Reblogged pixel-witchy
"I seduce the skeleton."
"You can't seduce everything."
"... I seduce the DM."
Reblogged caelumartistlain
Over The Garden Wall aesthetic
Posted by gabapplewrites
Black Cats
I wanted to share what I wrote for this morning’s word war (I won, btw):
Limerick gave me a pointed look. I frowned. "What?" "You're doing it again." I looked at my hand. It was resting on the back of Limerick's shoulders. "What, this?" His yellow eyes narrowed to thin lines of gold in a sea of black. "What do you think?" I petted him again, fingers dipping into the thick fur between his shoulder blades. "Cats usually like being petted, don't they?" "You have no idea about cats, do you?" I actually didn't know, since Mom never let me have a pet before, but shrugged. "You're purring, anyway." He blinked, eyes going from gibbous to full moon in surprise. "I -- what?" And then he stopped to listen to himself, and there it was: a deep, rumbling purr in his chest. Limerick's eyes went half-moon and glared up at me. "Stop. Stop this at once." "You like it!" I stroked down the line of his spine. "Doesn't your master ever pet you?" "No, of course not. Have a sense of propriety; I'm a Familiar, not a normal house cat!" "Sorry," I said, but kept petting anyway. He didn't move. Soon, he settled into a loaf next to my leg, eyes completely closed. "You're a terrible person, Salmon Coal," Limerick said. "Yeah, I'm the worst." I moved up to scratching behind his ears, then down to his neck, rubbing the loose skin over muscle. "Ah, yes, scratch right at my neck there -- thank you." "You're welcome."
Posted by gabapplewrites
So Fishsticks is currently sitting at 68,434 words, which is roughly 273 paperback novel pages. The more I keep at it, the more I love the story, though there’s still a ton of work left to do. I want to keep the total thing under 80k, so that also means that I need to revise and cut a lot of stuff, too, because there’s no way I can finish it all in 12k.
My brother suggested I try writing the story as a picture book to distill it to its purest form, and even though I’ve only gotten the first quarter down, it really has helped a lot.
It reads:
Salmon Coal believes in ghosts. He can’t see them, but he knows that they’re there.
“The evidence is all around,” his dad says on TV. William Coal is a famous Paranormal Investigator who hunts ghosts for a major broadcast network.
“Don’t listen to that horrible man,” Salmon’s mom says. “He chose career over family. Let’s pretend he doesn’t exist.” But she is a librarian, and does not work for a major broadcast network.
It’s easy to pretend that his dad doesn’t exist, though, because he lives in LA while Salmon lives in Massachusetts, all the way across the country. But, if something really supernatural happened in town, his dad might just pay a visit.
Salmon goes out every night to record all of the paranormal activity around town. He even joins a Ghost Club at school with his best friend Theo, where they talk about how fun it would be to actually see a ghost.
Unfortunately, none of them have any luck.
That is until Theo’s older sister, Lauriette, finds a cursed book in her grandfather’s study.
“It’s totally haunted,” Lauriette says. “Just like the hotel.”
Lauriette and Theo live at The Linden Estate, which is a big hotel in the woods just outside of town. It’s popular belief that it is, indeed, haunted.
“Hella haunted,” Theo adds. “We should investigate during Homecoming because it’ll be at the hotel. You can be Lauriette’s date.”
This is very convenient, because no Coals are allowed on Linden property. That is because William Coal has always wanted to film a holiday special there, and Mr. Linden is not fond of the media.
Salmon agrees to the investigation, but a date -- ? With Lauriette?
Now that is scary.
That’s 258 words, which is already almost HALF of what a picture book length should be. Oops. But I’ll work on it. :)
Reblogged ariel-s-awesome
forlackofabettercomic-deactivat
Being an adult is the worst.
Posted by gabapplewrites
“Ghosts versus poltergeists versus demons...”