#blair nishkian

[thefearandwonder]

It is done.

My psychological sci-fi horror comedy novella is done. Psychopunk: The Jellyfish Exorcist is ready for you to devour.

Please do consider leaving a comment, a favorite, a follow, and a rating on Royal Road! It helps me immensely as an author, and quite frankly, I deserve to succeed, because my writing is both good and rad.

So if you're the kind of person who enjoys aquatic cyberpunk with Dark Crystal vibes, give this one a shot. You won't be disappointed.

[thefearandwonder]

Psychopunk: Only Cancer is Immortal (2nd Update!)

Whoa, what a month! I wrote 14,279 words in about three and a half weeks! The leap year was nice, gave me an extra day to tinker with the art you see here!

I know, I know, I'm not exactly a professional digital artist, but I love to dabble (as a treat). Good news, though! My wife, who IS a professional digital artist, agreed to help out once a month with this kind of thing!

This month's section was a ton of fun to write. I'm really looking forward to seeing where the story goes, aren't you? Stick around!

Available for all supporters on my Patreon! Just $1 a month for some of the wildest sci-fi and poetry selections!

[thefearandwonder]

We're on Royal Road, baby! New chapter every workday!

[thefearandwonder]

February Psychopunk Update Incoming!

Getting closer to the big monthly update! I'll be posting it tomorrow, so you should get ahead of it and become a supporter today!

You can get access to my ~12,000 word, proofread and beta-enjoyed novel updates every month. If you're one of a handful of people who really vibe with my work, you can become a beta reader on my Discord server too!

This year's project is Psychopunk: Only Cancer is Immortal

We're sitting at about 30,000 words now, having begun the project's official drafting in December.

As a supporter you're only required to commit $1 a month to see all my novel and poetry updates. I know you like my writing, so why not throw a token bit of support my way? It helps so much!

[thefearandwonder]

Committing to Monday updates for Psychopunk: Only Cancer is Immortal, now that the new part-time day job transition is a bit less... scream-y.

I'll always let my patrons know if there's to be a delay in a release, but that shouldn't happen outside of extreme circumstances.

[thefearandwonder]

Well, hitting the short list of the 25k milestone wasn't quite the gangbusters moment I'd hoped for. But I always say, finish what you start, and we'll do our best to finish this story strong before I throw it into the manuscript crypt with everything else and move on to the next tome of unpublishable psychobabble. 🤪

[thefearandwonder]

I made the first big milestone and I'm still truckin baybeeeeeeeeeeeeee check me out, if you're not too SCARED 🤪🤪🤪

[thefearandwonder]

Current lifeline of sanity: Spring sunlight and my puppies 🥰

Current floss supplies: Dangerously low (one box remains) 😬

Favorite song RN: BLACK STATIC by HEALTH 🤘

Current anxiety: How much caffeine is too much? 400mg daily? OK but the caffeine in dark chocolate doesn't count right??? 😇

[thefearandwonder]

Officially caught up to hit the first milestone by the 16th. Time for a 4-hour bath, tequila reposado, and a whole lot of winging it for two days off of writing

[thefearandwonder]

Chapter 3 up!

[thefearandwonder]

WAIT! Please visit the link above and consider liking and leaving a comment! Even if you don't enjoy trippy, oceanbound cyberpunk, if you enjoy me as a person, helping me trend on this site during this writeathon can help me make it to the top and I push myself to write quality content every day!

[thefearandwonder]

Chapter 2!

[thefearandwonder]

Psychopunk: Only Cancer is Immortal (April Issue, 2024)

This month's promo art brought to you by my writing prompt and a cursed AI. I couldn't think of a novel that could benefit more from the warped, discerning eye of a modern art generator. We hit over 14,000 words again this month, putting me at a respectable pace given how clean the drafts are! I am proud of myself and delighted to be writing this novel. My therapist and I have been talking about 'doing things just for myself' more, and while that sounds really boring and self-love-y, not doing it was the primary reason I got burned out so many times over the years. This is a book that's unapologetically for me and for people who care about me and want to know more about the inside of my brain.

And I think that's an ok thing to do! We're one chapter or so away from the conclusion of Part 1, so look forward to the thrilling climax of next month's release! Boy, how are our heroes going to get out of this jam? Who knows! Stay tuned and as always THANK YOU for being an amazing subscriber and supporting my work as an artist. And don't be shy about sharing what you think in my Discord server!

[thefearandwonder]

Please enjoy a relaxing sound bath and a poem inspired by my own Yi Jing divinations. ☯️🙏

[thefearandwonder]

Psychopunk: Only Cancer is Immortal

Chapter 8 Excerpt:

Trip offered her a thin smile. “You wouldn’t be the first person to mistrust PRISMA – some people in Syndicate even think the whole corporation’s central leadership is an elaborate deepfake meant to cover up a fairy cabal.”

“A what the fuck?”

“Fairies are spirits that live in computers. Most of the ones that live alongside us in Syndicate are helpful spirits, but some can be mischievous. My mother was a gijutsu-miko, she used to do exorcisms for people who got malicious fairies in their heads.”

Trip remembered his mother especially by the simple circle tattoos on her hands, the inked lines on her finger bones and chin, and the way her flowing sleeves would flicker the candles in a given room. The thought made his heart ache. He had not considered her for years.

“I remember,” he said, feeling far away from that dingy bus ride. “I remember one time when she had to connect her mind to a fisherman’s. He was an old man with legacy tech from the twenty-odds, and it was blackwalled, too – nothing going in or out, so his onboard fairies had turned strange. He’d take the jellyfish from his catch and just… throw them at schoolchildren while shouting in a language no one understood. Only happened once or twice in town, but it was enough to get the gijutsu-miko involved. She had to stay connected with him for a full day, and the only way she got him to comply was by drugging his bukubuku tea with valium. Eventually she got the fairy to stop believing in its own existence, but that took the old man’s oldest friend out of his head; he no longer hallucinated the fairy in his episodes and felt empty. A few weeks later he tied a tire to his neck and threw himself off of his boat into the harbor. My mother said she’d never use the ‘solipsistic hallucination’ ever again on a fairy.”

Mote’s eyes were wide and her face was as flat as it was mute. “… um, what?”

“Sorry. Uh… Gijutsu-miko are important in Syndicate. They go by many names, depending on the culture. Broadly, they’re just called psychopunks.”

“No offense to your culture or anything,” said Mote. “But the more you talk about it the more ratdick insane you sound.”

[thefearandwonder]

The myth of Aryan superiority only gets weirder (i.e. stupider) when you put it under an academic microscope. So, a bunch of colonial scholars in the 19th century got obsessed with the linguistic implications of the translated Rigveda, let their imaginations run wild, and then some of them concluded that this was somehow proof of European supremacy.

Except those 'other' Europeans. Only the conquerors and colonists were the supreme ones, not the nomads or folks with tribal traditions. And never mind that without oral, tribal traditions there'd be no Rigvedas to translate in the first place.

Intelligence just means your mind is good at memorizing and analyzing things, it doesn't mean you have the wisdom to see past your own reflection in the mirror.