#story collection

[small-z24]

Master List:

One-Shots:

Baking Mishaps

Bat Boys Babysitting Adventures

Shadows of Confession

Gentle Shadows

Shadows of Destiny

Bargain in the Shadows Pt. 1 Pt. 2

Shadows Entwined

Through the Shadows

A Dance in the Shadows

The Breaking Point

Shattered Prophecies

Heat of the Moment

A Shadow’s Legacy

Shadows of Fate:

Part 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Love in the Shadows:

Part 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

(Last Updated: 06/02/24)

[shadow-words]

Book Review: Buried Deep and Other Stories by Naomi Novik

_Book Review; Buried Deep and Other Stories by Naomi Novik_ An interesting collection of #fantasy and #sciencefiction stories.

This collection of short stories range from Austen/Temeraire crossovers to disturbing fairy tales set during the Black Plague. Novik’s style of writing is sharp, intelligent and on occasion, sardonic and a little sarcastic. I enjoyed most of the stories, and as usual with my other story collection reviews, I’m going to be reviewing the stories that stood out the most to me. After Hours This…

[draganwhorror]

I bought a book...

[creepykawaii97]

I'm Bored

I'm currently trying to think of what stories to write about my anthropomorphic cute bat Abbie, but I don't know which aesthetic to try?

Aesthetics:

Dark nature

Oceancore

Farmcore

Kawaii gothic

@acidphosphorusofficial @cloudforecast

[maverick-werewolf]

My website shop is now open!

Ever wanted to buy one of my books? Now is the perfect time!

All my books are now available directly through me on my personal website as paperbacks, ebooks, and yes, even some hardback editions! And the prices on my fiction ebooks are now lower than ever!

Books available include all my prior books (such as my popular nonfiction work The Werewolf: Past and Future and all of my fiction) and even my newest release, my own edition of Sabine Baring-Gould's irreplaceable folklore source, The Book of Werewolves.

Visit the shop at maverickwerewolf.com/books (click here)!

[ijustkindalikebooks]

Review: A Sunny Place For Shady by Mariana Enriquez.

Mariana Enriquez's A Sunny Place for Shady People is her first story collection since the International Booker Prize-shortlisted The Dangers of Smoking in Bed. Featuring achingly human characters whose lives intertwine with ghosts, the occult and the macabre, the stories explore love, womanhood, LGBTQ counterculture, parenthood and Argentina's brutal past.

I do always find this author's work intriguing, so when I saw her latest collection on Netgalley, I asked if I could read it and I'm glad I did as we get a new collection of weird, dark and political stories that reflect the lives of different women in horrifying and twisted ways.

I do think the stronger half of this are the first two stories - the characters she creates and shines a light on, are people I think I've met and so many I've met, that these stories feel like you're walking into a scene of people that you know and that she has written with pinpoint precision into these stories which make for story that really pull you in and allow you to live in them.

The tone in these stories vmake you feel like these stories are being told to you and just you alone, like you are in on this book from the beginning and something important is being shared with you on every page. This sort of autumn campfire energy creates a sort of menace in these stories that draws you in, especially in Face Of Disgrace in particular, which builds the tension until the very last line of the story.

Sure there are stories where I'm sat there thinking 'what did I just read?' but all in all this is a great collection that took me some time to read because these stories can really get to you. I'd definitely check for trigger warnings with these stories as they cover a range of things that effect women, violence against women in particular is something that is a major part of many of these stories.

I need to read something light after finishing this.

(Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC for honest review).

[pensivegladiola]

The Honey Month by Amal El-Mohtar

[words-and-coffee]

I look up at the store, at it’s windows, for her face. There was only the moon, like a death mask.

Camilla Grudova, The Doll's Alphabet: The Moth Emporium

[storycollecter96]

SUMMER DREAM 

The cold has ended, and now we are free,

After all the hardship, we are as strong as a tree,

Come, let us give this moment our all,

We know better than to be afraid of the fall, 

Let us drink, eat, laugh, and dance, 

Come on, let us not miss our chance, 

It is a time to have fun, 

After all, this is the season of the sun, 

I swear to make these summer days ones you will not forget, 

Swear to me that you will enjoy it without regret, 

I know, my love, I know, this world keeps spinning, 

But remember, no matter what, it is up to us to keep living.

[do-androids-dream-ao3acc]

Emhyr and Geralt are on a journey – and it's leading a bit into the past. 2432 words, T, read below the cut or on AO3.

"Love beneath the stars," Geralt said. 

He almost seemed to sigh. But, without knowing it, he had put on that special smile: a little goofy, a little transfigured; in any case, all Geralt. Technically, Emhyr summed up, just a post-coital release of some hormones. He owned, for obvious reasons, a small collection of writings and treatises on human emotions and their physical effects. Technically, Geralt was probably not human. In this case, however, Emhyr disagreed – and as far as the practical application of the findings of this knowledge was concerned, Geralt was an excellent subject for study. 

"There's a tent roof above us," he replied dryly, as he stared with serene fascination at the small, red marks on Geralt's neck that stood out so clearly against his pale skin; testaments to the passed moments. "And by the way," he continued, carefully pushing aside a few of Geralt's white strands to take a closer look at the man lying in his arms, "we could have been in Vicovaro by now."

"As if you hadn’t liked that distraction," Geralt muttered with a tiny laugh that made Emhyr's chest quiver. 

"By portal, it would have been faster," Emhyr replied stubbornly. 

"And more boring. After all, the trip won't take long. How much time have we had to ourselves since the wedding? Think of it as a honeymoon."

Emhyr snorted into the white mane that spread across his chest.

"A strange custom from lands about which we know next to nothing," he returned. "Dreamed up by people who apparently have no obligations."

"Until we arrive, you don't have any, either," Geralt asserted. 

Emhyr looked at the tent roof above them, through which soft moonlight pierced the darkness with a silvery veil. Now and here, with this warm body of his spouse in his arms, the latter’s ever-so-slightly hay-scented hair tickling his nose, it actually seemed possible. 

"It's our first journey together," Geralt mused, "at least since ..."

"Oh, I remember our journey as apparent spouses. Let's hope this one is more uneventful. Or do I need to remind you that back then you were bitten by wild dogs, kicked by a horse, thrown in jail..."

"Never mind," Geralt interrupted this inglorious enumeration. "Anyway, I'm sure you secretly like it too."

"Oh? Why would you believe that?" 

"You didn't refuse. You grumbled, of course, and looked at me with those extremely raised brows, like this, watch …"

Emhyr made the mistake of actually looking. Geralt raised his brows to his hairline, grinning like a fisstech addict. 

"... but then you called Triss in and told her that the trip would be on horseback, whereupon she ..."

"How, pray tell, do you know that?" asked Emhyr sharply. "Have you been listening at doors lately?"

"Mererid," Geralt returned dryly. "And don't even think of calling it an indiscretion. Your valet is a bad spy, but extremely loyal. I tricked him, and he was very embarrassed. He doesn't need to be embarrassed by you any more."

Emhyr snorted. 

"Anyway," he countered, "the result is a sorceress who detests travel on horseback and who is therefore in a very bad mood; a court marshal who constantly reminds me of wasted resources; and a security advisor whose paranoia is currently higher than Tir Tochair."

"You exaggerate."

Geralt sounded sleepy, and Emhyr glanced at him. Of course. His eyes half-closed, he apparently considered this discussion done for. Somewhere in the distance, a frog croaked, and Emhyr was close to sighing. He hated sleeping in a tent, nature surrounding him instead of solid walls that offered safety – if only from memory. But Geralt was right. He had agreed, perhaps a little too lightly, to this journey. Why exactly, he himself was not quite clear. 

"I have a feeling you're fine with us not reaching Vicovaro too quickly for reasons other than love beneath the stars," he said. 

Geralt wrapped an arm around his chest, pressed a warm, fleeting kiss to his skin, and murmured, "You're too, Em. You’re too."

.....

Sunlight reflected on the river, still many miles in the distance, but perfectly visible from the small hill in this clear weather. The traveling party – a cortege of horses, carriages, servants, and soldiers – had stopped for a rest below the hill. Emhyr and Geralt had found that freedom was relative within the preconditions and safeguards of such a journey, but at least for this moment, they were alone.

"The Alba," Emhyr said, almost in awe. Then, annoyed, he wiped away a fly that stroked around his nose and added sullenly, "How long until we cross it?"

"You're in a hurry again," Geralt sighed, stepping up behind him and wrapping his arms around Emhyr's body in an inappropriately hot-blooded fashion for the time of day. "Just look around calmly."

"I am always calm," Emhyr asserted. "And there's nothing around me but endless landscape."

"Exactly."

Geralt's voice was a warm breath against his ear, and he wondered how much of them could be seen from down there, from below the hill where his grumpy sorceress, his nervous security advisor, and an undoubtedly agitated court were waiting. But that mouth at his ear, that body pressing against him, were distractions enough to make him forget such things for a while.

"It is your landscape," Geralt continued to speak. He reached out a hand and pointed into the distance, which indeed seemed to consist of little more than greenery, vastness, and emptiness. But his words filled this supposed emptiness with meaning. "Your realm. All of it, from the grass beneath your feet to the river back there and much further. So, enjoy it."

What a way to look at it. The realm was not just trees and grass and the river (although of course the river was not insignificant, not at all). However, it was also not just an abstract piece of map, not just a statistic of people and livestock. For a moment, Emhyr wanted to believe that he could actually look at it through Geralt's eyes, see it as something he had worked for and earned. Something beyond: beauty, ephemeral like everything else, but therefore no less worthy of contemplation. Loved even, like Geralt, who stood behind him and breathed in his ear and was so much more than just a witcher, so much more than the sum of his scars. 

He still stood bolt upright, because some habits could no more be discarded than the past, and yet he felt his muscles relax. He felt his own breath conforming to the one that brushed around his neck, clearly felt the slow rise and fall of his chest, and was, for a very brief moment, almost one with everything. 

"Mine," he breathed, without noticing it himself.

"Everything, even me," Geralt replied. Or a voice in Emhyr's head, it was hard to tell.

.....

The days passed with an ease that surprised Emhyr, for ease was certainly not a quality that could be attributed to him or his task. However, there seemed to be a strange little spell cast over this journey. The spell was called, of course, Geralt. How peculiar... he was such a striking, such a physical man, whose strength was so visible on the outside, and yet at the same time he had managed to burn himself into Emhyr's mind as a mere feeling, a thought. No, not only into his mind, into all his neural pathways, his whole self. 

He was perhaps exaggerating again. 

Or it was the fresh air, which probably actually did bring a certain lightness, room to breathe, more space for thoughts. But those thoughts were not filled with problems, not even the occasion of this trip (a purely strategic visit, a polite exchange of inanities, combined with the subliminal and sometimes deliberate threat that the personal appearance by the emperor usually brought). 

But there was no denying it, he was almost relaxed. Even his aching thighs, which burned after hours in the saddle and inevitably reminded him that he loved rides but took far too few, were somewhat dear to him. Or the fact that when he complained about it in their tent in the evening, his husband found an oil with which to massage his tense muscles, and this inevitably led to other activities that he preferred even more. 

One morning even, after an outdoor breakfast – only two days earlier, every insect that approached his plate had seemed like an enemy attack – he made a joke. His security advisor laughed (a sound as if a cat's tail had been stepped on), announcing that he understood the joke and believed it was indeed funny. Geralt's mouth, on the other hand, only flashed a fine smile, but his golden eyes shone with unprecedented triumph.

.....

The Alba river lay before them as a brilliant blue ribbon, a natural boundary beyond which stretched Vicovaro. The bridge, according to the maps, was still an hour or two upriver ahead of them, the final destination lay another day in the distance. And yet, even if everything on the other bank looked the same as it did here, still nothing more than trees, bushes, and the occasional farmstead that they rode generously around, Emhyr felt like everything was suddenly changing. 

Only when a hand settled over his own did he realize that the reins were already cutting painfully into his palm.

"Come," Geralt said, and so he surrendered once more to this spell.

Geralt took the reins from his hand, while pushing Roach forward only with his thighs, and the stallion followed him willingly, as did his rider. He led them back a bit, against the actual direction of travel, to the foothills of a forest they had seen stretching out to their left this morning. Behind a group of trees they stopped and dismounted, sheltered for the moment from the curious gaze of the traveling party, who no doubt wondered at this new interruption. 

"We'll be there soon."

"It's not like you to state the obvious," Emhyr remarked with a sidelong glance that this time told him surprisingly little. One of the wonders was that the man who had so little control over his features could, on occasion, seem just about impenetrable. 

"I just think..."

Geralt hesitated, which usually meant he was considering how to deliver an unpalatable truth to his counterpart. As far as Emhyr knew, he had never lied to him, and there was no reason to spare his feelings. His impatience stirred, announcing itself as a slight tingle at the back of his neck, and would soon set his spine ablaze.

"Spit it out."

"What if you run out of spit?" Geralt said, looking off into the distance. 

Emhyr regarded him with a touch of wonder. Over the past few days, he had almost forgotten that he was usually two steps ahead of others. He hated ignorance as much as he hated the tone his skin took with too much sun, and yet he had to admit he didn't know what Geralt was getting at. 

"Vicovaro doesn't hold the best memories," Geralt began, "or less the place as what it stands for."

"Personal memories," Emhyr interjected, "of Knight Cahir."

Suddenly it all made sense, and his analytical mind seemed to have returned working at just the right moment. 

Geralt shrugged.

"As I said, it's not so much the place. Cahir often emphasized his origins. It was a strange mixture of pride and humility."

"Humility?"

"Or modesty, perhaps. After all, he was not born in the capital and therefore, in his view, not a true Nilfgaardian."

"A remarkable man," Emhyr replied, as he continued to try to explore Geralt's expression. But he was staring ahead, although there was nothing to see but trees. However, it was probably about what lay beyond. For the rest, his words seemed hollow, given his own role in this story. 

"I guess he was. It's odd," Geralt continued, "but I've always avoided Vicovaro since then. Well, Nilfgaard in general, I'll admit. We didn't even know each other for long, but what he did for Ciri was indeed remarkable. But... I’ve always been a witcher, Em, always, I know nothing else."

Emhyr regarded him carefully and said quietly, "I know that, but that doesn't make you uncaring, Geralt."

Geralt did not look at him, his eyes seemingly still focused on the past. He tapped his chest lightly with one fist. 

"It gives me a strange twinge when someone mentions Vicovaro," he admitted. 

"Like a wound that never closes," Emhyr replied. 

Now Geralt looked at him. 

"You understand, you know, but I don't know what keeps your wound open," he said frankly. His eyes widened as Emhyr let out a low, barely audible laugh, although he himself was sure it must have been an extremely humorless sound. 

"You don't know?" he retorted. "Didn't you realize that Assire var Anahid was from Vicovaro?"

Emhyr knew that Geralt could dilate or constrict his pupils by will, but now they were clearly dilating with surprise. A textbook reaction, his mind noted. He had indeed not known it. 

"So you see," he quickly deferred, "we both have a reason for not necessarily longing for the arrival. Sentimental, perhaps."

"Human, perhaps."

Geralt had stepped up beside him, interlacing his fingers with Emhyr's as they both looked ahead and back at the same time.

"Well, in that regard, rumor has it, I seem to have something on you, husband," Emhyr finally replied with that peculiar kindness in his voice that was clearly mockery. 

"You think? So you’re not aware that some of your subordinates refer to you as a gargoyle behind closed doors?"

"They do what?" 

Apparently, his face had taken on such an indignant expression that Geralt thought he was allowed to crack an outrageously wide grin. 

"They say I'm a good influence on you," said the latter, shrugging. "Apparently I've softened your stony heart, or something like that."

"My what?"

Geralt just grinned and squeezed his hand. 

"Vicovaro waits," he then said. "That of the future, I should think."

He released his grip, strode up to Roach, and patted her neck while taking her reins with his other hand. Emhyr stared at him with narrowed eyes. 

"You made that up, didn't you?" he demanded to know.

"Get on your horse," his spouse replied. "If I return alone, people will think I'm a bad bodyguard."

"You're not my bodyguard," Emhyr muttered as he mounted his horse. 

"Well, maybe you are mine."

As they looked at each other now, the sun seemed to shine on a beach full of amber pebbles.

It was good to warm each other like this.

[brightbeautifulthings]

The Lives of Saints by Leigh Bardugo

"She was nothing and no one, a girl on her knees with prayers on her lips, full of terror, full of rage."

Year Read: 2023

Rating: 2/5

Thoughts: If you’re offended by religious critiques, best not to read on. Bardugo showed herself to be an exceptional short story writer in The Language of Thorns, but where I felt that collection could easily stand on its own as well as provide a rich depth to the folklore of the Grishaverse, The Lives of Saints does neither. I'm struggling to understand its purpose outside of a blatant cash-grab, and the only reason to have it would be if you were planning to write really in-depth Alina or Inej fanfiction.

There's nothing about this that stands out, including the art. It's smudgy and boring like the kind of religious art you see in children's books and magazines in a dentist's waiting room, which in that sense suits the content perfectly. The stories are all similar and forgettable, and if you've ever read a martyr/saint story from actual history, you've got the gist of all of these. I already can't remember a single one specifically, not even the ones who turn out to be characters in actual Grishaverse books. The Alina story is... barely Alina's story? and just left a bad taste in my mouth, and there was heavy eye-rolling in the Darkling's (which, to be fair, is my usual response to him). If Bardugo was trying to show they're all bullshitty propaganda in-universe, then job well done.

[beardedharmonypanda]

Guys, tell me what you were obsessed with or did or loved as a kid. For me, i was obsessed with Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory, I wanted to be like Willy Wonka and own the chocolate factory as I loved chocolate. Or just fabricate a memory you think would be cool. I'm collecting stories, i would like to hear yours. Or simply tell me what you wanted as a kid. I'm looking for inspiration. I am dedicating a whole journal for this. I will write each story I receive in it.

[microsff]

April 2023 story collection

** I have posted the collected stories from April 2023 for my supporters on Patreon and Ko-Fi. Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/83778662 Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/post/April-2023-story-collection-I3I0LRI0J **

[bastionofbibliophiles]

I'll add: we built robots

Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.

[abookbumble]

Here's another peek at THE ILLUSTRATED WOMAN! It's hard to believe that we are less than a month until release day. Ebook pre-orders are still live! https://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Woman-Melissa-Bobe-ebook/dp/B0DJ67RYWG?ref_=ast_author_dp