Not a Short Story

Hope ZaneGeneral

So the Illness that I mentioned last week continued. Woof. Somewhere in all that fever-brained mess, I decided to write a short story. It’s… not really turning out to be a short story.

Well, I have my hopes, but it seems to be turning into a novel, like all things tend to do. Fairytale started as ostensibly a short story, and now I’m 100k in the thick of it. It’s funny, this was supposed to be a quick smut fic, but as I started writing the characters, there was just so much more to them. I think I tend to write long because I get curious. Curious about who these people are, what happened to them, and what’s going to happen to them. You know how it goes.

Anyway, it’s interesting because I don’t think this is a story I could have started except when I was so sick that I couldn’t possibly give a fuck about anything besides clawing onto my continued existence. Talking about art school is kind of funny that way, and it is about art school—about two painters.

Here’s a little snippet of it. I’m thinking of putting it up on my Patreon for patrons to read, and that might be the only place it lives until I have enough short stories to put together a collection.

Heechul wakes in the night with his heart pounding. He doesn’t know what time it is. Kaoru’s room is an unfamiliar place, and there are no clocks. He could have been sleeping for a few minutes or a few hours.

He startles a little when he feels a warm, heavy body beside him, its heat leaching into his own.

Of course it’s Kaoru. Who else would it be? Even so, it takes a while for Heechul’s heart to calm down.

He doesn’t have nightmares, that he knows of. Or at least, not nightmares in the way anyone else can talk about them. Since he was little, he’s often woken feeling frightened. And how do you talk about that?

Angeline

Hope ZaneWriting

Am I allowed to talk about the characters I’ve dreamed about and left behind?

Maybe it’s not right to say that I’ve left them behind, so much as I’ve left their stories on pause. I think a lot about a girl called Angeline. She’s Mag’s adopted daughter, from the world of The Poison Path—that Mag, Magdeline Blackweir, who becomes the Poison Queen of the West.

I think a lot about her story. I’ve written part of it. I know who Angeline’s birth mother is, and I know you’ll want to know, too. I know why Mag adopted her and how she raised her.

I even know who Angeline falls in love with and what kind of doom she causes.

I’m really hungry to write her story next. It’s just been hard to find the time—to find the time materially, to have space and time for myself. But also to find the time and space in my own head. It’s often so crowded in here. I have so many stories to tell.

I’d really love to tell this story next; whether I do it before or after I finish Fairytale, I’m not sure. I sometimes wish to be someone who can work on multiple WIPs at the same time. Maybe I still can. I’m actually kind of hoping the Patreon, and getting to share WIPs as I go, might be what I need to keep the fire burning as I tend to all the different irons stuck in it.

With a sickness

Hope ZaneGeneral

It’s been a hell of a year so far. I started 2024, like I’m sure everyone did, with the best of intentions of Getting Shit Done. Instead, I mostly got very sick and spent the last two weeks resting and trying to feel a little less like death.

Fortunately, I think I’m starting to feel better now, but getting back to normal has still been a slow and careful crawl.

Onto publishing news, I started posting my WIPs on Patreon, and I think I’ll continue for the foreseeable future. The format might change as I figure out what works for me and for my readers, but I really like the idea of letting people read along as I go.

Since I was feeling a little better today, I finished uploading the last few chapters of Fairytale, bringing the Patreon up to date and the total chapter count up to 30. The first four chapters are free for anyone who’d like to check them out.

This story started as a little whim that grew and grew. I didn’t have any intention of turning it into a full-length book when I started, but before I knew it, I’d looked up and 3 months had passed, and I’d written almost 100k words. Charis and Mouse now have a special place in my heart next to all my other characters. I hope you’ll grow to love them, too.


Signing up for $5/month will give you access to extras and WIPs where you can read along with stories in The Witchblood Heir verse and more as I write them.

close up photograph of two person holding sparklers

Happy New Year

Hope ZaneGeneral

I’m thinking of a song I can never find on the internet, a kind of lost track by Stars, whose music sort of defined my youth. Anyway, it’s a song called London Fields. Particularly, I’m thinking of this line that goes, “I dream that you’ll seal my fate, save me just a little late, that in the yard you’ll kiss me hard and tell me you’ve been waiting.”

It just seems fitting to carry with me into the new year for some reason.

I don’t have any big, definitive new year’s resolutions for this year. Of course, there are things that I want and things I hope to achieve, but it feels good to keep them to myself for now. Small seeds need darkness and warm care to grow.

But something I can share… I’m thinking of something Felix (from Stray Kids) said in one Bubble voice message. I think about it off and on these days. It was something along the lines of, “I hope we can keep walking slowly in the direction of our dreams this year,” and yes. That’s what I want for all of us.

I’m feeling nervous, tentative, but hopeful about the year ahead. However the first day of 2024 finds you, I hope we can all face the year ahead with courage and openness.

I hope good things come our way.

Picking up words incidentally

Hope ZaneLanguage Learning

I’m going to start a running document of Words I Have Learned From the Trending Sidebar on Twitter, which so far includes 사고 from 바스사고 and 방송사고, wherein people were very upset about the audio fuckups during Stray Kids’ year-end stage on SBS. (See also: 음향사고)

I learned 공항 because everyone is eternally very concerned about where idols are going. Today I got 새벽 네시 after recognizing 새벽 from 새벽바람 from a song that makes me want to weep.

And on my second time seeing 금발 vs 흑발 trending, I finally get it. Specifically, it helps that I read through a picture dictionary and saw 금 enough times to know it means gold and 은 is silver.

…side note, I was Team 금발 Felix for the longest time, but 흑발 Felix might be growing on me.

Idk, shitposts on Twitter might be one of my new favorite ways to learn a language. There’s something very warm and comforting about memeing and internet jokes being the same the world over.