Writing about aftermath

Hope ZaneWriting

I’ve been wanting to sit down and write a real blog post for a while now, but the blog post I thought I would write yesterday is probably different than the one I’ll actually end up writing today, food poisoning and all (ick).

I’m always fighting between the impulse to keep work to myself, where it’s safe and only mine, and the very real, sometimes achingly urgent desire to share it with others.

I’ve been working on a couple of new stories. The one that feels most exciting to me is about running away from home, or maybe just about running.

I was thinking the other day that I often write about the aftermath. The Thing happened, and now you live, to quote Coleman Barks, “in the wake of a new life.” You are stumbling through the wreckage, trying to assemble pieces of yourself.

(And here, a friend reminded me that what is grief but the aftermath of loss?)

Part of the interesting part of writing, to me, is figuring out what that Thing even was. What was the hit that caused the pain? Can you reconstruct the blast by the shape of its crater?

Jisoo feels like that kind of wreckage. Soft and fragile and sharp. Cringing and traumatized, loved and hurting and willing to hurt others.

Or else maybe the hurt is accidental.

I am still looking for the incident that made a hole of this size.

Koreatown

Hope ZaneAnnouncements

I am serializing some new monstrosity here, just by the by.

“You’re sure they can’t find us?” Jisoo asks.

He wasn’t going to lean against Minjae—keeping that space between them; he’s not a baby. But Minjae loops his arm around Jisoo’s chest, warm and steady and perfectly heavy-strong, and pulls him closer.

“Absolutely sure,” Minjae says, pressing a kiss to the side of Jisoo’s face. “I swear on my life,” he says, kissing his way across Jisoo’s temple, fluttery across his eyelashes, and then down to his nose. “Absolutely no one is going to find us here.”


It’s only running if you talk about it.

SPOILERY little WIP (wip it like you stole it eyy)

Hope ZaneWIP Wednesday

But in this, even Iseult is surprised—she gives birth not to one babe, but to two.

All told, her birth is a strange and involved affair.

There are cunning folk that Iseult has kept in touch with, and even those of the fey courts have a hand.

They all turn up at the doors of Domhan Mhín, one after another, and Jenny is sore beside herself. After the first, second, and third visitors come, Iseult thinks that Jenny will start turning them away at the door.

Certainly that’s the way it seems as she stands poised there, dressed in cursed coins with her hair ringing her head like a fury, barring the entrance.

“We come to visit the mother and child,” one fey man who Iseult does not recognize says.

He is stooped and hunched, with a kind of wheedling voice. He carries a satchel that bulges oddly. It stops when he compresses it in his hands, as if cowed, but then soon after starts up again. To watch it is to feel strangely and vaguely ill.

“I didn’t ask what you were doing here,” Jenny says, her already strong voice rising and growing tarter. “I asked what that has to do with me.”

Important Announcement for People Who Want to Read Ahead

Hope ZaneAnnouncements

The quickest little announcement but an important one: I started posting my WIPs on Ream (lmao yeah I know). And I mean, all of them, or at least I have intentions to. Yes, the sequels to all the series I’ve been working on, and all my little projects that slip between the cracks.

I lowkey want to throw up about it? By which I mean, it’s making me very nervous because I am sometimes small and skittish, but I am also feeling good about it. It’s given me a sense of freedom and possibility that I have been missing in my writing life for a very long time, and I needed that badly.

So go check it out if you want! Right now everything posted is free to read, although you can subscribe to support my writing (very appreciated!) or follow to be notified of new posts (also good for my ego!)

reamstories.com/lovetincture

Alternate: Scribble Hub