Abigail Barnette's Blog, page 17

Jill is my best friend. Jill is gone.

Jill and I met in 1994, freshman year gym class. I was brand new. All the other kids were from local Catholic feeder schools. When the teacher sadistically instructed us to pick a partner during the very first day of class, the only two students left without a partner were Jill and me.

But she said I couldn’t be her partner because she’d already partnered up with an invisible friend.

It wasn’t a joke. She refused to be my partner.

That’s how we became friends.

On January 6th, 2022, Jill died suddenly in her sleep.

In the course of our friendship, we went to all sorts of places together. We saw the Liberty Bell together. She pointed at a painting of Benjamin Franklin and John Adams reading the Declaration of Independence as Thomas Jefferson looked on.  She leaned over and said, “Hey, can I get your John Hancock on this?”

It’s still the funniest thing I’ve ever heard anyone say.

Jill found the cold, impersonal nature of the “have a good summer” yearbook signature perfect for birthday cards and books and basically anything she could write on and give to me. She gave me the same birthday card every year. It’s a plain white card with “Happy Birthday! I got you a card! This is the front.” The inside read, “This is the inside.” And on the back, “This is the back.” When I recently directed a show, she came and brought me a card she made. “You directed a show! I got you a card. This is the front.”

Once, we were at the mall. Bath and Body Works had a seasonal candle with Elton John’s name on it. Jill picked it up, took the lid off, inhaled, then said to the sales associate, “This doesn’t smell anything like him.”

My heart is broken.

We had a running joke where we’d always ask each other, “are you mad at me?” We never were. Neither of us could remember a time we were ever in a fight.

When someone dies, their texts and messages don’t disappear. You can still see your ongoing conversation as if it could keep going. I sat in front of our open messenger chat and typed, “This time I really am mad at you.” I couldn’t send it. I don’t want her to think I’m really mad at her. It’s not her fault.

I don’t know how to be me without her.

We both made Spotify playlists about each other. Mine is titled, “Jill and Jen BFFs 4Eva” and she called hers, “IDK, my BFF Jen?” due to the fact that we constantly referenced that old cellphone commercial where the little girl is texting, “IDK, my BFF, Jill?” Both playlists have “our” song, “Little Wonders” by Rob Thomas, on them. They also both have liberal doses of the Spice Girls because they were our thing. 

We had thousands, maybe tens of thousands, probably millions of things that were our thing.

There are more photos of Jill on the walls of my home than there are photos of my kids. To be fair, I’ve known Jill longer.

Once, we spent an entire day using MS Paint to draw “Ghost Frank” (he looks exactly how you’d imagine an MS Paint ghost to look) into photos with the Beach Boys. Ghost Frank is the fifth Beach Boy, no matter what John Stamos thinks. It’s just that nobody acknowledges Ghost Frank because he accused Brian Wilson of stealing his wallet. I tried to joke with Mr. Jen that I had to break the news to Ghost Frank and that he would be devastated. But Mr. Jen didn’t get it. Only Jill would get it.

Jill is gone.

Our jokes, our codes, the language of our friendship is a dead language now. Only one speaker is left and it is impossible to teach. It takes twenty-seven years to become fluent.

Jill is my best friend. Jill is gone.

I wrote this throughout the day yesterday after I got the call. I can’t decide who to be or how to be a Jenny who doesn’t have a Jill. So, I’m going to just run on autopilot. I’m going to work, I’m going to rehearsals, I’m going to consider whether or not I could sit through her funeral with dignity or if I can’t bear to think of a life where I’ve been to Jill’s funeral because Jill’s funeral was a thing that happened. But please, as you see me posting content here and over on Patreon, as you see me living my life as usual, please don’t think it’s because I don’t care about her. It’s just because I’m sleep-walking through life with a broken heart.

2021: What a Year of Chaotic Creation Taught Me

Not to be all, “What I did over summer break” here, but I feel like doing something radical like “taking a whole year off and just doing whatever the fuck I feel like while supporting myself solely with blogging and my backlist” is worth examining. Because first of all

It was terrifying. Anybody who’s switched careers or considered switching careers or took a gap year of any kind knows the terror of “what if.” Specifically: what if I’m fucking up my entire life when I could keep my head down and slog. And that was a valid concern for me. I was killing off a pen name and moving away from writing romance, but I was also trying to move into other areas like art and youtube videos and animation and even game design. If not for yous all, I would have been flat on my ass. Patreon support and private donations kept me afloat throughout 2021 and believe me, it wouldn’t have been a very creative year if I’d been plunged into sudden poverty. So, thank you all for that, because I’d forgotten that

I’ve done scary things in the past and I just forgot about it. 2022 is actually the tenth anniversary of my Fifty Shades of Grey recaps. It was absolutely terrifying to write those. I knew that a career in traditional publishing would never happen for me again when I started tearing into another, more successful (and, as it turns out, wildly vindictive) author’s work. I truly believed I would write those for an audience of eight or so people and then fade into obscurity and further poverty, a failure like I always knew I would be. But my entire life changed. I took that risk and it led to writing arguably my most successful series ever. How did I manage to forget that it all started with doing something scary, taking a leap of faith that was actually more of a l’appel du vide thing? Ten years ago, I was burned out and at the end of my rope, but somehow I’d forgotten that steering hard in a totally different direction was the way to go. Now,

There is so much more joy in creating. I’d reached a point where I wasn’t having fun anymore. I could still create stuff, I could still pay the bills, but I’d become monumentally dissatisfied with what I was devoting my time to. Now, I’m fully engaged and having fun, even with the stuff I started before I went off to find myself. I don’t want to give the impression that I dislike working on stuff to share with you all or that you’re all some kind of massive obligation I resent. There are just times that it becomes overwhelming and frustrating because it’s not going as quickly as I would like or I’m not able to work at the same pace 2012 Jenny was able to pull off. I never resented my awesome Trout Nation citizens, but I’ve resented myself for not cranking out the hits faster. This, in turn, fed into this awful self-loathing about how ungrateful and lazy I am, until the thought of making or doing anything was a nightmare. Now that the burnout is gone, the self-loathing and inward resentment cleared up enough to handle another really important block, which was my failure to realize that

If people want my work, they’ll buy it. This was a mind-blowing thought I had when I saw someone post one of those tired “I made a thing go buy it maybe”-style promotional tweets (which I have been guilty of in the past): why the fuck do people spend so much time apologizing for creating something and selling it? Like it’s some kind of imposition on our fellow humans who, and I cannot stress this enough, will not buy something they do not want. I had started to feel like I was inconveniencing people by releasing a book and promoting it, by having a Patreon and charging for blog posts on there, I just felt like everything I created was me actively making a nuisance of myself. I was like Oliver Twist, please sir, can you buy this? And then I thought about this one author back in the day whose Twitter feed was just every five minutes, buy my book, buy my book, 5 stars, buy my book. Even in the midst of a personal tragedy, she found time to tweet that it had happened, then responded to all the supportive replies with “it would make me feel better if you’d buy my book and leave a review.” I know in my heart, to its very depths, that I have never been that obnoxious about my self-promotion, and I also know for a fact that I never bought a book from that author because of how obnoxious and opportunistic she was. And guess what? That’s everybody’s choice on the whole planet. My fear that someone will buy my books, read my blog, join my Patreon, look at my videos, etc. because they feel somehow forced and then they will hate me forever is completely unfounded. I’m not scamming anyone for making stuff and offering it for sale. I also learned that

I don’t like writing books. I really, really don’t. You know what I do like to write? I like writing The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp. I liked writing The Boss as a serial. I enjoy writing serials and I don’t enjoy sitting down, writing something in one big, long go, feeling lonely and invisible, putting it for sale, watching it make something of a blip for a few days, and then…that’s it. There’s really no sharing of the journey, no feeling that what I’m writing will even touch anybody’s eyeballs. I’m writing for an audience of one for a year, then I put it up for sale and…there it is. It’s just there. I’ve been cool with that in the past, during my traditional publishing career, because there wasn’t any other way. But after I wrote The Boss as a serial, I stayed dissatisfied for a lot of years, thinking more than once, “Gosh, I wish I could go back to what it was like writing The Boss.” I remember nights when I was so obsessed with getting that next chapter out, I’d be typing with one hand and cooking with the other. That was the energy that first drew me to writing through fanfic, and that’s the energy I need to get back to. On the fiction side, you’re going to see a pivot toward more serialized content that will later get published in book format for people who’d rather read it all in one go. But overall, my focus is going to be

BLOGGING.

I don’t know why I keep clinging to this idea that because I started out as a fiction writer, I must stay a fiction writer forever or die penniless in the streets. I don’t have to. Fiction is about to become a side job, a hobby/job, so I can focus on the writing that I realized I enjoy a lot more. That’s writing stuff here and sharing it with all of you and reading but never responding to your comments because I get easily overwhelmed. I like saying stuff and having people say stuff, often smarter stuff, back. I like feeling that I’m not just putting words into the void, the way I do with writing. What I learned is that to create, I need to have a community of like-minded people to share those ideas and projects with and I need to feel like I’m not working in a dark little office alone.

Thanks for bearing with me during a year of sparse blog content while I went out and:

Started designing t-shirts and stuffTried my hand at learning animationSpent some time figuring out Godot and whether or not I’d like to make a videogameDirected a production of Moana Jr. that broke records at its theater

Okay, quick break to be a proud director:

(This was my favorite scene of the show. These kids are, I believe, fourteen and seventeen and they made me cry every night.)

And of course, just time to figure out what I need to keep going in the “unprecedented times” we’re all so #blessed to be living in. I hope that everybody finds at least some little way to be an explorer this year, and may you all find your way through the burnout.

 

This Viral BookTok Recommendation Is Better Than It Should Be (part two)

In part one, I told you of the wonders of blue alien peenus.

Now, we’re gonna talk about jacking off minotaurs.

It’s not a joke, it’s not a Chuck Tingle book. Morning Glory Milking Farm is an urban fantasy romance set in a charmingly bonkers world in which various fairytale creatures live and work side-by-side with people in the normal, boring world. It’s part of a series by C.M. Nascosta, but at this point, I’m only recommending Morning Glory Milking Farm because I DNFed the other book due to reasons we’ll discuss within this review.

On cover alone, this book would have never ended up on my Kindle. And to be perfectly honest, now that I’ve read the book? The cover is fucking gross. However, what’s inside the cover is what matters with this one. And yes, what’s inside the cover is a story about a woman who jacks off minotaurs…into old-school glass milk bottles.

You know what? Let’s not focus on the cover.

The human heroine, Violet, is struggling financially when she finally lands a well-paying job with a pharmaceutical company in nearby Cambric Creek, a community of mythological creatures. Turns out, minotaur semen has scientific and medical applications, and these guys make a little extra cash for selling it. Violet’s job is to, well.

Look, she jacks off minotaurs. There’s no other way to put it. That’s the job. she sits under a massage-table type bench with a hole in it and jacks them off. It’s clearly inspired by milking table porn, so if that’s your kink, there’s plenty of that going on in here and it’s surprisingly hot. Just like with Ice Planet Barbarians, it’s a story that you could find on Literotica.com, in the best possible way. There’s solid worldbuilding, there’s heat, there’s humor, and a surprisingly slow burn on the romance plot, considering the heroine gets well acquainted with the hero’s undercarriage as the meet-cute.

Rourke is a minotaur whose POV we’re never in, so despite how much I liked this book, I can’t say that I know anything about his character beyond “he’s hot and has a fancy minotaur dick.” This is another part that has confused me; the way his dick is described, it sounds more like a horse dick than a bull dick, but that doesn’t really matter when as a minotaur, he’d just have a regular human dick, right?

Don’t get hung up on the dicks. Violet is likable, the scenes at the “milking farm” are hot, and eventually, someone fucks a minotaur. The worldbuilding is exciting to me. I mean, it’s mythological creatures living human-ish lives among humans in human-style settings. I was so excited when I realized that was the set-up. I wanted to call up C.M. Nascosta and be like, “HEY, ME TOO!” Those types of settings are so fun to write and read, and this is like if she took ’00s urban fantasy worldbuilding and went, “you know what would look great in this? Minotaur erotica.”

Now, my original intent was to finish another of Nascosta’s monster romances set in Cambric Creek, Girls Weekend. The concept was cool and I really expected to be adding it to this post as another “must-read” but I can’t. Unfortunately, Girls Weekend falls into a trap that that’s hinted at near the end of Morning Glory Milking Farm: species becomes a stand-in for race.

Once Violet and Rourke are dating, she meets his neighbors, an orc and an elf who are in a romantic relationship together. Their story is one of the plot threads in Girls Weekend, which I DNFed when it started to read a lot like sex tourism fantasies of visiting far-off places and having sex with the not-white men who live in them. In this case, the orcs read like they were a green-washed version of porn-fetishized Black guys and the pastel-colored heroines talk about them like sex is a sure thing because orcs are sex-hungry brutes. The fact that one of the elves meets up with a character who’s, for lack of a better word, biracial, and immediately describes him as having a narrower nose than other orcs was a red flag; so was the fact that upon finding out one of his parents was an elf, the elf character notes that this makes him more attractive to her.

The problem is, species getting swapped for race in fiction is a 90º slope that’s marked as a bunny hill.  You’d think you could avoid doing it by accident, but unless you’re hyperaware of stuff, you can end up rolling down the hill ass-over-tea-kettle. The monster erotica subgenre is a pounding avalanche of that trope right now, and unfortunately, Girls Weekend is another snowflake added to the pile.

But Morning Glory Milking Farm doesn’t delve quite so deeply into the idea of “biracial” orcs or interspecies relationships. The human/minotaur incompatibility of Violet and Rourke is largely constrained to stuff like having to get special detergent to break down the quarts of bull semen that end up on her sheets when he ejaculates and how to make a relationship work when one of you can’t comfortably fit inside the other’s apartment. There’s a brief conversation with the couple from Girls Weekend in which the elf hints at difficulties being in an interspecies relationship, but the culture clash element isn’t a major theme in Morning Glory Milking Farm.

I really loved and highly recommend Morning Glory Milking Farm, because it’s a fun time. Girls Weekend let me down, but I’ll give another book by C.M. Nascosta a try, in the hopes that Girls Weekend is just a dud and the same mistakes won’t get repeated. And you should give Morning Glory Milking Farm a try. It’s cute, it’s funny, it’s filthy, and it surprisingly lives up to its hype.

Jealous Haters Book Club: Crave SPECIAL EDITION

In the last recap of Tracy Wolff’s Crave, I noted that the reference to the CW show Legacies made me a little uncomfortable, considering that the publisher’s other big hit was a series that blatantly ripped-off the original series of Roswell. I did some poking around and it definitely sounded like there were similarities, but nothing I hadn’t expected to find similar. It just looked like a bunch of common tropes.

I decided I’d just give Legacies a little watch. And I did. And I recorded it. And had to get it copyright approved on YouTube, which means that the ads you see in the video were put there by Warner Bros. Television as payback for using their content. Which, by the by, is a neat feature; I’ve got another react video waiting for a decision on a claim and it’s like, come on. Give people a break for react videos. If they’re not showing the entire movie who cares? It’s criticism and commentary for fuck’s sake. Not a bootleg.

SO ANYWAY. Here’s my video with my verdict, which I think most everybody here is going to agree with.

Oh! And while you’re watching the ol’ YouTube, subscribe to my channel. Even if you never watch YouTube or you never watch my videos (which is always okay, they’re really only on there because I think it’s fun), I’m trying to get to 1,000 subscribers so I can get back to doing my live Saturday night tarot get-togethers. YouTube took the mobile live stream function away from accounts under 1,000 subscribers and because my internet connection is so unpredictable in my rural, I’d been relying on 4G to do these broadcasts. After trying a few different methods and platforms, I had to call it quits. I would really love to hit 1,000 YouTube subscriptions so that I could get back to that!

Right. Okay. Video time. Jealous Haters AV Club.

FREE SHORT STORY FROM JENNIFER MORNINGSTAR!

Slight change of plans; I was going to release this on Jennifer Morningstar’s YouPorn account, but there’s been a slight delay in getting that set up. So, please enjoy this Smashwords freebie, back from the out-of-print void!

 

Jilted bride Lady Catherine Stelling would have never considered running away with a rogue, but that was before notorious pirate Christopher Valentine set his sights on her faithless fiance’s prized airship.

Read this fun, silly, sexy steampunk story here!

And don’t forget, I’m bringing more of my sexy steampunk back from the void! Look for details here!

High Thoughts About Animals

The weather where I live is b-a-n-a-n-a-s where I live right now. Pain levels? Oh, through the god damn roof. I’m high as heck as a result. And I have thoughts about animals.

I think cats can read. My dearly departed cat BFF used to sit in my lap when I worked from bed. She’d put her paws over my wrist as I typed, and she kept her eyes on the screen. Every so often, she’d turn her head and look at me with such a judgmental expression that I am certain she could read what I’d just written and she did not like it.If I had too much money I would die by tiger. I have this dream of winning the lottery (which I never play) and opening a tiger sanctuary like Carole Baskin’s. But I would die because I would pet the tigers. I wouldn’t be able to resist. I know it’s bad from a conservation standpoint. And I know it’s dangerous because they’re frickin’ tigers. But I would do it anyway because I have no self-control. They’re frickin’ tigers.I’m afraid to realize my dream of eventually dying by tiger. My housecat, Baymax, is less than a year old and he makes me afraid of tigers. Baymax is a loving cuddle bug like 90% of the time. The other 10%, he’s a primal beast, lunging at faces and viciously attacking feet under blankets. Today, as Baymax had my whole nose in his mouth (a tooth in each nostril), I was like…what the fuck? Why do people keep tigers at their house? I would be dead right now.And yet, I keep dogs that could easily kill me in my house with me. I don’t think my little pit bull could kill me. She could seriously hurt me, for sure, but I can physically overpower her dumb ass when she tries to do something aggressive. My older pit bull? Definitely she could. But I’m cool just chilling on the couch with her, trusting her not to kill and eat me.I can’t believe birds and chickens and shit like that are dinosaurs. Why is this not something we’re marveling at every single day? You know those fat little round boy birds with black heads and little white cheeks? I read somewhere that those are descending from T-Rexes. WHY ARE WE NOT TALKING ABOUT THIS MORE?I think some animals probably don’t give a shit about captivity. I’ve been thinking about getting a jumping spider recently but I was like, oh no, what if I do that and it’s actually cruel to keep them in a terrarium after all? And then I thought about if I was a spider, wouldn’t I dig a life where predators were not a thing, the temperature was always just right, and I always had exactly how much food and water I needed? I think the same thing about hamsters. The only thing a hamster in the wild wants is to be left the fuck alone and to eat and burrow. I don’t think they mind living in people’s houses when they’re getting what they need.I think a lot of animals do and people who keep them are bullies. Why do you want a pet tiger? Those things want to go around places. I think the fact that we have to keep cats indoors is cruel, to be honest. I get that it’s a responsible thing to do but at the same time I’m like, man. Why do I think I’m the boss of these cats? But it’s like, a million times worse when it’s not a domesticated species.Don’t get me started on octopuses. It should be illegal for private individuals to have pet octopuses. They’re so much smarter than we are and I know that we don’t know everything about them yet. They die of boredom in home aquariums. That’s fucked up.Same for chimps and other apes. There doesn’t seem to be much difference between humans and chimpanzees and gorillas and stuff. They’re way too much like us.I’m afraid of chimps and other apes. I can barely squeak by on picking up human social cues. How the hell am I supposed to figure out how to communicate with a gorilla without making a fatal faux pas? They have all these cultural rules and behaviors that are part of survival, so they take that shit seriously. My plan for if I ever run into a gorilla or a chimp or a bonobo is to just lay on the ground and hope it doesn’t notice me.

Well, it’s time for a nap. I’ll be getting high when I wake up so please share your animal thoughts.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

CW: Infant loss, parent estrangement, grief, self-pity

The holidays are hard for a lot of people. I recognize that I don’t have the patent on that. I also recognize that not everyone feels the need to state that fact, almost as an apology for daring to have their own bad feelings about the holiday season, but I have been trained by determined child therapists to always remember that the feelings of others are bigger, deeper, more real than what I experience and therefore I should always acknowledge those (neurotypical) feelings first so as not to make everything about myself.

That’s a huge theme in this story.

This year, I’m dreading Christmas at my Grandma Z’s house. I’ve dreaded Christmas (and almost every single holiday that requires family togetherness) ever since my mother shacked up with my future stepfather two months after my high school graduation–three desperate, pick-me months after she met the man and reshaped her entire personality and worldview to fit his. I am the classic failed baby trap, the one that backfired on the woman who set it. Freed from her Jenny-shaped shackles by the arrival of my adulthood, my mother set about building the life that she always longed for, the one in which she had a husband to care for her and legitimate children. Almost overnight, I went from believing I had a mother who loved me, that we were sold only as a pair, that she would always have my back.

In her eyes, it seemed, I was the only thing still standing in the way of her do-over, something that became abundantly clear as the years went on and I was slowly but surely phased out through devious moves like “accidentally” forgetting to tell me that the entire family was meeting for my grandparents’ 50th-anniversary group photo. The photo is still on display at my grandmother’s house. There are all my aunts and uncles, my cousins, their spouses and children, and of course, my mother and stepfather, Donna and Gary, with my little half-siblings. Notably absent are me, my husband, and our son. I was devasted and angry, but determined not to make it “all about myself,” as my tiresome emotional outbursts often did.

Recently, I absolved Donna of her duty to keep pretending that she’s my mother. It’s not much of a difference, to be honest; ever since she moved in with Gary, even just a phone call with her was intensely one-sided. Most of her responses were, “mm-hm,” and “oh?” in a bored, almost annoyed tone. How dare I break the bubble of the pristine, Bible-correct family life she’d wanted for so long with a call about something good that had happened to me or, even worse, because something had reminded me of some joke between just the two of us? With the advent of cellphones, things improved, a little. She would call me from the car–only the car, never from home–and tell me about what was happening at work. Eventually, she would ask something about me or the kids, but without fail, the call would drop or Gary would be trying to reach her on the other line or she would pull into the driveway. Once in that driveway, her obligation was to her new life only, and she was finished with me.

Ultimately, our phone conversations became less frequent. In recent years, our contact was limited to seeing each other at Christmas and possibly getting a phone call on my birthday as she, you guessed it, drove home from work. Occasionally, I would see her Facebook posts as they devolved into QAnon conspiracy madness. Like everything else she believes in, I knew they weren’t her original thoughts but the thoughts Gary and their church wanted her to think. After all, she’d gone from picking up guys in bars on Friday night and leaving me with a babysitter until morning to hardcore Evangelical Christianity that dictated outing a trans woman at her church and participating in the shunning of a single teen mom (despite having been one herself). I’d already given up on ever having the close, loving relationship with my mom that I’d mistakenly believed we’d had when I was a child, so trying to change her mind when her political views became more like symptoms of long-term lead exposure wasn’t something I had the time, energy, or, frankly, the responsibility for.

If you ask members of my family why I put my foot down and made it clear to my mother that we are estranged, that I don’t want contact from her, that her number has been blocked from my phone, they would say, “Oh, you know Jenny. Crazy liberal.” Or simply, “politics, she’ll get over it.” And they’re right, it was a political post that caused me to finally unload on her (a post in which Donna lamented the denial of her “religious exemption” to the vaccine and announced that she was poised to lose the career to which I’d often taken a backseat throughout my childhood). What they won’t tell you is that they’ve sat by for the past twenty or so years watching my mother discard me without a single word to comfort me or to acknowledge openly that Donna’s abandonment might have had a lasting impact on me.

And the worst example of this involved the death of my little brother, Samuel.

It’s hard for me to type his name because I don’t feel like I’m allowed to. I’ve never felt like I was allowed to mourn him, to feel grief, to even tell people “my brother died” for a number of factors. Chiefly, the fact that I was told, very sternly, by Gary, that my brother’s existence and death had “nothing to do with you.”

At Donna and Gary’s wedding, I gave a (non-alcoholic, good, Christian) toast in which I mentioned my new stepbrother and stepsister and shared that I had always wanted a sibling. It was true; all my cousins had brothers or sisters growing up and I’d go to their houses, consumed with envy at how lively everything was, how they had people to talk to and play with and even fight with. I was the child of a single mom who worked nights, so I spent a lot of time by myself. Though I had just turned twenty when Donna announced she was pregnant for the second time, that childish hope sparked back up in me. Sure, my little brother or sister had missed the window for being my playmate or thunderstorm comfort buddy. There would be no epic fights over toys or who changed the unwritten rules of a complicated game of pretend, but I would finally have a sibling.

Even though the baby wasn’t born yet, Christmas was coming up and I wanted to get Donna and Gary something to celebrate the arrival of the baby, whom we already knew would be assigned male from the sonogram printout I’d framed and hung up in my apartment. Every time I’d look at it, I’d think about how in twenty years, my brother would come to visit me and I’d point to the wall of photos I’d have curated over the years and say, “look, I still have your first baby picture.”

I’d just bought the present the night Gary called me.

“Baby’s dead.”

That’s how he broke the news to me.

“Baby’s dead.”

I have children. I know the grief he must have been feeling. At the same time, I’d like to think that even in my darkest hour, I would find a less callous way of stating it.

My crying audibly annoyed him. “Don’t come down here,” he warned me. “This doesn’t have anything to do with you. You’ll just upset everyone and your mom doesn’t need that.”

Shame overwhelmed me. By crying at the news, I was making my brother’s death about me. I was already upsetting everyone and nobody wanted to see me because they had already predicted the erratic, selfish, overdramatic, focus-stealing behavior I was exhibiting from the moment I heard, “Baby’s dead.”

I said, “Tell mom I love her?”

Gary said, “Yup.” Maybe he did tell her I said that. Maybe he didn’t, because he didn’t want to upset her.

I didn’t speak to my mom on the phone that night. I don’t think anybody in my family bothered to call me. And that’s okay. Because I wasn’t the woman delivering a stillborn baby at the hospital. Every tear I shed made me feel more and more guilty, like my emotions were victimizing Donna even though I stayed in my apartment just fifteen minutes away from the hospital.

The next day, I spoke to my grandmother. She’d gone to the hospital. She and my grandfather had both held my brother in their arms. They saw what his face looked like. They said he was perfect.

They said my stepsister was there.

Her presence wasn’t upsetting. She got to hold my brother. I was furiously jealous. I’ve never really been able to like my stepsister as a result. It’s not her fault but it is what it is.

But at that moment, my irrational jealousy made me even more ashamed of my own grief. How dare I presume I should be included. How dare I have tears or feelings at all. No one said these things, but the message of “This doesn’t have anything to do with you,” had been crystal clear over the phone. And here I was, barging in, trying to be a part of something that I wasn’t included in.

“I just want to know what he looked like!” I sobbed.

“They took pictures,” My grandma assured me. “You’ll get to see him.”

The morning of the funeral, I was in a panic. I was running late. Something in me, some stupid thing in me, had convinced me that if I just got to the funeral early, if I just got there on time, if I got there before he went into the ground, maybe they would open his casket and I could see him. Maybe, after all the hope and the entire lifetime of longing, I would at least get to see what he looked like.

But I knew that it wouldn’t happen. I just needed that hope to get me there when I wasn’t sure my presence was even wanted. I didn’t ask them to open the casket, obviously, but it was hard to walk away from the graveside knowing that my chance was gone, that I was as close to my brother as I would ever be, and still I would never see his face.

A few weeks later, after the holidays, I mentioned to Donna that I knew there were photos. I asked if I could see them.

“No.”

I thought I heard wrong.

“Do you think I can’t handle it or something?” I asked because surely that’s what was going on. She was my mother, after all. She was trying to protect me.

“No. We just don’t want you to see them.”

“Does he look bad or–”

“He looks perfect. You’re just never going to see them.”

I went home that night and looked on the internet for photos of pre-term stillborns. This was the early days of the internet, before beautiful memorial photos. All I got were the photos I’d already seen from a million and one anti-abortion protests. It didn’t make me feel better or make my grief easier. All I could think about was that my brother was dead and gone, that my stepsister was worthy of seeing him and holding him, that nothing about his death or any part of my mom’s new life had “anything to do with” me.

To this day, I’ve never asked about the photos again. I don’t want to make it all about me. I don’t want to upset everyone. But there are times I want to drop to my knees and beg and offer them anything I have for just a two-second glimpse. Just so I can know what he looked like. I just want to know what my brother looked like.

Twenty-one years on, I still have uncontrollable crying jags when I remember all of this. It comes up more often than you’d think. And still, even here, on my blog, in my own space that I’ve created and carved out for myself, I’m embarrassed to share this story. I’m embarrassed to make it all about myself, to not respect the decisions Donna made in her very private grief and to hang all this dirty laundry out. I’m ashamed that I still cry about it because crying and emotions, particularly my crying and my emotion, “upsets everyone” and this “doesn’t have anything to do with” me. It feels selfish to share this part of my life because over two decades ago a woman who was already done with me had a stillborn baby and it had nothing to do with me.

It doesn’t matter that it was my brother. I was twenty, not six. I was grown up. I didn’t have to be included. I fully understand that I don’t have a right to be upset about something that happened to someone else and that I’m making it all about me, all over again. I understand this and I accept this but that doesn’t make it hurt less. It just compounds the shame over the grief I have no business feeling.

I have siblings now, as I mentioned above. I didn’t see them much when they were kids because I assumed that they, like the rest of Donna’s life, didn’t have anything to do with me. Now that they’re nearing adulthood, I like to think that I know them a little better and that they’re aware that I, absolutely, have to do with them. I don’t ever want them to think that I stayed away because I didn’t care or don’t love them. But there are no walls covered in pictures. No reminders of them around the house. Because I’ve never been sure that their existence was supposed to include me. And if I got too attached and something happened to them, my grief would be dramatic, overblown, silly, a performance to get attention.

I wouldn’t survive that again. One can only take so much self-hatred over things other people seem to be allowed to freely express.

This Christmas, I will go to my grandmother’s house. I will see Samuel’s stocking hung up with the collection of other “dead grandbaby” stockings that make up a macabre display intended to keep them in our memories. But this will be the first time that I don’t have to pretend that I’m a part of my mother’s new family.

She and her husband don’t have anything to do with me. I wish I would have gotten the hint twenty years ago.

Jealous Haters Book Club: Crave, Chapter 8, “Live and Let Die”

You’d think this would be the chapter where they watch a Bond movie, but alas, it is the chapter where my “inspired by” hackles first raise.

Let’s get into the recap and I’ll expand upon that.

At the beginning of chapter eight, Grace is back in her room, sleepless, just waiting for Macy to wake up so Grace can tell her what went on in the night.

The nausea hits me as I’m tiptoeing across the room, and I barely make it back to my bed with a soft groan.

Macy must have heard me because she tells me, “I promise the altitude sickness won’t last forever.”

“It’s not just the altitude sickness. It’s everything.”

“I bet,” is all she says, and the silence stretches between us. I’m pretty sure it’s because she’s giving me the space to sort through my thoughts and decide if I want to share any.

Can you imagine this exchange in Beautiful Disaster or A Court of Thorns and Roses? It would be like, I’m pretty sure it’s because she doesn’t care and all she cares about is pink stuff that makes me sick to my stomach because I’m not like other girls and also Macy is a whore and I’m perfect and a virgin.

Honestly, I can’t tell if the reason I’m enjoying this book more than the others is that it meets a bonkers low bar compared to other titles? Or is it genuinely this enjoyable?

“It’s just… Alaska’s like a foreign planet, you know? Like everything about this place is so different than home that it’s hard to get used to it.” Normally I don’t dump my stuff on people I don’t know really well—it’s easier to just keep everything inside—but Macy is the closest friend I have here. And there’s a part of me that feels like I’ll explode if I don’t talk to someone.

Macy tells Grace to give it more than twelve hours, let the altitude sickness clear up, and see if she can’t adapt to a new routine. The place is weird to Macy at times, and she’s live there her entire life. Then Grace lets it slip that she’s been up in the night.

“I know it’s a pretty big school, but do you know two guys named Marc and Quinn?” I ask.

“That depends. Does one of them have a septum piercing?”

This suggests there may be four guys named Marc and Quinn who hang out in groups of two but only one of those groups has a pierced Marc or Quinn (I can’t remember who had the piercing, I’m just getting old, okay?)

Macy starts to relate a funny anecdote about them when she realizes that Grace doesn’t find them quite as hilarious as Macy does.

“Maybe they were just fooling around, but…I’m pretty sure they tried to kill me tonight. Or at least scare me to death.”

“They tried to what?” she squawks, nearly dropping the bottle of water she had gotten out of the fridge for me. “Tell me what happened right now. And don’t leave anything out.”

Again, look at this totally normal reaction. Instead of following the paranormal YA handbook, Macy is concerned. She doesn’t just brush it off like, boys will be boys, lol they must like you, or yeah, they’re dicks but they’re dreamy dicks. This means Grace can tell Macy all about what happened–with one caveat. She leaves Jaxon out of the story.

Plus, I’d sort of silently agreed to keep something about the interaction a secret, although admittedly now, back in my room, I wonder if I’d imagined that silent exchange or not.

Idk, probably?

Grace explains how she escaped:

“Someone heard the fight and came to investigate. Once the boys realized there was a witness, they chilled out pretty quickly.”

“I bet they did, the jerks. The last thing they’d want is to be reported to my dad. But they should have thought of that before they put their hands on you. I swear, I’m going to murder them myself.”

I hate to keep comparing this to all the substandard YA tropes out there but can we take a moment to appreciate that Macy believes Grace without hesitation and revises her opinion of the two boys she earlier described as being “good guys” and “funny” based on how they treated Grace. Like, is this really happening?

“What were they thinking? They don’t even know you, so why do this?” She gets up, starts pacing. “You totally could have gotten hypothermia if they’d left you outside for too long, let alone what could have happened if they’d kept you out there more than ten minutes. You seriously could have died. Which makes no sense. They’re always a little wild, super high energy. But I’ve never seen them be malicious before.”

I don’t think a life-long Alaskan would immediately think, “you’d die in ten minutes” when it’s ten degrees, but those complaints are from the last chapter.

“The whole thing doesn’t make sense. I’m beginning to think they were high or something, because there’s no other explanation as to why they would have been outside in only jeans and T-shirts. I mean, how did they avoid getting hypothermia?”

“I don’t know,” Macy says. But she looks uncomfortable, like maybe she knows for a fact that they do drugs.

Or that they’re vampires or werewolves or ghosts or whatever.

Macy says her dad will take care of it, but Grace is kind of like, ehhhh don’t really want to be a tattle-tale on day two of being here. Then she thinks, hey, what if they bullied someone else like that?

Macy makes a random mention of a party they’re going to and how Grace is going to need make-up for that, and we get a little hint of Not Like Other Girls on the wind:

I’m not sure what amuses me more, the way Macy just casually drops in the fact that she expects me to attend a party with her today or the fact that she actually expects me to wear makeup to it, when mascara and a couple of tubes of lip gloss are pretty much all I own.

Considering she had a full face of makeup on yesterday when she was riding a snowmobile through the Alaskan wilderness, I can only imagine what her party look will be.

Hang on, now. Put that away, Grace. Don’t ruin this good thing we’ve got going.

Surprise bomb number two:

“It’s a welcome to Katmere Academy party—for you.”

“What?” I sit up so fast that my head starts to throb all over again. “A welcome party? For me? Are you serious?”

“Well, to be fair, the school hosts a kind of high tea one afternoon a month to promote student unity. We just decided to make today’s tea a little more festive in your honor.”

Who is “we” here? I assume it’s Uncle Doesn’t-Understand-Teens.

Macy promises Grace that not all the students at the school are jerk-offs.

“But I can cancel if you want. Tell everybody that your altitude sickness is too bad. Which, at the rate you’re going, might not even be a lie.”

I feel like every time I excerpt something from this book, it’s to marvel in how not fucking awful it is. Which is a nice change of pace, but probably not all that interesting to read. But you know what? Not every book we do here is gonna be an infuriating gem.

Thank god.

Grace says that unless she’s actively vomiting, she’ll go to the high tea.

I’ve got to face these prep school kids en masse sooner or later. Might as well get it over with today when they’re all under adult supervision and presumably on their best behavior. So much less chance of me being tossed into the snow or out a window that way… I shiver. Too soon for that joke.

My issue with “OMG HYPOTHERMIA” rears its ugly head again. Tossed into the snow or out a window. Both sound bad, right? But one is objectively worse and more dangerous compared to the other. So why was “tossed out a window” not the danger Grace was put in, in the first place?

I just want some raised stakes to balance out what I’m not wholly optimistic won’t become some kind of weird damsel-falls-for-abusive-anti-hero dynamic.

I’ve been hurt too many times before.

Macy keeps pushing water on Grace, warning her:

“[…] Altitude sickness requires lots and lots of hydration. I mean, if you don’t want to get pulmonary or cerebral edema, which, you know, could kill you almost as fast as hypothermia.”

Look at Macy, with the vague and kinda wrong but still pretty right medical advice! But it leads me back to the nits I’ve been picking about the location (and probability) of this school. The HAPE and HACE advice sounds like it’s based on climbing experience; those are conditions that generally happen above 8,000 feet, HACE usually doesn’t set in below 12,000 feet, and base camp to climb the largest peak in the Denali range is at 7,200 feet. I know we’ve been told that the school is built “halfway around the mountain” (which, if we’re talking about the main peak would make the school around thirty miles long) but Denali is a range, and no mountain so far has been specified. It would stretch the limit of my disbelief for the sake of the story to think that there was a thirty-mile long school built 8,000 feet above sea level and there’s no online trace of its existence. I also stretches the limit of my disbelief that any boarding school, no matter the size, would have been built 12,000 feet above sea level. The builders would have to be world-class athletes in top condition to survive working on it.

Believe me. I would much rather bitch about these things in a book than scream to the rooftops about abusive male main characters, though, so I can’t even criticize this too harshly.

It just, idk. It seems like something that, were I editing the book, this would stick out to me.

There’s another mention of Macy’s mysterious boyfriend:

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a lot tougher than you look?”

“My boyfriend. But I think he secretly likes it.”

We haven’t gotten a name for the boyfriend yet. This seems odd, considering Macy overshared everything else. What’s up with the boyfriend?

Grace asks Macy if there’s any chance of Netflix on this mountain, and then.

THEN.

Oh. No.

So, let me preface this by reminding yous all about Liz Pelletier’s other YA triumph, written by the cunt who doesn’t get named here because she’s already gotten enough publicity and mileage out of me back at the start of her patchworked, borrowed “career.” A little thing called the “Lux” series which, when not trying to ram itself beat-by-beat into Twilight‘s dickhole, is 90% ripped off from Roswell, a book and television series that was literally used in the social media promotion of those copycat trash scam books.

No,  I’m not kidding, the Entangled twitter account at one time hosted a watch-along hashtag for Roswell, which is about the ballsiest move ever. Especially since the pathetic cheating wannabe scam artist who wrote the books has said more than once that Pelletier specifically asked for something that was like Roswell.

Keeping in mind the fact that Pelletier has previously encouraged writers to rip-off other writers and media franchises, imagine the Cedar Point’s Top Thrill Dragster-level stomach plunge I had when I read THIS:

“Point taken. How about Legacies? My best friend, Heather, and I just started watching it last week.”

Macy’s eyes go huge. “Legacies?”

“Yeah. It’s this really cool show about a bunch of teenage vampires, witches, and werewolves all living together at a boarding school. […]”

Yeah. So.

I looked up Legacies because I’m not familiar.

Legacies is about:

A girl named HopeWho, after the death of her parentsIs sent to live at a boarding school for supernatural creatures (Salvatore Academy)Which is run by a human manWhose teen daughters attend the school

Oh no. No, no, no, no. Don’t do this to me, Crave. Don’t do this to me.

As much as I hate, loathe, and despise the CW’s bastardization of my all-time favorite YA series, I will need to check out a few episodes of Legacies just to see wtf is going on with this shit.

Legacies began airing in 2018. Crave was released in 2020. And lest anyone think, wow, what a coincidence, the author probably has never seen the show, Liz Pelletier has probably never seen the show, that’s only two years and not enough time to copy someone, please remember that when I wrote a novel for this publisher, every single edit I had to do on the manuscript was given like a seventy-two-hour return window to meet production deadlines. And at one point, they released a book with the exact same plot as one of Bronwyn Green’s books just two weeks after it was released–and the copycat title was only announced a month previous to release when Bronwyn had been promoing her story months before. Could be a coincidence but… Bronwyn’s novella had been a part of the anthology I was in that fell apart after Anne Rice went Anne Ricing all over the place, a boxed set that Pelletier definitely knew about because she addressed it directly with my agent, who was, idk, supposed to spank me.

Again, could be a coincidence, but when it looks like a vulture and acts like a vulture in so, so many other situations? Why give the bird the benefit of the doubt when it tucks into another animal’s kill once again?

Back to Crave, in the hopes that I’ll watch Legacies and these similarities will be superficial.

HOW THE FUCK IS GRACE WATCHING A TV SHOW THAT’S LITERALLY ABOUT THE EXACT SITUATION SHE IS IN RIGHT NOW AND SHE’S STILL NOT MAKING THE CONNECTION ABOUT VAMPIRES AND SHIT LIKE THAT?!

COME ON, GRACE.

GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER, GRACE.

We start the show back at the first episode so Macy can catch up. And as we watch the main character’s foster brother become a werewolf, I can’t help thinking about what Marc and Quinn said about the moon. I mean, I know it’s just that they needed the brightness of the moon to illuminate the dark wilderness around here.

Of course I know that.

Still, after going two rounds with Jaxon—both of which ended with him warning me off—it’s hard not to wonder exactly what I’ve gotten myself into here.

Okay, Grace. You’re getting closer. You’re kinda getting there.

But I’m just saying.

OPEN. YOUR. EYES. GRACE.

Now, I guess I’m off to watch some Legacies, teeth gritted the entire time, braced for fucking impact.

Jennifer Morningstar’s debut: all the news you need to know!

In 2020 (maybe 2021, let’s be honest, everything post-2019 is going to be just one long blur for most of us), I announced that with the retirement of my Abigail Barnette pen name, I would shift my focus away from erotic romance and to erotica. I planned to launch this new venture by republishing In The Blood, a previously published vampire novel, under that new pseudonym. I opened it up to give it a quick once-over and suddenly I’m balls deep in a rewrite that takes it from paranormal erotica to full-out erotic horror. I thought, well, now Jennifer Morningstar is gonna be put on hold for a while.

Then, I was just tootling along in my files a few days ago and I ran across two books I had pretty much forgotten that I’d written. Infernal Devices and Bound In Brass are steampunk erotica previously published by a small press. The rights reverted to me and I never got around to re-publishing them. They’ve just been languishing in my writing folder. Languishing and being, well. Pretty hot.

Do you like straight-laced Victorian dudes who own and operate a secret steampunk sex dungeon? What if they had tattoos and like, piercings in places that would be covered by respectable Victorian dude clothes? What about sexually curious good girls who can’t resist a good time with an aether-powered fucking machine? Now, how do you feel about getting a second chance to snag some out-of-print titles with all those features?

WELL GUESS WHAT.

Coming December 30th, 2021:

The Two Aces. Victorian London’s most salacious secret, the club is a place where erotic fantasies are played out among clockwork automatons and aether-powered machines. Where nothing is off-limits and the pleasures are as wicked as the imagination will allow…

Permilia Deering goes to The Two Aces looking for the sexual excitement that she knows she will not find with the man to whom she is affianced, notorious cold-fish Wallace Sterling. On her first visit to the club, she meets the Ace of Spades, a masked stranger who drives her to heights of passion she’s never dreamed possible—and makes her seriously reconsider becoming a mannerly society wife.

When Wallace Sterling first glimpses his fiancée standing outside The Two Aces, he assumes she’s uncovered his secret identity—the Ace of Spades. But Permilia has no idea that her intended is living a double life, and Wallace worries that he’ll be out of the picture once she gets a taste of what the Ace of Spades can offer her…

PRE-ORDER NOW!

Amazon • Smashwords 

Coming February 1, 2022:

The Two Aces. Victorian London’s most salacious secret, the club is a place where erotic fantasies are played out among clockwork automatons and aether-powered machines. Where nothing is off-limits and the pleasures are as wicked as the imagination will allow…

Tallulah Applewhite is an American widow abroad, finding all the pleasures Europe has to offer. She gets more than she bargained for when she ventures into The Two Aces and meets the man known as the Ace of Hearts. Their sexual encounters push her to the very limits of desire, and together they find just what her unhappy marriage was missing.

Horace Sterling has never wanted anything that he couldn’t have, but he’s surprised at how much he wants this fresh Georgia Peach. Uninhibited and alluring, she enflames his passion like no other. The only thing more scandalous than taking up with a widow who should be in mourning would be taking up with a married woman—and both he and Tallulah are in for the shock of their lives…

PRE-ORDER NOW!Amazon • SmashwordsBut wait! There’s more!In December, Jennifer Morningstar will also republish two steampunk short stories that have been available here and there for the past decade, but which have been out-of-print more than in-print. These will be totally free on YouPorn.com, where you’ll also get exclusive previews of Infernal Devices and Bound in Brass. Don’t want to visit a pornography site? The shorts will be available to purchase on Amazon and Smashwords.Keep your eyes on the blog for more information as it becomes available (and check this pinned post for the Amazon pre-order links when they become available). I’m so excited to ring in the new year with a new direction, new pen name, and an air of general horniness.

The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp, Chapter Nine

Need to catch up?

What is The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp? The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: PrologueThe Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Chapter OneThe Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Chapter TwoThe Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Chapter ThreeThe Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Chapter FourThe Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Chapter Five The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Chapter Six The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Chapter SevenThe Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Chapter Eight

At first light, Fiona woke to Chariclo and her daughter, Melannipe, come to dress her for the trip to Hera’s temple. Though Fiona had only slept for what felt like a few minutes, she rose and let them drape her in a dusky rose-colored chiton held together at the shoulders by small seashell buttons. Melannipe used her watery fingers to deftly maneuver the sides of the garment together, overlapping the fabric and securing the folds with a golden cord around Fiona’s waist.

“This is beautiful,” Fiona said softly to ease the tension that had entered the room with the two women. Chariclo, who’d been so concerned and welcoming before, might as well have frozen over. That only made Fiona desperately, demonstratively grateful, which in turn just seemed to irritate Chariclo further. 

Fiona lifted the hem of the skirt carefully, fully aware of her lack of undergarments. Not that the nearly transparent material hid much, especially in the places where Melannipe’s touch had soaked it through. Fiona wouldn’t argue about it and risk upsetting Chariclo more. Fingering the embroidery along the hem, Fiona asked, “Did you do this, Melanippe?”

Before she could answer, Chariclo cut in with a flat, “I did it. I had hoped to wear this to my daughter’s joining in the temple of Hera.”

With her stomach churning at the awkwardness, Fiona quickly apologized. “Oh, I had no idea! I don’t want to take your mother-of-the-bride dress from you.”

It became instantly apparent that she had not responded appropriately. The white crest of a violent wave crashed through Chariclo. “You mean to insult me by turning down my gift?”

At what point did I piss in your ocean? Fiona held the retort on her tongue. She’d intruded on their lives. She was the inconvenience, not Chariclo. “I just meant, I came here with my own clothes. There’s no reason you have to give me such an important and sentimental item. And I would never expect you to. I’m a stranger.”

Chariclo wrinkled her nose, deep lines of sea foam forming a scowling brow. “And now you would prefer to present yourself before Hera in filthy clothes reeking of mortal blood?”

Melanippe stepped between the two of them. “This will be easier to ride in, anyway,” she burbled happily.

Chariclo glided away, still roiling with whitecaps.

Unsure of how well astrals could hear, Fiona waited far long than was comfortable before she spoke again. “I’m really sorry for all this trouble I’m causing everyone. And I didn’t mean to insult your mother. It seemed like it bothered her to give me this and the last thing—”

“It has nothing to do with you,” Melanippe interrupted gently. “But leave now, so she doesn’t have a chance to say another unfriendly word.”

Fiona took that as a warning against more than just words. But over a simple dress? Why not keep it?

“Come on,” Melannipe urged her. “Marcaeus is waiting.”

“Oh, my clothes,” Fiona tried to remind her as the watery woman splashed her with concern toward the courtyard.

“They were destroyed,” Melannipe bubbled. Her rapid shooing motion splattered water everywhere, giving Fiona no choice but to hurry away lest she wind up in a wet chiton contest on her wedding day.

At least, Fiona assumed it was a wedding day. It was hard to tell when she was not only seeing the groom before the ceremony, but she was doing so barefoot in what was basically lingerie.

Not that the intended groom would notice, since they were both on the same page about their fake marriage. That did peel a layer of awkwardness off the situation.

Marcaeus stood in the courtyard, still alarmingly shirtless, with a leather satchel slung over his shoulder. He didn’t bother to glance Fiona’s way as she approached, keeping his eyes on Chiron as they engaged in an intense conversation.

A few droplets of seawater dribbled down her bare arm, and she turned to Melanippe.

“Don’t be afraid,” the water-woman said in the low voice of a calm sea nudging the bow of a docked ship. “Not of Hera, or him.”

“I’m not afraid of him. He’s my boss,” Fiona whispered.

Melanippe’s head tilted. “Isn’t that who mortals fear most?”

“I…” Fiona couldn’t argue against that.

She also couldn’t truthfully argue that here, in this strange place, in his true form, Marcaeus wasn’t exponentially more intimidating than the kilted businessman who ran Chiron Corp. The fact that she was his enemy now didn’t help.

Fiona’s night had been long and sleepless as she’d vacillated between self-pity and self-hatred. How had her brother gotten her involved in this? How had she made such a mess of it that now Greek gods and an arranged marriage had become involved? But the answer to those questions was always another question: why had she agreed to do it? Yes, she’d wanted to help Wren, but couldn’t there have been another way? If she’d just taken her time and thought things through…

She’d just gone along with whatever her brother asked because that’s what she’d always been expected to do. She wasn’t the hero of her own story. She was the evil henchman in Marcaeus’s. And he was treating her far better than she deserved.

Chiron glanced in her direction and she realized too late that she’d been staring. He gave a nod toward her and Marcaeus turned. His face entirely unreadable, he stated flatly, “You’re barefoot.”

Fiona looked down and wriggled her toes against the grass. “I guess I am.”

He walked over and extended his hand. “Get on.”

It wasn’t a friendly invitation, but she accepted it, anyway, and let him pull her up to sit on his back.

“Chariclo doesn’t intend to see us off?” Marcaeus asked, in a tone that suggested he’d already encountered her mood that morning.

“She’ll see reason. Eventually.” Chiron chuckled fondly. “My tempest.”

With a wave of his hand, Chiron opened one of those incredible portals. Of what Fiona could glimpse through it, Hera’s temple stood on a rocky outcropping over a lush mountain valley.

Mountain.

Olympus?

Fiona had somehow failed so badly at corporate espionage, she was going to end up on Mount Olympus. It could go down in history as the worst fuck-up of all time. She’d probably hold that record in more than one dimension, now.

Marcaeus moved toward the portal and Fiona scrabbled to grab his shoulders; riding sidesaddle, sans saddle, didn’t feel secure at all. On the other hand, it was unsettling to have her hands on her shirtless boss’s very broad shoulders. She turned her head to thank Melannipe again, but the moment Fiona said the woman’s name, Marcaeus stepped through the shimmering gateway, closing it behind them.

“Excuse me!” Fiona knew she was in no position to argue about anything, considering all she’d done to get both of them into this situation, but his rudeness had made her appear rude. “Your friends were not happy that I was there. The least you could have done was let me thank them again for their…patience.”

“Not kindness?” Marcaeus asked as he plodded their way through the lush, bluish-green grass of the mountain path.

“Melannipe was kind.” It was the only way to dodge the question. Fiona wouldn’t speak ill of any of the astrals who’d helped her. “They were all kind. In their way. You, included.”

“I’m protecting my company,” he reminded her.

As if she needed reminding. “I know. But you could have called the cops on me. Fraudulent glamour is a felony.”

“I’m aware.”

“I’m trying to make things right! Why are you being such a dick?” The word was out of her mouth before she thought twice, which she should have. What was keeping him from bucking her off? “I just wanted to say goodbye to your friend.”

“My friend.” The word came out practically screaming it was a lie. “I suppose that’s what she is, now.”

Fiona’s heart plummeted. “Wait, were you—”

“Yes.” He said nothing further.

Chariclo’s comments made sense now; she thought Fiona was the cause of Melannipe’s broken heart. And Chariclo was correct, which made the whole thing worse, as did Melannipe’s kindness. Fiona couldn’t imagine being so gracious to someone who was stealing her fiance.

“I don’t understand,” Fiona began again. “She didn’t say anything. She helped me get dressed and gave me advice and—”

“What kind of advice?” Marcaeus snapped, stopping so suddenly that Fiona nearly toppled off his back.

“She told me not to be afraid of you, for one,” Fiona grumbled, doubting that pearl of wisdom. “And she defended me from her mother. It just didn’t seem like she was that sad–”

She stopped herself at the unintended implication that Melannipe didn’t care about him.

 His sudden inhale betrayed the depth of the accidental wound. “Maybe she isn’t.”

Again with the talking before thinking.

They didn’t speak further until they reached the milky blue steps to the temple. From afar, it had looked like marble. Now that they were close, Fiona noticed the subtle variants of translucency and hue in the stone.

“Aquamarine,” he said, startling her.

“What?”

He held out his hand and she took it, but it still startled her when he swung her from his back to set her on her feet. “The stone. It’s Aquamarine.”

“How did you know I was wondering about that?” It was almost as unsettling as being treated like a backpack.

“You’ve never seen anything like it before.” He stated it as a painfully obvious fact, which it was, but the truth didn’t make his tone any less exasperated. “You’re not vapid enough to lack curiosity.”

“Was that an attempt to compliment me?” she asked.

He looked down, his expression shamingly humorless. “It was a statement of fact. I have no reason or desire to compliment you.”

He started up the steps, but Fiona couldn’t let him walk away without clearing the air. “Wait.”

With an annoyed sigh, he turned.

He could be as mad at her as he wanted, but damn it, she would apologize.

“What I did to you was wrong. I should have never listened to my brother. Before they put that mark on me, I could have chosen not to be a part of any of this. I couldn’t make a wrong situation right by lying. I knew that, and I did it anyway. And now I’ve hurt you and I’ve hurt a very kind, very thoughtful stranger.” A hiccuping sob caught her by surprise, and she swiped angrily at her tears. “You could have left me unprotected against the demon’s mark. You could have just sent me back to my brother and let him force me to do…god knows what.”

The thought chilled her.

Marcaeus’s stone features softened. “I knew my options. I couldn’t leave you in the demon’s–or your brother’s–control.”

Stunned speechless, Fiona could only stare.

“Doing the right thing sometimes means that innocent people are hurt.” He nodded tersely, his gaze moving to the top of her head. “Put your veil down. You’ll wear it until the anakalypteria.”

When she opened her mouth to ask, he answered before she could utter the question. “The unveiling,” he explained, coming close and reaching for the long veil pinned into the ornate braids Melannipe had worked for her. The veil covered her almost to the floor; no wonder it had felt so heavy.

“Thanks. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve never been to Mount Olympus before,” she said, silently tacking on how grateful she was for the extra coverage; though it had begun to dry, her chiton hadn’t started out opaque in the first place.

“You’re not on Olympus,” Marcaeus corrected her, giving the veil one last, gentle tug into place. “This is Mount Pelion. My ancestral home.”

“Oh.” The knowledge she lacked shamed her. “I didn’t realize there were gods and goddesses on more than one…mount.”

He didn’t respond, but he took her hand again and resumed the walk up to the temple. Somewhere, a peacock let out its screaming call, and as they climbed higher, white feathers went from “scattered” to “carpeted” beneath her bare feet. Finally, they reached the top and he fell to his front knees, nudging her to kneel, as well.

“Bow your head,” he said in a low voice, before calling out, “Hera, exalted Queen of Olympus, wife of might Zeus, mother to—”

“Oh, shut up,” a lilting voice answered, a voice much younger than Fiona would have imagined it would be, but still commanding. “Get up. And take her stupid veil off. Do you think I don’t know why you’re here?”

Struggling to her feet, Fiona squeaked out, “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. I can’t stand the weakness of an insincere apology. Do you know how many I’ve heard since the day my father vomited me out?” The goddess snapped.

“Thank you for your cooperation. We know this is an inconvenience.” Marcaeus began, and Fiona noted his directness. She would follow his lead and only say what was necessary and to the point.

Marcaeus moved in close and lifted the veil. The silk caught on one of the pins in her hair. As she reached up to prevent him from dislodging her braids, he uttered a soft, shockingly charming, “Oops,” and reached to correct it himself. Their hands brushed and he jerked his back as if he’d touched something disgusting.

Hera’s laughter rang out like a crystal bell, and as the veil lifted from Fiona’s eyes, she saw the goddess—an actual goddess!—standing with one brown hand over her mouth. Her pile of glossy black curls shook as she barely took pains to stifle her laughter. “This marriage is a bigger sham than mine. Never marry a sibling, mortal.”

“I, um. Thank you.” The thought had never crossed her mind, but Fiona wasn’t about to correct a goddess.

“There’s no danger of that.” Marcaeus’s voice held no hint of humor at all. Astrals, she had quickly come to realize, didn’t seem to do a lot of joking.

Maybe that was just in the presence of humans. And liars.

“Bring your bride.” Hera’s derisive snort seemed to amuse the snow-white peacock at her side; it squalled and fanned its tail with a rattle. “This won’t take long.”

The temple’s columns were even more intimidating when viewed from close up; despite how slender and graceful they had looked from afar, Fiona imagined their circumference could rival the long-extinct redwood trees she’d learned about in high school science class. The milky clouds in the stunning aquamarine glittered as they moved into the cool shadows beneath the pediment. They passed through the portico and into a sun-drenched courtyard lined with shimmering, gold-leafed trees bearing dazzling, gilded fruit. One stood in the middle, taller and more gnarled than the rest, its branches reaching out to nearly enclose a perfectly circular space.

“When human men cheat, they give their women diamonds.” Hera’s wry humor made Fiona realize she’d been staring, open-mouthed, at the orchard-bordering-on-forest. The goddess nodded to the branches of a sapling supported by a golden staff. “I presume those apologies are much easier to store. Or throw into a pit. But my husband chooses symbolism over ease of destruction. Drama queen that he is.”

Hera led them into the circle of branches and stood before them. The leaves rustled, and Fiona gasped in alarm as the tree seemed to enfold them, pulling a canopy of gold around them. Marcaeus took her hand, and Fiona thought he might have done so to calm her until he gave it a tug to indicate she should kneel again. He didn’t release her but carefully arranged her palm to lie across the broad, veiny back of his own hand.

The goddess pulled a length of twisted golden vine from within the branches and wrapped it around Fiona’s forearm, then Marcaeus’s, looping and crisscrossing the cord deftly until the couple was bound elbow to fingertips.

As Hera finished the final knot, she asked, somewhat annoyed, if Fiona guessed her tone correctly, “Did her father offer a sacrifice?”

Does an entire planet’s climate count? Probably not. She opened her mouth but couldn’t quite find an appropriate answer before Marcaeus could do it for her.

“Her father is dead, and her brother estranged. Chiron has taken on the role of her kyrios. This morning, he made a sacrifice of twenty million human dollars to your Swiss account.”

Hera’s brows rose and her mouth curved in a pleased smirk. “Sacrifice accepted.”

“Sacrifice is such an elegant word for ‘bribe’,” Marcaeus quipped, and Hera’s crystalline laughter filled the bower.

“Isn’t it? Just as calling this a wedding is preferable to naming it for what it is: a perversion of our customs and rites.” Hera sighed a deeply exhausted sigh. “Marcaeus, Chiron gives this woman to you as a newly furrowed field in which to sow the seed of your future generations.”

Gross.

“I take her,” Marcaeus answered, flat as tap water.

Grosser.

Was Fiona meant to say something back? She looked desperately to Marcaeus, but he wouldn’t make eye contact.

“Congratulations, I’m sure the two of you will be very happy.” The goddess’s use of air quotes around the final word was, Fiona thought, a bit mean and unnecessary, even though the marriage was a sham.

“Wait…is that—” she began.

“Yes, that’s it. I hope it was as romantic as you’d hoped.” Every time she spoke, Hera made a stronger case for why she should perhaps not be the goddess in charge of overseeing marriages.

Which was why Fiona asked for confirmation, just to be certain. “But I didn’t say anything.”

“Neither did I, at my own joining,” Hera said. “Brides are superfluous to the rite, really.”

And there Fiona had been thinking of the Astral as a magical realm of spiritual enlightenment. Despite its beauty and strangeness, Elyssia, at least, seemed to be the same shit, different plane.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Hera added, gesturing to the vine binding the couple’s arms. Instead of loosening it, she passed her hand over it, tracing the path without touching it. Before Fiona’s disbelieving eyes, the golden vine flattened and sunk into their skin in a scorching brand that made her hiss. It took only a moment and her arm was free from Marcaeus’s, but the mark remained, a thick, gilded line that broke wherever their skin had touched. Those breaks matched Marcaeus’s own mark; if they laid their hands over each other again and pressed their forearms side-by-side, the spectral rope would be unbroken.

She still marveled at the instant tattoo as Marcaeus bowed to the goddess. “Thank you. I know this is—”

“What did I say about apologies?” Hera snapped, and the tree jerked its branches back, leaving no trace of the circle they’d just stood in.

Fiona waited until Marcaeus stood to get to her feet. “Thank you. Without apology,” she added, so as not to offend the goddess further.

To Fiona’s surprise, the goddess graced her with a slight incline of her head.

Marcaeus cleared his throat awkwardly. “I assume, based on her…species, that you’ll not require the rest of the ceremony?”

Since things had been so slapdash already, and since Hera had already made her feelings on the fake marriage clear, Fiona wasn’t surprised when the goddess responded, “Only if you’d like to explain to your bride what such a ritual entails.”

Fiona had seen stop signs less crimson than his face.

“I thought not,” Hera said with a smug twist of her lips. She waved a hand and one of those clever portals appeared—Fiona wondered why none of the Astrals had thought to monetize that ability as travel agents—but whatever lay beyond was blank, blinding silver. “Enjoy your honeymoon.”

Marcaeus made a grim noise and stood back, gesturing to Fiona to enter the shining doorway ahead of him. She did so without hesitation. He’d proven himself trustworthy; she was the one who’d been dishonest.

It took her a moment to realize that the strange new world she’d entered was her own. The white marble floors and walls gleamed despite the night above the skylight, and the gentle trickle of moving water in the shallow, square pool in the center of the space could have blended easily into the homes she’d seen in Elyssia. So too would the keyhole-shaped door surrounded by a ceiling-high plate of intricately embossed, patinated copper, though which she glimpsed a sunken circular pit of satin sheets and mounds of pillows.

He’d brought her directly to his bedroom, on their wedding night.

That set off alarm bells warning her about things she was not interested in imagining, let alone experiencing.

“Hobb will be here in the morning with the paperwork to make it legal on the mortal plane,”  Marcaeus told her as he closed the portal behind him. “After tonight, our spiritual bond will be complete in Elyssia.”

“What happens tonight?” Fiona asked, trying to disguise the nervousness in her voice while every instinct in her urged her to scream, “I don’t want to have sex with a horse!”

“Normally, we would have gone into the valley, where I would have bred you at the ceremonial altar before the males of my clan.” How could he state something like that so casually?

Fiona’s jaw dropped, heedless of her brain’s plan to remain accepting and open to their cultural differences. She’d found the line. Public breeding was that line.

He gestured over his shoulder.  “We could go back if you’d like.”

“No!” She cleared her throat and calmed her voice. “Sorry, that’s just not something mortals…do. That I am aware of.”

“We are required to sleep in the same bed to seal the union. At least, this first night.” He waved his hand at the sunken pit of cushions beyond the key-hole door. “But sleeping is the only requirement.”

“Good,” she blurted in relief.  And she had never seen anyone look so offended without moving a single facial muscle before. “That’s not what I meant. It’s not that I think you’re gross, it’s more about the…anatomical…”

His laugh broke some of the tension between them. “You’d be surprised at what some humans are eager to prove anatomically possible.”

“Oh, I’m sure.” She wished she hadn’t said it the moment it crossed her lips. “I wasn’t implying that you—”

That made him laugh again, and her stomach unclenched a bit. Maybe it was because they were standing in her realm, where she knew the rules and the consequences. No fearsome creature would end her if she offended them with the wrong remark.

Fiona immediately regretted the thought. Everyone she’d encountered in the Astral—with the exception of the water that had tried to kill her—had treated her fairly. They’d been under no obligation to treat her warmly. That didn’t make them violent, vengeful creatures any more than a snotty remark made an exasperated restaurant server a potential assassin.

“Marcaeus?” she asked in a near-whisper. “There was something about the veil, too. Did I make you miss out on that?”

He couldn’t disguise how off-guard the question had taken him.

She used his surprised silence to add, “You said it was an unveiling.”

He cleared his throat. “In a real joining, we would have arrived here to a meal with our families, after which I would lift your veil and present you with gifts. I’ve always found it a charming tradition.”

“I don’t have a meal prepared,” she began, attempting a smile. “But I’m still wearing the veil. Would you like to…”

He looked down, color coming to his cheeks as he smiled to himself. “It is my favorite part of a joining celebration.”

That, and not the voyeuristic breeding? That was a relief.

“Here—” she tried to reach the veil hanging down her back, but she realized quickly that the length would hinder her in putting it over her face.

He moved closer to help her. “These are ridiculous, really,” he admitted with an embarrassed chuckle. “And I don’t have a gift to give you.”

“You can always send someone shopping later. Nothing under two carats, please.” She hoped he knew she was joking and that she didn’t actually expect anything.

He’d already given her more than she deserved.

Despite his protestations, Marcaeus carefully arranged the veil and stepped back. Fiona wondered if there were ceremonial words to be said, or some kind of prayer he held sacred, but he waited for a second, then knelt before her and took the hem of the fabric. In his true form, he didn’t need to stand to reveal her face; with his legs tucked beneath him, he still towered over her.

The silk obscuring her vision lifted and she looked up, blinking with surprise at the intensity of his gaze as their eyes met. His mood, playful only seconds before, had changed to that of someone watching their stocks plummet in real-time.

“Did I do something wrong?” she whispered. “I didn’t mean—”

“No. It’s not…” He seemed at a loss for words, finally settling on, “No.”

“Oh. Good.” It wasn’t good. She’d been raised in a family of liars and she could spot a bad one instantly. That didn’t stop her from babbling on, “I thought, um, maybe I was supposed to, you know, say something or there was—”

“Not at all. Thank you for indulging me.” He delivered the statement as though he’d thanked her for dropping off his dry cleaning. “The bed is there. Human facilities are across the hall. The ensuite is not—”

“Not human-compatible. Got it.” Some things could remain perpetual mysteries.

“I have work to catch up on. I will be up most of the night, but I will return to sleep before dawn so that joining is sealed properly. There’s a television, if you’re bored. I would rather you not wander the rest of the apartment yet. Until I can make sure any sensitive material is out of sight.” The implication that she might rifle through drawers on an espionage quest wasn’t entirely unfair. Especially considering that she had no idea if the demon’s mark could still control her.

She watched him go and heard the painfully obvious and slow scrape of a lock turned by someone failing to make the act as silent as they tried to. Fiona looked down at the substitute wedding band tattooed around her forearm and hoped that its magic outmatched that of the demon’s.

After all Marcaeus had sacrificed for her, she would do whatever it took to not harm him further.