MultiMind's Blog, page 2

Giveaway for YA Dark Fantasy Horror novel “The Harlequin” at The Storygraph, ends 3/18!

A little late to my own party, I know, I know but I’ve been prepping to go to Houston, TX for a book event. My friend Sonny (the one I reference in this post) just wrote his first book, a rock memoir called Son of Southtown, which comes out Feb 25 … and he didn’t have any closer dates, especially none that didn’t conflict with my upcoming book events for The Harlequin (coming out March 14, 2025, audiobook out Summer 2025, events currently TBA). I’m not used to flying (or being out and about) so that is a lot a brain-stuff for me. It’s my second air trip in my life.

Either way!

Enter now at The Storygraph for a chance to win a copy of my upcoming YA dark fantasy horror novel “The Harlequin”. This copy will be signed in shimmering ink with a glass pen and will have shimmering sprayed edges. The pack will also have a “Welcome to New Tulsa” bookmark and a handmade page holder.

What The Harlequin is about:

Quiet and bookish, Rosalyn always loved living in her head, especially under the glow of the silent moonlight. One snowy moonlit night, she finds someone princely and ethereal standing at the edge of the forest, the Harlequin. 

Dazzled by his words and ways, Rosalyn follows the Harlequin. 

But to what end?

All MultiMind Works Are Now on Indie Story Geek!

All of my works are now available on Indie Story Geek. Including works like “Null (Void)”. For bloggers and reviewers, a review copy of “The Harlequin” is also available on Indie Story Geek.

I learned about Indie Story Geek through my time of working with the virtual writer’s conference Write Hive. Here is what it is:

Indie Story Geek is more similar to The Storygraph than GoodReads in that it allows reviewers to include content warnings, talk about the build of the story from worldbuilding to characters and storytelling, things like that. There are review bloggers on Indie Story Geek also, for those who want their works actively reviewed.

However, Indie Story Geek doesn’t have a star system but a radar chart:

From Indie Story Geek about their rating system:

How we started: S. Kaeth had a few conversations with other indie authors about visibility and the stigma of indie books as “bad quality”. In chatting with Kriti Khare, SK and Kriti discussed the subjectivity of the reading experience and the limitations of 5 star reviews, and fortunately Kriti had already come up with a system. SK’s husband went to work designing a database system, incorporating Kriti’s book experience scales, and creating a website to collect books and hopefully make it easy for readers to find their next great indie read!

It’s different for sure but it seems pretty ok. Their explanation is pretty thorough so I do like it. And it’s with readers in mind. You click on the radar chart and you find a selection of similar stories with similarly matching radar charts. Though it is not entirely easy to find what line of the chart corresponds with what judging meter. It’s explained on Armed With A Book, which is linked on Indie Story Geek but at a glance, you’re a bit lost unless you have the system memorized

On the author side, you’re able to upload your book, putting in all the data (that I despise to hunt for but that’s me) so your book is findable in the system but also someone can buy it if it piques their interest. You can put in up to five genres (and they’re super fleshed out, I really liked it!) as well as reader groups, which is fairly all inclusive. You submit and after a short while, it’s approved to be on the site. I also like how it can include works that might not or do not have a physical format, such as a web serial or podcast.

On the reader side, the search feature is one I like. It’s not as “we hand picked something for you” like The Storygraph but Indie Story Geek is way better than GoodReads if you want to read something that doesn’t look like it would make its way on a January 6 Reading List. They actually do let you look for diverse works, be it by race, neurodivergence, mental health, etc, as broad or narrow as you like. You can intersect it with genres like “fantasy/dark” and “horror” or “horror/psychological”. I like that I can find diverse reads very easily and within my preferred reading genres. They really took the fact not everyone wants to read Yet Another Asimov Redux seriously and you’re also still in the usual pile so someone can look for diverse works with a fine tooth comb – but they can’t avoid diverse works at all as they look in any genre, it’s all mixed in. That’s good.

Indie Story Geek isn’t as snazzy in looks as The Storygraph or GoodReads, nor does it come with an app component like those two, but it does seem to be pretty nifty in helping people determine their next indie read. I also do appreciate that they’re trying to combat the stigma that indie books automatically means “terribly made”. I recommend it for independent writers, from small presses to self-published, because the site does seem to be useful. I also recommend it for readers because it’s another way to find a book you may want to read.

New Book Coming Out: YA Dark Fantasy Horror Novel, “The Harlequin” (March 14, 2025) – Storygraph Giveaway starts on Feb 19!

I’ve made mentions to it here and there but now that the cover is done and narrators are picked, I can talk about everything in full.

What The Harlequin is about:

Quiet and bookish, Rosalyn always loved living in her head, especially under the glow of the silent moonlight. One snowy moonlit night, she finds someone princely and ethereal standing at the edge of the forest, the Harlequin.

Dazzled by his words and ways, Rosalyn follows the Harlequin.

But to what end?

I focused a lot on the history side of things but that’s to curtail any foolishness I’m probably still going to see but I get to be more caustic in my “you should have done your homework”. The story is really about Rosalyn and The Harlequin, not really the town all this occurs in. Oh, and I’ve already touched on how this is not a “Dark Romantasy” to curtail that as well.

The Harlequin is another one of my “legacy stories”, where it’s been in my head for over 20 years, basically since I was a teenager. Just like Dreamer, The Glassman, and Kinetics. I would be on the light rail as it went up to Hunt Valley, MD, through a forest-y, woody mountain-like thicket as I listened to Flyleaf and that’s originally where the story started of the Harlequin and the girl he lures itself. I also merged it with a story I had as well at the time but didn’t do much with called “Patiently Waiting”, which featured a shy, bookish girl and her brother who looked out for her, even tho he found her behavior as too introverted.

The Harlequin is also the story that made me switch to fountain pens because it was super tough to pen that story when I simply couldn’t find a pen to write with. I talk about that in detail here. Now I have my TWSBI Vac700R and pretty much eliminated that problem.

The audiobook will be coming out a little later in the year, around June. It will be a dual narrated work, a first for me. The narrators are Nicole Cash and Marquise Vilson. I originally wanted the book to be solo narrated because that’s how all my works are but because I was awarded a creativity grant from my state, I could spring for two. I tried to get my usual female narrator, Soraya Butler, but she left audiobooks altogether so that meant finding a new person. And that person is Cash, which I am very happy to have onboard. Vilson, I picked because I really liked him in the too short-lived CW show “Tom Swift” (which I still watch on repeat), where he played the role of Issac, Tom Swift’s bodyguard. Vilson is the first narrator I have ever hired from the realm of tv and film. It’s also his first shot at audiobook narrating. He will be handling all the male voices, including the titular Harlequin. I do hope that he enjoys himself. I hope I don’t burn myself out in the engineering & mastering process. I like his voice & I like giving queer people of color jobs ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This book will have a small swag bag, just like The Glassman and Dreamer did. A forest bramble filled page holder and a bookmark, since Rosalyn is a bookish person and this is … a book. The book will be signed and the edges will be sprayed with Ferris Wheel Press’ Glistening Glass ink. More details about that later, it will be available in the upcoming Storygraph giveaway that’s coming on Feb 19. There will also be upcoming bookstore events, stay tuned for that as well.

Available everywhere March 14, 2025!

Latinx Kidlit Book Festival Auction, Ends Feb 14

It’s that time of year again, where the Latinx Kidlit Book Festival auction happens. I enjoyed the last time doing knowledge share stuff and things like that so I’m back at it again.

What you see here is what is available for bidding. But don’t just look at what I have to offer! There are plenty of writers who have a litany of things to bid on, from portfolio and manuscript critique to virtual visits to books and ARCs.

All proceeds go to the Latinx Kidlit Book Festival, a 501(c)3 nonprofit literacy organization, and a portion will go to restocking new books for schools impacted by the LA fires.

Auction ends Valentines Day! Bid now!

The Year of Soaring

It’s 2025 so that means I’ll be planning to head to S. Korea between Oct and Dec. That means after The Harlequin is out and published (March 14, 2025), everything will be focused on writing Soaring, a sci-fi fantasy alternative history work that has been worked on since about 2014. I talk more about it here.

Long story very short, it would be my first time outside the US (traveling is expensive, especially if you weren’t born with money, which is my case), second plane trip in my life (first time was going to ATL for Multiverse. I didn’t die, therefore yay). So this all means a lot of research on simply traveling since that’s all brand new to me and the last I want is to lose things or have everything go awry just because of some “well known unwritten rule” that I plain didn’t know about.

I already have been trying to get things put away so that I can have a lot of screw-up room for traveling. I know 5+ languages, including Korean, so I don’t have to worry about how to read signs or things like that. I’m just going to have an apartment to myself, as far from any foreigner hot spots as I very much can (there’s a reason why I’m going to the other half of the world. It’s not because I really like japchae), and all I plan to do is spend all my time writing. Y’know, the same stuff I do here, self-isolate and work on my works.

That means also being on radio silent. I don’t post or do much of any internet-related stuff when I write. The most internet related stuff I plan to do is access the decade of research I accrued (which will hopefully get compiled to something remotely comprehensive during the summer) and that’s probably it. I don’t even plan to be outside my apt very much, besides grocery shopping for the most part. It sucks I can’t transfer my Lotte points internationally ;_; I may attempt to visit Dominant Industry or Colorverse but they’re ink makers so of course I would, probably.

I already have Kakao, I’ve been using that for years so everyone who I need to interact with in the US (friend taking care of my cats, my doctors, friends who are native to Korea, etc) is already lined up.

Because I don’t want to risk my disorders flaring up before I leave, I’m going to be pretty strict with my time and interactions. I do have a couple promotional things to do for The Harlequin getting worked out currently but that’s it. Right now, it should be about 3 in-person events at the total max. As always with every event I do, I have a mask on and I strongly prefer people who attend to do the same, especially if you want to talk to me for longer than 15 seconds. I’ve never caught Covid and don’t intend to any time soon. I already am not that much of social butterfly (well, sometimes I am, sometimes I am not) but yeah, expect some awkwardness and weirdness, I suppose.

The Harlequin is coming out this year, “Stalwart”, my short story in the anthology Yemoja Tears, is supposed to be coming out this year. So it isn’t a case of nothing will be coming out. I have no idea how the publishing schedule will be affected once I am back. I have no idea what will be affected when I am back. I will be limited in checking my emails – mainly when I am on break between books so if someone sends me an email between Oct and Dec, I hope it isn’t urgent because you’ll be waiting for roughly a week or more to hear back – and like I said above, if it isn’t Kakao, you’re probably not going to get through as fast as you would like to think. I regularly leave my tech devices on Do Not Disturb or straight up disconnect them from the internet when I am writing. There’s a reason why I am uber social and interactive now, because I sure as f#ck won’t be then. Once I’m off the plane in S. Korea, if I didn’t know you personally before I left America, I will have -34556423321% desire to when I am there. The one thing I do stress to people, friends included, is that when I am working … I am working. Especially since travelling to such a faraway place is not at all cheap. I’m saving money because I’m not going for Super Happy Awesome KPop Time and I can already understand the language but still, plane tix and apt rental is still pricy.

Since I’m doing all the planning myself, that means there’s going to be things I will probably miss so that’s why I’ve been spending the pandemic doing a buttload of prep work. Seeing what I do need to bring, seeing what I don’t need to bring, how much stuff costs, etc. The less I interact with others, hopefully the less things will go awry.

I plan to work on some pretty heavy subjects, such as war and human rights, so I’m probably not going to be a massive bucket of sunshine anyways. I already am very easily pissed when someone or something interrupts my writing in general, I bet dollars to donuts I’m probably going to be omega worse after writing a passage that features the Holocaust, Cambodia’s Year Zero and/or the Middle Passage. I already have local saunas earmarked in the area I’m staying in, on the off-chance I get to use any of them so I can decompress. I probably will be in VR to definitely decompress. By myself.

Yes, I have seen the recent S. Korean news about how they can’t basically go 40 years without someone tossing the nation into martial law. It doesn’t really phaze me, I’m American, we have much worse here. At least they arrest their presidents there. I feel like a lot of people paint the US as a much friendlier and nicer country than it actually is. We literally have mass shootings here. They don’t over there. Big difference. I’m from Baltimore, I already lived through martial law. Besides, I plan to keep to myself so nothing is that big a deal to me.

Long story massively short, I plan on hyperfocusing on just my works and all related matters. I hope things will not go awry, especially since I am trying my best to make sure they don’t.

Historical Links about the Tulsa Massacre (The Harlequin)

These links and video are centered around the Tulsa Massacre that occurred in the summer of 1921. The history of this event is the backdrop of the creation of the fictional town, New Tulsa, in the novella The Harlequin. Though the Tulsa Massacre is not the main focus of the work, The Harlequin, it is indeed noted.

Here is a couple pages about Tulsa from the National Museum of African American History & Culture (NMAAHC). The links doesn’t show gory (most of the links do not), but they do show historical imagery and facts:

Remembering Tulsa

Objects and Testimonies from the Tulsa Massacre

Below is a video that is on the Testimonies page

 

Here is the hearing held by the congressional House committee near the centennial anniversary of the massacre, held May 19, 2021. No gory images, just personal lived accounts & experiences of the Tulsa massacre and the effects of it being buried and ignored throughout history, as well as being misclassified as a “riot” and not a massacre.

 

Here’s also a page from Tulsa City – County Library. Nothing gory, just facts and historical accounts.

1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

Here’s also a video of the survivors interviewed, also provided by the library. There are some pictures of deaths depicted in this half-hour long film.

 

Here is a digital exhibit from Tulsa History (tulsahistory.org) about the massacre. It is mostly text but there are audio interviews with survivors and digitized documents from the massacre.

1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

They also touch on why it is now called a “massacre” and not a “riot”, emphasis mine:

In recent years there has been ongoing discussion about what to call the event that happened in 1921. Historically, it has been called the Tulsa Race Riot. Some say it was given that name at the time for insurance purposes. Designating it a riot prevented insurance companies from having to pay benefits to the people of Greenwood whose homes and businesses were destroyed. It also was common at the time for any large-scale clash between different racial or ethnic groups to be categorized a race riot.

…

Definition of RIOT: a tumultuous disturbance of the public peace by three or more persons assembled together and acting with common intent. Definition of MASSACRE: the act or an instance of killing a number of usually helpless or unresisting human beings under circumstances of atrocity or cruelty.

There is also a write up from the Oklahoma Historical Society, which includes historical pictures (the ones pictured on the write up are not gory) of the massacre and the aftermath.

Tulsa Race Massacre

Thank you for reading and learning.

Blockage and Writing

Some people don’t have a book in them.

They think they do but honestly, they probably don’t. And that’s ok.

Writing is something that I notice people think is easy and that they’ll one day “sit down and write a book” – which never comes.

Some folks have genuine reasons to as why they can’t put pen to paper: real life issues such as working a blue collar job (anything above blue collar as a deviation from writing is just a nattering, pointless excuse), having a disorder that wreaks havoc, raising a baby. This is not about them.

Some people who want to write have major blocks inside themselves, like the fear of failing (or, alternatively, the fear of succeeding and somehow failing upward). There’s no amount of how-to writing books, workshops or writing groups someone can have to fix those. The solution that works best in that situation is the one many can find difficult to do: therapy. Talk therapy.

Therapy helps you un-screw your brain. It’s not always cheap or accessible – there are, however, some places, like Loveland, which helps Black girls and women afford therapy for free up. There’s one for Black men and boys as well but that currently escapes me. I recommend looking at Meg Thee Stallion’s Traumazine mental health site and for details. I think there are other resources for other groups of color but not off the top of my head. I’ve used Loveland, I super appreciate them when I couldn’t afford therapy for my small laundry list of disorders, especially since I need specialized treatment for my trauma disorders.

I already have talked about how I go in very deep with dark emotions in my works, therapy helps me do that – and not wind up on suicide watch every time I finish a book … or before I even start a book and things like that. I’m a big fan of “go deep” because I think that’s where the best emotions for moving storytelling but not if you’re going to self harm somehow as a result of it or it breaks you. You can muse about Heath Ledger and Chester Bennington but one thing those two have in stark common is that they’re dead. There’s a new Joker. Linkin Park got a new singer. Nothing else is coming out of those two for the rest of time, plain and simple. And it isn’t because they didn’t try therapy, I personally know Chester tried very, very hard. But it can be tough going deep because occasionally you still go off the deep end. However, still try therapy. It’s better than frying your brain and/or liver with chemicals that are eventually going to rob you of your skillset anyways.

At least, with the help of therapy, you can get some of those blocks out of the way. Hopefully even write for fun. And I mean professional therapy, not trauma dumping on people in your writing group and dragging them down the boulevard of your broken dreams they definitely didn’t ask for.

Also, it is important to remember that you don’t have to pump out a book to be a writer. There are many different kind of writers, from blog writing (what you’re reading) to book writing.

I regularly wonder why folks will say “oh, I always wanted to write a book” but never do, esp. when you tell them you’re a writer. And will vomit to you all their ideas – or, worse, tell you what you need to write next.

They’re kind of stuck in the fantasy of being a writer; the mint juleps, the tweed elbow patches, saying smart sh#t straight off the cuff that makes others think you’re so witty and intellectual, particularly at fancy soirees you’re not at all in the right social circles to attend or know where they are.

They marvel a little too hard at the fact they’re meeting a writer – not a writer whose books they have read – just a self-proclaimed writer. As if they’re talking to a deity and not a regular person that worked on a skill for a pretty long time.

(It gets worse for me because I write with a fountain pen and that pings the lofty stereotype in their head so they’re even more insufferable. And a good number of them start talking like they’re in In Living Color’s “Booked on Phonics” kit, which is a super funny skit I always loved – but not when it plays out in front of you in real life.

In short: It sucks)

Therapy isn’t a fix for them, they need a reality check. It’s about the perceived stodginess of writing, like only people who are better than other people can do it or something ridiculous.

I super recommend this reading from Kris Rusch from her “How Writer’s Fail” series, Part 11: They Want To. It’s super apt and on the money. She brings up therapy and other super helpful musings. Actually, I recommend reading the entire series, it’s very good. It may not be therapy but it does help put things into perspective, which some need, and is a reality check for those who definitely need it.

Writing is a skill. Plain and simple. You have to work at it to get it. What constitutes as “good writing” may differ from person to person. Most are not reading Proust and Tolstoy for joy – and people already don’t want to read because they have had to read works like Proust and Tolstoy when they were in school. Many classics seem like utter crap when you’re not the intersection of Ivy Leagues and Trump’s voting bloc. You don’t have to stomach boring Shakespeare or dull Hemingway – nor do you have to write like a long dead White guy (who couldn’t write women or people of color for sh#t, only White straight men) – to be a writer.

If you can tell a lie, you can write a story. And people lie more than they like to think. All a story is, is some fabrication. And not being myopic. Not everyone thinks the same and not everyone who thinks different is Wrong. If you can’t think broadly, you’re probably going to always have some very stifling, boring work. Or it’s going to directly mimic the low denominator drivel you already see in day-to-day media: predictable plots, tropes that should have died back in the 1800s, characters that are barely characters but more like inflated 1 dimensional figurines that you can’t tell from the other 1 dimensional figurines. It’s all head work. And people do it more than they think they do.

Another thing is handing your work for hyper-critical nit-picky people to read – don’t do that. They’re not sitting with reams of awards so what makes their opinion so important? Even if they did, who cares? People can lose awards fast nowadays. Plus, awards just mean they’re popular in that circle, not in general. Harry Potter only got I think one Nebula award (only book four, I think), there are other books that have several Nebulas … and none of them are the same juggernaut of success to Harry Potter. Plus, the average person has never heard of a Nebula award, it isn’t the Grammys. But they have heard of Hogwarts. And it took about 14 publishers to pass on it all the same before someone decided to pick it up and give the boy wizard an honest try.

Do you think these 14 publishers would have passed on Harry Potter now if they could rewind time. No. And these are publishers, they always want to procure the next best thing because it’s great for their pockets, why do you think some person you personally know, be it a caustic relative or a mean-spirited “friend”, would be better at determining your work? Have them write a book first if you think their word is so meaningful. Especially if they think their word is meaningful.

No one sees my work until it’s at least one draft past being typed up from written word. And even when they see it, I tell them it’s mainly for vibe check reasons, to make sure it isn’t word vomit. I don’t want developmental editing, I just Made A Thing and want others to see it. If I like the story, then the story is fine, I’m just doing show and tell because I’m glad it’s finally on the page. I have to be the primary one who likes the story first because guess what? I’m the one who has to sit there and write 200+ pages of it. Bare minimum, I better like it or it simply isn’t getting written. There’s no ink pretty enough in the world to make me sit through penning bs malarky I couldn’t care less about. That’s a waste of ink, for one. Ferris Wheel Press is expensive, Dominant Industry has small bottles and Monarca is hard to get. If I wanted to write stories I hated, what’s the point of creative writing? Not every story is for everyone. It doesn’t have to be a best-seller, just a good story. Oh, and read this about bestseller lists if you think it’s an end-all, be-all thing.

For me I just want to write a good story that can evoke some kind of feeling. I remember John Waters said that for him, an award isn’t a trophy like an Oscar or Emmy. A true award for him is seeing someone get up in the theatre and vomit in the aisle. That’s how he knew he truly affected someone. He’s also from my city, and I, too, would rather at least have someone say “your work deeply disturbed me, wtf is wrong with you?” than a shiny award. At least I know it’s real, y’know?

Writing is an art but, like any art, it takes work in doing. But not everyone can or does want to learn that art. Maybe they just want to seem smart (because they don’t think they are), successful (because they don’t think they are), interesting (because they don’t think they are), so on and so forth.

New Ink: Endless Alchemy’s Candy Sea and Wearingeul’s Swatch Cards

I got a new ink (because I somehow need more ). This ink is from Endless Alchemy, a new ink maker who is based in Madras (also known as Chennai)*, India. I don’t think I have any inks from India and now I do! As always, I strongly prefer to collect inks from ink makers of color and India has a rich history when it comes to ink.

I got it because the bottle is interesting, the color is pretty and it sheens. Das’ it.

Look at the pretty box!

The bottle looks like a cross between Sputnik and a science beaker. I like interesting bottle designs. It’s how I got into Korean inks Dominant Industry (looks like a light bulb upside down) and Colorverse (looks like a minimalist depiction of a bird). Like one ink maker in Mexico, Monarca, Endless Alchemy inks come with a base. But this base is different: it is cork and has two features, one side for upright, one side for rotating.

Look at the pretty bottle!

The ink bottle has a bulb at the bottom, which sits the bottle on a tilt. It almost makes the bottle a fiddly toy (have the cap on if you do this), but it’s great for if you have the shimmer variety of ink or you like your bottles on an angle when you refill your fountain pen. When you have the cork coaster base on the rotating side, it rotates freely but not right off your desk. When you have it on the other side, where there’s a cut out, it sits the bottle upright.

Topsy TurvyPlain and Straight

The bottle is 45ml and the color is deep watery blue with a heavy sheen, which I like. I like sheening inks. I saw this through watching a livestream walk through of a fountain pen convention from Inkpendence (he is very helpful in finding new inks, random stuff I don’t need but very much want, and more! I follow his channel) The price is pretty ok, $18 for a bottle. You’re getting years worth of writing ink so you won’t be running through it that fast, unless you’re writing hundreds of pages at a time. Even with hundreds of pages at a time, you’re still going to have something left for a nice long while

I also got stylized swatch cards, cards that are meant to be swatched with fountain pen inks but when you put down the ink, it reveals an artsy design underneath.

Check out the sheen in that lettering!

Colorverse was the first to do it with its nebula pack, I think. It looked like a regular white index card but once you smeared fountain pen ink on it to swatch it, you would see an outline of stars. There are also different kinds, like wavy waves or stacked houses, every one a complete delight to look at when you test out your inks. Wearingeul, who is also in Korea, has been really pumping these out.

And I wunted it. Wunt.

I already have my handmade ink journal that I made, the Ferris Wheel Press swatch book I got for free because I buy a bunch o’ stuff from Ferris Wheel Press buuuuuuuuuuuut, I don’t have a fancy swatch card set. Now I have 3 things to swatch inks with! (As if I need 3, only the ink journal matters since it is actually the paper I write my novels on.) I just like it because ooh, shiny.

I doubt the swatch cards can be used for anything else, it’s pretty niche to fountain pens and that’s fine by me. Swatch books and ink journals are useful so I don’t have to go through my ink collection bottle by bottle to find the right ink to write with, vibe-wise. I can just flip through my ink journal and go with that. No fuss, no muss.

So I now have the cards. I wanted one that wasn’t a full page, I wanted to have sides that I could still handle after swatching but I also wanted an interesting design so I went with the ink drop. I got it from Goldspot Pens, which had uber fast shipping and I super like their “new to fountain pens?” playlist on their youtube channel. It’s great for beginners and covers everything from handling to cleaning to troubleshooting. They also are the only ones (that I know of) that sells the pointed nibs for my Lamy stylus for my e-note. And they also sell Endless Alchemy’s ink, so I could bundle everything together for a Black Friday sale.

And they threw in a sticker.

Yes. I am a sucker for a sticker.

The cards are definitely a little different from what I was expecting. They really do work by isolating the ink – the vast majority of it, anyways. Maybe it’s from how I apply ink – I use a cotton swab and swish it on the paper side to side going downwards – but if I go outside the lines, the ink becomes teeeeny micro dots or small smeary, broken islands of ink. It isn’t bad or distracting, but it isn’t picture perfect. But it also depends on the ink, super sheeners will spot sheen around the ink drop, for example.

[image error]

However! Not a major problem! I found a solution for the spots. I just take a cotton swab, spritz one side with two shots of rubbing alcohol (don’t overdo it, sopping is bad), rub carefully over the dots a bit and then take the other end, the dry end, and rub on the same spot. For most of my inks, it does work and makes the ink swatch card look just about showroom ready. Others, all of them major sheeners, the vast majority of the dots are gone but a very small stubborn spate of speckle remains.

Do I like it? Yus. Will I buy more? It has about 60 cards, I think, in a set, so only if I somehow run through 60 different bottles of ink. I currently have less than 20, which I am happy with. It’s a bit gimmick but, honestly, it’s really super useful for people who want to swatch their ink and thus know what’s in their collection at a glance. I most likely will get a business card holder book so I can store these cards better than just use the original packaging. The cards are all about the size of a business card so they’re small and handy.

There’s two lines beneath the ink drop, which I also like, so I can write the ink brand on the top line and the name of the ink on the bottom line. I can’t do a smear test or things like that but I already have my original ink journal, which has that. Keeps things simple. I use a metal dip nib to write the info on the card, which I am starting to prefer exclusively for swatching inks. I like fountain pens to write my books, glass dip pens to sign my books and metal dip to swatch my inks and do short letters when I am too lazy to fill my fountain pen (and don’t want to worry about my glass dip pens).

Would I recommend it? Yah, especially if you have a sizeable collection and want something that entertains the eye. It’s always good to keep record of what you have, so you don’t buy the same color twice. It’s a lot of cards so it will be a while before you run through all of them.

I don’t buy ink the same way I did when I first started a couple years ago in 2022, where I bought a payload of ink. And moar ink. Now, I just buy ink if it has something super interesting about it, such as color, shimmer, bottle shape, etc. I’m fairly over my ink kick, especially since I have enough ink for literal thousands of pages. I can pause ink buying for a few years, while writing steadily and still not have to worry about running out of words.

*Named Chennai officially in 1996 but Madras has also been in use for a very long while. And it is on the bottle as “Madras”.

The Harlequin is not a Dark Romantasy – It’s a Horror, Plain and Simple.

I wanted to make sure to get this one out the way because someone somewhere out there will try it.

My upcoming book, The Harlequin is not a historical fiction dark romantasy, nor a dark romantasy. It is a YA dark fantasy, horror novel. The reason why I am say this, particularly the romantasy part, is because I’m a bit concerned some reader will think that this is Yet Another Dark UWU Romantasy book when it is not at all.

By the way, “Romantasy”, for those unaware, means “romantic fantasy”. It’s apparently been getting more popular nowadays. Back to the subject:

The book is horror. There is doting and romantic behavior, but it’s all abusive. Not something to consider romance at all.

I see this super concerning trend in dark romantasy, and even romantasy, (granted I’m not a romance reader but I still see it all the same) where super duper concerning behaviors would be peddled as “romantic” behavior. It’s like Twilight stuck in a copying machine.

Here’s a little brief list from the National Domestic Violence Hotline of what an abusive relationship looks like. My work checks off most all of these. Super flying colors on the “Too Good To Be True” list, though. That’s not romantic.

The reason why I find this concerning is because I don’t want my work mislabled, for one. And for two, I already think the dark romantasy genre warps the heads of younger (and sometimes, not so young) women and girls. I don’t want my work added to that pile. There’s a reason why I define this work as a horror – not a romance – and why there will be a content warning page on it.

I don’t mind writing super messed up relationships, it doesn’t bug me at all. But I don’t want anyone to slap a wrong label on it, as if to say “some of these behaviors are ok, even desired”. Especially if someone is already getting enough confusing signals of “what is appropriate treatment in a relationship” from media as it stands. I’m already seeing less things about consent in general, that’s concerning. I’m already seeing more things amplifying toxic masculinity and toxically passive femininity in general, that’s very concerning.

The Harlequin is a horror and meant to be a horror. It is a horror with dark fantastical elements but it is a horror all the same. The end.

Please enjoy but use your head.

My thoughts on the current situation surrounding Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki

Caution: this post is about Ekpeki but Gaiman, Harlan Ellison and others are getting brought up as a comparative example.

It has been brought to my attention that there are issues surrounding Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and ethics. Actually, it was Ekpeki who brought it to my attention via FB messenger after I saw two editors leave the Caribbean anthology with the super cryptic message of “It is with a heavy heart that I, Fabrice Guerrier and E.G. Condé are informing you that we are collectively leaving Donald Ekpeki’s Caribbean Pantheology anthology project.
The Pantheology concept is a powerful and compelling subject, and Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki will always get credit for popularizing it, but for confidential reasons we cannot continue our work on the project” and asked him what happened when I showed him the message.

Full disclosure, I know Ekpeki personally and also my work is slated to be in one of his anthologies, Yemoja Tears, after he personally requested a story from me for it. Another one of my stories is still in the submission process for the Caribbean anthology he is part of (and, to my current knowledge, the two editors left around the time these ethics issues came to light, Oct 25, 2024). He has zero idea I’m posting this and will see it when everyone else does.

As I previously stated above, Ekpeki showed me the posts that were about him after I asked what was going on and he’s shown me links afterwards without me prompting. I have access to the original 70+ page document, the File 770 articles and updates, all provided by Ekpeki and seems unaltered. I also am still working through the info and doing my own research to make sure things add up.

When I first let folks know that I was getting to know Ekpeki, one informed me that he liked to self promo and he threw his weight around a lot. That was it. And this is in the field of western, traditional, science-fiction and fantasy writing, where Harlan Ellison groped a woman on stage at the Nebulas and is known for berating people openly, Issac Asimov snapped bra straps, and Neil Gaiman raped – but that was all pretty okayed behavior in the community – File 770 dragged its feet about Gaiman and both Asimov and Ellison are beloved in the traditional SFF community. I operate under a belief of “what you will accept is what you will allow” and if a White person, especially a guy, in the community has done something worse but still has a career or a half-way decent reputation, it shows me anything lesser is not a genuine concern in that community. In other words, I grade a person of color with the exact same yardstick as the White person gets. And if groping, berating and rape are fine in that community (especially if you have to hit a particular number for anyone to actually care), that means if anything less than that is creating a fire, there is probably a coat rack argument afoot. Remember, I came from the music industry, I have met worse and seen that get lauded. (People were surprised Bad Boy Entertainment lived up to its name, da fuq? )

Plus this was the same person who told me how great a person Pablo Defendini of Fireside fiction was when he was dropping novella contracts by surprise left and right after being mum for about a year – and blocking anyone who had an issue with that. That one got covered by SFWA’s Writer’s Beware and got a special caution notice from SFWA. I could not care less if Defendini was the bestest friend in the whole wide world that made the most amazing cupcakes and gave the bestest hugs – still not ok. I certainly wasn’t a fan of hearing it, especially as one of the novellas in front of Defendini was my work The Glassman when it was just 18,000 words. My work was on the final round before Defendini turned it down and I was super blown about that – until I later learned about the novella problems and the audio blackface. Actually, that was one diamond experience of several that pushed me to go indie and put out my work myself. And then there was the verbal blackface audio version done by a White narrator of the essay “Da’ Art of Speculatin'” and the best Defendini could say to all that was basically “I have zero idea how my own publishing house runs”.

Now, one thing I have noticed is that Ekpeki gets a lot of hate from the traditional Sci-fi/Fantasy (SFF) writing community, which is overwhelmingly White. Especially when he started sweeping awards and getting attention from lit publications, including ones that regularly ignore writers of color, such as Locus and Publisher Weekly. And it’s pretty vicious, from immense death threats to people saying he’s a rapper (?????????? Racism really can short-circuit a brain) that is a danger to everyone or whatever Jan 6 bs they tout. And remember, Gaiman literally raped people and fans are still hankering for the next display of Good Omens. A good chunk of the fans are also SFF writers. SFWA even made “Gaiman rules” instead of “Gaiman Get Out” for their workshops over a decade ago that lasted pretty much up to now. Sooooooooooooooooooooo, to me, that means some things are okay and some things aren’t. Why, I’ve seen J.K. Rowlings get more heat than Gaiman does and while she is deeply transphobic, among a litany of other problems (that were previously ignored because they targeted the marginalized, some are still ignored), there’s nothing so far, to date, of her engaging in actual physical harm towards transpeople or anyone else. Gaiman has a current body count of at least five in terms of non-consensual behavior. Both are messed up people but it doesn’t escape me that one is treated worse than the other and it isn’t the one who did physical harm.

Speaking of SFWA, I am aware Ekpeki was also a newly elected Director-at-Large, one of several. A director-at-large is someone or a group (in SFWA’s case, a group) who assists the actual executive Board. One Black person at the top, especially in a position no other Black person has been in before, is not going to change the entire organization, especially if that organization has a historical level adherence to Whiteness. Double so if they’re the only Black person in the group. For all I know, it’s just another “get you in the door just to shove you right back out of it and say ‘well, we tried ::shrug::” or “If anything goes wrong, remember: blame the Black one” type position. Happens often. I do know this current skirmish shouldn’t get him booted out if they can literally develop a special rule for Neil Gaiman preying on younger women at SFWA events for well over a decade. And they let Gaiman do pretty much everything SFWA related (he hasn’t held office, however). And this excludes the behavior of Asimov, China Miéville and Harlan Ellison. Hey, SFWA is probably waiting for 2-3 years to pass so they can shove Gaiman into more SFWA stuff. Ekpeki, however, was booted out on Oct 28, 2024. And it looks like it was the only time SFWA had a shuffle-up mid year in it’s history. Harlan Ellison was able to be vice president for the entire term 1965 – 1967. Ah, so I was right. He wasn’t a sweetheart during those years and didn’t magically turn into an ungracious dick after those years. Same Ellison through all that time.

Back to Ekpeki, pobody nerfect and everyone can do something evil so that’s why I still looked at the links Ekpeki provided and also looked about elsewhere so I could see things for myself. It’s similar to how I approached the accusations with Gaiman, I listened to every podcast and writing about his behavior, despite the fact he already was showing major signs on the walls in how he acted and treated others years prior. I do this because saints aren’t as common as others would like to think. While I already believed the women Gaiman raped when it was just one, it doesn’t mean I don’t want to learn the details so I can make a better decision or have a thorough thought about the situation. I rather make as informed a decision I can, not just vibe off of feelz and “well, I already like this person” or “well, I already dislike this person”. You learn that one kinda fast in the music industry, especially if you are in any circles with folks like R. Kelly and/or the Lost Prophets. Vibes are nice but sometimes vibes lie. Especially if they are meant to.

This means that if anyone has anything concerning about Ekpeki (that would also be devastating if it were a White guy doing it, not just “Hey, we finally got something to nail you to the wall! – unless you wrote Coraline, love that book and the movie was brilliant”), then send it. Big or small, I do want to see whatever you have. It might not move me, but then again it might, I genuinely can’t tell if I don’t see it. I thought Ce-Lo Green was a great person – up until his rape case, the details around it and his “who gives a sh#t” reaction to it. I didn’t need to see the case, his temper and words were enough to make me notify every woman I personally knew in the industry to watch themselves around him and anyone who seems to support him since he’s in the same circles I run in also. And some were notifying me of the same before I could get a word out. I hadn’t met him but I didn’t want to risk the safety of someone who did or would and they felt the same. If I see an issue and it looks thoroughly definitive, I change with it. Ditto with Buckcherry and Marylin Manson. I looked at as much as I could find when Meg Thee Stallion was shot, including footage and social media posts. Because I want to make an informed decision, not one based on feelings if I can help it. And when there was the audio of her shooter admitting he shot her, that pretty much sealed the deal. However, I already believed her because her side was the most cohesive and made the most sense out of everyone. And lined up with the police footage I eventually found.

All acid aside briefly and back to the world of writing, I do want to see proof of more misbehavior if it is there. I genuinely do. I have a Contact Me form and I religiously check my messages so know that if something is sent, I will see it. But understand that I’m going to weigh it by it’s own accord – and then I look at the community affected and see how they usually handle issues like that and worse ones. If it’s a community that can make special rules to accommodate messed up folks like rapists and gropers (especially if they are White because race matters and it’s amazing how fast people are sticklers for rules when someone darker is around), then it’s going to make me wonder why something that is comparatively smaller is getting such heat. Remember, if the community is already fairly ok with rape and other bigger problems, what makes this comparatively smaller instance so special?

I also saw that File 770 debunked the original complaint, and the woman who brought this all forth apologized but File 770 still recognizes that this doesn’t automatically heal everything to do with Ekpeki.

By the way, there’s concerns that Ekpeki “White guilts” White people into voting for him in awards and funding his “personal” trips to WorldCon and other writing conventions.

Let’s get some bits out of the way:

He’s a writer, WorldCon is a writing convention that houses the Hugos, that’s not a personal trip, that’s a business one. I went to Multiverse as an author – it’s a book convention. Learn the difference between business and personal, it will help a lot. I’m personally about to go to South Korea to work on a book series later in 2025. I’m working, not having Super Happy KPop Fun Time.

Moving on, I personally have never met or known a single person who has killed themselves due to White guilt. Regular, standard, garden-variety guilt? There are cemeteries filled with them and they crowd trauma disorder units like a party no one would ever want to be invited to. White guilt? No one. Even if White people were offing themselves from an attack of conscious (good riddance? If that’s the route someone takes as the alternative to literally unlearning harmful rhetoric and being a better person – which is tough but not impossible and not all bramble and turmoil, you do get to make new friends and have more vibrant life experiences – then please head for your nearest exit bag because hey, something-something Darwin-related), it’s not my personal problem. Or the problem of any person of color. Including Ekpeki. I’ve seen him post about his fundraisers on facebook, I don’t see any guilting. I have seen him post about his experiences, it’s not suffera literature. If anything, it comes off more as “White people are paying attention to me when they usually ignore Black people vivaciously (and still do), might as well talk about issues here that affect me and others like me.” Pretty standard of any Black person who has over-glaring attention from White people. Because you have zero idea when they’ll go from “this is my favorite Negro” to “there’s a fire burning in their eyes – and it’s in the shape of a cross”, and it’s super fast. Look no further Will Smith & Kanye if you want a recent and visible rendition of how that all goes. Either shamed or go mental. Or any fairly visible Black kid in the D&D space. Because these are the same people who hop from Octavia Butler (after she hit her head on the pavement and croaked, they did not care much about her prior) to N.K. Jemison to Ekpeki now. They’re tokenized, in other words. None of these writers wanted to be used in this way, they just wanted to write, just like everyone else. But White folks in SFF seem to have an extremely hard time understanding that. Even I don’t want that kind of messed up attention, I’m not interested in becoming Alexander from Baltimore Sci-Fi Society, the Black kid who got this exact treatment (again, he didn’t ask for, because he was a teen surrounded by adults) and went batty as a result. Because that’s the end result: you either go nuts, they fry you for something a White person gets a major pass for, or they discard you the nanosecond you’re no longer useful for their virtue signaling (which is for other White people, remember, they don’t care about you) – or all three. They don’t really care, they got whatever they wanted out of that, who cares about you?

Also, here’s the thing about guilt, any guilt: it is a feeling you have in yourself. A person can try to stoke it in others but at the end, it is your emotion, created inside you. I have ran into this myself, White guilt from White people, simply because I was existing. I’m not guilting you that I’m from the inner city, that’s you. It’s simply a fact for me. I’m not guilting you by needing to take buses instead of have a car when I was a teen/young adult (when this was happening), that’s you. It’s simply a fact for me. Your White guilt is meaningless to me. It’s 100000000000% not my problem you think you’re a terrible person. Get a therapist or get over it. (And if you think, “get over it” means “go full MAGA”, the guilt was mainly theatre you were doing for yourself and dragging other people into it – you don’t actually have a conscious, just a manipulation drive.) White guilt gets heaped upon Black folks a lot, we do not ask for it. White guilt is hella performative anyways, very “oh woes, please someone (not someone White) assuage me of this emotional turmoil and guilt which pangs the very fiber of my being, oh dear, oh my”. It just sound like more emotional labor assistance from BIPoC, painted as guilt.

That’s kind of why my assistance of White guilt sounds very “it’s ‘down the road’, not ‘across the street’, Schick has awesome blades, have fun!” because when I don’t assuage the guilt like they were expecting but instead pour into it for my own entertainment in a way that visibly shows I don’t care since it is not my problem, guess what it turns into? Anger. Because they didn’t expect you were going to pull the “I’m actually a human being you’re dumping your bullsh#t onto and I will happily let it fall to the floor” card. Guilt can turn into anger but when it is flash paper quick, which White guilt turns into? That’s not actual guilt, it’s just manipulation. Because exactly what are you mad at? And why did you think it was my job to care? Real guilt can be very consuming, White guilt is just self-imposed privileged bs. If you want to self-flagellate for selfish reason, here’s let me help you and I’ll turn it into my comedy hour. Look, it’s either that or my time is being wasted, which I despise and is exactly what White guilt does for any BIPoC. Remember, you can always just broaden your horizons, unlearn messed up behavior on your own time, speak up when it happens and eradicate whatever “guilt” you have that way. It doesn’t bother me much to be this caustic because, hey, I’m not a person to them, I’m a walking political stance and unfortunately for them, I’m actually not a political stance, I’m a person, surprise! That method works a lot better than what my younger self did, which was be too nice. When I meet someone who is genuinely trying to be a better person, I’m way nicer. When it’s White guilt, set phasers to “fry”.

As it pertains to Ekpeki, it’s not really Ekpeki mobilizing a feeling that someone has in themselves. Guilt happens inside of others, you don’t put it in them. You can try but it’s on them to feel it. It’s just a post. I’ve seen way more fundraiser posts from others in general. And at least he’s fundraising to go to places to do business, not visit some vacation spot to kick back and do absolutely nothing.

And for awards, Ekpeki even won an NAACP Image award. That’s Black people voting for art within the diaspora. We don’t exactly go “Awwwwwwwww, you’re a little waif in stray from Nigeria, here’s an award from the Black American diaspora,” your art has to stand on its own merits. Obviously, traditional SFF would ignore that because it isn’t White-centered. To them, if it isn’t about them, it doesn’t exist and it definitely doesn’t matter unless forced to pay attention to it.

Other marginalized groups may not like talking about race and racism or other forms of prejudice like Black folks do (then they wonder how we got our own universities, media stations, art, historical laws passed (that they also benefit from), etc etc – and still call us lazy and uncouth ) but it’s what we do. You get progress when you bring up issues. When Ekpeki posts about prejudice and things like that, he’s not saying anything that hasn’t already been said before from bigger and smaller people. These are some of the same folks who will whinge about Ekpeki but obsessed over Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” song. I bring that up because the person who mentioned that Ekpeki White Guilts for Money was a non-Black writer of color.

I’ve read both the original accuser, Erin, and Ekpeki replies – one thing struck me, Erin pulled White Woman Tears. If the term is new for you, here’s this and also this.

For me, that usually kills whatever you have to say. She felt like she didn’t belong as a White South African? That’s not Ekpeki’s problem, he’s a spec fic writer, not a therapist, she should try one of those. Plus she’s a White person in South Africa, space was literally carved out for her, out of other people and their land. Apartheid, hello? She’s acting like she was thrown in jail for 27 years in South African prison and finally got out – oh, wait, that was Nelson Mandela, whoops. This is what happens when you’re too nice, you extend a kind hand … and then they put out a 70+ page document on you they eventually have to rescind “That is like so much of what I needed to hear right now. I’m actually crying” is one thing Erin said. Ekpeki was nice there because he wanted her to feel like she belonged as a fellow writer living in Africa. I completely get it because I know what it feels like to be an outcast – but I would have dropped the guillotine with that line.

There’s being appreciative and tears coming from that (especially when you can’t sell a story and one finally gets accepted after years of trying, I know exactly how that feels, big time) and then there is pulling a classic White Girl loop de loop that winds up dragging a Black person. She did the latter. She’s free to have emotions but it’s on her to control them, not use it as a tool. Looks like she didn’t cry during her 70+ pages or she would have probably fried her keyboard. Sounds like she knew where she belonged when it came to mobilizing White and White-appealing anger. And using the accusation of theft, that’s a classic one. Well, goodness, here she was saying she doesn’t belong when she seems to know how to fit in quite well when it suits her.

The anthology in question was for the African Diaspora – that means anyone who hails from Africa by blood or simply was born there. Black Voices is similar not not the same, it’s for African descendants. Black people, in other words. Looking at technicalities, Erin would count for the African Diaspora given that she’s born in South Africa, a country in the continent of Africa. So, going off technicalities, there’s no real issue there (unless the anthology was crammed with White people, then there would be a major issue there). Also, there was collaboration between her and Ekpeki, so still there’s someone who is actually Black (and African) on the story. It’s a collab. It’s still, going off technicalities again, a diaspora work.

I have seen Ekpeki worried about winding up on Writer’s Beware but mainly when kinks in the publishing system are going awry and it seems like he wants to fix them. Defendini of Fireside didn’t care, just hit the block button over and over and paint himself as a suffera when cornered about it. That’s noteworthy on Ekpeki’s part. Heck, even the owner, Gordon Van Gelder of Fantasy and Science Fiction has been wonky with edits and payments, which also wound up on Writer’s Beware but people are still sending their stuff to them and hoping to get in. Actually, it was the editor Sheree Thomas, the first Black editor the publication had, who was catching heat left and right, even though she’s not the owner, and had to put up with an owner who didn’t seem to care unless badgered to. And the SFF community seemed pretty ok with that.

All in all, if there is something I need to see, send it. I can’t decide on what I don’t know about. But I also know things aren’t adding up somewhere and it’s the SFF community who is producing the funny math. Ekpeki didn’t have to inform me, he could have kept quiet and hoped I would not have seen anything. Others have done that with me before, it’s probably the most popular (and worst idea of a) route I’ve seen. But so far, I have not requested for my works to be pulled from anything Ekpeki is on and currently do not intend to unless I see something to give me proper justification and concern to do so.