Musings of a Fallen Angel

Challenge #6

In your own space, Create something. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I decided to dip into a new fandom and wrote a Witcher fic.

Ache and Absence – Geralt/Lambert, Geralt/Yennifer

You can find it here.


Banner by Seleneheart.

Challenge #5

In your own space, talk about an idea you wish you had the time / talent / energy to do. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.


Oooph. Today’s prompt took off in my mind, especially once I read the hints about all the different ways we could tackle it. I have A LOT of ideas I wish I’d written, notebooks with story ideas or character sketches or just a scene or image that popped into my head. Why are they notes in notebooks? The easy answer is that I haven’t done what I needed to in order to craft them into stories.

I’d like to say that I’ve not written more original fiction and poetry because I don’t have time. But that’s not true. It’s because I haven’t made it a priority and because I’ve avoided it for a boatload of reasons that most writers grapple with. Procrastination and avoidance means you don’t have to put yourself out there and take risks. They are powerful agents of fear and self-doubt. I’m trying to be planful about identifying and containing them this year. To build back that writerly muscle memory that will let me be productive.

In terms of energy, I think that lack of energy was a thing for me and still is. Losing 50 pounds last year has helped with my energy levels and just generally how I feel in my body. The energy deficit wasn’t just physical: it was also emotional/intellectual. When you feel worn out physically, it’s bleeds into those other areas. So I’m hoping to continue my journey in this area in 2022 as well since I think it will also make me more productive.

In terms of fics, I have a list of fics that I’d like to continue or that people have asked me to continue that I would like to write. I suppose that I haven’t because… Well, let’s be honest, because I haven’t made doing so a priority. The last two years especially, I’ve been more likely to play video games and passively consume media rather than writing. We’ll see how successful I am at breaking that chain this year. Gaming in moderation to make time for creation.

There is one other take on “things I wish I’d written” that I started doing this past year. I’ve been making master lists in my writing journal, something that Alexandra Sokoloff talks about in her books on writing. Part of the process involves making lists of favorite things in different categories and then analyzing those lists for commonalities in terms of things that spark excitement. So you could have a favorite heroines list or a favorite vampire story list. One of my lists is “Things I Wish I’d Written,” and I don’t mean that in the toxic way we all are prey too--judging ourselves against other writers.

My list tends toward things where the writing sings (like Stephanie Garber’s Caraval series or Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House), or the characters/world just captivated me (like Jay Kristoff’s Nevernight series, Bioware’s Dragon Age video games, Nalini Singh’s Psy-Changeling and Guild Hunter series, or Marvel’s WandaVision series on Disney+). So compelling characters, worlds I want to lose myself in, and writing that sings are things that draw me in as a reader and should translate into the things that give me the most joy when writing them.



Banner by Seleneheart.

January 3rd would have been my mom’s 89th birthday. She has been gone for years now, but I don’t think I was posting much when my sister and I found out we had a surprise older brother.

It happened a few years back when my work team was all gathered here in Georgia for our annual get-together. I got a call from my apartment office to let me know that my brother had called to check to see if the registered letter he sent was delivered. They confirmed that it was and wanted to let me know. Now, this was rather confusing, as the only brother I knew about was born before me and died a day after he was born when the hole between the two sides of the heart that is supposed to close at birth stayed open. I asked where the letter came from. Answer: Arizona. Aside from folks at work in our Phoenix office, I don’t know anyone in Arizona.

Naturally, I called my sister to let her know, and we were thinking it might be a prank or error or something and that I’d see what was up when I got home. Then about 10 minutes later, she called me back, because her apartment complex also called her with a similar message.

The letter basically said that it was as hard for him to write as for us to hear, but he was apparently our brother. He said that his adopted mother was a head nurse at one of the two hospitals where we grew up, and that she adopted him at birth because she wanted but could not have children. She died when he was young, and he lived for a time with his maternal grandmother before moving in with his adopted father when caring for a child became too much for her. He said he was getting in touch to get more information about our family’s medical issues/conditions that might impact his daughter and her family. In the letter was a copy of his birth certificate (with my mom’s name but no father’s name) and my mom’s obituary.

Apparently, adoption records in Pennsylvania were sealed, but due to some new legislation, records were unsealed for children seeking information on their birth families.

A year before this, my sister took an Ancestry DNA test, and she got a hit/match at first cousin/half-sibling level in Arizona, but our family is so small, she dismissed it.

With our mom already dead, along with most of her closest friends, we didn’t have many options for trying to get more information. We called my uncle, who did confirm that my mom was pregnant and had a baby before she married my dad. He didn’t know much or have any idea who the father could be. He just said that it was something that was not talked about in the house given how strict my grandparents were. We also talked to his ex-wife, who was close with my mom. She had more information, information she said she always thought she would take with her to her grave. She also was pregnant before she and my uncle married, and my grandparents did not treat her well. My mom got close to her and told her that she also had a baby before she got married, but that the child had died.

Now, the doctor on the birth certificate was our family doctor, and the child was born not at the hospital we always went to (and which was close to his office) but at the hospital across the river where the nurse who adopted him worked. We’re thinking that maybe my grandparents arranged the whole thing and then told her the baby had died. I mean she’d have no reason to lie about that when the fact that she had a baby out of wedlock was the more scandalous secret. I’m not sure how the fact that there was no grave would have played out, but there’s no way to know. If that’s really what happened, it’s horrifying considering that the first baby she had with my dad did, in fact, die.

So… Yeah. Brother of surprise. He’s ten years older than me, so sixteen years older than my sister. He sells real estate and seems rather red-leaning politically. We’ve talked a few times, but there isn’t a lot of common ground between us. We do talk regularly with his daughter, who is a big Disney/Marvel/Star Wars fan. We have a bit more in common with her, excepting perhaps politics.

My dad travelled often and for long stretches of time with his job. We know he wasn’t always faithful, and we always assumed if a half-sibling turned up, they would be in the Philippines or Korea. We NEVER would have thought the surprise family would turn up because of our mom. And yet, here we are with Surprise!Family.

Challenge #2

In your own space, set some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I have a pretty long list of goals for 2022, probably more than I will get to, but that’s okay. I’m am going to focus on the most important ones, and then when they get completed, I can go back to the list for the next most important ones.

The goals below are the ones I’m focusing on first.


Health Goals:
Repeat the 2021 success and lose 50 more pounds by year end.
Make moving more part of my daily routine by walking laps around the lawn island outside my building three times a day.
Keep up my water intake to stay pleasantly hydrated (which also has the benefit of having to get up and move more to fill up).
Keep focusing on making better choices on what/how much I eat so that I can avoid the dreaded “D” word and still be able to stay on track with losing weight while not going into deprivation mode (which is a sure path to failure). That worked in 2021, so I’m hoping it will work in 2022.


Writing Goals:
Write daily. Even if it’s just a handful of words.
Create space in my days to achieve the above.
Write and post one fic a month.
Write a poem each month.
Complete a novel.
Publish a novel.
Start a second novel.


Reading Goals:
Read daily.
Create space in my days to achieve the above.
Read two novels each week.
Read one non-fiction book each month.


Miscellaneous Goals:
Organize and declutter my personal space.
Catalogue my books/other media so I know what I have and what form it takes.
Organize and declutter my computer files.
Track progress and milestones on all goals and celebrate wins.
Don’t get paralyzed by what isn’t working. Turn those moments into opportunities to adapt.
Work on my website and produce content for same.




Banner by Seleneheart

So…. Umm…. It has been awhile, hasn’t it? With fandom quieting down (at least the part I participated in) and people I enjoyed talking with going to other platforms or quitting them entirely, I guess it’s no surprise I haven’t been around much. I’m going to try to get into more of routine posting in 2022 and see if this is still a space to interact with folks. With my work going all remote and COVID keeping me at home as much as possible (even though I’m vaxxed and boosted), the last two years have been kinda lonely.

The last time my life was close to normal was at the beginning of March of 2020. I was planning on going to the aca-conference I usually attend every year, and I had oral surgery to have a wisdom tooth removed. Recovering from that took me to the second week in March, and I went back to the office that second Wednesday in March. On Thursday, we were told to gather up our things because we’d be working from home for a few weeks. The conference was cancelled. A few weeks turned into a few months turned into a year, and the company decided to shut down our office and have everyone stay remote permanently.

DragonCon was cancelled in 2020. And while it went on this year, with the Delta variant running wild, I didn’t feel comfortable attending. My comic-book store, where I’d hang out for hours on Saturday to talk geek closed. The new shop I started frequenting decided they weren’t going to sell comics anymore, just games and gaming stuff. Socializing has been reduced (except for visits from my sister) to phone calls, IMing, Discord, Zoom, Google Hangouts/Meets, and FaceTime.

It just feels like an effort to connect or engage when all the currents seem to be driving us to pull away/pull apart. To shelter and isolate for our own health and for the greater good. To hide from all those people who reject science and vaccines.

What’s worse is that the industry I work in, the auto industry, has been gutted by COVID. We laid off/furloughed so many people, and my team is on rolling furloughs, so I was out of work in October, and will be again in March. I know things will bounce back when the auto supply issues improve and then normalize, but things suck now. Losing HUGE chunks of savings while I’m on furlough is also crushing and demoralizing. Which is worse when you’re feeling cut off from social and normal in so many ways.

I did emerge a bit before Omicron started spreading this year. I’d meet a work friend for dinner once a month. I went back to the movies, especially when I was on furlough and could go to early shows on weekdays. Sitting in a mask for hours at the theatre wasn’t fun, but just doing something that I took for granted but wasn’t able to do for almost two years was nice.

The entire time wasn’t entirely bleak. Just mostly. My niece had a baby boy in March of 2020 and a baby girl this fall. She was born about a month early when her mom went into premature labor when she got COVID. Both came through fine, though baby spent over a month in the hospital.

I lost about 60 pounds and ended the year down 49.6 pounds, but that’s because I gained about 3 pounds at Thanksgiving and 4 pounds over Christmas/New Years.

Over Thanksgiving, I worked on a multi-media art project with my sister called “Breaking Out.” It’s a pair of canvases with contrasting colors—muted rainbows and metallic gold on one, greys and blacks on the other. I wrote two poems, and the sis did the painting and collage (photos, poems, broken mirror). The work is on display at Florida State University’s Art Education in Critical Times exhibit.

Last year at this time, I was looking forward to a slow return to normal with COVID diminishing and Trump voted out of office. This year, I still want that, crave it. I’m not as hopeful we’ll get there, but I need to clutch what glimmers of light there are in this long, long dark. There isn’t really an alternative, is there? It’s do that or surrender to the dark.

Hope all of you and yours have been weathering the storm as best you can.

Dear Yuletide Writer,

First, let me say that I'm so happy to have you writing something for me that I don't get to see every day but wish that I did. Thank you in advance for that!

I know that my prompts lean toward the slashy and the sexy. I like slash, het (though not vanilla het), and femslash. If you’re writing either het or femslash, I like strong, capable women who own their own strength, intellect, and desire. Of course, I like that in men too. I like BDSM, though more in terms of power dynamics and less in terms of highly ritualized behavior.

However, I love interesting and complex characters and good stories above all else. Even when it comes to the sexy, the sorts of stories I like best are the ones that really get inside the characters’ heads, ones that go beyond the act itself and show how it impacts the characters or their relationship. If you want to see the sorts of things I write (and like to read), I'm also Savageseraph over at the Archive of Our Own.

This is not an exhaustive list, just some things that often tend to make me smile.

( Likes )

While this shouldn’t be perceived as a critique of items in the list, these are things I would prefer not to receive in my Yuletide Fic.

( Dislikes )

And now, a bit about the fandoms I've requested for this Yuletide exchange.


( The Exorcist (TV) )

( Critical Role (Web Series) RPF )

( Wonder Woman (2017) )

( Grayson (Comics) )

( Midnight, Texas (TV) )

Having said that, I read and write and enjoy lots and lots of things that aren't really represented in my fics, so I don't want you to feel boxed in. Write what you really love, what inspires you, and it will show in the fic. If you have any questions, you could bounce them off my writing partner caras_galadhon.

I'm sure I'll love what you make for me, and I'm already looking forward to reading it!

Wow. 2017 has been kicking my ass. I can’t believe it’s already October. It seems like it was just February and all those months in between just got lost. I feel like I got a bit lost. Sure, there have been times I’ve not been as in touch with my LJ before, but this has marked the longest time I’ve been away. Not posting. Not reading my flist.

Not present.

I’m sorry about that, all. I can’t even say it was a total wreck of a year. I got a promotion at work, and I’m helming our two largest clients, which is a lot of challenge and pressure, but those things tend to motivate me. It was the year of the live-action Beauty and the Beast and Wonder Woman. I’ve read some good books, remain hooked on Critical Role, have some new favorite television shows. I went to DragonCon.

However, I’ve also found myself stressed and worried and tired and just not feeling great. The political climate here at home makes me anger and sad in equal measure. It has just been hard finding things that make me feel excited and upbeat. Even things that normally make me feel excited and upbeat.

Today, I gave myself a shake and told myself, “Self, get the fuck over it. There’s plenty of crap you can cling to, but all that does is leave you covered in shit.” And frankly, who wants to spend their time covered in shit?

So in order to not end 2017 in that condition, I’m going to try not to wallow in misery and remind myself of the good that I’m not seeing when I do that. I’m going to celebrate the things I do love instead of lingering over the things that sap my energy and make me feel bad.

This was one of the places I could come to recharge and talk about fun stuff with friends, and if any of y’all are still out there reading, I’m hoping we can have some fun as we close out 2017.

My family is broken. It's being abused and degraded and tarnished by ignorant, hypocritical, pathological liars who should never have come close to seats of power, let alone occupy them.

I'm ashamed it has come to this. I'm angry it has come to this. This is not what my country is about. I'll never stand with what is happening now.

Instead, I'll stand with my Mother of Exiles. That's the country I want to live in.


New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Is anyone else watching Emerald City? I have to confess, I'm not quite sure what to make of it. There are stunningly gorgeous visual moments and some interesting narrative moments. But I'm honestly not sure if it's clever and interesting or a hot mess.

Perhaps a bit of both.

Day 4





Comment to someone you haven't ever interacted with before or introduce yourself to someone you've interacted with and friend/follow them. Afterwards, leave a comment in this post with the equivalent of "I did it!"

I actually did something like this today, but not in fandom. My company has a field force, and I work closely with the various Regional Managers. I’ve not met most of them, and they’re really just names on emails to me.

This year, I decided I’d start calling them just to say hello and get to know them as people, not just when we need to interact over business. And I started that today by talking to one of the managers in the Northeast.

So it’s not quite the challenge of the day, but I think it’s in the spirit of it.