#my favourite thing about writing these two is learning more and more that LONAN is the hopeless romantic????

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

“You look like a Prada guy,” and other random things Harrison passes off as flirting | Seventh Virtue

Some chaotic Harrison dialogue to spice up your dash!! <3

Sifting through early Lonan & Harrison interactions from Seventh Virtue! Lots of personal favourites in this bunch.

Seventh Virtue, circa 2021.

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Something Held | Feeding Habits Update #8

Hi all!

Not me not realizing it’s been 3 months since I posted a Feeding Habits update hahahahahaha. Today let’s chat chapter nine, SOMETHING HELD. This also marks the last chapter in Harrison’s POV so prepare to say goodbye to this icon!  TW: body horror, mental illness, trauma

Just a reminder: This is my original work and plagiarism of any form will not be tolerated.

Scene outline, excerpts & a little reflection on making difficult decisions that my not particularly benefit the book but benefit you as the writer under the cut because this update is GIGANTIC.

General taglist (please ask to be added or removed):

@if-one-of-us-falls, @qatarcookie, @chloeswords, @alicewestwater, @laughtracksonata, @shylawrites, @ev–writes, @jaydewritesfiction, @jennawritesstories @eowynandfaramir, @august-iswriting​, @aetherwrites​

Scene Breakdown

Scene A:

It has been two weeks since Lonan found Harrison at his shared apartment with Suzanna and things are getting strange. Lonan and Suz are getting closer, Harrison is getting more distant and slowly losing it. One morning, Harrison wakes hearing Lonan and Suz’s laughter, and crawls to the kitchen to investigate. When he reaches them, Suz is evening out Lonan’s hacked haircut and they’re both sobbing.

Scene B:

Shortly after this bizarre encounter, Suzanna steps out of the apartment for a breather because her son is sort of terrifying her! So Lonan and Harrison double-team to clean up Lonan’s hair shavings. Harrison begins eating the hair while Lonan stares and they have a conversation about the state of their friendship.

Scene Ba:

This scene is gross and confusing! More hair is ingested. My god.

Scene Bb:

After the above ordeal, both boys rinse off because they’ve been rolling?? around?? in??? hair?? but also?? things don’t stop being a little gross

Scene C:

An air of calm finally settles over the apartment. Lonan brews earl grey tea for him and Harrison to share and Harrison asks if he abandoned Lonan in the final chapter of Moth Work. Lonan doesn’t really answer this question so Harrison continues on his confused, but finally lucid (one-sided) conversation, admitting he understands he burdens his mother, who still has not returned. They circle back to the question of abandonment and Lonan answers Harrison the way he wants to be answered (yes), and this is a moment of freeing, where he feels some sort of responsibility in this irresponsible new life he’s led in NYC. They sort of agree to be friends again.

Scene D:

The boys head into the city to find Suzanna, heading to a bakery near the Hudson River. Lonan drives in his used car, a strange experience since Harrison has not seen him drive in years. Taking the opportunity, he searches through the car and finds a map in the glove compartment. The map is erratically scribbled over and it takes him to moment to realize this is Lonan’s map and the first indication that Lonan, who he has assumed is this stable, perfect person, is not as unscathed as he seems.

The boys pass the waterfront and Lonan nearly crashes the car into an oncoming truck. Harrison regains control of the vehicle tucking them into a side street. Shaken, Lonan apologizes for the mess he’s created both physically from his nosebleed and between Harrison and his mother, which gets Harrison a little antsy because he doesn’t like the suggestion that he’s going to leave. Lonan clarifies, stating he won’t if that’s what Harrison wants.

Scene E:

Later, everyone is back at home and Harrison wakes up to a Lonan-less bed. He gets up to investigate the strange dripping coming from the bathroom and opens the door to find Lonan precariously teetering over a sink filled with water. Harrison, concerned, moves him away and tries to ask why Lonan is presumably going underwater, but doesn’t push. They both stand on opposite sides of the bathroom until the sun rises.

My process:

Honestly, writing this chapter was a huge up and down. The first half of it came much easier to me, but the rest was a literal hellfire to get through. I think I was incredibly fatigued with writing in Harrison’s POV as I’d been writing it since June (I finished this chapter in either December or January). This book has been a pain in the ass to write despite me liking what it is, and I really think it being the only place I’ve physically “gone” since the pandemic makes it even harder to write. I felt claustrophobic in Harrison’s POV since I’ve been writing it for half a year, and in a lil ~breakdown~ my beautiful sister reminded me of something she’d previously told me, “it's not about what works, it's about what you want”.

Let’s chat about this for a sec! I think I was watching a Harmony Nice video on her “hard-to-swallow” self-care, and she basically outline (I’m paraphrasing here) that it’s critical we care for ourselves in ways that might not necessarily be easy to do. Honestly, leaving Harrison’s POV is one of those hard-to-swallow self-care things I literally had to do because my mental health was not happy with me! Y’all know my boys are very close to me, and I’m not picking favourites but Lonan is 2500 times easier for me to write with at the moment. I think Harrison’s situation and how he deals with it is much too similar to mine but in a way that is difficult to place (Lonan and I are unfortunately similar but in a way that is easier for me to understand about myself!). From the beginning of writing his POV I’ve been in Struggleville, but kept pushing through hoping the next chapter would be “the one”. Not to burst my own bubble but there is no such thing in the state of mind I was in! I was pushing myself to find something that doesn’t exist because my brain was really not equipped to do what I needed it to do. I really, really did not want to quit on Harrison’s POV, but I had to, not because I don’t like him (he’s my baby) but because I needed a moment to myself. I felt way too seen in ways I don’t really know how to address in myself, so writing him was horribly frustrating at all times (my fault, not his).

My characters really do live in my head rent-free lol. They live in there! They take up space! They take up energy! They take up concentration, and resources I need for myself! Empathy is so integral to my process, that I give a little part of myself in everything I write. This is a blessing because I really get to dig my heels into the mind of another person, but a curse because I’m not a machine (and sometimes I forget that). It is a lot of emotional energy and labour to give everything you have to fictional people. I don’t think an artist needs to be tortured to create good art (this is not it!) but I never truly practiced this well? In my attempt to be empathetic, I was torturing myself a little bit, not going to lie!

So to combat this, I decided I needed a change. Hence, this chapter is imperfect and probably needs some stuff added to it, and while I’ve only written little of Lonan’s second POV, I’m feeling a lot better! It’s nice to get “outside” in a different place lmao this is so sad (pandemic writing things).

Excerpts:

I wrote the beginning of this in a livestream I hosted on my YouTube channel! There’s also a shoutout here to my dragon tree Lisa <3 miss u boo

Two weeks go by. Lonan sleeps on the couch. Harrison wakes up at dawn—no earlier, no later. Suzanna buys a plant: a Madagascar dragon tree she names Lisa. June grows into the collar. Lonan plays sudoku in the newspaper. Harrison learns to bake focaccia, gluten-free, whole wheat. Suzanna learns to palm read, tells Lonan he’s experienced great betrayal (they stop the reading immediately; Lonan goes back to the newspapers). Harrison begins burning incense at sunrise—frankincense. The dragon tree nearly dies (Lonan saves it). It rains every weekday that contains the letter T. Lonan shifts stacks of soggy newspapers onto the breakfast table, answers crosswords with the help of Suzanna (four across, nine letters, Something held). Harrison burns a baguette. Suzanna buys a hanging basket of pothos. The power goes out for two days and the icebox floods the kitchen tile (Lonan mops it with old newspapers, the ink running like jellyfish). June barks for the first time. Harrison eats a bundle of dried bay leaves. Suzanna waters the plants with rainwater, icewater, wrung into a coffee tin. Harrison leaves the stove on while sautéing shallots (he eats them whole). Lonan wakes up feverish and fills out four newspaper crosswords, then falls asleep on the coffee table. Suzanna moulds panna cotta in coffee mugs and shares the batch with Lonan when they won’t tip out. Lonan teaches her how to propagate the pothos and soon they have twenty empty cans of cuttings poking from the windowsills. They rearrange the furniture, the couch facing the kitchen instead of the TV, the dining table right outside the bathroom, then put it all back the next day. They birdwatch from the tiny window with binoculars and a magnifying glass. They sort coupons. Whittle soaps. Watch Norwegian films without the subtitles. Discuss cliff diving. Make matching anklets (blue beads, elastic string, the plastic clacking how Harrison knows they’re coming). All of this they do as Harrison lies on his bed for two weeks, counting the corners of his ceiling and trying to determine a way to multiply them telepathically.

This is the very next paragraph!

At first he assumes they’re laughing. The sun nearly rising between other high rises, blotting his room with dawn. This is not a surprise. They are probably making pancakes out of buckwheat and discussing the hilarity of whole grains. They are probably laughing at store-bought cherry preserves. Too sour. Their cheeks puckered. But then the laughs get louder, and the sun rises higher and it’s not laughing at all, but gasping.

Here’s Harrison crawling!! is this straight out of the exorcist probably!

Harrison’s instinct is to crawl. As if his smallness against the ground will stop anyone from hearing him, even before he unlocks his door. On hands and knees he shuffles from his bed to his doorframe, edges the door open with his shoulder. On hands and knees he hikes through the hallway, the gasping getting louder, shuffling until he sees them. Lonan sitting on one of the kitchen stools, a grocery bag wound around his throat. Suzanna clacking scissors in two hands so their blades ping in the sun. Her fingers loped around his hair, knuckle-deep, the blades snipping, the gasps growing, them both sobbing, the hair falling, the sun stalking, their bodies rocking. Harrison takes it in from his crawl. Experiences it all on his knees.

So this excerpt seems really you know, normal:

They clean up the hair. Harrison with the dustpan, Lonan with the broom. Harrison still kneels. Lonan still cries. The only thing that has changed since crawling into the kitchen is that Suzanna is taking a walk around the apartment complex. She needs air. Room. If she cries long enough, a cigarette. So Lonan sweeps. Harrison collects. This repeats.

The kitchen smells of nutmeg. Freshly grated from a whole club over espresso, Harrison imagines. He smells this as he tracks Lonan with the dustpan, hovering its open belly for clippings of hair. And Lonan is so compliant, brushes cuttings of himself onto the plastic surface so Harrison can trash it. As Harrison looks on from his knees, Lonan diffuses in sunlight, the window illuminating only his edges. A body so familiar Harrison knows exactly where it flares with light or absorbs it. A body with skin like mulberry silk. A body he could recreate in charcoal with his eyes closed. His archangel translucent and luminescing.

Skip this excerpt if you don’t want to read about Harrison eating hair!! i’m sorry!

Harrison picks a bundle of fallen hair from the dustpan. It’s airy from being recently shampooed, smells faintly of pear, maybe even ginger. This hair, touched by a woman, or a few women, and cut by one, or a few, in different contexts. Eliza’s hands deveining the roots, and then Suzanna’s, trying to fix them. So Harrison eats it. That bundle like a toothpicked cube of cheese. He puts it in his mouth and swallows.

Lonan watches like he’s unconcerned. He watches this feral animal—Harrison must be something feral, starved of something and ravaged by that hunger. Chewing mouthfuls of hair like that will quell of him of what is missing, if there even is anything missing, something unidentifiable in this bland circuit of New York City, this time-loop of sonhood, this fresh start a dousing of flatness. As Harrison eats, he understands he consumes that something like it’s holy communion, reuniting with that something by absorbing it. And still, that hunger moves him, from finishing the dustpan of hair, and closer to Lonan.

“Do you think I’m a bad friend?” Harrison asks, wringing the corner of his lips clean from loose hairs. From this perspective, Harrison on his knees collecting hair, Lonan’s eyes look bluer. Maybe their saturation has nothing to do with the angle, but Harrison feels this is true; his eyes are so crystalline, they are temptingly edible. Like two plump blueberries. Or a matching set of clear glass marbles. Harrison swallows. He repeats, “Do you think I’m a bad friend?”

Lonan swallows, adjusts his grip on the broom. “We’d have to be friends for me to answer that.”

“Aren’t we?”

And here’s the rest of this scene!

“You’re my mother’s friend,” Harrison says. “She trusts you.” He crawls closer to Lonan. “You’ve got secrets. Rituals. Tell me her favourite finger-food and who she wants to marry.”

“I don’t know your mother that well.”

Harrison wraps a handle around Lonan’s ankle. A muscle there jumps like a dolphin breaching the water. He’s memorized this plane of skin, could rebuild it from single grains of sand while blindfolded. He furls his hands across its surface, unfurls.

“You garden with her,” Harrison says. “You share a plate for dessert.”

“She’s kind to me.”

“You cook her breakfast.” Harrison tugs on Lonan’s ankle, knowing it won’t raze him, knowing he’ll come down anyway. “You know the exact temperature she drinks her coffee down to the last digit.”

“I’m trying to be hospitable.”

“You’re trying to be a son.”

Lonan kneels. Crouching so they’re huddled over each other, so it’s nearly impossible to distinguish one body from the other, which one sinks, which one rises.

“My mother’s only got one son to live with,” Harrison says, his voice thin from a clogged throat. He reaches for Lonan’s scalp, scrapes a line down the centre, now an even plane of cropped hair. “And it isn’t me.”

“You’re unstable,” Lonan says, burrowing his face either into a cabinet or Harrison’s shoulder—neither can tell. “You won’t let yourself have friends.”

Farther, toward the tile they go, a pile of hair scattering. “My mother wants me to forgive you by replacing me with you.”

“She’s grieving,” Lonan says.

Harrison loses his hands. He doesn’t know where they disappear to, if he touches skin or tile. “I haven’t died,” he says. Skin or tile. Skin or tile.

Here’s an excerpt from scene C ft. this memoir bit from the time I was shocked that this university I visited had real FANCY teabags:

Lonan brews tea. Earl grey, from a tin. Harrison doesn’t know why he expects it to come from a bag. An individual paper sachet, or if he’s lucky, one of those fancy ones woven from nylon. But it’s from a tin. Two teaspoons into the bottom of a single mug they pass back and forth, wordless at the kitchen table. Strung in the bathroom, Harrison’s t-shirt hang-dries, nearly figure-like, an unfilled phantom. He tugs a throw around his shoulders and stares at his hands. Each crest of cuticle. Each bulb of knuckle. Each maze of fingerprints.

He is material. This is fact. Not just outlines. He’s got skin that goes pinkish when pinched, a pulse that juts from his wrist, two eyes that burn at the scent of lavender, ten fingers. But as he holds his hands up, studying them in the faint moonlight, it is difficult to believe his tangibility. In the city, he has lived as a haze. Fogging over grocery stores, eateries, nondescript. Fresh start has always implied an air of zest, a zing that should have fueled him to plant roots in this restart. But Harrison is rotten, aphid infected, overwatered, underwatered, then not watered at all. He flexes his fingers. He pops the joints. He tries to press his pinkie to the back of his hand. But none of this brings him back to himself. His hands continue feeling like someone else’s. His body invisibly marred in some way he can’t reverse, disconnected in retaliation.

Harrison reflecting on his relationship with his mother:

Suzanna has never left him alone this long, and to her detriment. He imagines her now, living the life she always should’ve lived, the life she lived before he crosscut his way to her most important thing. She’s probably at a salon, having her hair twirled with a round brush, making dinner reservations at some place always too expensive for two (extra points if it has a French name, more if she has to wait a half hour before getting a table). When she talks to her stylist, she doesn’t mention a son, but plans to travel up the west coast, all the way into Canada if she’s feeling adventurous. She’ll buy crime novels she’ll never read at duty-free, reapply a lipstick that cost her a paycheck in the reflection of a hand-dryer. After the salon, she’ll meet a woman at a wine bar, converse about children, and still not mention a son. Suzanna’s singleness will be a celebration.

The boys finally trucing it out <3

When Harrison finally opens his eyes, Lonan is staring at him. His eyes two reels of the Pacific. They cycle in blue. So much of him has changed, and yet he is still the same. Beyond the haircut, Lonan isn’t that much different. He can’t be much different. But as Harrison searches, splaying his palm on the wet table, he knows this is untrue. Lonan is hollower than he was last summer. A little more haunted. They have this in common, then.

“Can we be friends?” Harrison asks. With his pinkie, he finds himself writing against the damp table just as he did Lonan’s scalp not too long ago. Lonan’s gaze follows each loop of each letter, Harrison’s steady left hand.

Lonan is consumed studying what Harrison has written, where each letter connects in near-cursive scrawl. After a moment, he nods, once, twice, and then reverts to staring at the table’s new inscription. On its surface are two words: something held.

The boys in the car like old times <3

Lonan drives. This is strange because Harrison has not seen Lonan drive a car in over a year. Usually, Harrison takes the wheel, but tonight he guides them through the city, in search of Suzanna. His car is clean. This isn’t unexpected. A cherry-coloured hatchback that rattles whenever he makes a left turn. It smells vaguely of cotton air-freshener and the undercurrent of cigarettes.

“You still smoke?” Harrison pokes at the plastic nob for the radio, and it crackles to life. Synth and electric guitar pulse in 4/4 time.

“I bought it used.”

They’ve agreed to get to know one another while they search for Suzanna. Another restart, some attempt at an honest hour. As Lonan changes lanes, Harrison pokes open the car’s glove compartment. A tin of nicotine gum falls on the mat. A hot pink feather pokes from underneath the driver’s manual. Harrison hauls out both, runs the feather along the gum tin, then the back of his hand, and then Lonan’s cheek. When that rouses nothing, he unlocks the tin and removes a slit of gum. Right as he’s about to pop it in his mouth, Lonan says, “I wouldn’t eat that.”

“Why?” Harrison asks. “Did you lace it?”

“Like I said, I bought the car used.”

Harrison puts the gum back, and then the feather. He sticks his hand farther into the glove compartment, feels around until he drags out a map of the state, bilgy and half torn. He unfolds it, careful to avoid the rips, and flattens it against the dashboard. Almost immediately, it wilts against the cold, faded from time in the sun. It’s been marked up. Half with pencil, half with a red ballpoint pen. After a few minutes, Harrison understands the previous owner’s route. Or at least he does at first. Following the red pen arrows, they started at Long Island, then reached Manhattan. Then a much longer arrow takes him from Manhattan to Geneva, and then Buffalo. And then the red pen circles, once, twice, three times, four times, and what is in the centre doesn’t even have a city name. What it does say is HELP, in all-caps, each letter then melting into an illegible scrawl. Harrison sees bits of words: Luke, woe, hands, clay, guard, stray, each wobbly and disappearing into the other, becoming cities of their own, destroying others. He tries to understand the route, but the farther he pours over the map, recircling each line with his finger, the more lost he gets in the ink.

“Is this your map?” Harrison asks. There is no proof that it is. Even the handwriting is all wrong. Ragged. Confused. Desperate. Not like Lonan’s careful, hesitant print.

“Like I said, I bought the car used.”

“But is it your map?” Harrison asks again. Gently, he creases the paper and then slots it back into the glove compartment. Outside, they pass three convenience stores in a row, a flock of couples emerging from a bowling alley, tipsy and cradling leftover deep dish pizzas and mozzarella sticks. They pass two more convenience stores before Lonan finally answers.

“I was confused,” he says.

“This is more than confused,” Harrison says. “It’s disturbed.”

“I’m not disturbed.”

“But something is wrong with you.”

Lonan slows at a crosswalk. A group of teenaged girls whisk by in glitter and lip gloss.

“Yes,” he says.

This is Harrison trying to stop Lonan’s nosebleed after their bizarre swerve which I think is kind of <3 tendy <3

Harrison reaches for him. One hand on the back of his neck, and the other reared toward the red stream. His touch is tactful, so faint his fingerprints wouldn’t even be left behind, but still, the dabbing with his jacket’s hem is enough to redirect the blood’s flow from Lonan’s upper lip to the cuff of leather. The radio is still on, garbled like an unmassing of crepe paper lanterns.

This is the final excerpt for this update that takes us to the very end of the chapter! Harrison has just found Lonan supposedly head-first in the sink and though he asks at first why he is doing that, takes an alternate approach as the chapter closes:

Harrison gets up, his knees popping like gnawed bubble gum. He decides he will handle Lonan at a distance, if he chooses to handle him at all. Like a timid pet owner trying to tame their suddenly-rabid yorkie. Like a friend not trying to tip the full glass. To let its contents film at its surface, but never spill.

Somewhere in the apartment, Suzanna probably listens to them. If Harrison didn’t know her better, he’d imagine her pressed neatly against the door, waiting to hear the shuffle of their bodies or the tang of an argument. Instead, he imagines her at the kitchen table, gripping a glass of water for so long, half of it evaporates.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Harrison says, stepping back until his spine hits the counter’s lip. He curls his fingers under the granite. Looks toward the window, now a faint periwinkle. Lonan heaves. His fingers caging his face, an animal restrained. They stand there until the sun rises.

So that’s it for this gigantic update! I have like four short stories to update you on so I hope to be back soon!

—Rachel

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

maybe you’ve talked ab this before but were lonan and harrison always going to be a couple? like when you introduced lonan for the first time did you expect him and harrison to be a romantic thing?

no! they were never supposed to be in a relationship!

I wrote a comprehensive post on their relationship’s journey from start to finish HERE.

I’d planned sooo many different endgames for them (and a major aspect of that end is that Lonan… dies), but a romance was never initially in the books. I was very young when I created my boys, and I also created them at two separate times. We don’t actually know they’ve met until 10 chapters into book 2, and the nature of their relationship is pretty black and white: they work together & hate each other! Fostered’s narrator, Reeve, also rarely sees them interact because Lonan isn’t in the book very many times haha (he probably makes ~5 appearances?). Because I was so young when I created them, their love lives developed as I got older so I really didn’t know a whole lot about them like past relationships, sexualities, etc. The process of learning those things is the kind of raw growth I’m grateful to have been able to witness since it really made them feel more human! When I learned and understood what shipping was, baby me very quickly started shipping them (at about the book 3 mark). I was still convinced they would end up acquainted (but likely not good friends and def not more) because I still didn’t get to see much of their relationship through Reeve’s head. It’s only at about book 5 when we actively get to see their friendship (and potential romance??) unfurl because Lonan becomes the centre of the book, and by proxy, we get to see what that means for Harrison. Before this point, there are so many other subplots that their relationship basically doesn’t matter at all to Reeve since she has more pressing things to worry about. By book 6 they’re official in some capacity tho their relationship has a very minor role until we get into their POVs in Moth Work. Was a bit of a journey that was wholly unplanned, just as the rest of my favourite parts of writing! Thank you for asking, I love gushing about my boys!

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Witness State & Coup de Grâce | Feeding Habits Update #3

Hey People of Earth!

Before we get into this update, TRIGGER WARNING that this chapter discusses attempted suicide, mental health issues, animal cruelty, toxic relationships, and some nods to starvation, so if these are topics you’re sensitive about, I would skip out on this update!

This chapter was a slight nightmare to draft as it went through many, many iterations due to a real struggle to attain the desired emotional arc, and also because of a few logistical problems. In total, it’s about two and a half months of work as it combines some scenes from the old chapter two while also patching areas I cut with new content. Despite the difficulties, I am so happy I pushed through because the final product is quite strong. Here’s a scene breakdown:

Scene A:

We start at the “beautiful place” AKA the cove Lonan and Eliza frequently visit. The last time we’ve seen Lonan was at the end of chapter two, when he had his mild “public freakout moment” on the steps of a cathedral. 

On the beach, he rests on the shoreline while reflecting on all the things he’s been tormented by since chapter two (wicked children, fathers, parenthood etc).

He sees an illusion of his father who is obviously not there (he’s very dead!) which propels him to converse about him with Eliza (remembering that Eliza and Lonan’s father were once romantically involved).

This conversation goes south as Lonan is able to unpiece some of Eliza’s mistruths until Lonan finally admits he wants to see his father again, insisting he’s still “alive” through the darkroom abandoned in Oregon him and Harrison failed to destroy in ch. 1 of Moth Work.

Scene B:

Lonan watches a moth through the window (that moth motif tho). Here he recounts what occurred at the hospital in ch. 2--the mother and her three kids taking him there, and then eventually being whisked away by Eliza.

Lonan heads to the kitchen to drink an acetaminophen but quickly realizes he’s not alone in the main apartment. His father sits on the couch looking over photo albums, each leaf holding the same photo: the postcard of Eliza that Harrison initially finds in chapter one of Moth Work. This vision obviously does not exist and is prompted by sleep deprivation but he doesn't know that lol.

Seeing this photo and his father prompt him to believe that he can only get away from this feeling of being haunted without Eliza in his life and further bad decisions ensue which I won’t get into!

I explained the meaning of the title HERE.

Excerpts:

Here’s the opening bit which is the most recent addition to the chapter:

The water is never murky, but today it doesn’t sparkle. Like it’s taken a low dose of cyan, it foams pale against the shore, an offering that wets the tips of Lonan’s shoes. He sits under the cove with one hand pressed into the current, each singular wave like a finger tottering over his veins. Today, their beautiful place is only an arched wall of stones and roily ocean.

Eliza is sunbathing. She lies on her back in the centre of the cove, where its mouth opens to a ceiling of sun. On the drive from the hospital, they both remained silent, Eliza’s hands taut like leather around the steering wheel, and Lonan’s head soldered to the cool window. Even when she pulled into the lot of a diner, named after a vague Canadian city or perennial flower, she said nothing, exiting the car to return to it with two crayon-coloured slushies, his red, hers orange. By the time she pulled up to the beach, her drink was half empty, his fully melted, urging against the brim of the cup. He followed her when she exited the car, parked against a row of pebbles, and placed his hand palm-first against the water the moment she lay against the sand and closed her eyes. Now, water puckers over the shoreline and between each of his fingers, a sort of absent massage. The water is a dull, vitamin-like blue. Warmer than he’s expected for the middle of February, pleasantly pruning his fingertips.

This is a direct continuation of that:

The sun has started to set. It flares against the horizon, its orange singeing the water’s blue. Like in front of the church, it fills him, its heat a comfortable grip around his throat. Though it should remind him to keep awake, its warmth lulls him closer to the sand until he rests his head just where the water laps. He knows it says nothing. He knows he has not slept in days. But to him, its rays nurse his skin like the loop of a nursery rhyme, and when he is parallel to the sky, he closes his eyes and welcomes the sun like it’s an infection. As colours pulse underneath his eyelids, water soaks the crown of his head, and it truly is like being buried at sea, just him, the sun, and the water at his perimeter.

The next chapter in this update is chapter four, aka Coup de Grace. This chapter was an absolute joy to write after struggling to get a handle on chapters two and three, and I’d consider writing this chapter to be, by far, the best writing sessions of my life. In this chapter I feel I really figured out the “crux” of Lonan’s character/his darkest secret, and that’s essentially that he believes all children are the wicked stems of adults, a belief he actually doesn't want to have, and actively combats until he sort of becomes absorbed by it. I learned a lot about my boy in this chapter and learning such important details about a character I’ve been writing for five years feels like a gift!

This chapter plays with form/the timeline a bit because we jump around on the timeline, almost like a movie that begins at the end. This was difficult to do in fiction, but I think I pulled it off, and am really happy with the chapter. Bear with me tho as this breakdown may be confusing:

Scene A:

We start with Lonan rapidly making his way to his father’s darkroom which sits in the middle of a forest. He’s brought supplies with him to destroy it.

The first line of this chapter mimics the first line of Moth Work, which you’ll see below.

Scene B:

We jump back in the fictive past to the morning that would’ve occurred right after the end of chapter three. Lonan goes about his morning routine but is disrupted by a loud thud from outside. Anya, the woman he’s befriended from chapter two, has jumped from the roof of the apartment complex. This attempt is unsuccessful.

His first reaction is to run to Anya’s apartment to see if her son, Joey, is okay. 

Scene C:

Less of a scene and more of an internal monologue of Lonan reflecting on Anya’s attempted suicide, and that he feels in some ways, she’s administered her own “death blow”.

Scene D:

Eliza takes Lonan to his father’s cabin to “get him away” from what’s happening at the apartment since he’s really taking the news badly.

Eliza tries to get Lonan to eat something because he hasn’t eaten much since Anya’s news, and they have a conversation about Eliza’s motives in volunteering Lonan to help Anya in the first place.

Scene E:

A flashback where 14-year-old Lonan and his father are at the cabin, about to kill a fish using the ikejime method. His father has informed him the fish is dead, but Lonan knows this is very much a lie.

Scene F:

The fictive present, where Lonan lies on a couch inside the cabin, Eliza tending to a fire. He has a bad feeling (he’s right about that lol)

Scene A2:

We continue the events from scene A as Lonan enters the darkroom, only to find out it’s been cleared out save for three pictures hanging that tell a story and reveals a lot of Eliza’s secrets.

All you need to know about these photos is that it makes their romance feel somewhat like a lie lol.

Eliza finds him at the darkroom despite telling him not to go alone, and Lonan tries to process the new info/secrets revealed.

Scene G:

In the fictive present, Eliza cuts off Lonan’s hair and together they burn each weft. They discuss a few things (his father, the women he’s befriended, future children, mating habits of the praying mantis)

Scene E2:

Back to the flashback where Lonan and his father have killed, cleaned, and eaten the fish. They rinse their hands off in the lake before his father knocks them both into the water.

Excerpts:

This is the opening, ft. the mirroring first line which makes me a lil too giddy:

The darkroom isn’t haunted, but a dead man owns it—and he knows exactly where to find him. Through the woods, Lonan brushes past bushes of gooseberries and wild rhubarb, a gas can sloshing rhythmically in his hands. In his teeth, he holds his flashlight so its beam brightens the pathway. It is not yet dawn.

This is a description of the darkroom that leads to the end of the scene:

He shouldn’t know where he’s going. The forest is so dense and unanimous, a duplication of itself, nothing more than repetitions of the same tree, same flower, same stream. But he doesn’t need to see to know where his feet take him—he doesn’t even need the flashlight. He’s memorized the direction to the darkroom like the pattern of veins on his own arm.

He is not surprised to see it still stands. As if protected from rain, thunderstorms, the fallen trees that crisscross at the walkway; it’s always been a divine place. The air is damp, and particles of mist cling to his throat.

He sets the gas can in front of the steel panelling that makes the door with urgency. He does not need to rush but cannot take his time.

Wildflowers burst from in between the cracks of concrete the shed sits on and he knows each species like they’ve been bred in his blood. Wax flowers, thistles, clusters of asters he’d sometimes gather as a boy and leave as offerings in the heart of the forest’s most prominent clearings, like an offering, or a ransom.

Lonan kneels once the first thread of sunlight leaks between the whisper of trees. He is familiar with this forest, the cabin not too far away, the messages the water speaks to him when he sits at its edge most nights, why the darkroom was his father’s favourite place and why it always will be. So when sunlight hits his eyes, he presses his fingertips against his lips, and looks to the sky for mercy.

Lonan watching his fave TV show that leads into Anya’s jump:

He turned the television onto its usual program while on his last three mandarin segments and looked on as a herd of caribou dotted a waterway. They moved like the current, pattering along the prairie, worriless. He should have heard the part where a wolf caught up to the herd, the same wolf that would later go on to single out a young fawn and silence it with two teeth in its throat like bullet wounds. He should have seen the part where the prey was consumed, its flesh a desperate shade of red. But the thud distracted him. Maybe not even a thud, more like a crash. A sound he felt in his temples, a ringing in his ear, like a chickadee. Lonan set the skin of the mandarin onto the coffee table and stood slowly. It’s his body that moved him, no force of the mind, toward the balcony. In one movement, he unlocked and shoved open the glass sliding door, rucking it forward with his body weight when it stuck. On his lip, he tasted citrus and salt, a mixture of fruit and sweat.

He heard death before he saw it. The way each identical sliding door of the apartment units around him shook open, just like his. What a woman on the sidewalk declared, her tone so shrill, he couldn’t tell if she was delighted or horrified, something like, “I thought she was a bird—I thought she was a gift from heaven.” The garbled sound of an infant, confused by the sound concrete makes when a human batters it.

We get Lonan’s first response and some Joey and *that stunning motif tho*:

Lonan did not deescalate the stairs to the ground floor to join the growing crowd. He did not call an ambulance or rush to perform CPR. He ran upward, scaling flights of stairs as if airborne, with little effort. Once he reached her unit, it was the tin of madeleines he noticed first, sitting unopened, untouched, dare he thought, neglected on her welcome mat. It’s this that lulled him, freezing him in place for a moment. He recollected nothing of bringing the madeleines to her the evening previous, of leaving them neatly tucked against her straw welcome mat. Innocently idle there, his gift unrecognized.

Joey sat on the couch. The television was on, projecting technicolor polygons onto the boy’s face. Lonan did not register what it was he watched, which animated shapes pounced and danced on screen. Joey did not cry at first. He sat, staring wondrously at the screen like it was a trap door to a different dimension. The socks secured around his miniature feet looked freshly ironed, and his hair smelled like his mother did when Lonan first met her—like coconuts.

The buzzing of onlookers and neighbours sounded like the caribou running. A constant drumming of a snare, a guttural kind of ambience. He thought of Anya the day previous, her desperate excitement to paint over the wall, the way she mixed that orange juice drink, incredulous, experienced. He thought of the sourdough he never picked up, and there on the counter they sat, one torn down the middle like it was ripped bare-handed, the other skewered with a chef’s knife. He thought of Anya’s hospitality, her coy excuses to help them both avoid embarrassment, the way each part of her apartment transformed into gold. He thought of their conversation, Anya’s initial instruction when she left him alone with her son. So when Joey cried, Lonan knew exactly to reach for the remote and tick the volume up until his sobbing quieted, like the last few minutes of a rainstorm, passionately loud, then stunningly silent.

Here we briefly reference 2 Kings 21:6: “And he burned his son as an offering and used fortune-telling and omens and dealt with mediums and with necromancers. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger.”

Anya will never be the mother she once was, in the capacity she longed to be. Joey will grow up without a father and with a mother who cannot mother him in the ways she’d always hoped; he’ll have no one to recreate. That is the real loss—what could have been. Anya burned herself into an offering, administered her own kill shot, provoked her own fate; either life or death, and her fate chose neither.

The following mirrors something Lonan’s sister, Reeve, says in Houses With Teeth about hunger:

The day Anya jumped from her balcony onto the sidewalk below, Eliza took Lonan to his father’s cabin. In a daze, he watched her pack a bag with enough things to tide them over for a month, and in that same daze, they reached the cabin before sunset. That night, Eliza rifled through the cabinets to put together a meal, and her findings assembled as a can of tuna topped with crumbles of saltines—cheap take on a deconstructed pâté.

She served him his dinner on a set of plates he vaguely recognized—terrazzo with a scalloped edge, maybe held a scrambled egg or halved tomato when he was a child. He stared through the French doors, down to the water that padded below. Even when she tried some for herself, putting on her enjoyment in exclamations like “It’s a culinary masterpiece. Refined. Daring. A little spectacular,” she couldn’t convince him to eat. His appetite disappeared when Anya fell from the sky; there would be no hunger as penance.

This is the fish flashback:

Lonan knows the fish is not dead. He is fourteen but not naïve. Sun warms the back of his neck; maggots shimmer over the gummy slick of the water’s surface. Today is what someone would describe as the perfect day. Trees whisper secrets amongst the spines of their leaves. Birds teeter on the neck of birch trees. A butterfly dusts its wings of the shore’s sand and nips at his childish knuckles.

The fish is not dead. This is fact. In his palm, it expands, its gills like the crescent cut of the moon. The fish is not dead. Its mouth kisses the air like it’s a divine thing, each blip of its lips greedy, like the air tastes of gold. The fish is not dead. Its scales grate against Lonan’s palms, shimmering, its prettiness its last defense mechanism. The fish is not dead.

More with this fish memory:

“It’s dead. It does not even know the taste of life. Why save it?”

“I don’t want to save it,” Lonan says. His father’s wedding band digs into his forehead. To an onlooker, it may look like he’s about to dip him forward into the water, not a drowning, but a baptism.

“What do you want to do with it?”

Mourn it, he wants to say. Pity it. Sacrifice it.

The water whistles ahead of them, all the uncaught sunfish gloriously slashing naively in the water. They are unaware of their future demise, and the current demise of their loved ones, bodies all piled into the net as if on display. Lonan’s eyes sting with lake water, a streak of it dripping onto his lip so when his father reaches over him and secures his hand like a marionette around the screwdriver, he tastes salt and doesn’t stop tasting it.

And the end of part A of the fish memory that gets a little gory:

“It dies for us,” his father says, his voice dampened, like the distant blip of the lake. “So we give it mercy in return.”

As the screwdriver’s tip lowers closer to the fish, Lonan licks his top lip and asks, “Why do we need to show it mercy if it’s already dead?”

“Le coup de grâce. A death blow. To end the suffering of the wounded.”

“But it’s already dead.”

“Even the dead still suffer.”

Lonan does not register when the screwdriver impales the fish’s brain. He does not register when his father uses both their hands to slit the fish’s gills with a hunting knife or register the warm spurting of its blood up their knuckles. He stares at the fish’s glasslike eye, and as he and his father gut and scale the fish, puppet and puppeteer, he imagines the way he’ll feel with its head in his mouth.

Here’s a section from the fictive present:

Seven days after Anya jumps off her apartment’s balcony, Lonan lies on a pig’s leather couch his father once towed in from the city, a damp washcloth doused in eucalyptus essential oil pressed to his forehead.

At first, he fears the blinking comes from stars and that the cabin’s roof has been removed. But as he comes to, he smells it, the earthy crack of wood, the wisp of smoke, and he knows the light that pulses is a fire.

Lonan opens his eyes. As he’s thought, he lies on his father’s couch, essenced water dribbling down his temples from the washcloth. Eliza sits hunched on the stone of the fireplace’s ledge, her shoulders ripening under the orange heat. She’s burning something. The scent of scorched film is not unfamiliar to him. Like his mouth, it is dry and acrid, like the lick of a battery.

“You promised,” she says, as if sensing he’s awoken. Lonan does not move, even as the eucalyptus soak drizzles into his eyes.

Eliza no longer wears the parka. She’s stripped to a pearl-coloured camisole, her feet bare and propped flush against the brick. Glossy red lacquer colours her toenails, reflects the light in ovular patterns along its surface.

“A false witness shall be punished, and a liar shall be caught,” she says. “Proverbs.”

Going to leave this tea here casually:

The darkroom was misplaced. This was Lonan’s first thought when he yanked open its steel panel door and entered to reveal its contents. He did not need the glimmer of a flashlight to confirm his instinct. This was not the same darkroom he’d known as a child, or the darkroom he found his sister in, or the darkroom him and Harrison tried to destroy. Everything was slotted away, puzzled back into a configuration so unknown to him, so wrong to him, that the organization felt more like war.

Unlike when he and Harrison had last stepped foot inside of the darkroom, lugging the gas can along with them, not unlike what he did then, the photos that used to string clothespinned in no justifiable order were now taken down. The bricks of photo paper forming a maze around the developing tables, the amber bottles of chemicals—all of it, meticulously put back in places Lonan knew they never had. Under his boots, he did not feel the crunch of glass or slip of forgotten negatives. The darkroom had been swept clean.

Lonan dropped the gas can at the darkroom’s entrance, and removed the flashlight from between his teeth, thumbing it off. He worked his way around the shed like he’d been wounded, staggering, stopping to hold himself upright. Nothing was in its rightful chaos. Expired film lay stacked in a waste bin he’d never seen before. Bad paper cuts had been shredded. The photos he’d been so accustomed to not looking at, all gone, except for three, evenly clipped on the last three lines.

In the distance, an eagle cawed. The stream trilled. Tadpoles cricketed along the embankment.

Lonan approached the remaining photographs like they’d electrocute him. They were displayed one after the other, each on its own line. The first, a picture not unfamiliar to him. Eliza standing in front of a colourful street of vendors. Her loopy signature on the back a jagged indication of where she signed it, most likely wobbling on a train, or in the back of a taxi. He picked it off its clothespin and held it up to a hole in the roof where sun bled through. Nothing had changed from the photo since he’d taken it last year, and he was almost grateful she’d left it fossilized when she took it from his pocket. His gratitude did not last by the time he saw the second photo, so unexpected, he had to glance twice.

His father stood arced slightly behind him, his hands not visible. Lonan knew where they were—one secured around his forehead, the next urging a screwdriver up a stone. Sun scalded the water’s surface, wrinkled it with light. He remembered the song his father whistled as he fried the sunfish on a birch branch, truly less of a song and more of a reminder as he hummed up and down each minor scale, not once stopping to check his work, like he knew better than any instrument.

Lonan plucked the photograph off the line and held it closer. Though he was shaded mostly by his father’s back, he knew they were both in it. He shouldn’t have been surprised when he turned it over to find that same looping signature inked onto the back, smudged, like she’d forgotten to let the ink dry before handling.

It would’ve been easier to think about the second photo’s implications had he not seen the third. He could’ve excused it—a shot taken by a neighbour, though the cabin was remote. A shot that fired itself, the camera discarded on the ground, though it was taken at eye level. A shot signed with familiar initials E.L.K, as if those letters could stand for anything but Eliza Louise Kiang. It would’ve been easier to excuse her presence. To excuse her knowledge of him, to forget she’d ever told him she didn’t know his father had children, that she swore she’d never have been with him had someone informed her. It would’ve been so much easier.

The last photo was not a photo at all, not in the same capacity at least. The ink had gone purplish from the elements but swirled, almost horror-like around the photo’s frame. He could have pretended the white swishes of colour were strands of lace, or the awkward scratch of photo blur. He could’ve pretended to not understand. But there it was. The light funnelling down on the black and white shape so he understood it was not a photograph he looked at, but a child.

I have already shared this line a few times, but it’s my favourite thing I’ve ever written oops!:

When she looked at him, she grinned, and he turned his face to the ceiling where a hole in the roof caved around a branch. The sun’s eye disappeared behind the bullet of the wood, leaving only its outer edges to skirt the sky, a veiling that felt less like an eclipse, and more like evidence of an exit wound. 

Obligatory “I’m the grass” shoutout:

“All people are like grass, and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field,” he says without once reading what’s actually written on the page. “Isaiah.”

“Isaiah was onto something, don’t you think? Poor grass, poor flowers—they all die in the end, but they have their God. They have their saviour. Everything dying except for God and his word.”

Eliza cuts another clump of hair. The fire welcomes its feed with haste.

“What does this have to do with children?”

“Do you feel you’re the God of these women, Lonan? Are you their saviour?”

Lonan shakes his head. “I’m the grass.”

And to finish:

After they eat the fish, Lonan and his father rinse their hands in the lake. This is respect. This is self-ordinance. This is a holy act.

His father stoops farther into the stream than he does, water nipping his knees. The sun has disappeared beyond the horizon, the sky now coloured periwinkle, silvering his hair. The taste of sunfish coddles Lonan’s tongue, oiled and briny with saltwater. They share a bar of orange glycerin soap, its scent cloying, like a rotting fruit basket. His father peels the bar between his palms, scrubbing until his fingers disappear under suds.

That’s it for this update! Hope y’all enjoyed! :) I’ll be back soon to update on chapter 5!

--Rachel

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Bad Vegetarian | Feeding Habits #1

Hey People of Earth!

As you can see from the title, not only do we have a new series of writing updates, we have a new series of writing updates for a whole new novel that was! not! supposed! to! happen!

For any of my friends who miss Moth Work (aka myself), guess who started writing a sequel literally no one asked. :)

I’ve had ideas for spinoff stories for Moth Work (as if MW wasn’t enough of a spinoff) and was peer pressured into starting this novel by @sarahkelsiwrites​ and I’m really happy about it! I have yet to come up with a title, but the moment I do, shall inform you, but for now, we’re calling this MW2!

This book (if it even ends up being a book) starts with chapter one, Bad Vegetarian. Unlike MW, MW2 starts in Lonan’s POV (not sure I’ll switch but I’m sure it’ll be inevitable), and I’m here for it!

I’ve been wanting to explore Lonan and Eliza’s relationship in more detail since having them come together in MW by complete fluke, and oh! is the tea piping!

This chapter really illustrates how truly dysfunctional this relationship is on both sides. Here’s a break down by scene:

Scene A:

Lonan is paint shopping with Eliza who has just gone vegetarian (which is the def the most normal thing she’s spontaneously done lately). Eliza feels like celebrating by painting their entire kitchen red.

Lonan particularly is drawn to blues, but since this ain’t what Eliza wants, they go with a brilliant red.

Scene B:

Lonan lines the kitchen with painter’s tape as Eliza bothers their neighbours for paint rollers, while trying to convince himself this relationship is still somewhat okay.

While doing this, he gets his weekly call from Unknown Woman who he’s been in contact with for the last few weeks. What for? We don’t know! They talk in code, and he realizes Unknown Woman’s situation is getting worse, and impromptu, tries to do something about it.

Scene C:

Lonan and Eliza bump into each other as he’s exiting the apartment and she’s entering, and have a short, strained conversation about why he’s leaving (she’s not aware of top secret phone calls that make this book feel lowkey like the old dystopians!)

Scene D:

Lonan attempts to drive to Unknown Woman but only knows she lives in Arizona (not great for directions lol). While in the car, he realizes it’s essentially impossible to get there without knowing where he’s going, and eventually gives up and heads home.

Scene E:

TW: blood

Lonan re-enters the apartment only to find Eliza “bleeding” in the kitchen. She’s actually just being wild and this “blood” is wall paint.

Scene F:

If we haven’t already seen the dysfunction, oh does it get worse! As Lonan and Eliza try to have a *moment* Eliza has a conversation by herself and gets a lil gaslighty.

Halfway through this, Lonan gets a phone call from Unknown Woman who we finally find out is his ex-girlfriend Glenne. Sounds like tea but he’s genuinely only helping her out of her toxic situation (which will be clarified later) though Eliza’s skeptical.

This chapter was a lot of fun to write! I wrote a majority of it today, and am really happy to have a *chill* project. While I love my other books (the three I am apparently now working on at once), it’s nice to have a place to dump my ideas with characters I know very well in situations I’m comfortable in whenever I feel like writing but don’t have tons of time/ideas/energy.

Excerpts:

Here are the opening three paragraphs! The first sentence sets up the POV a little weirdly, but I think it works with a later sentence that sort of mimics this “reminder” kind of style:

There are no rules, just remember, Eliza is vegetarian. She’s into earth tones, neutral tones, leafy greens, root vegetables. It’s all new. The day she announced her diet change, she also announced a desire to repaint the kitchen, to fit the new aura, to fit the new ethics, but she wants to paint the kitchen blood red, and Lonan is still a meat-eater. He reminds himself: there are no rules, just remember, Eliza is vegetarian.

In the hardware store he thumbs paint chips. They’re set up in an array, almost like checkers, dissolving in a gradient from reds to purples. Eliza wants red, “Not necessarily earthy, but the root of organism, of life,” so Lonan looks at the blues. They’re all a variant of a seaside theme—Sea Breeze, a cloud-like blue, Beach Umbrella, a wispy aqua, Seafoam Serenade, muted like the soft side of a turquoise. Repainting the kitchen matters little to him, and so do the blues, but the red section, devilish, makes him shuffle his blue deck faster.

Radio from the store’s intercom tins through the speakers, dampened by the hustle of carts, the thud of bodies against the concrete flooring. He holds many cards up to the light, Secret Getaway and Parisian Summer almost the exact shade, but still he flicks through, until half the pile is indistinguishable, and the other half are blues he likes and not reds, like Eliza’s asked.

The next excerpt sort of highlights the last six months of Lonan’s life as he’s been on this whirlwind of keeping up with all the things Eliza has tried. I have added kudzu pudding and other kudzu food just for my pals @sarahkelsiwrites​ and @shaelinwrites​ (rlly want kudzu pudding):

Her sudden vegetarianism is not confusing to him. Eliza tries new things all the time, something he’s learned after living with her for half a year. One time, she brought home four different kinds of dried beans to make into tea, and together they drank it atop the balcony, the Vegas strip across them somehow tasting better. One time, they ate a variety of kudzu foods for a week because Eliza said invasive species had to be killed somehow, and so they spooned kudzu pudding into their mouths, kudzu root powder into their water, kudzu salads with salted almonds. One time, she put them on a warmth ban, and they ate only frozen peas, potatoes, raspberries, turned the thermostat down until every surface crackled. She liked the feeling of subtle frost on the countertops, how it jolted her when she touched it accidentally in the morning. He found her many mornings awake before him, transfixed to the table with both palms soldered to its surface, like she’d forgotten she wasn’t a part of it. One time, she paid to have the furniture in the house rearranged, not good enough for her spirit, and then reverted it two days later. “The couch doesn’t like being so close to the refrigerator,” and he could’ve asked “did you ask it?” but said, “Understandable. It shouldn’t be forced to catch a draft.” So her vegetarianism is normal. Already, she’s switched their meat supply to beetroots, chickpeas, tofu she rips apart bare-handed. For the last three mornings, they’ve both taken a shot of spinach and gingerroot, a liquid that burns to make you feel alive, as if you weren’t already.

The next excerpts kind of surprised me with their amount of humour! Not something I expect from Lonan, but I’m glad he has some sass back lol (CW: some upsetting animal imagery):

There is nothing wrong in this relationship. Everything is Eliza’s new favourite adjective—stunning. Everything is scrubbed with kitchen bleach, glittering like a plasticky pool float in the shallow end, stunning. Everything is planned, put in a calendar, a notebook, a flitter of receipts, but always planned, stunning. Everything is better, even better than better, a better that can only be described as stunning.

Lonan uses this word frequently now, rolling out a strip of blue painter’s tape and trying to find different ways it stuns. Sticks when he sticks, peels when he peels, keeps its edge when it needs to keep its edge, so it’s stunning. The bubble television is turned onto a channel about sheep, and as he lines the baseboards, outlets, catches glances of a sheer buzzing against skin, sometimes a hunting knife slicing until there’s blood. 

Eliza is asking a neighbour for paint rollers because they bought four cans of wall paint, two paint trays, a box of garbage bags, three rolls of painter’s tape, and a small paintbrush each for both of them but forgot the rollers. Stunning.

The following excerpt highlights that Lonan has a cellphone! Is Fostered just a bizarre alternate reality of a time period that doesn’t exist? Perhaps! (CW: some upsetting animal imagery):

Today, they’ll prime the cabinets, the walls, and tomorrow, scroll a coat of red onto both. The kitchen will look more like the inside of an anatomical heart, the sinks and drawers like ventricles, but this is Eliza’s vision—her tastes come alive.

The sheep are being herded by a collie. As Lonan rips another strip of tape with his teeth, he stares at the screen mounted in the corner, at the almost-naked sheep dashing across a field. How many will be slaughtered, he doesn’t know. The narrator must’ve said that, but there is no plan, really, for death. Even for sheep.

He kneels toward the kitchen vent, the tape roll linked around his wrist, and smooths a line of tape down. Eliza doesn’t want to paint the vent—it wouldn’t complete her vision—and so it will remain the original wall colour, a square of cream so worn, it’s almost grey.

Here we have some hints at Eliza’s weirdness:

He straightens and looks at her. She’s bundled in her fur coat even though she has always insisted she’s good at even Vegas’ warm winter. Since going vegetarian, she’s insisted it’s fake, even though he’s read the lining tag—100% mink. He doesn’t know why she’s needed her coat when she’s only walked up a few flights of stairs but doesn’t care to ask.

She approaches him with her thumb out, and when that thumb presses into his eye socket, he flinches.

“What happened here?” she smooths the dip of his under eyes, her fingertips cold. He smells her perfume, different today, always different, a smell like cloves and lavender. “Are you sleeping?” She presses onto her toes, examines the other side, and her frown deepens. “This doesn’t look like eight hours.”

“I’m sleeping,” he says, though they both know this is a lie. It’s taken her two weeks to notice.

“I can run to the pharmacy,” she says. “If you need a refill.”

“I’m sleeping.”

“I didn’t notice this morning—I would’ve given you another energy shot.”

Here’s a line I like because of a) skin and b) sun:

Lonan goes nowhere. This is not his plan. Asphalt whips under the skin of each tire, the setting sun wringing him blind. 

Fully sharing this for the verb zags (and also because I accidentally roast cities tho I love them I am one of these blink-less people):

He doesn’t know where he’s going. Arizona is the only thing he knows about her, doesn’t know if she lives in an apartment, a duplex, a house—fully detached, semi-detached. As he pulls into a residential neighbourhood somewhere along the vague line he’s drawn on the map from Las Vegas to Arizona, he watches for all these options. In the distance, a jogger zags across the street with her golden retriever, children play basketball on a driveway, still in their school uniforms, another woman clips the wilted stems off a magnolia bush. 

It’s when he gets closer to the apartments that the sameness is noticeable. High-rises with pearlescent windows that go pinkish in the sunset—all of them identical. Each building evenly spaced, more like a board game than a place to live. Even the space around each building is the same—the same rose hedges, the same iron fence, the same people bustling in and out, all wearing some variation of the same pantsuit, all holding some other hand—child, partner, lover. The same haircuts, smiles, eyes like marbles, as if there’s a store somewhere that sells copies, a catalogue for eyes that don’t blink. He’s been looking into the sun for too long, there must be a difference, but the longer he looks, the more indistinguishable they become.

To get out of explaining where he wants to go when he and Eliza bump into each other, Lonan says he’s visiting his sister (Reeve), and because she’s iconic and must make an appearance, here’s a line ft. our queen:

He could make the lie true. Reeve is somewhere in the country, he imagines, dancing in a faceless city, living in a motel room, tipping everyone well. 

(^^ all true)

Here we have Lonan identifying with the animals more than anything else for the second time in one chapter (TW for more blood imagery):

Lonan hooks the car keys onto the lanyard by the front door and slings his coat across the couch. The television is set to the same channel as before, though the program has switched from sheep slaughter to birdwatching. On screen, a heron perches by a riverbed, opalescent in the sunshine.

“Did you hurt yourself?” he asks, the heron now frisking up the white bark of a tree. He glances at the fluorescent red dripping between her fingers, pattering against the tile.

“I was opening the paint cans.”

“With a kitchen knife?”

He gestures to the blade on the counter, blood-free, newly sharpened.

“It’s all I had on hand.” She pulls her wrist closer to her, runs her index finger along the injured area.

“It’s clean.”

“I washed it, Lonan.”

This next one has some blood imagery so TW for that!

The heron has moved closer to the riverbed. It watches the water knowingly, its subtle simmer of movement, and after a moment of watching, strikes its beak down so it spears a trout. He misses the part where it eats. Eliza’s clicked off the TV from behind him.

She slams the remote onto the counter so hard, its back clatters off and onto the tile. “I cut my arm with a kitchen knife while opening paint cans. It happens.”

“I don’t see a cut.”

“Why would I make that up?”

“I don’t see a cut.”

She walks toward him. He expects her to shove her wrist in his face, but she doesn’t. She just holds it, some of the blood fluorescing pink, splashes onto her toes.

“You got to see your sister?” she asks.

“She cancelled.”

Eliza clucks her tongue, examining her wrist, and then she extends her arm, revealing the full patch of pale skin gone red.

Lonan takes it, and with his fingernail carves a line through the red to reveal the healthy patch of skin, painted, uncut.

And finally, here’s the last line of this excerpt that essentially explains where the title comes from ft. predator VS prey symbolism:

He’s reminded once more of the heron, how it plunged into the riverbed with ease, and the trout dangling in its beak, its commitment to life most fervent the moment before being consumed. 

So that’s going to be it for this update! I don’t know how frequently I’ll be writing this, but it’s been a lot of fun so far. I’m excited to explore more relationships I haven’t turned over in a while as a little side project while I do other things! Hope y’all enjoyed!

--Rachel

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Hi! I love your youtube channel & I think you're super cool! I'm a newer follower and was wondering if you could give a summary of the concept of Fostered---it sounds like a really interesting series!

Aww thank you!

Yes I can!! Fostered is too thicc for me to give extensive summaries (unless y’all want this) and there is very little you need to know from the earlier books to understand the current ones! That’s because as myself and the series have aged, its genre, age category, and plot points have changed!

Here’s a small outline of the main characters:

Reeve

Protagonist + narrator for all “main” Fostered books

Sister of Lonan

Will write salty breakup songs about people she was never in a relationship with

Bi as fuck!

Foster

Was once Reeve’s boyfriend?? no??

Best friend of Harrison

Will write love songs about tofu

Ace as fuck!!!

Harrison

Best friend of Foster

Also Reeve’s best friend!

Sort of love-interest of Lonan (we’re getting there lol)

Will write love songs about waffles

Gay! as! fuck!

Protagonist of Moth Work

Lonan

Reeve’s brother!

An antagonist for a good chunk of this series

Will not write love songs he has no heart (he does I am just mean)

Also bi as fuck!! Everyone is bi in that family lol we love it

Here’s a breakdown (CW: there’s a lot of violence/convo about mental illness/potentially triggering content in these summaries, so tread with caution):

Fostered (book 1) to Resisted (book 3):

These books (Fostered, Hunted, Resisted) are probably the most harmonious out of the 6 (7 including Moth Work) so far! That’s because for a long time, I believed Fostered would end at three books (initially a standalone, then duology). They’re all closely linked through the “foster homes” plot (hence the name of the series) and are obviously the most dystopian of the books (all three are also YA). You can feel the 2014 dystopian vibes in this book lol. I wrote this summary 5 years ago for my first ask ever and it sums up that idea:

The book takes place in the not-too-distant future where children who’ve committed crimes, are neglected, or have chosen to, are sent to behavioural detention centres – what everyone else that’s not the government like to call ‘foster homes’. The story revolves around a fifteen-year-old girl named Reeve who’s lived two years in a ‘foster home’ after being accused of her sister’s murder. Following an accident that she caused which subsequently led to her escape of her foster home, she stumbles across a group of kids, who like her, have gone through the lifestyle and also have escaped. She makes an alliance with them and everything seems in its place until she finds out that a team of hunters are searching for her because of the same accident. Unable to remember anything that happened from the event, she then learns that maybe all things don’t point to her – what really happened on the day she escaped? 

(props to 14-year-old me for writing this)

I wrote these three books so quickly (though at the time, as a thirteen-year-old, it felt like drafting took forever). I started Fostered in October of 2014, and by May of 2015, I was halfway through Resisted :))))). How?? These books are all above 85k??? I could never!!!

FOSTERED (book 1 - YA dystopian):

Follows the above plot. What isn’t mentioned above is how this book starts. We start with Reeve (15 at the time–a baby!!!) chillin in an abandoned storage unit she was hoping to use as shelter. HOWEVER, plot twist of the season–there are already people there!

She’s semi-ambushed by these people who she later learns are our good ol’ pals Foster and Harrison. The boys are also taking care of a 6-year-old girl named Essie who they love fiercely!! They’re sketched out by Reeve, which we later find out is because–they! know! her! 

Foster, Harrison, and Reeve were actually all the closest pals in a ‘foster home’ they called WAFFLE. Reeve forgets that during the disastrous accident she causes that separates them (she blows up the foster home lmaooo) but lookie here–the squad is reunited! Eventually everyone comes to love each other (though it ain’t like that in the beginning) + Foster and Reeve have a romance which I find so bizarre now?? They would never.

The squad is being “hunted” by a group of “chasers” (I LOVE dystopian lool) headed by a woman named Red who is actually?? a badass? She tries to kill them a bunch of times, Reeve kills Lonan’s sister by using her as a human shield, Essie dies, I’m awful!

HUNTED (book 2 - YA dystopian):

After Essie’s death, the group is shook! Harrison especially as he is *soft* and the “leader” of the group. To protect his other ducklings who are now the most sought after people in America lmao (Foster and Reeve), he does something SCANDALOUS and joins the *government* AKA all the evil people putting innocent children in these awful detention centres. What a 180! Essentially, he does this to purposefully manipulate investigations into Foster and Reeve away from them, but Reeve doesn’t know this so she’s cheesed when she finds out (she feels #betrayed)!

Harrison’s departure of the group triggers the group’s breakup. Harrison joins an *elite* section of the government that *I believe* tries to wrangle runaway foster kids?? This group is lead by our other good pal Lonan and this is the first book he appears in! He takes Red’s place as antagonist in this book.

The group also includes Holly, a badass who is also Foster’s older sister (and also Lonan’s first serious girlfriend)! She’s scary! She also dies by hanging in a blood-drinking cult mid-way through this book! don’t! ask! Margo is this group’s tech analyst, and she’s a mentally distant hippie (and Harrison’s first and last serious girlfriend which obvi didn’t work out lol he’s gay!) Idk what Harrison’s job was here, but he learns techy stuff from Margo!

This book is important because it establishes Lonan, who continues to be a pivotal character as the series progresses. It also establishes Lonan and Harrison’s relationship. Obvi Lonan is the antagonist in this book and won’t make his redemption arc for another 1book lol, but him and Harrison have a bit of a bizarre relationship. Though they’re almost rivals, they almost adore being each other’s rivals (but don’t tell them that)? After Harrison leaves Lonan’s team, the squad essentially is *hunted* by them, hence the book title lol. 

By the end of this book, a few important things happen! Lonan kills Margo (remember, Harrison’s first and last girlfriend lol, we could say Lonan was killing his competition lol is that too much), this obviously reinforces his role as bad guy! After the book’s events, Lonan eventually overtakes the group and they’re all imprisoned! Love it!

RESISTED (book 3 - YA dystopian):

This is my favourite Fostered book because there’s just so much tea! We start in “headquarters” AKA Lonan’s pride and joy! After he kills off his old boss so he can be Ultimate Antagonist (actually because she essentially killed his girlfriend ahaha), he’s the Man in Charge and power trippin like crazy. 

Reeve is separated from Foster and Harrison who are also in HQ because she’s mentally unwell. Lonan has given her the job of executing people (because he is evil) which she ain’t diggin! so Lonan takes it upon himself to address her mental health concerns (which obviously isn’t helping because they mutually hate each other). 

Eventually, Reeve barters with Lonan for what she wants by using Holly’s death (which only she and Foster witnessed) as leverage. As I mentioned above, Lonan essentially kills/drives away his entire *elite government squad* which means! He needs another one! Reeve uses this as an opportunity and says WELL you COULD hire Foster and Harrison. Lonan does and VOILA we suddenly have a new squad!

This is really where we build a relationship between Lonan and Reeve who have previously done nothing but try to kill each other! They actually bond in this bizarre kind of way. While they still don’t like each other, they mutually understand each other more than Foster and Harrison do as in many ways, Lonan and Reeve have both done the same awful things (lots of killing people :))). 

This all builds up to the epic reveal that they are actually half siblings (they share a mother) and oh DOES THE TEA START BOILING. This news causes major tension in the OG squad (Reeve, Foster, Harrison) as Foster and Harrison think Lonan has done too many irredeemable things to be forgiven, despite the fact that he and Reeve are related. They are right! However, Reeve isn’t so quick to decide. 

She and Lonan go through a lot together (including kidnapping! attempted murder! An explosion! Reeve pretending to be a corpse!) which are still some of my favourite things to re-read and the reason I love this book the most out of all the books I’ve written. This is where #redemption arc occurs!

This book is too long for me to cover everything, but essentially their relationship is the most important! The book ends when the squad (now joined by Lonan) is forced out of hiding because Reeve is injured and actually needs real medical attention! This leads to ANOTHER separation, with Reeve heading back to a foster home for the first time in a few years!

Hollowed (book 4) to Rewired (book 6)

HOLLOWED (book 4 - YA (?) dystopian (?))

Book four is my least favourite book of the 6 and that’s because it’s melodramatic and I was finding my writing style! It’s not quite appropriate for YA because of its violent subject matter, but wouldn’t appeal to adults, so it’s a bit category-less. Dystopian elements still exist, but are less relevant, so it’s also a bit muddled in term of genre.

All you need to know in terms of events are that Reeve meets someone named Lincoln in the foster home she’s put in (see previous) who ends up being a horrifically abusive person. He sort of shifts into the role as antagonist, though from this book on, the lines between good guys and bad guys blur. Hollowed also introduces a new character–Glenne! Glenne is Lonan’s second serious girlfriend and remnants of this relationship still show up in current Fostered spinoffs (tho she will be irrelevant in Houses With Teeth most likely). 

SPLINTERED (book 5 - YA?????)

The genre and category of this book are impossible to define. We continue almost where we left off in book four, and this book is pretty unremarkable in terms of events lol. The squad remains the same, except toward the end, we’re introduced to Darren, a dude from California who hears about Lonan’s *elite government squad* (before the government disowned him) and hopes they can help him locate his missing brother (tho he don’t reveal this until book six). 

This book is mostly about Lonan’s declining mental health that still has not gotten better. Some hints of Lonan and Harrison’s relationship getting closer are also dropped in this book.

REWIRED (book 6 - Adult (???) literary fiction sometimes???)

The category of this book is bizarre. It begins as weirdly maybe almost YA, but dips into adult literary fiction at some points. This book is where I really grasped my style and so the genre and category reflect that transition. 

What you need to know about Rewired is the progression of Darren and Reeve’s relationship as it goes from acquaintances to PALS to MORE THAN PALS to I don’t! want to be! your! pal! This book is so weird and disjointed because of this transition away from YA dystopian and into adult literary fiction. We also get even more Lonan and Harrison relationship development as Reeve meddles her way into business that is not hers!

MOTH WORK (spinoff - no categories anymore I have no idea)

The most recent Fostered book! We finally get to see Lonan and Harrison’s relationship on the page and oh boy! Is there tea! As Lonan struggles to grasp trauma from childhood, and Harrison struggles to help him, their relationship goes to places it ain’t never been before! This eventually leads to a much needed separation where Lonan explores a new relationship with Eliza (his father’s ex oooooof) and Harrison figures out what he needs in order to live a healthier, happier life. MW is a bridge between book six and seven.

HOUSES WITH TEETH (book 7 - adult literary fiction *I’m hoping*)

I have yet to write this book, but we’re back in Reeve’s head! Here’s a synopsis I’ve shared before:

After escaping a toxic relationship, twenty-year-old Reeve disappears for the second time in one year. She’s drawn to Wicker, a mealy town outside New York City, whose disappearances of affluent girls has caught her attention. The day she arrives, a sinkhole buries one of them in the front yard of her new home, a fixer-upper she shares with estranged friend, Foster. Quickly she falls prey to speculation by herself and others, who try to connect her to the tragedy. And even stranger, false recognitions as the girl in the ground, and the many other missing Wicker girls make her feel more and more like one of them–these alluring, unknown women. 

This book is very much my vibe now as a writer, however, it’s been difficult to re-integrate back into Reeve’s head with all Fostered’s dystopian elements removed! I don’t have much else to share about this book since I know so little about it, but it is essentially my current project.

So I hope that was helpful! There’s a lot of unexplored territory that I worry might be impossible to get into because I legitimately do not remember a lot @sarahkelsiwrites calls me a fake fan lol (I genuinely am), but if y’all ever want to know more, I am 100% down to share whatever! This was also a lot of info so if y’all have questions, send ‘em in!

Enjoy this abridged version of Fostered!

–Rachel

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Lots of writing! | Writing Update #1

Hey People of Earth!

I have many a things to update. mwahaha

The first of which is this bad boy!

FISHBOWL was a one shot-ish thing I worked on in mid August because I didn't want to write the scene I had to write, but also didn't want to write outside of my universe. Soooo, of *course* your girl wrote herself some more fanfiction because? I mean? Why not!

It’s not unheard of on this blog that I ship (and then, subsequently cannoned) my boyz Lonan and Harrison. I’d written the first chunk of this story on mobile, just in a note, because I’d gotten an idea for some dialogue. (I had the whole story written besides the beginning and end.) The struggle was figuring out how to start the story. I toyed with a couple ideas, writing a million different first sentences. Frustrated that I wasn’t feeling any of ‘em, I shelved the project for the night and went to bed.

The next day, I came back to FISHBOWL, and I looked over the random first sentences I’d jotted down. One caught my eye, and so aha, I found my sentence. (I struggle with writing openings, so once the first sentence is nailed down, I usually am able to get a good flow rather quickly). I wrote the entire thing in one sitting, and while it’s disjointed and weird, I had a lot of fun.

EXCERPTS:

The story itself is basically plot-less since it was only meant to entertain myself, but I think I wrote some cool stuff, and explored a setting (Lonan’s room) with a lot more diligence than I have before.

This excerpt’s first line inspired me to write the rest of this story (lol my only motivation). It’s not even a favourite line, it just helped me wrap my head around the language a bit/gave me the idea to have a fishbowl-lens look on the story. 

The bottle is crystal edged. Half drained. A kaleidoscope through his eye.

He passes it over with ease. Harrison can’t tell if he’s done it because he’s drunk, or because he doesn’t want questions. 

“My mom likes this shit,” Harrison says, fingering the bottle, like he’s holding a memory and not jade-tinted glass. Careful, so he won’t shatter it. It’s almost like he’s a child again.

I also lluuuurve this next paragraph, just because loppy IS SUCH A NICE WORD. loppyloppyloppy. I just like the personality of the objects in Lonan’s bedroom (because he’s got none). Like his poor depressed lonely fishbowl, poor slothy aloe, poor upset betta.

Harrison watches the fishbowl on the nightstand. He should change the water. It’s aglae’d and forgotten, almost, like the loppy potted aloe on his desk. The blue betta hardly slashes through the water. Ris reaches over and unscrews the pot of pet store bloodworms, sprinkles in a pinch of the pellets. The fish cuts around its browning bamboo stake, and vacuums two into its mouth. Its fins wiggle like ink drops.

This is the last paragraph of FISHBOWL, and I mean, I like her tho?

The betta fish glugs through the water in a flowery whoosh. Bottom feeds the last of the bloodworms. The takeout containers are empty, and rolled onto their backs. Stained rusted orange with dried chili. The aloe plant is still curved instead of straight. Harrison makes a note to water it in the morning. The digital clock bleeds 6:22 in neon cherry light. When it bounces off Lonan’s eyes, they look purple. 

So that’s it for FISHBOWL! I had a lot of fun writing this lol. Maybe too much. I must be stopped.

CHICKEN NOODLE is chapter 14 of REWIRED, and to be frank, it was a bit of a pain to write. I’d churned it out after writing a really intense scene previously, and couldn’t really feel into the flow of the words as easily as I’d done before. The first scene took a chunk of time to write, because I wasn’t sure where I was taking it. After finally nailing a concept, I did complete it, and I’m rather happy with how that section of the chapter turned out. 

However, lol, scene two is a mess?? In my opinion at least, I did read this chapter to @sarahkelsiwrites​ last night, and she rather enjoyed it! Because it was SUCHHH a mess, and I had no motivation to write it, I, toward the beginning of the month, adapted the scene to screen. 

Stripping back the scene really allowed me to figure out how I wanted it to end (which was exciting!). Obviously, it isn’t a very good screenplay, but it was exciting to have a different take on the scene/focus on a new form to learn instead of self deprecating!

The following excerpt is from the beginning-ish of the chapter and sets up the concept:

Maybe this is how it feels. To be a child, or a fetus, or a cell, or a human, stuck in the womb of a mother. Sloshing in amniotic fluid. Doing little fetal summer saults. Eating what she eats. Drinking what she drinks. That last serving of apple crumble. The remnant touches of cognac stuck to her lips. A dog and a bone, a human and its lung, a plant and its gardener, a mother and her child. Can’t live without her, even when you want to. Bitter dependency. 

my favourite parts of this are ‘fetal summersaults’ and ‘human and its lung’ like ooooh. I’m like not 100 on it but I don’t mind it!

PEACH is chapter 15 of REWIRED, and oh boy is she a CHAPTER. I drafted this one as well as 16 over three days (they’re both super short), and I’m shook??

Chapter 14 ends with Reeve saying some *very* horrible things about another character (Emily), and her relationship with our boy Harrison. Because of this, she’s finally decided to check out Emily for herself, and see if she’s really as horrible as Reeve (who’s assumed her to be a Lolita figure), has anticipated. 

Here’s an excerpt:

Emily and I sit on her pull out. My mother would haphazardly call it tacky—blue gingham, red quilt—but I almost like it. With its coffee stains, and holes that vomit polyester. Second-hand charm. Maybe Harrison toted it off some suburb’s curb for her.

So this is the final chapter I’ll be updating you guys on (because it’s the most recent one that I’ve written lol). 

LOLITA, LOLITA, takes place in short succession after PEACH, and deals with a familiar theme--romanticizing/glorifying a female figure (sorta similarly to Lolita, which contributed to--of course--the title). This chapter is sort of the tail end of the ‘whimsical’ adventure Reeve has had entering Emily’s world, and has a lotttt of French inspiration.

Emily, as a character, does study the French language/culture a bit, and Reeve really clings to this particular detail. I think in a lot of ways, she does this because this is a detail she previously ridiculed (in the line: The kind of girl who learns French in her spare time and smokes essential oils, from chapter 10). 

Here’s the first one (I think it’s kind of clunky honestly but I like the idea so when I revisit, hopefully with some editing I can clean it up):

We split a brownie over a glass of Pinot Noir. She says it’s a French thing, and I imagine the bottle emptying on the veranda of a politician’s off coast villa. My lipstick stains the rim of the glass in a ruby porthole. It tastes like fruity hand sanitizer to me.

I also really like the next one, particularly the end. Like with before, I think it’s kinda clunky but I ain’t all that mad:

She’s pulled her hair into a bun. The gold ridge of a bobby pin peaks out from behind a twist. Hiding between the white of her scalp. My nails have dried, now, and she’s gifted me her peach lip gloss, which I wear gracefully on my lips like it isn’t second-hand, but a lavish salve made in Europe. Tested on the eyelids of a fetid rabbit. Warm and licked at on the mouth of a rich young woman. An off brand perfume clings to her throat. The plastic breath of amber and ylang-ylang. I’ve tried to mimic her up-do, but my hair falls, even when I pump it with hairspray. Je suis amoureuse. I should tell her. I am in love.

^^ the perfume in question in my head is like a bootleg version of Chanel No. 5, hence some of the perfume’s classic notes!

The second half of this update deals with Reeve *attempting* to talk to her brother (@Lonan @Lonan). They’ve now migrated to his room, which she notes, is vastly different to Emily’s.

The first excerpt is a line I find kind of funny because a) food b) relatable c) lol Lonan’s ideas for gifts tho d) SAME e) grapefruits ?? f) it’s kind of adorable

He’s brought me half a grapefruit and a spoon. A surrender, or a lost attempt at a gift. The flesh wet, and pink.

like tbhhh grapefruits as presents sounds litttt

The next is actually sort of stolen from FISHBOWL, ha. FISHBOWL takes place in Lonan’s room, so I *very much* stole all the description from there and shoved it into this chapter. oops lol.

His room feels smaller, somehow. I think he’s moved the bed. Or it might be the new coat of paint. The addition of small things, like houseplants, candles, miniature replicas of American landmarks. A wilted aloe plant. A fish bowl. The blue betta inking the water in bored compliance. I think to ask him if he’s made the space more claustrophobic on purpose, but don’t at the last second. Lonan’s never been one to collect clutter. 

And lastly! Not my favourite but eh:

I say, “I like what you’ve done with the place,” even though I don’t. “What kind of plant is that? This one?” I get up from my spot on the floor next to him. Touch at the pot next to the watering can. Finger the waxy leaves. Anthurium, peace lily, ficus? Probably a ficus. “I think Mom would like these. You should take a picture to show her later.”

I like the tone of this scene a lot because it’s so dissociative. Almost underwater. It’s kind of a very thin version of my usual style, but I think it works for what I was going for for sure (I hope lol). 

So that’s about it for this update! I know it was a lil different, but I hope you guys enjoyed regardless! As always, thanks for reading! :)

--Rachel

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Chapter titles! | June Writing Update

Hey People of Earth!

It’s JULY which means we’re due for a June writing update! I honestly didn’t do very much writing in June (was June even a month? did it happen??), so like with May, this update will be pretty short!

FOSTERED #6

I’m kind of at an eh with this book, honestly! This month consisted of stressing over a scene I couldn’t get quite right, until @sarahkelsiwrites gave me some awesome advice while I was mid *sarah help me*. She said “Just end it where you’ve written up to and come back to it later” which is so insanely simple, but helpful. Because I take long breaks between writing scenes sometimes, I tend to lose sight of a lot of details/initial excitement for scenes, which is basically what happened with this scene! So coming back to it later is actually a lot more helpful than trying to piece together words I meant to write weeks prior, if that makes sense. This was actually something I tried to actively avoid, but it seems to be working way better now!

Sarah is my #1 supporter and I dunno man this book wouldn’t have made it past literally the first chapter header if it weren’t for her lol, so bless her patient soul. 

Also, me when I’m writing:

sarahhhhhhhhhh

my kayak is sinkingggggg

sarahhhhHHHAahhh

I did do a thing I REALLY LOVE for this book this month and that’s chapter titles!

A few months ago, I wrote a chapter that I just *knew* needed a chapter title (Table Manners). After writing it, I tried naming the rest of the chapters in this book, and it wasn’t actually as fun as I thought it would be lol. I couldn’t come up with anything I liked, so I dropped the endeavor.

Welllll I came back to it a few days ago and well I have a whole list now:

honestly this book suck but deez titles doeeeeee

I’ve been writing this book for 9 months and this is like the only happiness it has brought me.

For those who can’t read my handwriting lol:

Breathing Room

Catherine

1997

Max

Double Jointed

Paper Negative

Earl Grey

Table Manners

Girl

Fort Tilden

Fluoxetine

Mother

The Garden

these!!!

!!!

I love them !!!!

they are my babies!!!

their content suck but I love them !!!! beautiful !!

Which chapter title is your favourite? I’m rather fond of how the list meshes as a whole because the atmos thooooo but I *love* Catherine, 1997, Girl, and Fluoxetine!

I thought it’d be cool to do a quick run down of why I chose these titles because there was a lot of thought??

PEOPLE YOU WILL NEED TO KNOW:

Reeve 

main character

stressed and tragic

Foster 

love interest ?? kind ? of ??? tofu boi???

?????

he’s hardly in any of these chapters so just imagine him making lentil soup instead??

Lonan 

problematic brother of MC

has picked a fight with Harrison for *no* reason, currently in his first month of being salty (TM)

Harrison 

feisty af but has a big heart

is tired of being walked on by Lonan

hurt af but using that salty energy to help people aw

Darren 

the only morally correct character

doesn’t realize what he’s gotten into

Emily

evasive, acts as a manic pixie dream girl figure throughout the novel, is unfortunately romanticized a lot even though she’s very much just a normal girl

1. Breathing Room

Ch. 1 is set in a very ‘claustrophobic’ time for every character

Gang is very divided after *various conflicts, but somehow manages to be suffocated by each other’s problems?

Both Harrison + Foster need some ‘breathing room’ from Reeve lol me too

how do you take a vacation from your first person narrator

2. Catherine

Reeve tries 2 be Darren’s new friend

Helps him set up his library

Title inspired by Catherine Earnshaw (Wuthering Heights)

Foreshadowing for where Reeve’s character ends up (particularly in her relationship w/ Darren)

Since they’re making a library, Wuthering Heights was *relevant*

3. 1997

“My mom met my dad on a Tuesday morning in 1997.”

that’s basically it

I dont know why this sentence just isn’t my parents met on a Tuesday morning etc etc but ok

lmaooo what is writing

4. Max

The name of Reeve’s father (who has died)

She heads out on a ‘de-stress’ vacay with Darren who is her new father figure ?? yonks

Lots of father references, mostly named Max because of Darren’s paternal-ness

5. Double Jointed

@sarahkelsiwrites gave me this idea lol

let’s just say our girl breaks someone’s fingers ??

and a relationship ??

ouch??

6. Paper Negative

Reeve is looking thru family photos

Lonan shows up and starts being a brat

he’s the negative haaha

7. Earl Grey

Reeve makes Lonan tea and some is subsequently spilled

8. Table Manners

Harrison fights w/ Lonan and Reeve has the audacity to tell him he needs to find some manners lol

9. Girl

Reeve glorifies Emily as being this eccentric but perfect person when in reality she’s just a girl

At the same time, degrades her as a ‘lolita’ figure

Lots of toxic femininity

Highkey not stolen from John Lennon

a giiiiiiiiirl

This excerpt kind of explains the whole unhealthy a) glorification of her and b) judgements Reeve makes (tis long and unedited as a heads up):

She’s perched on the armchair next to him. Her feet, unsocked and half-baked laze atop the teakwood desk. She’s at a beach, maybe. Lost her sandals in the tide, mind in the boardwalk. Her hair is shorter, cut to curl at her chin. Red, as always, like the carmine lacquer chipped off her toenails. Shoulders are thin, her waist edges toward gaunt. But I’m sure he doesn’t tell her that. She’s beautiful to him. Starving herself, or taking turns fondling the new Marlboros he sticks between his lips, she’s still beautiful. A puff from him, trade-off, pivoted elbow, kiss from her. Her ribs stick out beneath her tank top, but he loves her. Size zero, tape measure a noose. With all her flaws, he makes love to her through rings of smoke.   

Smoking kills you. I want to tell her. That smoke goes straight for your throat. You’ll be forty at twenty. What about your beauty regime? Butted out like he’ll do to your heart, to that cigarette you do unspeakable things to. Aren’t you afraid of being ugly?            

I won’t, though. She’s doing nothing wrong. Sat in shorts with her bra leering from under her tank-top, toes flexing, shoulders meager. Guilty, no, garish, yes. I’ve never noticed the gold she wears in her ears until now.            

Somehow, she’s managed to remain on his side. With her body like dust, and temperament like mercury, he sits at his desk with her, lets her look at the findings on his laptop screen. I should get them rings for their left hands, an extra diamond for her. A mantle and a spellbook, a white dress and a bouquet. A four-post bed complete with a chiffon canopy for when he canopies her. Rose petals, and champagne. Congratulations. I’m so happy for you. I’ll save the date. 

She is a girl, like me, but with his attention. A girl who hasn’t asked for the speculation I impale her with. A girl who doesn’t deserve it. I should be ashamed of myself. That’s what my mom would tell me if she heard the vile thoughts I choke Emily with. You should apologize and be friends with her, Reeve. That’s two weeks grounded, until you learn it’s not ladylike to ridicule her because you aren’t her. It’s not ladylike, Reeve, not ladylike. Where are your manners, young lady? 

who doesn't have manners now ???

10. Fort Tilden

A memory about a family reunion at this particular place

11. Fluoxetine

Reeve recounts her mother’s use of antidepressants

Lots of gaslighting in this chapter

12. Mother

The saddest of the titles, recounts a betrayal of a mother figure

Kind of very sad when reflected with the contents of the chapter

13. The Garden

Recounts an experience in a garden with a boy

The setting for the death of a relationship where things are kind of in constant growth? backwards growth?? decay ??

So yes! I rather love these, lol, they bring me very much happiness. 

Onto some book stats:

CURRENT WORD COUNT: 56 449

CURRENT PAGE COUNT: 97

STUFF I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO: Ohhh, I mentioned a few of these in my goals update post, but definitely additions to my shippy playlist: Some Kind of Love by The Killers, Happier (Acoustic) by Ed Sheeran, And I Love Her by The Beatles, Can’t Say No by Conor Maynard (my *personal* favourite)

MEDIA I’VE BEEN DIGGING: 

Sarah drew this GORGEOUS duo portrait of Ris and Reeve:

(yessss Harrison’s nose is so satisfyinggggg) 

I also made a header for Paper Negative w/ this family photo I found in the licensed for reuse w/ modification section on Google:

EXCERPT:

I edited this into the chapter of doom, and you know, I just re-read it and I’m not mad?? I think there are like *adjectives for dayzzzz*, but I think it’s almost where I want it??

His room is warm. Smells of old coffee and cigarette smoke. Emily isn’t here with him. But she’s left her things, yes, her books, and her spells, charms, and crystals. A circle of stones on her dresser, the clamshell rosary looped around the mirror. Set with candles, and beading, a dish of mildewed water. He’s dashed his cigarettes over her incense, and from the look he shoots me when he catches me looking, I figure he’s left them there without her permission. She occupies half of his room, her space bent in a diagonal path from half the door, to the right of the night table. Where she is, her space still breathes, ribbonned and decorated, pinned with dried flowers, and flutes of perfumes. Where he is, his space jitters.

It’s no surprise the left half of the room beams with just his energy. Lighters, and chewed pen caps, posters and pictures and drawings tacked to every breathable inch of the walls, even leaking onto the ceiling. The map, hanging next to his bed, ripped and sewn together again by bits of cellotape. Two opposites under one roof.

And what would I be, then, if I inhabited this room? Not a roommate, or partner, but possibly a lampshade, or chest of drawers. Unimportant enough to not notice every day. Only missed when unavailable. Perhaps I would be of no particular use, too, like Emily’s hanging terrarium, or Harrison’s tossed out marker drawings.

So that’s all for this update, y’all. Hoping July brings back a spark, lol. If not, you can bet I’ll be thoroughly looking for it in the meantime. ;) Thanks for reading!

--Rachel

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

I have all the questions for you, and excuse me if I’m being dense but... what are the fostered books about? I’m not asking for spoilers, but I’m Intrigued to know the general details of it! Again apologies if you’ve covered this I’m new here hello

Hellooooo Anon, welcome to this blog, happy to have you here. :) This is actually an excellent question because, while I talk about this series a lot on here, and they’ve made up five out of the eight books I’ve written, I’ve somehow managed to not actually give much information on what they’re about. lol. So thank you for reminding me to actually talk about these books and their general plot! I know you asked for general details, but since I’ve never really given much of a detailed answer for this question, I’m going to use this post as a reference point for the future!

So… The FOSTERED books are sort of this strange amalgamation of all the things I’ve enjoyed since I started the series when I was 13, ‘til now, at age 16. Some general shtuff about the series:

- I pants all the books

- All the book titles start with the first letter of every major character’s name (because 13 year old me thought this was very cool)

- Though it’s a large series, it’s got a relatively small cast

- I am not seeking publication for this series, so I mean, if you have spoilery questions, don’t really mind answering those because this series, nor it’s characters are going to be in the public eye

- I can’t really settle on a genre for it because it started out as a dystopian (I would say this ‘dystopian’ phase of the series lasted from books 1-mostly 3), but now it’s not really a traditional dystopian, if that makes any sense! The setting is weird, because it started out as very much in the distant future, with classic dystopian-ish rules, but as the books have progressed, it’s gotten very contemporary. At this point, it’s sort of dystopian but takes place in this world, with the same rules besides a few factors which will be mentioned in the synopsis below!

- I have considered possibly re-writing this series, but have decided against it for a couple reasons. A) I think it’d be very, very difficult for me to get back into the heads of these characters as if it were the first time I’d been writing them, and B) the idea isn’t all that unique, and the earlier books are so hard to salvage, lol

- The series is intended to be YA, but I would say books 5+6 are prettyyyyy much not YA

- I wrote up a list of themes for these books to give my best friend some examples when she was writing an essay, and a few I noted that stand out are: self-discovery, the unreliability of love in relationships, moral ambiguity, reality exists only in the eye of the beholder, losing one’s mind

- I do have the bones of a re-write planned that my sister, @sarahkelsiwrites and I brainstormed back in 2016. Buuuut, I’m no longer re-writing the books, so that re-write is sort of a flop, ha. I actually wrote the first chapter of this re-write, so maybe I’ll share it in an Old Writing post?

Soooo, now that that has been said, here’s the kinda bad blurb I have up on my Novels page (which you can check out HERE if you’d like to read up about the rest of my books):

Taking place in the not-too-distant future where children who’ve committed crimes, are neglected, or have chosen to are sent to behavioural detention centres – what everyone else that’s not the government likes to call foster homes – FOSTERED follows fifteen-year-old Reeve – who’s lived two years of her life in a ‘foster home’ after being accused of her sister’s murder. When she causes an accident that leads her to escape her home, she stumbles across a group of kids, who like her, have gone through the same scarring lifestyle and are also on the run. She makes bonds with them and everything seems in its place until she finds out that a team of hunters are searching for her because of the same accident that continues to haunt her memories. Unable to remember anything that happened from the event, she then learns that maybe all things don’t point to her – what really happened on the day she escaped?

(that rhetorical question tho)

SO yes. Book one pretty much follows the structure of a lot of dystopians out there! I would say this synopsis is pretty accurate to book one, but as for the other books, not so much, since like I mentioned before, the books strangely diverged from this dystopian story to a not very dystopian story. This plot pretty much ceases to exist by the time book four rolls around. Book four is also the point in the series where everything goes from pretty light and fluffy to very dark.

Since I don’t really have much to say in terms of the plot, because in all honesty, this series lacks a very structured plot, and is sort of all over the place, and mostly mention characters on here, I’m going to briefly go over the major characters in this series.

This is a cast photo @sarahkelsiwrites drew for me:

But here’s a little about each major individual character (which is pretty much the top row) in mini character profiles:

First up, we have our protagonist, Reeve:

Name: Reeve Aldaine

Age: 15 in book one, currently 19 in book six

Birthday: April 13th

Nicknames: I think she is successfully the only major character in this book without a lasting nickname

MBTI type: ISFP

If she had a favourite band: Daughter

Songs that remind me of her: Made Of Stone, Numbers, Smother, and The Right Way Around by Daughter

Some other stuff:

I’ve been writing with Reeve for the longest out of all of my protagonists, and it’s been really interesting to see how much she’s grown, and how much she’s stayed the same. She’s a fairly quiet, yet determined person who doesn’t mind speaking her mind when necessary. She is a very emotional person, but depending on the situation, will choose to show what she feels, or keep it to herself. Her voice as the series progresses becomes more and more ambiguous, and at times is super distant. I’ve had a few parts of book five in particular narrated in verse, as well as third and second person. She’s sort of an unreliable narrator, and is very poetically existential, but it’s super fun to write her.

And now here’s a little about our first supporting character and love interest, Foster:

Name: Foster Creed

Age: 16 in book one, 20 turning 21 in book six

Birthday: August 23rd

Nicknames: (via his birthday post) Foster (because Foster actually isn’t his name), Auggie (from Harrison), Prince Charming (from everyone in the entire world), Wary Sidekick (from Reeve hhhhhaaaaahhaa), The Other One (from Lonan mostly but also from everyone)

MBTI type: INFJ

If he had a favourite band: Strangely enough, I don’t really see Foster listening to music ? I don’t think he’d have a preference, in all honesty. Since his friends listen mostly to the rock spectrum, he’d probably listen to their music, but don’t see him with a concrete favourite band.

Songs that remind me of him: Something by The Beatles, @sarahkelsiwrites says Seashore by The Regrettes, Tenerife Sea by Ed Sheeran

Some other stuff:

Foster, out of all my characters is the one I make fun of the most. :) He’s also probably the nicest, and I’m too mean to him, but when you live that cinnamon roll life, and I live the cinnamon roll life, and also, don’t confront people, there’s bound to be some teasing. Foster’s name isn’t Foster (ha, it’s August, like the Rush kind because I thought this was a great idea??), and overall, he’s a very decent dude. Out of all these major characters, he’s the best at keeping his cool under all situations, and pretending he’s A-Okay when he’s not, lol poor boy. He acts as the voice of reason in his friend group. When he gets sassy, it’s an accomplishment, and I hold mini celebrations and send endless excerpts to @sarahkelsiwrites, because he’s a very reserved, nice, quiet person.

And now for our second supporting character, Harrison:

Name: Harrison Frost

Age: 17 in book one, 21 in book six

Birthday: November 3rd

Nicknames: (via his birthday post) Ris (from Foster but now everyone uses it ha foster never gets the creds), Frost (from Lonan who needs to stop calling him this 2k17), Waffelina (from @sarahkelsiwrites), Cinnamon Head (from Reeve)

MBTI type: ENFP

If he had a favourite band: Harrison’s music taste is vastly different from mine, and like Foster, isn’t really big on music, so probably wouldn’t have a favourite band or artist. He would like some rock music, and then would like trap music. Yes.

Songs that remind me of him: Paper Planes by Victoria Duffield, I’m Not Making Out With You by Surf Curse, Metabolism by The Strokes

Some other stuff:

Harrison is actually the character that drove me to continue writing this series, since I was pretty meh on it after chapter one of book one. He’s a very goofy guy who sometimes needs to take things a little more seriously. From books 1-3, he’s always been the ‘leader’ figure of his friend group (which consisted of just Foster and Reeve), and while he has some pitfalls here and there, does his job relatively well (very relatively). But, as the books have progressed, he’s also mellowed out, and matured quite a bit. He’s also great at pretending things are A-Okay, but unlike Foster, gets more worked up if challenged. Since book three, he’s hidden his true state of mind from the main cast, and like everyone in the story, has gotten progressively more melancholic. But yeah, overall, is a pretty chill, funny character who often brings humour to the story when it gets darker.

Aaaaand lastly, the character I mention most on here probably, Lonan:

Name: Lonan Clark

Age: 18/19 in book two, 21 in book six

Birthday: December 9th

Nicknames: Loner (from Harrison/@sarahkelsiwrites), Lone (from Reeve)

MBTI type: ISTJ

If he had a favourite band: The Strokes

Songs that remind me of him: Two Kinds of Happiness by The Strokes, Hot N’ Cold by Katy Perry, Blackbird by The Beatles

Some other stuff:

I loosely refer to Lonan as my favourite character out of all my characters, and he’s made a really big impact in my life. Unlike Foster, Reeve, and Harrison (who I call the original gang), he doesn’t make his appearance until midway through book two. Lonan is a really rigid character. His beliefs are very concrete and logical, and the first thing he does in any situation is analyze the problem. Thus, his foundation as a character is pretty harsh, and not really feeling. Strangely enough, even though he’s very logical and makes that clear, his decisions are often very illogical and brash to those they affect. He started out as book two’s antagonist, then transformed into book three’s anti-hero, and from books 4 onward, he’s now officially a good guy. I love Lonan a lot because of how complex and morally-grey he is. He’s the kind of character I like to pick apart, frame by frame.

I *think* that’s basically it for the basics? I’m sorry this was super long, I just realized I’ve never really answered this question, so here’s a bit of a master post for further reference! If you have any more questions about this series and/or its characters, let me know and I’d love to answer them. :) Thanks for asking, hopefully this was enjoyable!

–Rachel

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Doing the Write Thing #52

SO TONIGHT’S WRITING SESSION WAS ACTUALLY GOOD.

Why am I already using caps lock.

SO.

I’m just going to get into this because HOLY STOKED.

Daily word count goal: 250

Words written: 2065

Total word count: 128 739

Total page count: 234

Songs played: Ya girl has officially booked extra time in Music Land because GUESS WHO LISTENED TO MUSIC 2DAY. Daughter dropped a FIRE new album today (as in at midnight, as in I stayed up to buy it), AND OH MY. It’s the score to the new Life Is Strange video game, and it’s absolutely phenomenal. I LOVE the guitar particularly in the score because while it has their usual effects, it almost sounds just purely acoustic without distortion or delay and all that jazz, so it’s so clean? I mean don't get me wrong, I love all the effects in Not To Disappear, but this clean sound is also AMAZING and gives me mega tbt feels to the EPs. The tracks are all so so so so so fucking good, but my favourite is definitely All I Wanted. (Go figures, that's one of my fave Paramore songs, and now Daughter has an All I Wanted which = life.) I listened to the whole thing while writing (until it ended, and then I wrote in silence), but I Can’t Live Here Anymore and Dreams of William came on at the perfect time. Would recommend, ESPECIALLY if you need some good instrumental stuff in your life because a good 3/4 or so of the album is instrumental, if not, it’s minimal lyrics until you get to All I Wanted and A Hole in the Earth I *think*. Either way, give this dude a listen. It’s called Music From Before the Storm.

Also, this is incredibly off topic, but I saw Surf Curse live yesterday and I can’t even begin to express how amazing the experience was. Jacob and Nick were seriously the SWEETEST people in the entire world, and the show was so engaging. Everyone in the crowd was so into it, and it was just so sweet to see a crowd of people who also know a band people I know personally don't know, and chill out with them for a night. @sarahkelsiwrites, my best friend and I met Nick and Jacob, and lol they were the kindest people ever. I got me a t-shirt and cassette, and they signed my copy of Nothing Yet which was sweeeeeeet. If I can take a picture of all my Surf Curse merch, I’ll definitely share it on here.

If you like surf punk/rock, ohhhh boyyyy, can’t recommend these guys enough. Also, Nick kills playing the drums and singing lead vocals at the same time, someone give this dude an award.

Linking my favourite song of theirs below to share the Surf Curse love.

Also check out their bandcamp and support ‘em. :)

Meanwhile, here’s a picture I got of Jacob yesterday:

And one of us with them that I stole from @sarahkelsiwrites

Look at Sarah and Nick so ready to conquer the world. Honestly. Do you see the pure happiness in my face cuz look it’s Jacob and also Nick is doing a thumbs up above my head oh happy day.

Things to know: I was not expecting this writing session to be as successful as it was? I was prepared to walk out without much accomplished while feeling awful about everything I wrote, but yo, I actually had a great time. :)

How I felt: Wonderful

Bad haiku to describe writing session: Today was so nice / I chilled out but had some fun / And wrote dialogue

ok.

Rating of writing session out of 10 and why: Like a 9, it was pretty darn good. Didn’t have much trouble, and I had lots of words are flowing out of my brain ahhhhhh moments.

On a scale from 1-10 my level of stoked-ness is: Like an 8

Lyrics to describe writing session: Happiness is two different things / What you take and then what you bring

--Two Kinds of Happiness, The Strokes (Angles)

Hey look it’s Lonan’s song.

(also successfully learned the intro of both Albert and Nick’s guitar in Modern Girls and Old Fashioned Men and am very happy lol)

GIF to describe writing session:

(The part two to my last DtWT update’s GIF, except this time it’s all happy and smiley.)

Excerpt:

“Your biggest flaw is focusing on the wrong thing. You get riled up, and can’t concentrate on what you need to get done, just like Harrison gets irrational when stressed, and Prince Charming remains oblivious to god knows—the entire world.”

honestly lol so excited for Lonan to throw tea at his face.

So that’s it for now. Thanks for sticking around for my music ramblings if you did. I’ll see you tomorrow I hope. Also school starts on Tuesday. *cries never ending river of pure sorrow and nothing more*

--Rachel