C.M. Rosens's Blog, page 24

#SpotlightOn… Wes Porter

Finally Wes gets his big moment… Here’s a spotlight post on my eldritch disaster lad.

@cmrosens

My next character intro is my protagonist for the next book! #indiebooktok #lgbt #queertiktok #indiebooks

♬ original sound – cmrosens

Character Origins

Honestly, I can’t remember – but I was interested in masks and personas and when I wrote The Crows and introduced him as this polyamorous Gene Simmons wannabe, downplaying his wealth and London life while around his childhood friends in his hometown, I thought it would be really interesting to have an eldritch mutation that was a bit different and that messed with people’s minds in a way that wasn’t ARGH TENTACLES. I think I’d recently watched an episode of Rizzoli and Isles where there was a pick-up artist who peacocked with statement pieces in clubs, and so that merged in my head with my fascination with masks and Commedia del’Arte.

I have memory processing issues and face-blindness. If you’re wondering how bad it is, I once saw a 5 sec clip of Denzil Washington in Unstoppable and my brain clicked the ‘Vin Diesel’ recognition button, even though it knew there was something not quite right about this, and I was then convinced that 5 sec clip was from a Vin Diesel film, even though I had seen the movie Unstoppable. The reason for this was the fact they both had shaved/bald heads and it was an action scene, and those were the only facts my brain retained from the clip.

So when developing Wes, it wasn’t too hard to describe basically an exaggerated version of how I see other people, which is, I will look at a close friend of decades, and suddenly see their real face for the first time. I also used to have mild body dysmorphia (not to be confused with dysphoria), and while I now feel very comfortable in my body, I have no idea what my actual dimensions are, what my shape is, or how I really look. I can’t judge distances, so I don’t know how much physical space I occupy. I put all this into a character and made it completely literal, so that not only can he not tell, but neither can anyone else.

The peacocking thing made me think about glam rock and Freddie Mercury, which is where the Gene Simmons comparison comes into it, and so that played a big part in character design. He’s gender non-conforming (gnc) in that he wears makeup – especially eyeliner and eyeshadow – and nail varnish, and tends to wear femme satin robes around the house, and so on.

Character Facts

Wes is awful. Fact.

He’s a middle-class aspiring mediocre wannabe, desperate to be influential and liked and seen and wanted, he cannot be lonely, and he is dazzled by power, wealth and influence. He’s also charismatic and extroverted, a big personality hiding a LOT of undiagnosed mental health issues, neurodivergence (ADHD) and deep-rooted, unexamined insecurities. In Thirteenth he reveals he went to therapy once, but “didn’t have the balls for it”, and his therapist suggested he cut down on the drugs and booze, so she had to go.

He’s a neoliberal “step on me, Maggie” Thatcherite, who mercifully often forgets to vote or engage in politics in any meaningful way. He probably read Atlas Shrugged at an impressionable age and counts it as one of the most important works of literature in the modern age. His reading habits will include Ayn Rand, Nietzsche (whom he pretends to understand), and biographies of Margaret Thatcher, exclusively. He is nearly 30 – this is not a phase.

He is pansexual, polyamorous, and puts a lot of work into developing his sexual ethics. If only he put that much work into his relationship ethics… No, that’s not fair, he does try. He has developed these after years of hurting people, which he has a real talent for. His willingness to change and grow in this area is one of the only redeeming things about him, but it’s a fairly big one.

Wes also has this idea of himself as a Good Guy. He genuinely thinks he does the Right Thing (usually retrospectively defined as the Thing He Did in X situation), and he likes to bring the Good Things he’s done up during arguments about current bad behaviour, as if this gives him a pass, but also because he sincerely feels hard done-by. For example, when Katy is feeling miserable and wants to move out in The Day We Ate Grandad, Wes feels the need to remind her that he was the only one who looked out for her and babysat her when she was a kid. The argument has nothing to do with that, but they can’t discuss current problems without him reminding her of his past ‘Good Deeds’.

He’s done the whole party scene thing to excess, and when we meet him in The Crows he’s apparently got a handle on it. In Thirteenth he really doesn’t, which isn’t his fault: his uncle is using him as a guinea pig for designer recreational drugs as punishment for stealing ketamine. In The Day We Ate Grandad, he’s 22 days sober from pretty much everything, and a physical wreck. He nearly relapses (coke, pills, hallucinogens) over the course of that book, but doesn’t, and that’s not a spoiler as it’s not plot relevant but it is character building. He does start chain-smoking again, and he’s not sober from booze or weed, but that’s the extent of it. I’m really proud of him for that.

Wes is also vegan, because he’s all or nothing, and if he eats meat he may relapse into cannibalism. He enjoys torture, and has always found living a double life where he can pretend he’s this sophisticated, civil, man of the world on the one hand, and on the other breaks people’s legs for his uncle and collects human knee caps (that he forcibly extracts himself) fairly easy to do. He gave that up for the London party life, and his human (rich, sweet, sheltered, naive) partners, but still flirts with that side of life because he misses the rush.

Wes also has the power to end the world.

I’m going to leave that there, and let that sink in.

Teaser Playlist: Ricky Porter

I’ve got a playlist for Ricky that I made for THE DAY WE ATE GRANDAD and going forward, that I love and which is here, called The Gilded King:

46 songs, 2hrs 52minsBehind the Title

The Gilded King is a nod to The King in Yellow, a fictional play that appears in the story of the same name by Robert W. Chambers. Anyone who reads it goes insane, and that’s basically the premise (on steroids) of one of my favourite Weird films, In The Mouth of Madness (dir. John Carpenter). In the later stories in the Lovecraftian mythos, the King in Yellow is conflated with Hastur (an Ambrose Bierce invention, initially, and a benign god of shepherds in his short story ‘Haïta the Shepherd’ (1891)).

Ricky is linked to the King in Yellow very subtly in the books, as when he’s not head to foot in grey, the main colour that he is linked with in terms of fabric is yellow. He has a dirty yellow blanket around his shoulders in the cellar of Fairwood in The Crows, and Carrie’s bedding is yellow, with yellow sheets or a duvet patterned with sunflowers. He also has a thing for cornflower blue (cornflowers being wild flowers that show up in fields and pasture lands) and he’s linked to the woods and fields in terms of his setting. That’s all a nod to Hastur in Bierce’s story, and the fact that Ricky is an autodidact who loves to read is a connection to The King in Yellow being a play in Chambers’ story.

Then there’s the fact that Wes constantly calls Ricky royalty-adjacent terms of endearment (usually sarcastically) – His Majesty, Her Majesty, Princess, Queen Richard, King Richard, King Richard IV… etc. [That’s meant in the way gay men in the UK (and probably/possibly elsewhere) can refer to each other with she/her pronouns, not a reference to his gender identity, just in case anyone’s unfamiliar with that and wondering.]

The TracksArsonist’s Lullaby – HoozierVillain of My Own Story – Unlike PlutoFilthy Pride – Social ReposeKing For A Day – Pierce the Veil, Kellin QuinnWe Don’t Have To Dance – Andy BlackChoke – I DON’T KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND METhrone – Bring Me The HorizonAnimal I Have Become – Three Days GraceI’m Not OK – WeathersSorry About Your Parents – Icon For HireRibcage – Andy BlackI’m Not A Vampire – Revamped – Falling In ReverseHold On For Your Life (Acoustic) – Sam TinneszHomecoming King – Andy BlackThe Kill – Thirty Seconds To MarsBeautiful Darkside – The Classic CrimeA Love Like War (feat. Vic Fuentes) – All Time Low, Vic FuentesNightmare – Set It OffMama – My Chemical RomanceEnding – Isak DanielsonPower – Isak DanielsonHome (Bright Soundtrack) – Machine Gun Kelly, X Ambassadors, Bebe RexhaHoney, I’m Home – Ghost and PalsWhile Monsters Rage – Barry CouplandKill Everyone – Hollywood UndeadSolitude – Sorry, PeachLonely – Palaye RoyaleMadame Le Mort – newhavenFly On The Wall – Thousand Foot KrutchOcean Eyes – American AvenueIn The End – Black Veil BridesRiver – OchmanFeel So Numb – Rob ZombieSquare Hammer – GhostThe Killing Kind – Marianas TrenchDemons and Angels – LOWBORNStart A War – Klergy, Valerie BroussardHELL TO HAVE YOU – Our Last Night, Sam TinneszTonight Is The Night I Die – Palaye RoyaleStreet Fight – Adam JensenMore – Finnegan TuiAngry – ParaviTomorrow We Fight – Tommee Proffitt, SVRCINANot Afraid To Die – Written By WolvesThe Stigma (Boys Don’t Cry) – AS IT ISDrown In My Mind – Story Untold

This is based on a shorter playlist of Ricky Vibes I made for earlier in the series, but these songs also still work and there are crossovers:

#SpotlightOn… Ricky Porter

Unsurprisingly, Ricky won the next poll… so here is Part 1 and Part 2 of the TikToks I did for him!

@cmrosens

Welp…….. you chose Ricky so here is pt 1 #indiebooktok #antihero #queertiktok

♬ original sound – cmrosens

@cmrosens

pt 2 where I tried to be fairer to Ricky who is my boy … but … #queertiktok #indiebooktok

♬ original sound – cmrosens

Character Origins

Bramble Cottage appeared first in a draft of Pagham-on-Sea werewolf thriller Real Meat where it had a touch of Roald Dahl’s The Witches about it (I read that as a kid and being stuck in a painting really bothered me… I didn’t get the antisemitism of that book until much later). I wanted a painting of Bramble Cottage to have a moving figure of a woman in mourning dress who appeared in it sometimes, always in a different place. This became Lettie Porter, Ricky’s mother, in mourning for the children she would never have, and the ones she believed Ricky killed in the womb.

In a draft of a story called The Reckoning I introduced Katy as a character and had her cousin live in the cottage, although he didn’t see the future and he only had a second mouth and full head of hair. When I rewrote The Crows I liked the changes to the setting I’d made and wanted to keep them – so it made sense to overhaul the whole thing and add in the new bits and pieces.

(Katy’s mum is Lottie Porter, sister to Lettie. Lettie and Lottie are sisters in Agatha Christie’s A Murder is Announced, which is one of my most read Miss Marple stories).

When I decided Ricky was going to be a serious character rather than a side character, I had to develop him. I spent a really long time on this, because I wanted to use him to explore the logical extremes of some of my own prior mental health issues, and I gave him some other traits I had from the same time period, such as teetotalism. I seem to have also given him undiagnosed ADHD, which is less obvious when he isn’t trying to complete tasks on time, but the traits become more obvious later in the series as other characters interact with him and the stories become more plot-driven.

I wasn’t sure the second mouth alone would be enough, so I found inspiration in the Twitter avatar of the man I was seeing at the time (and went on to marry), and the tendrils were born.

Ricky is also, in many ways, a nod to where I grew up, and the lads on the bus to town, and ones I was mates with, but he’s primarily a grotesque caricature of myself from 2006-2008 moulded carefully into a three-dimensional character.

Film/TV Inspiration: Physicality & Physique

Ricky is 28 at the start of the series, but I think he reads a lot younger in The Crows sometimes. I didn’t want him to be like Callum in Tiger House (2015) but also that performance by Ed Skrein is very very close to the way I conceptualised Ricky at the beginning. The rage certainly, but that became more about his emotional dysregulation, and also the way Ricky oscillates between maturity and childlikeness, especially in situations he can’t control. Other influences from film/TV on his character include Ajax from Deadpool (2016), Eddie Brock in Venom (2018), Hjorr in Northmen (2014), where there’s a giggle that really got to me in his first scene, and Vinnie in S01 of Brassic (2019).

I didn’t want Ricky to be as tall as Ed Skrein or Joe Gilgun though: he needed to be imposing in other ways, especially reputation, so he’s 5’5″, about 2in shorter than Tom Hardy. That impacts the way he moves and sees the world, and boxing felt right for that. Ricky is shredded and lean in the first book, he moves like a boxer, but you don’t really see him fight with his fists. That was more based around Tom Hardy in Bronson (2008), and actual boxers, like Joe Calzaghe.

I worked in a gym at the time, and passed my Level 2 gym instructor exam, and it really bothered me (and still does) how you can mask disordered eating with exercise, and have a really unhealthy attitude to your body and with food if you ‘look good’. So, an intrinsic part of Ricky ‘looking good’ was that he starves and binges, and he mindlessly comfort eats stuff like insects, rotten fish, gone-off meat, anything he can get his hands on. Nobody’s called him out on it and suggested this isn’t good, because he outwardly looks muscular and sinewy. He’s physically strong. He loves that, and plays up to it. But his strict ascetic lifestyle is hurting him, and it’s resulted in disordered eating habits.

I knew I wanted his arc to be that he eventually gains quite a bit of weight, because that’s what can happen when you stop restricting and start trying to eat more regularly – the abs go, since he’s not maintaining them, and he does put more weight on through the series as he relaxes, his body changes as he ages, and he ends up being comfortable with that. He may never have a healthy relationship with food, but he hopefully will end up with a much healthier and balanced relationship with his human-passing body.

Personality & Problems

Ricky self-medicates and has social anxiety – he’s an introvert forced into the limelight because he can see the future (if he’s sober and not grounded in the present by contentment/enjoyment). His farsight makes him simultaneously a boon to the family and someone they come to for advice, and unable to form anything but transactional relationships with his family, who view him like a sentient cash machine.

He’s under-socialised and doesn’t understand how friendships work – he’s never really had any – and he doesn’t see his life changing. He’s had ample opportunity for it to change, but never taken it. ADHD is a lot to do with this, I suspect, because Change Is Bad And Scary. But it’s more than that, too; he can’t cope with the idea of moving away and starting over where nobody knows him, and he has to build his reputation from scratch. He mainly wants to be left alone, but at the same time can’t cut ties with his parents, whom he’s been slowly poisoning since he was 12.

Did I mention he’s also a cannibal whose hobbies include taxidermy? That’s pretty key.

Ricky is also both on the asexual and aromantic spectrums. I don’t know where he is on either, exactly. He’s mainly sex averse, but he’s had sex before (under the influence, in dubious consent circumstances, while in his teenage experimental phase). He’s canonically bi, even if just in terms of aesthetic attraction, which is very rare for him in itself. He might be aceflux? He doesn’t know, and doesn’t think about it, or interrogate it.

Those are the main points! I could talk about that lad for hours. Any questions about him or Fairwood House (previous #SpotlightOn post), drop them below:

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Teaser Playlist: Fairwood House

I have a Carrie/Fairwood playlist on Spotify that I didn’t post on the inspiration/intro post yesterday… here it is with the list of songs below.

30 songs, 1hr 45minsBaby You’re A Haunted House – Gerard WayIf I Had A Heart – KarlieneAlready Broken – KarlieneHaunted House – Florence + the MachineKing – Florence + the MachineHaunted House – NeonDon’t Make Me – MALINDAHow Villains Are Made – Madelin DukeDon’t Save Me – CharlotteHome (Bright Soundtrack) – Machine Gun Kelly, X Ambassadors and Bebe Rexha)Under My Skin – Jukebox The GhostDead Is The New Alive (Manipulator Mix by Dope Stars Inc.) – Emilie AutumnWhen I Was Done Dying – Dan DeaconThird Eye – Florence + the MachineIntroduction: Resurrection – Andy BlackI Found (Acoustic) – Amber Runmad woman – Taylor SwiftAll the King’s Men – The RigsWoke Up A Rebel – Reuben and The DarkHolding Out for a Hero (from Vikings S02 Trailer) – Nothing But ThievesStronger (Acoustic Version) – Jess MoskalukePomegranate Seeds – Julian MoonPyrokinesis – 7 ChariotOne Foot in Front of the Other – Emilie AutumnHaunted House – AviatorsThe Girl Who Loved The Monsters – Rob ZombieDarkness At The Heart Of My Love – GhostHug All Ur Friends – CavetownShit Happens – Katelyn TarverNicer – Katelyn Tarver

I also have a few playlists just for THE CROWS as a novel: here’s the instrumental playlist for the book that gives you some of the vibes:

#SpotlightOn… Fairwood House

@cmrosens

I will do a more in-depth spotlight on cmrosens dot com #writersoftiktok #indiebooks #indiebooktok #lgbt #queertiktok

♬ original sound – cmrosens

Inspiration for The Crows/Fairwood

I ran a poll on Twitter asking which characters should I do a little spotlight on and introduce, and Fairwood House won! Fairwood House is a character in my novels, and I’ve blogged about the inspiration behind it here.

In that post, I mentioned a house my grandad called “the old doctor’s house”. I think it’s The Laurels, and here it is in its pre-ruined heyday:

The Laurels, from the Risca Museum Photo Archive

The Crows/Fairwood is a little bigger than The Laurels, probably more like Manor House:

Manor House, from Risca Museum Photo Archive

It’s definitely smaller than Tredegar House, which is another inspiration for it from my childhood, but it’s more that sort of shape, just not as long in the middle section:

Northwestern façade of Tredegar House, Newport, south Wales
Photo Credit: Tony Higsett, CC 2.0

I’ve been asked if it has plural vibes and it does, though not on purpose, it just came out that way. Each bit of the house has its own personality and the house as a whole works with all these different parts of itself, but it can also condense itself into an avatar that presents as whichever gender it wants. It can appear as any of its owners, past/present, and the owner’s personality or a facsimile of that can front when it’s the avatar.

Fairwood House/The Crows by Tom Brown (2019)
One of the illustrations in the novel

It also has a lot of history, and so different bits of it are different ages. The oldest part is the 13thC crypt belonging to a totally different building (a monastery) that it was built on top of post Reformation, and that retains its own character and communicates mostly in plainsong. It has some 16thC and 17thC beams and panelling remaining, but is mainly 18th-19thC in terms of architecture.

Tredegar House’s “Brown Room” is similar to what I imagine the disused dining room/ball room of Fairwood to look like, but longer than real life, with the windows on the opposite wall, and no fireplace:

The Brown Room of Tredegar House, People’s Collection Wales

The smell of the house is very specific and based on two real locations: Llancaiach Fawr manor, Nelson, and Mansfield College library, Oxford.

Llancaiach Fawr, Nelson Mansfield College Library, OxfordOn Class

The class aspect of the space is really important as well, and the gendered spaces in the house and political spaces in the house, as all of that goes into its personalities. I spoke on the class side of things on the Left Page podcast. Basically, the kitchen is the most welcoming room in the house for lots of reasons, and its owner – who is working class raised, moved into middle class and then lost her job and ended up with nothing except the house – doesn’t sleep in the master bedroom because it feels like it doesn’t want her there. She sleeps in a guest room, which is smaller and actually feels friendly.

Carrie’s respect for the house’s spaces means that the house really warms to her, and that has a knock-on effect later on… Ultimately, it’s a story charting an uncomfortable working class takeover of a space designed to be oppressive to the working class, but that’s a process, not an event. It’s my Gothic Socialist narrative, I guess?

On Genderfluidity

Fairwood isn’t gendered a lot of the time or is usually ‘it’, but people do tend to gender the avatar of the house as that takes on the form of a real owner that it has now, or has had in the past, and borrows their pronouns.

It represents itself by scarring and moulding the figure of the owner, creating either something that could easily pass as human, or something very uncanny and humanesque. The house itself doesn’t think of itself in gendered terms, and even though it settles into one form over another as the series progresses, it retains the ability to be fluid in its personal representation.

Thanks for Reading!

Fairwood is a lot of people’s favourite character and that’s fantastic. I’m so delighted that my sentient, haunted house has had such a positive reception. I’ll do a couple more of these posts for other characters, so check out my Instagram stories and Twitter for polls, and go vote for what’s next!

The Day We Ate Grandad: Content Notes

Hi all, I figured I should add the CWs for THE DAY WE ATE GRANDAD. I’m going to do a few posts on Insta and TikTok for this as well…

This is a Content Note list, as it’s not just to warn of triggers, but to inform more generally of content. All my novels so far have a page of Content Notes on this site for people to read, and going forward I’ll try to include them in the books themselves in the front matter for those who may need them.

The Crows is here.

Thirteenth is here.

Blurb

Three possible futures. Two versions of the apocalypse. One chance to save the world.

Wes Porter, a severely depressed insanity-inducing playboy, is detoxing from hallucinogens that have unlocked his ability to see versions of potential futures – and he’s just foreseen two ways the world could end. Normally, Wes would leave the hero bullshit to somebody else, but he can’t abdicate responsibility this time… not when both those apocalypses might be his fault.

With some prompting from a mythological bard-prophet who may or may not be real, and a lot of assistance from his monster-eating baby sister who desperately wants to move out of his apartment, and their soothsayer cousin who has his own demons to fight, Wes attempts to save [his] world… but have his poor decisions doomed them all?

THE DAY WE ATE GRANDAD is the third book in the Pagham-on-Sea series. It is a dysfunctional family cosmic horror novel for fans of WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS, THE MAGNUS ARCHIVES, and THE CALL OF CTHULHU, with themes of bereavement and grief, generational trauma, and a dash of Roman/Welsh mythology.

Add to GoodreadsContent Notes:Addiction and sobriety (drugs, but also literal addiction to a romantic partner)
ADHD symptoms that aren’t diagnosed or acknowledged, characters themselves are unaware they exhibit them and blame themselves/other things for memory processing issues, hyperactivity, lack of impulse control, lack of focus, self-medication, etc.
Animal death (a sheep for entrail reading purposes)
Apocalypse threat – eldritch god destruction, but also destructive behaviour from insidious addiction to an image
Arson and on-page fire
Bereavement in complicated circumstances and varied – often messy/destructive – responses to grief; on-page memorial service
Binges and their aftermaths, a minor (17F) having to handle some of this and being placed in a carer/parental role
Body Horror
Body dysmorphia & complex feelings around one’s own body, which can be read as similar to dysphoria
Child neglect (historic) and mention of child sacrifice in cult context – no on-page depiction of this, and no minors feature in the book apart from the 17yo MC (the only minor MC, all other MCs are adults)
Cult – family members being indoctrinated, joining out of trauma, and insider POV
Depression (severe)
Disordered eating in men that has gone unrecognised by others
Dubious Consent (m/m)
Dysfunctional family and dysfunctional intimate relationships
Emesis
Erectile dysfunction due to lifestyle (combination of drugs, alcohol, poor diet, sobriety journey, grief, constant stress), not handling this well.
Family estrangement, being cut off by close relatives after a betrayal
Friendship issues, loss and arguments
Gore (Graphic)
Inbred family of sibling & cousin pairings, family culture of inbreeding is prized over ‘outbreeding’ but also joked about by family members
Insectoid fae creature with spider-like and maggot/worm-like attributes which includes spontaneous ejaculation during a non-sexual interaction. Wes is just Like That.
Murder of close relatives by MCs
Parasites, parasitical imagery, worm/maggot infestations in living flesh, graphic descriptions of wounds that may trigger Entomophobia or acarophobia, parasitic dermatophobia, or parasitophobia
Queer characters who are messy, angry, abusive, soft, sweet, suicidal, fucked-up, poorly treated, bad company, good company, deserving of more, deserving of a punch, and at least one who’s a Thatcherite. Some characters are gay, some are bi, one MC is ace and aro-spec, one is demisexual and demiromantic, one is allosexual (potentially hypersexual?) and demiromantic. Some characters are monogamous, some are polyamorous (accepted, normalised, not the focus of the plot).
Relationship issues and complicated dynamics
Self-harm and suicide ideation; suicide in cult context as ‘sacrifice’
Self-mutilation for various reasons, to varying degrees: under the influence of addiction, and in cult context, and in ritual context.
Sibling deaths and sibling estrangement; complicated sibling relationships; younger sibling caring for older sibling and vice versa.
Sex is frequently mentioned, a man comes on-page during a non-sexual encounter with an insectoid fae entity, frequent sexual imagery and banter, references to sex lives, discussion of kink, and explicit sexual attraction to non-human entities including a sentient building.
Trypophobia (descriptions that may trigger this)

If that sounds like your thing, the pre-order link is coming soon!

Meanwhile, here’s the GoodReads link again to add it, and to share to others who might like it! I rely on word of mouth so every share is useful!

Add to Goodreads

Support Queer Saints II!

ANNOUNCING A NEW INDIEGOGO CAMPAIGN!

Queer Saints II : Queer Villains is now accepting pledges, and the campaign comes to an end on 12th April 2023.

From Medusa Publishing Haus’s site:

Medusa Publishing Haus is an independent horror imprint owned and operated by Mae Murray, a writer and editor hailing from Arkansas, now living in eerie New England. She contributes essays and criticism to horror-centric websites, including Fangoria and Dread Central. She is the recipient of a 2022 Brave New Weird award for the Superior Achievement in Short Fiction, and has been published in horror fiction anthologies and nonfiction collections. The Book of Queer Saints Volume I was her editing debut. Her debut novel I’m Sorry If I Scared You is due out Spring 2024.

From the IndieGoGo Campaign:

One year ago, The Book of Queer Saints was released to much fanfare. A book centering horror stories about queer villains was timely, but the situation for queer people, especially trans people, has only become worse. While the first book was influenced by the intracommunity bullying of queer folks who write complicated—and sometimes downright evil—queer characters, Volume II comes as the world grows increasingly hostile toward queer and trans folks. The demand for us to be likable and palatable to straight cis people, the pressure to be meek, quiet, and invisible, has only grown greater over time. 

But The Book of Queer Saints Volume I showed that complex queer narratives are important now more than ever, and that the queer community needs an outlet to breathe their frustration, anger, joys, fears, loves, and losses, into fiction.

In the time since its release, the excitement around the project has only grown, and fans have continued to show their love for the mission and stories. I was lucky enough to have the incomparable Hailey Piper, Eric LaRocca, and Joe Koch on board to help bolster excitement, but my greatest achievement with Volume I was providing first-time publication to burgeoning queer writers whose voices and stories might otherwise be unheard. It has been one of my greatest joys to watch them grow as writers over the course of the past year. 

The thought of making a second volume never crossed my mind, but fans of the first book were adamant—and I am passionately devoted to the mission of the book and feel I am not yet finished exploring its themes of queer complexity. There are still so many more conversations to be had. I’ve learned and accomplished a lot in the year since Queer Saints I was published. I ran a successful Kickstarter for my debut novel. I’ve continued to write articles and short stories, host workshops, and be an outspoken advocate for working class and marginalized writers. I’ve been in constant communication with great publishers, and I even started my own business, Medusa Publishing Haus. Now, I am ready to take on the task of publishing Volume II under the Medusa name, and couldn’t be more thrilled that this is Medusa’s first project.

I enter this endeavor knowing a great deal more than I did in terms of demand, shipping, budgeting, fees, and taxes, and the goal of the campaign reflects that. 

Some of the major changes in Volume II:

1. Volume I was about 3000 words shy of being eligible for a Stoker nomination (rookie mistake!). Volume II will be at least 60,000, so it will be eligible next year.

2. Volume I writers were paid $.03/word. Volume II writers will be paid the HWA prorate of $.05/word.

3. Volume I was exclusive to Amazon KDP, severely limiting the scope of its reach. This year, I will switch to a hybrid model utilizing both Ingram and KDP, so that it is more readily available to booksellers.

4. Due to multiple business obligations and deadlines for my novel, I will be enlisting the help of compensated first reader(s) to help with the submissions process.

5. And finally, Volume II will be released parallel to a reissue of Volume I, now published under the newly formed Medusa Publishing Haus. Volume I‘s reissue will also be sporting a gorgeous new cover by Truborn Design, which will compliment Volume II’s cover (sisters, not twins). Together, they will be collectible items. 

Timeline:

IndieGoGo Launch: March 14 

Submission Period: May 1-31 

Acceptances/Rejections: July 3

Edits: July 17

eARCs available: August 1

Release Date: September 4

Publicity period: August 1-September 14

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-book-of-queer-saints-volume-ii–2#/

Get InvolvedClick here for the IndieGoGo CampaignFollow Mae MurrayFollow Medusa Haus

Release Date: THE DAY WE ATE GRANDAD 14 April 2023

We have a release date for THE DAY WE ATE GRANDAD, Book 3 in the Pagham-on-Sea series! ARCs will be coming out next week, apologies for the slight delay there, just getting last minute edit fixes done and then formatting for the eBooks.

The podcast will begin on 20 April 2023, so not long after the release date! Buy your copy and read along!

KEEP YOUR EYES PEELED FOR PREORDER LINKS. Coming soon.

I will try and ship physical proof copies to people directly from Amazon, so that will take a little longer.

View the video embedded below for my credits and the wonderful theme tune for this novel composed by Gemma Dyer (née Cartmell) who also composed the themes for THE CROWS and THIRTEENTH.

The video text is below the embed.

Video Transcript

14 April 2023: Book Release
14 April 2023 eBook and Paperback
Cover Design: Rebecca F. Kenney @rebeccafkenneybooks (Insta)
Interior Illustrations: Thomas Brown @hopelessmaine (Insta)
Edited by: Johannes Newman-Gillheim @johannespunkt (Twitter)
with early Developmental Edits by: C. J. Subko @sarcasmlemons (Insta and Twitter)
Book Formatting: Ezra Arndt @ezraarndtwrites (Insta and Twitter)

20 April 2023: Audio Release – weekly serial on Eldritch Girl podcast
Theme Music (the audio to this post!!): Gemma Dyer [née Cartmell] @gemmusic97 (Insta)

Indie publishing is a collaborative feat. Support your Indie community! (heart symbol)
Thank you to everyone who made this happen, and to all my readers/listeners so far!
Thank you for all your support. (Don’t forget to review!)

eARC Request Form

There is still time to request an eARC – complete the form below by Monday 20th March 2023.

Submit a form.

The Day We Ate Grandad eARC Request Form

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60161402-the-day-we-ate-grandad

I have run out of paperback ARCS, but you can still claim eARCs of THE DAY WE ATE GRANDAD, for an honest review on Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple books, wherever you usually shop, and Goodreads/Storygraph.

Cover Design: Rebecca Kenney
Interior Illustrations: Tom Brown
Developmental Edits: CJ Listro
Editor: Johannes Punkt
Podcast Theme: Gemma Dyer [Cartmell]

Blurb

Three possible futures. Two versions of the apocalypse. One chance to save the world.

Wes Porter, a severely depressed insanity-inducing playboy, is detoxing from hallucinogens that have unlocked his ability to see versions of potential futures – and he’s just foreseen two ways the world could end. Normally, Wes would leave the hero bullshit to somebody else, but he can’t abdicate responsibility this time… not when both those apocalypses might be his fault.

With some prompting from a mythological bard-prophet who may or may not be real, and a lot of assistance from his monster-eating baby sister who desperately wants to move out of his apartment, and their soothsayer cousin who has his own demons to fight, Wes attempts to save [his] world… but have his poor decisions doomed them all?

THE DAY WE ATE GRANDAD is the third book in the Pagham-on-Sea series. It is a dysfunctional family cosmic horror novel for fans of WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS, THE MAGNUS ARCHIVES, and THE CALL OF CTHULHU, with themes of bereavement and grief, generational trauma, and a dash of Roman & Welsh mythology.

Content NotesMENTAL/PHYISICAL HEALTH
-addiction, including addiction to a person in a literal sense, consequences of sobriety (does not improve some relationships)
-alcohol use/abuse/relapse by a male character inside his POV, involving a total lack of self-awareness
-body dysmorphia and potential to read this as dysphoria
-depersonalisation, derealisation, questioning reality by POV characters, some of whom also have some incoherent thought patterns and memory issues relating to previous drug use, and potential undiagnosed/unmedicated ADHD symptoms
-disordered eating
-emotional dysregulation
-erectile dysfunction caused by lifestyle, stress and prior drug use
-grief and compounded bereavement, complex and toxic reactions to loss, from drug/alcohol binges to depression to joining a cult…
-self-harm (cutting attempt), self-destructive behaviour of adults and teen girl
-sobriety journey with different levels of familial and friend support, concerns over relapse, fractured relationships
ABUSIVE/DISTURBING DYNAMICS
-NO CSA but historic child neglect and manipulation, emotional/psychological/physical abuse
-toxic, dysfunctional inbred/incestuous (siblings/cousins) monster family, inc. bullying, boundary-crossing
-mention of child sacrifice but none shown on-page
-dubious consent while under the influence
-people literally addicted to a MC to the point that withdrawals cause self-harm and the addiction itself can cause extreme behaviours, from property destruction to murder to self-mutilation.
-adult male sexual arousal/fellatio (in context of dubious power dynamics in an m/f relationship)
-interfamilial violence, physical attacks and sacrifice
HORROR TROPES
-violence and gore, violent deaths in an inbred eldritch familial context
-fantasy violence, monster violence
-detailed open wounds, infected wounds
-body horror [eldritch, mutation/transformational, parasitic/worm-adjacent]
-cannibalism
-arson and on-page fire/immolation
-very strong language throughout
-mention of animal cruelty/death but nothing on-page

Ko-Fi Members automatically get an ARC. If you haven’t claimed one yet, but you want to snag a copy, comment here:

Submit a form.

#AmWriting: Dark Fantasy Fun

Yelen & Yelena

Little bit of a departure form my normal fare, but I’m writing a second-world dark fantasy novella(?) called Yelen & Yelena.

It’s the Beauty and the Beast story of my heart, with two aromantic central characters, a curse that can’t be broken, and monster sex. It started off just for fun, but I’m enjoying the worldbuilding so much and exploring the characters, and now it’s atr 37K words and growing. I thought it would be around 40-44K, but it may end up at ~50K, so a short, standalone novel.

I may play more with the concept of a Beast remaining a Beast, as I do have another idea with a character like that – my dark fantasy X-Files idea, which grew from a kernel of a plot into whole episodic character arcs, so I’m not sure what format would be best for it. Perhaps a series of short stories, organised into an episodic anthology. I don’t know though!

Back to Yelen & Yelena: this is a juicy little bite of magic and mayhem in a mercantile world, with feudalism vs capitalism (neither are great systems for my protagonist to live under, as she gets fucked by both in different ways), a 30-something independent laundress who does casual sex work for rent money, amoral dark sorcery, a pandemic of fungal rot, and a 200-year-old monster who can’t face the memory of himself as a man and mainly misses getting laid.

Yelena’s village is dying. A blight creeps over the fields, rents are high, and legends say the dark forest contains a cursed castle from a bygone age, where many travellers have gone missing. 

Her grandmother, who claims to be the only girl to escape the castle, spins terrifying tales of the Beast who lives there to frighten the village children; but far from scaring young Yelena, they excite her. 

Years later, Yelena is an unwed seamstress, taking her pleasure from passers-through and earning her rent in the process. When she falls foul of a pious merchant’s wife who accuses her of dark sorcery, Yelena flees to the forest to find shelter – and discovers not only the enchanted castle of her grandmother’s stories, but that its master, Yelen, is indeed the Beast of her deepest fantasies. Yelena immediately offers him company and mutual pleasure in return for shelter, but in exploring the castle, its master and the nature of the curse, she discovers something else: the source of the blight that plagues her village and the surrounding farms.

Caught in the epicentre of a curse that’s out of control, can Yelena find a way to give the immortal, abandoned Yelen something worth living for, and stop the rot oozing out of the castle? Or must it end the way all monster stories end, with fire, pitchforks, and heads on spikes?

Fine, I'm finally giving in and will play @FantasyIndies #FantasyIndiesMarch

Day 1: I'm CM/Mel, and I primarily write horror & eldritch family drama set in contemporary UK. I'm now writing a dark aromantic Beauty&theBeast twist w 2 bisexual leads called YELEN & YELENA. pic.twitter.com/ZBhNSxeXUt

— CMRosens: @CMRosens@horrorhub.club (@CMRosens) March 3, 2023

My master tweet thread for this WIP!