swamps of the bayou. Writing from the artists’ point of view provided the narrative with a visual aspect to the loss of identity. My descriptions of the emotions and struggles my characters move through in the course of the novel are framed through the lens of art. To make this world as visceral and instinctive as brushstrokes on canvas, I spent many hours researching the art world—talking with artists, visiting galleries, and working with my editor who is a painter herself.
What would I do if I couldn’t create? My novel Portraits of Decay is the closest I can come to an answer. In writing this book, I found my voice as a writer amidst the terror of its loss.
—-
Portraits of Decay: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Apple Books|Kobo|Ruadán Books
Author socials: Website|Instagram|Bluesky
Additional links: Animated cover on Bluesky
shadowhive) wrote2025-10-23 08:18 pm
wychwood) wrote2025-10-23 07:57 pmglitteryv) wrote in writethisfanfic2025-10-23 03:35 pmThursday vibes are...
great! (I wrote)
4 (50.0%)
cool! (I planned/outlined)
4 (50.0%)
nice (I daydreamed/bounced ideas with someone else)
1 (12.5%)
fine (I rested)
0 (0.0%)
I keep track of my writing...
with a planner/journal (digital or physical)
2 (25.0%)
a spreadsheet (my own or someone else's)
4 (50.0%)
by posting here!
0 (0.0%)
keeping track of my writing? Erm...
2 (25.0%)
thisbluespirit) wrote2025-10-23 08:22 pmrainbowfic, which was because I was doing a very long sequence divided up into five parts and wasn't sure what to do about it now it's complete - it's something like 28k altogether (this is what has been absorbing my whole writing time for four months, when I've had any). Anyway, I've decided I might as well crosspost all the parts at once and move on. People certainly aren't obliged to read any of it, let alone all of it.
