K.A. Cook's Blog

You can tell my updates here have become infrequent at best: I’m using the same header title as I did for a fiction collection post spanning the same three-month period last year. I’m also posting this at the end of October…

This is, in part, what’s lead me to rework my online presence. Most of what I’m writing/creating is connected to my aromanticism, so it goes up on Aro Worlds. That’s also the name of my Patreon, one of my Tumblr accounts and the Twitter account I forget to use for anything more than automated content promotion. You see where I’m going with all this? It was becoming absurd to treat my Aro Worlds site as a secondary home, because it’s not. For better or worse, this has become my main online identity. For better or worse, aromanticism has nudged in front of my genderlessness in terms of issue in focus. Nor do I have the ability to focus on more one subject at a time, thanks to limited spoons.

So, while this website lies buried under cobwebs and dust bunnies, aroworlds.com is now a more-updated archive of my (aro) books, cross-stitch patterns, posts and resources for allo-aros.

I’ve updated the book pages here for anyone following older links, and I have no plans to delete this site. I’ll stress, though, that if you don’t want to wait three months to find out what I’ve been creating, and you don’t object to following an autistic, genderless queer who shines a little more light on hir aromanticism (but never stops talking about neurodiversity and disability), you’re best to follow me in the land of greens and golds.

I’m currently preparing content for @aggressivelyarospec‘s Aggressively Arospectacular 2020 event in November: fiction, cross stitch pieces, patch patterns, an icon set, a new fiction collection and a jacket covered with my cross stitch patches. I’ll admit to not knowing if I can accomplish all these things in time (four posts are queued, the more involved three are in progress), so there’s a good chance of glorious failure!

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[image error] Suki Lewis has always known what she wants–or, more correctly, what she doesn’t want. She also knows that a good woman of Freehome, deserving of her mother’s uncritical love, wants something she can’t fathom or mimic: a stable, lasting romantic relationship.

She can’t safely stay, but leaving means surviving the challenges of priesthood, her mother’s abuse and the belated finding of a name for her differences: allosexual aromanticism.

Those With More collects four stories showing Suki’s lifetime navigation of her belief, family, community and identity.

I recommend having read What Makes Us Human before starting the eponymous (final) piece in this collection, but the first three stories stand on their own (when read in sequence).

Suki has become one of my favourite characters, mostly because she’s the expression of a direct, blunt, passionate honesty. Giving her community, duty and purpose gives me hope that I can find the same for myself, even when people call me “abrasive” when I insist that my identity be respected and “aggressive” when I stand up against antagonism. She’s battered, she’s flawed, she’s bitchy–and she works, over a lifetime, to find a balance between owning that and letting others see the other shapes of her personality.

Suki is permission for my fellow allo-aros to shrug off accusations of “aggression” and demand our safe, equitable inclusion while also recognising and honouring our need for emotional support.

Individual stories: Abrasive | The Complexity of Human Decency | If Absurd Works | Those With More.

[image error]Kit can’t find anything unfair about the contract or the man, so why is the ring so heavy?

Kit March is a signature away from marrying the man who loves him. He should be delighted, but for reasons he doesn’t understand and can’t explain, his future with Lauri weighs upon him. What is a magician to do when no script extant has words for the confusion he feels?

I’ve updated and polished this story a little, in the process of moving content over to my other site. It’s not that different! I’ve just fleshed out Kit’s background and showed more of his thought processes and relationship to the particular kind of amatonormativity experienced by allo-aros.

We don’t talk enough, I think, on the complexity of experiencing something society assumes we possess–sexual attraction–while not possessing the accompanying shape of romantic attraction required for this sexual attraction to be socially acceptable. If we allo-aros seek to explore and express our allosexuality, we are mistaken for allosexual allomantics. We mistake ourselves for them. How do you conceptualise this fundamental truth without a-spec language? How do you escape the trap of feeling like the only options are to withdraw from relationships or perform romance? I don’t know, and neither does Kit.

If this story offers confusion without resolution, to me that is the ultimate allo-aro experience!

[image error]Four months ago, Kit March abandoned his fiancé without even a note of explanation for a deserving man.

Leaving Lauri should have freed him from the pressures of romantic expectation, so how does a talented magician end up performing flash magic for buttons and hairpins in Raugue’s worst tavern? Kit doesn’t know and doesn’t care, as long as he can keep drowning guilt in beer and spellworking. As long as he can keep not thinking!

When a stranger offers the word “aromantic” followed by an opportunity to join a dangerous quest to the Gast, Kit may have more distraction than he can survive—and more comprehension than he can navigate.

This is the first chapter of my Esher Hill serial repackaged into its own story, since I am not speedy in finishing  the prelude/prequel stories I need finished to continue. (2020. Enough said.) This too has been reworked a little, but, like Ringbound, it isn’t substantially different.

The stories I’ve written and reworked over the last few months–Suki and Kit–feature allosexual aromantic protagonists of the “not interested in any permanent relationship, let’s just have casual sex” kind. (Contrast with Mara’s marrying Benjamin, or Darius’s array of relationships with Efe, Aysun, Akash and Ila.) Part of me revels in writing stories about characters considered less acceptable portrayals of allo-aro (Suki and Kit are closer expressions of me, relationship-wise, than Mara or Darius), but part of me fears accusations of problematic characters or the use of my characters to justify or reinforce antagonistic stereotypes. Even some advice about writing allo-aro characters directs against allo-aro characters who “only sleep around”!

What do you do when you are that stereotype, when because of that your representation and self-expression may be used against you and against your community? It’s difficult enough to write characters more like me into story while knowing that their being allo-aro separates me from readers; it’s so much worse to write characters more like me into story while knowing bad actors may also use their existence to harm the community I am seeking to represent–and that even some parts of said community may take offense.

Embracing my status as A Proudly Problematic Allo-Aro gives me the courage to write and post anyway, but it doesn’t lessen my fear and frustration.

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Thank you for reading! If you still follow this site despite my posting rate of four times a year at best, let me express my awed respect for your support and loyalty!

The combination of changes to my medication and life under lockdown has made it difficult for me to put words to document, especially in the world of fiction.

I have long learnt, however, that it matters less what or how I create as long as I still create. Even if I’m not doing what I want to do, or feel I should be doing, I’m not losing the habit and discipline of creating. I’m still in touch with the faith that I can take a blank canvas and conclude with something new. I’m still developing skills, exploring ways to improve; my brain isn’t lying fallow. It’s just that I’ve shifted to an art easier for me to manage in present circumstances: cross stitch.

[image error]These last few months have earnt me callused fingertips and an explosion in my cross stitch patch collection, along with a few handmade cards and kit projects. (Also chronic thumb pain. It’s like seeing an old disliked acquaintance, since I’ve spent the last year being annoyed by my left wrist, right shoulder, left hip and back. Hello again, my wonky right thumb!) I’ve finally figured out French knots! I’ve learnt a few more border stitches! I’ve fallen deep in like with a size 26 tapestry needle!

New tutorials include aro text patches, aro arrow patches and a variety of heart-shaped patches. I’m most proud of my arrows, but I’m delighted that I’ve figured out non-square/non-rectangular patches. I like the challenge of working within the pixel-like limitations of an even-weave cloth like aida to create simple shapes; it appeals to me, although I can’t contextualise why, more than freehand embroidery.

Around and between the cross stitch, I’m finding shorter pieces easier to manage and produce at the moment. Given that I once found the prospect of writing a two thousand word fiction assignment an exercise in cruel and unnatural restriction, this amuses me!

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Pressure, Sides One and Two: a series describing the different angles of pressure allo-aros endure from family, society, the queer/LGBTQIA+ community and, yes, the a-spec and aromantic communities.

The first story takes autobiographical snippets from interactions with family, friends and queer community, showing how these spaces’ misogyny, sex shaming, whoremisia, allonormativity, amatonormativity and monosexism create a culture hostile to allo-aro identity and expression. Progressive spaces are still horrifically prone to unconscious allo-aro antagonism or erasure (particularly in regards to demonising casual sex), but I also wanted to highlight how many other forms of hatred and oppression incidentally harm allo-aros, reinforce beliefs that deny or belittle our existence as well as that of the intended target, or make it difficult to recognise or feel accepted in our identity.

The second story, more allegorically, also refers to snippets from interactions with the aromantic community, showing how it has historically ignored and sidelined allosexual aromanticism in favour of a general assumption of aromantic asexuality or a requisite aromantic relationship to asexuality. I like the metaphor of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’s green-lens glasses because that describes what it felt like to first be aro: to find this new, safe home … and then realise that I wasn’t seeing the promise made by glittering green walls.

The nature of this series lets me experiment with short creative non-fiction, fictionalised autobiographical, and literary or referential pieces amongst my usual genre pieces. I find it very freeing!

I’ve also just posted another Hallo, Aro story, Abrasive, to Patreon. (Everyone else can access it next week!) Here I explore some of the background to the angry allo-aro stereotype, depict the way our family can support/reinforce a partner’s sense of romantic entitlement, and introduce a character we’ll meet again in forthcoming Marchverse pieces.

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A hallway conversation with a stranger brings to light something absent from Esher’s life, unexpected help from a pair of priests, revelations about the Grey Mages and a chance he may have already lost.

The bulk of this chapter concerns two neuroatypical people communing on their frustrations with the absurd social expectations held by neurotypicals. That’s still not a common scene in fiction, although it’s more common in my fiction. Esher, however, is in desperate want of a friend. So is Faiza. And they both need a friend who understands them! I had fun writing the synchronicity between the two of them despite their very different backgrounds and circumstances: this is what it feels like when I meet another autistic person. We know we sit at odd angles from the rest of the world, and it’s wonderful to find someone who not understands it but lives it.

(I also enjoy writing Faiza, full stop. They’re a lovely mingling of polite, direct, unsure, enthusiastic and nerdy as fuck.)

If you think that Esher isn’t going to go onto a quest with an injured hand and/or there won’t be scenes discussing needed accommodations and navigations before he does, you have really underestimated the depth of my commitment to heroic protagonists with hand-related disabilities (and mental illnesses).

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When Efe Kadri writes to Faiza Hiba Khalil for advice on how to work with an autistic mercenary-magician, it startles him to discover why Faiza is less than appreciative of his efforts.

I wrote this Patreon exclusive story as a break from Quest. (So I … write about ableism as a break from writing about ableism.) Is this a story where a somewhat-acidic autistic not only points out an allistic’s ableism but turns it right back on him? Yes. Is it a fantasy of all the things I’ve felt after an in-person interaction but can’t say in real life because I am a thousand times more eloquent in text than I’ll ever be with mouth-words? Yes. It’s still pleasing, though, to highlight the utter hypocrisy inherent in how some of the “better” (as in: not engaging in obvious abuse, bullying, torture, abandonment and murder) allistics, the ones who think they’re allies, regard us.

There’s too many stories where autistic characters are written as grateful for the condescension of an allistic who sees us as just human enough to be given a chance. This piece can be summarised by four words: fuck that ableist noise.

(Note: this piece is set many, many years after meeting the younger, less-confident Faiza in Quest.)

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In which Darius discovers that there’s a whole lot more going on with Efe and Aysun’s plans for managing a king’s absence from his throne than he ever imagined.

(Or: what I post when I don’t have anything more finished to post, because it took me two weeks to put together that cursed heart patch tutorial.)

No, there isn’t a real summary. This scene, taking place almost immediately after the end of The Adventurer King, was posted to Patreon because sewing patches and creating patch patterns in Photoshop left me with no time to prepare anything else. Do I know if this first draft will remain canon by the end? Possibly? Maybe? Darius’s ignorance in the aforementioned story means he makes a few assumptions that need correcting, followed by a lesson on why allistics shouldn’t keep vital information from their autistic guard-companion, so the bones of this chapter aren’t going anywhere.

(Probably.)

I like Efe at the end, having made himself at home on Ayako’s bed. It’s fun to write the casual moments of a man’s privilege-wrought confidence through the eyes of a character uninterested in accommodating said privilege.

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Thank you for reading. I hope you are as well as can be in the situations we find ourselves in, and that you have an outlet for distraction and self-expression in these difficult times.

I need to renew my domain registration this month, so if you have a couple of dollars spare and you’d like to help an independent creative keep this archive going for my (mostly free!) queer-as-fuck, autistic fiction, would you consider buying me a ko-fi?

In December 2019, I felt that Christmas was the worst time of year for a person of Dutch heritage to also be a coeliac.

In March 2020, with pandemic-fuelled grocery shortages and a constant fear of will I have enough food to eat if we’re quarantined for two weeks because ordering in gluten-free restaurant food in my region isn’t an option, I have been proved hilariously naive. I laugh at myself now, because sighing over not eating speculaas or pfeffernüsse seems ridiculous in comparison! Do I have enough GF (gluten-free) pasta to go with my rice? I don’t know, but I’m yet to find it again at the supermarket! And so many things are still impossible to get, like frozen vegetables; even fresh vegetables are becoming impossibly expensive.

What do I eat when I can’t get two weeks’ worth of frozen veggies and rice? What do I eat when everyone has stocked up on rice cakes as a cheap shelf-stable food, even though they’re my normal lunch staple? What do I eat when dried beans and lentils, recommended by the internet as a wonder food I should be pursuing during food shortages, all bear “may contain gluten” warnings? Are supermarkets going to prioritise GF replacement foods the same way they’ll prioritise restocking the gluten-containing ones? Can they even get those that aren’t made in Australia, like several brands of GF pasta?

(Why is barley deemed such an essential component in soup mix? Do folks realise how many more foods would be open to me if we stopped adding barley and malt flavouring to things not otherwise containing wheat, rye or oats?)

There are many other things to fear right now, yes. Far too many of my relatives are in high-risk categories, for one. I am privileged enough to be able to worry about continuing to avoid gluten, when some coeliacs have long forgone that option; I am privileged enough that grocery shortages this severe are new to me. Nonetheless, dietary restrictions add a real component of anxiety when it comes to a pandemic, and it isn’t something I see folks discuss or even acknowledge in mainstream conversations about grocery shortages and accessibility.

The ableism that stops me ordering an emergency pizza from Dominos because the website’s fine print says “we can’t confirm that your pizza isn’t subject to cross-contamination during the cooking process” is a problem when society is stable, because it denies me basic access to something other folks take for granted–nearly immediate hot food. During a pandemic, though, the impact of this–along with the bags of dried split peas and pinto beans subject to cross contamination with the barley-containing soup mix–cuts even deeper. When I lose GF option after option through everyone else’s stocking up on these foods, the limited options that remain leave me closer to having to sacrifice my health in order to eat. And being trapped inside the house for two weeks (in the best-case scenario) only to run out of coeliac-safe food is a possibility … while also being one of the less terrifying consequences of contracting COVID-19.

(Not to mention being one of the less dangerous intersections of disability and pandemic, given that disabled people have already died through being unable to access appropriate care both from contracting COVID-19 and from a lack of services doing lockdowns.)

The ableism we’re forced to tolerate in a stable society becomes all the more terrifying, dangerous and lethal during a pandemic, and disabled people need the abled to both recognise it and, as soon as possible, act to mitigate it.

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[image error]After a night of revelations to her dead aunt Rosie and her living brother Esher, Mara Hill must dare another with Benjamin Lisbet. If she’s truly the woman Mara hopes, surely Benjamin will be receptive to a conversation of the “I love you and want to be with you, just not romantically” sort? Surely this afternoon won’t stray beyond Mara’s preparations of a picnic basket, chives, rehearsed speeches and less-rumpled clothing?

Yet her months of searching for magic to refresh her fading love means there’s too much she doesn’t know about Benjamin. Too much Mara needs to know to hold this conversation without losing Benjamin’s friendship.

Mara thought speaking of her fading love under cover of dark difficult enough … but speaking of romance in daylight is another challenge entirely.

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon | WordPress

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 7, 160 words / 30 PDF pages.

It’s more common to see female autistics in the role of Shy Person To Be Seduced (usually by a man, with all characters concerned being both cis and heterosexual), a character who needs to be convinced that romances and/or relationships are a good or non-dangerous thing. It’s even less common find those rare flirty female autistic characters in the context of fiction centring on allo-aro experiences, confusions and challenges. Writing an autistic character who flirts, is openly sexual, isn’t submissive and is done with the way the world tramples over her in all her parasol-waving anger? Delightful. Writing an autistic character who has more of my own confusion about what the hell non-romantic even means? Wonderful. Writing two neurodiverse, queer aromantic-spectrum women with their sexual attraction for each other a central component of the story? Glorious.

I’m thinking to write a gloriously self-indulgent sequel to this relaying Mara and Benjamin’s early misadventures in baking now that I’ve retconned Benjamin as coeliac, because Mara’s expectations are far from Benjamin’s They’re Not Completely Flat So That Totally Counts As A Scone reality. (It’s amazing how much more appealing shittily-baked goods become when you’re a coeliac.) This is in part because there’s no point to coeliac if I can’t put the absurd bits into fiction and in part because Mara and Benjamin are fun to write.

[image error] Moll of Sirenne needs prompts in their girdle book to navigate casual conversations, struggles to master facial expressions and feels safest weeding the monastery’s vegetable gardens. Following their call to service, however, means offering wanderers in need a priest’s support and guidance. A life free of social expectation to court, wed and befriend does outweigh their fear of causing harm—until forgetting the date of a holiday provokes a guest’s ire and three cutting words: lifeless and loveless.

A priest must expand a guest’s sense of human worth, but what do they do when their own comes under question? Can an autistic, aromantic priest ever expect to serve outside the garden? And what day is it…?

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon | WordPress

Length: 8, 062 words / 32 PDF pages.

This story broke me, thanks to a spate of power outages resulting in an unopenably-corrupt file that wasn’t auto-backed up to my second harddrive the way it should have been (also because of said power outages). I still can’t look it without a pang of hurt for the draft (now become an unparalleled marvel of autistic-aro fiction, according to my brain) I had to completely rewrite. I’m glad I did it … but it was a hard thing to get past.

But it did give me the Guide and a deeper understanding of Moll, both of whom we meet again in A Quest of Spheres and Phalanges. And it’s a different take on the “aromantic character and author dealing with Valentine’s Day” sub-sub-sub genre of aromantic narratives. Plus What Makes Us Human has something that’s rare in aromantic fiction: a middle-aged narrating protagonist dealing with amatonormativity. Folks tend to assume older aromantics have it all figured out, even though there’s massive hurdles for older aromantics even recognising their own aromanticism, so it’s important to me that folks have a broader range of characters, in terms of age, with which to find connection.

(Moll too is a coeliac, although it’s less stated than implied. Why? Because I can … and because it feels weird to write a character who isn’t.)

Sadly, the best I can say about Human is that I don’t hate it. Hopefully in December the frustration will be more a distant memory and I can judge this on its own merits, not on the lost draft!

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To save Mara’s life, all Esher Hill need do is ride to Sirenne, get his guiding priest to permit his addressing the Grey Mages and convince representatives from a powerful collective of magic workers to heal a dying sorcerer. He has his fathers’ money and a willingness to work off any remaining debt. How much more, short of his now-unsellable soul, can her life cost?

It seems simple enough a prospect, if Esher ignores the encumbrance of a family friend, his inability to remember his medicines, his hand’s meeting a wall, a tray-spilling mishap and the Greys’ staggering disdain for altruism. Not to mention his increasing lack of sleep, stability and sanity following his kin’s revelations and manipulations! But when Esher learns what—and where—he must seek for the Greys’ promise of healing magic, his hope of retrieving their long-lost artefact seems as broken as his right hand. How can he survive the Gast’s pantheon of horrors when he feels increasingly unable to survive his own mind?

How can he help Mara if he can’t even help himself?

Patreon Links: Met the Wall | Vertigo

Length: 9, 257 words (thus far).

I’m posting this long novelette/short novella as a chapter-by-chapter serial to Patreon. It’s a semi-work in progress, in the sense that I still mean to do another cohesive edit of the story as a whole, so it lacks some in polish and togetherness. Since I’ve been struggling with producing longer works, I want to see if this process helps get this story from “messy early drafts” to “actual readable narrative”.

A Quest of Spheres and Phalanges is the story where Esher begins to process Love is the Reckoning. It wasn’t my intent, but I feel like these stories and (eventually) Crew show a man who is coping with his brain but struggles to maintain that coping when faced with events and people that push him off his road–and the importance of finding the people that allow him to begin to regain his footing. (It also wasn’t my intent, but it mirrors my own loss of trust in people and the fight to get back to where I was.) It also gives the story a bit more resonance than its actual purpose of “explaining why Esher ended up in Astreut on a quest for an eldritch artefact” and “introducing Faiza and Indigo”.

Getting the missing Mara and Esher stories written, drafted, edited and posted has long been my goal for 2020, something I’d been planning for months. (Also known as The Year In Which I Will Attempt To Fill In More Narrative Gaps And Work My Way Back Up To Novels.) Quest, alas, has always possessed a background that doesn’t sit too easily in these terrifying times. I do mean to break it up with other pieces, but it isn’t always the most comfortable thing to be working on–and likely not the most comfortable thing to read.

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Lastly, I’ll mention that I’ve been working on a series of tutorials and patterns for making pride-themed cross-stitch patches, should anyone wish a distracting craft during our extended hours at home. I find them good for keeping my hands busy while watching TV (which by itself isn’t near distracting enough), and holding a sewing needle isn’t too bad on my hands compared to many other crafts. (Pen, pencil, paintbrush and many cooking utensils are out.) I’ve also got umpteen stim-toy-related tutorials on my @stimtoybox Tumblr, by myself and other creators, for anyone looking for something new to try or make.

Best of luck to everyone. I do hope we can all get through this.

I finished two of the pieces mentioned in last year’s master post. I suppose that’s an accomplishment, if we ignore all the name-dropped works that didn’t eventuate?

On the positive side, I’ve been somewhat-regularly posting fiction through the second half of this year. My mental health has been a disaster, I’ve got another new chronic pain site, I’ve tried several new medications, I’ve spent much of this year struggling to sleep even on melatonin, and I’ve had to kiss farewell anything containing gluten … but I have posted a score of stories. That’s something worth celebrating, even as I hope that I never again endure a year imbued with 2019’s chronic sense of despondency.

(I’m hoping that coeliac turns out to be the missing key in the mystery that is my ongoing physical and mental health, because I’m beyond tired of enduring yet another treatment or medication change for no meaningful difference.)

I’ve posted or published a total of 82, 318 words of fiction alone in 2019. I’ve also gotten back into sewing in a major way, between making clothes for my 6 inch mini dolls and pride-flag cross-stitch patches. (There’s even more on Tumblr.) I also made an allo-aro information hub on Aro Worlds, I started a Patreon, and I created Aro Arrows, an archive for aromantic-pride stock images. Making different things (so there’s something I can do when various limbs object to what I mean to do) is how I survive my body and brain, so to talk only in terms of productivity obscures the real pain and struggle 2019 also brought me. But there is also a wondrous selection of things I can say that I made!

(I also changed my pronouns, about which I still haven’t had the time or spoons to write.)

I’m currently working on tutorials for said patches and the publication edition of Love is the Reckoning, but I am desperate to start writing a story (any story) in which I can provide representation for coeliac. Like autism, I have to wonder what my quality of life may have been now had I known earlier–if my doctors hadn’t brushed off the possibility. Diagnosis, again, brings that twinned combination of belated recognition and betrayal. If I can bring awareness to coeliac through my writing in 2020, perhaps I can build a world where people can sooner recognise their symptoms and push for testing.

Thank you, as always, to my supporters: you are in large measure the reason why there’s so many fiction pieces on this list!

I would like, in 2020, to be able to make enough income from my online work that I can afford domain registration and add-free plans for all my websites. If you want to help me with that not-so-lofty goal, please check out my ko-fi and (again) my patreon.

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Contains: A sapphic aromantic who wishes to partner a dragon’s handmaiden without the complications of a romantic relationship, but finds comfort in her friendship with her own dragon.

Length: 993 words / 4 PDF pages.

Why I liked writing it: There’s an aro-coded dragon…? I like the idea of aro characters finding support in platonic or non-romantic relationships, but I adore writing about aro characters finding support in platonic or non-romantic relationships with other aromantics.

Read after this: Attraction, where Elisa finds a girl and still has no intention of leaving her dragon.

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Contains: A genderless gardener wishing for a name that better describes hir and the trans mother who knows that such gifts should never become obligations.

Length: 1200 words / 4 PDF pages.

Why I liked writing it: In my real-life interactions with family members, I’ve been forced to compromise on my name because of their hurt at my rejecting something they chose for me. (That my deadname is culturally feminine in the West and a person who says ze isn’t a girl may prefer a less-gendered name is … irrelevant.) It hurts to feel like the name by which I’d prefer to be known is impossible until I am financially secure enough to separate from my family. I needed to write the conversation I wish I’d had–the conversation I deserve to have, the conversation I should have had. This story is trans and non-binary grief given word.

Read before this: This is a rare stand-alone Marchverse piece.

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Contains: A sapphic, allosexual, lithromantic trans witch enduring the most amatonormative holiday extant–in a small town still in want of open conversations about aromanticism.

Length: 3, 429 words / 10 PDF pages.

Why I liked writing it: It’s fun to take holidays and give them an aromantic twist, and it’s even more fun to see Mara taking her aromantic knowledge and doing in life for her community what the dead did for her. Plus Mara’s referring to Not-Valentine’s-Day as That Day feels like one of the most aromantic things possible, short of arrow puns and green.

Read before this: The Sorcerous Compendium of Postmortem Query, if you’d like to know about that night in the graveyard in which the dead gave speeches about aromantic identity (and Aunt Rosie).

Read after this: Love is the Reckoning, if you want to know why Mara spends a lot of time thinking about Esher.

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Contains: A gay aromantic man dealing with the casual amatonormativity of alloromantics who think they accept his aromanticism.

Length: 992 words / 4 PDF pages.

Why I liked writing it: I think many out aros have had well-meaning alloromantic allies talk about how “lucky” we are to avoid the trials and tribulations of romance and dating. Having aro characters turn microaggressions into a game feels like the real-life meme of making bingo boards for acts of antagonism or erasure, and there still aren’t too many stories about general aromantic experiences with allo-aro protagonists. I think it just hit a few different boxes of “things common to aro experiences but not yet common in aro fiction”. It was also fun to use a fairy-tale structure for a contemporary story!

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Contains: A sapphic aromantic who fears that her interest in another girl may be best explained by a word she doesn’t wish applied to her–romance.

Length: 989 words / 4 PDF pages.

Why I liked writing it: This is the beginning of my “what we consider romantic is really bloody arbitrary” revelation, something I find the aromantic community prefers to push aside in favour of narratives where the distinction between romantic and non-romantic is recognisable and uncomplicated. To have someone declare that romance is whatever the fuck I decide it is still feels empowering, as an allo-aro who struggles with the feeling that so much of my allosexuality renders me too romantic to be aro or write with accuracy and honesty about aromantic identity and experience.

Read before this: Friendship, if you want to know why Elisa reassures Azhra that she’ll stay in Tierre.

Contains: An unknowing aromantic who isn’t prepared for his friends’ conclusion about his identity; a verbose eldritch entity stuffed in a saddlebag; an alloromantic trans man who will always be there for his queerplatonic partner; lots of casual polyamory; and some of the many ways autism impacts conversation and connection.

Length: 10, 436 words / 29 PDF pages.

Why I liked writing it: The language–of touch, of gesture, of verbal shorthand–used between Darius, Akash and Ila in this and future stories is still something that thrills me. Darius has learnt something of Akash and Ila’s expressions; Akash and Ila have learnt something of Darius’s gestures. Allistics working to speak (Darius’s shape of) autism as much as Darius works to speak allism? Consent communicated in ways that don’t require verbal communication? Intimate relationships and demonstrations of physical intimacy that are profoundly non-romantic? This story is about Darius’s learning the word aromantic, but that’s far less interesting to me than the worldbuilding, language, communication and relationships I’ve been able to explore in the course of showing how he learns it.

Read before this: Certain Eldritch Artefacts, if you want to know why there’s references to a magical talking belt.

Read after this: One Strange Man and The Morning After, if you want more Darius, Akash and Ila.

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Contains: A queer, pansexual, genderless person dealing with the historical inability to find recognition of hir aromanticism as separate from asexuality.

Length: 915 words / 4 PDF pages.

Why I liked writing it: This is a slightly-fictionalised depiction of the first half of my aromantic journey. Most narratives with allo-aro characters don’t include or reference our relationship to asexuality and the ways we can, rightly, feel let down by early understandings of aromanticism as not separate from asexuality. It’s important, I think, to express and grieve for that sense of time lost to ignorance, the needed knowledge I could have sooner possessed if only the people with the nascent language knew to speak it to me.

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Contains: A library in some disarray; a young magician on a quest; a dragon reflecting on hir past human attendants; and a mythology celebrating the similarities between dragons and autistics.

Length: 4, 047 words / 12 PDF pages.

Why I liked writing it: Autistic dragons with a mythology that suggests autistic humans are autistic because they’re closer to the nature of the long-lost human gods, who once kept companionship with dragon gods before continuing on their wandering ways. I don’t mean this as the mere “differences explained by your descended from a non-human creature” trope, which is why I had Darius reference a more modern understanding of autism and no conclusion reached on the truth of each. I mean this as the creation of a fictional mythology in which the autistic neurotype is centred and normalised, a world where autistics have access to a mythological presence and resonance. Not to mention autistic dragons…

Read after this: Certain Eldritch Artefacts, albeit not without some pondering as to why Darius didn’t try harder to find a way to stay with Azhra.

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Contains: A meet cute between a geeky bookseller and a mysterious boy wearing gloves, a girl trying to get Nevo’s attention for reasons he’s misreading, and hints that not all is right in Ihrne.

Length: 1, 783 words.

Why I liked writing it: Harper looks like … well, he looks like Nevo’s manic pixie trans boy, which isn’t a usual character type for me. (Harper isn’t one, but he’s going to great effort to appear this way.) Nevo is adorably awkward. And writing a series of stories (or interludes) that focus so much on working-class experiences and culture in Ihrne? Delightful.

Read after this: Men Bound by Blood and Jeile, and then the other Eagle Court books to realise how Nevo’s Ihrne differs from Paide’s.

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Contains: An autistic allosexual aromantic struggling to deal with the ways alloromanticism and aromanticism alike are binary, neuronormative ways of looking at the romantic attraction spectrum.

Length: 1, 000 words / 4 PDF pages.

Why I liked writing it: As an autistic with an autistic’s understanding of and relationship to aromanticism and romance, I feel as though I stand on one side of a gulf waving at the aromantic community on the other side. This story let me explore why I need more specific labels to explain my aromanticism and why some aromantic community assumptions about romance and romantic relationships feel, to me, utterly nonsensical.

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Contains: An abroromantic trans man on the border of flirting, the first instance of a long-running joke, more Nevo awkwardness, the provision of backstory with regards Nevo’s father and uncle, and more-detailed examinations of Ihrne’s cissexism.

Length: 2, 736 words.

Why I liked writing it: This is foreshadowing for a surprising reveal in Harper and Nevo’s story, something I hope to be sharing with everyone in 2020. Nevo’s handling (or lack thereof) of Harper’s transness, and the resulting problems because even indifference of the why does the world expect me to care about the ways in which someone is a man sort become warped by Ihrne’s cultural cissexism, isn’t something I too often see in fiction. Plus I do enjoy Harper’s defying the shy-and-reclusive-from-fear-of-being-discovered-as-trans trope! It’s nice to be able to write someone with the glibness I’d have should I possess fewer problems in getting my thoughts to my mouth.

Read before this: Booksellers Who Know Things, if you want to know why Harper calls Nevo “Bookstore Man”. This piece does not stand on its own!

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Contains: A disabled, pansexual, aromantic cis man discussing the reasons why the phrase “I don’t love” encompasses his platonic and familial relationships.

Length: 1, 000 words / 4 PDF pages.

Why I liked writing it: There’s still a tendency in the aromantic community to regard love as what makes our humanity worth recognising: we don’t feel romantic attraction, but we still love! This is damaging to me on multiple levels, as someone who has come to find love a complicated concept I don’t know I wish to apply to myself. (I do believe that love is not and will never be the singular metric of anyone’s human worth.) I always intended Paide to reassess love’s worth in light of his people and his family, but feeling so disregarded by my own community had me decide to make this conversation its own story.

Read before this: Their Courts of Crows and A Prince of the Dead, the latter of which contains Thereva’s first utterance about love.

Read after this: The King of Gears and Bone, in which you might marvel at the length of what has been a trying day for Paide!

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Contains: Another mysterious person entering the bookshop, Nevo’s secret book stash, that moment of queer revelation, and a delightful indulgence of anxious-autistic behaviour and mannerisms.

Length: 3, 351 words.

Why I liked writing it: Because it’s fun to work in clues about another character knowing that your observing protagonist lacks the knowledge to put it together. Not to mention that it would be a crime against my neurotype if I didn’t write an autistic character into this series! While this story is foreshadowing and explanation (or at least an attempt at justification) for events that take place further along the narrative track, it really exists because this was joy to write.

Read before this: You don’t need to have read any other Eagle Court piece for this, as it’s the earliest set of all pieces.

Read after this: Wait for Birds of a Feather!

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Contains: A trans, abrosexual, aromantic autistic breaking the rules for the friends he loves; a queer alloromantic trans man and a pansexual, aromantic genderqueer in a QPR; and an acceptance borne from a midnight flight through the streets of Rajad.

Length: 7, 673 words / 22 PDF pages.

Why I liked writing it: “Like” is a strong word, because I was terrified to share this. The aromantic community has a tendency to regard romance as irrational or absurd, often in judgemental bordering-on-dismissive ways. I recognise that this comes as a result of amatonormativity, a world where romance is held up as the human ideal, but this harms aromantics who experience some shape of romantic attraction as well as alloromantics. (Romance itself isn’t what’s harmful; amatonormativity is.) Do I think the aromantic community is ready for this viewpoint? That I’m unsure about, but I do believe that aromantic storytelling needs must encompass more perspectives than mere validation of aromantic identity. Sometimes, that means demonstrating our cruelty.

Read before this: Love in the House of the Ravens, if you want to know why Darius has been pondering the word “aromanticism” and why he needs must come to a reckoning with it.

Read after this: The Morning After, if you’re thinking that of course Halima will figure out that Akash is behind the theft!

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Contains: A cis, sapphic, probably-demiromantic shopgirl defying restrictive notions of good; a cis, bisexual, autistic shopgirl defying restrictive notions of abled; two older cishet women enduring and perpetrating misogyny; and a promise of a future possessed of a goodly number of cats.

Length: 4, 021 words.

Why I liked writing it: Exploring the misogyny perpetuated by women on women isn’t something I’ve often put to fiction, despite experiencing it every time a family gathering includes one of my aunts. I will also never get enough of writing the affection and intimacy an allistic can have for an autistic, given that most fictional instances of this tend to have a self-congratulatory note. To write Adelin as though it’s unquestioningly normal that an allistic accommodate, respect and adore her autistic partner, without Adelin thinking it unusual or exceptional, is a wondrous, joyful thing.

Read before this: It isn’t necessary to read any other work to grasp the meaning, but Yuissa’s plan takes on a different tone if you’ve read Booksellers Who Know Things!

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Contains: A trans, abrosexual, aromantic autistic wishing that he’d left his shirt on before bed; an alloromantic trans man and his former lover racing to manipulate the other; an aromantic genderqueer who keeps getting stuck in the middle of everyone else’s chaos; and a détente that makes nobody completely happy.

Length: 9, 973 words / 28 PDF pages.

Why I liked writing it: Consequences! Fantasy has a strong tendency towards disregarding the impact of actions perpetrated by the designated protagonist. Smaller acts like the theft of cheap jewellery or the working of a spell get brushed aside by too many narratives as though it doesn’t matter that someone endured loss and violation. I want it to matter, and I want it to matter to Darius. It also helps that this story explains in part how a certain future Dark Lord manages to get hold of Darius’s heartname … because a few days spent working spells for Halima isn’t the ultimate price Darius pays for his theft.

Read before this: One Strange Man is required reading.

Contains: A world where sexual attraction sans alloromantic attraction takes on fangs and teeth–and a pansexual’s aro liberation means accepting monstrosity.

Length: 1, 000 words / 4 PDF pages.

Why I liked writing it: To be allo-aro is to be regarded, explicitly and implicitly, as predatory in a world where romance is seen as the quality that renders safe, unthreatening and acceptable one’s sexuality (especially if one is female, trans, gay or lesbian, multisexual, a sex worker or a person of colour). It felt right to take another metaphor for monstrosity contaminating humanity–werewolves–and show that the real monstrosity, so often, is the attempt to contain and restrain what we believe as dangerous.

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Contains: One autistic, aromantic organiser extraordinaire armed with coloured ink; one autistic, aromantic officer a little too prone to interrupting; and an allistic friend in want of better ways to go about introductions.

Length: 5, 596 words / 17 PDF pages.

Why I liked writing it: This was one of those stories that came together without difficulty. Trans characters? Autistic aromantics bonding over stim toys? A narrative built over undercurrents of the ways the disabled and aromantics are pushed into meeting standard assumptions of how one is meant to adult? There’s still more for me to explore in looking at the intersection of amatonormativity and ableism when it comes to social expectation and social standing, but this is a beginning … and Alida and Antonius feel so natural to write. Perhaps because I, too, would rather read a book than talk to people…

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Contains: One trans, bisexual frayromantic alongside an office of well-meaning cis co-workers who think they’re being supportive and inclusive … in a bitter comedy of alloromantic assumptions and errors.

Length: 6, 688 words / 21 PDF pages.

Why I liked writing it: I don’t often get to write stories peppered with references to online LGBTQIA+ culture! I write fantasy to give people of my identities the sense of mythological, heroic identity we’ve been historically denied, but contemporary does allow for freer use of current language and tone. Plus Rowan’s narrative has a low-key snark of the “I will think it but I am far too afraid to ever say it in public” sort that, as a fellow slightly-judgemental anxious wreck, I can confirm as accurate. For all the grief the writing of this story gave me, I found a lot of joy in writing the tribulations of an aro trying to be out as aro (while trying to not be out as aro).

Read after this: The Pride Conspiracy, because one throw-away line here gave existence to an even longer story!

Contains: A cis, allistic king ruminating on politics, Hamide Golzar and magic; his trans, allistic sister trying to navigate a brother and a lover who despise each other; and a non-binary, allistic employer who needs to learn better ways to discuss an autistic employee, even if he isn’t in the room to overhear it.

Length: 4, 794 words / 14 PDF pages.

Why I liked writing it: I didn’t. Writing a scene where allistics discuss an autistic character was uncomfortable to say the least! However, as I want to write a series of stories where Efe learns how to be a better ally, I thought it worth writing down the kind of scene that allistics think isn’t ableist but is burdened by obvious and subtle shapes of ableism. Sometimes things aren’t in the least bit enjoyable to write, but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth doing.

Read after this: The Adventurer King, to get a sense of how Darius responds to the consequences of this discussion.

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Contains: A trans allo-frayro trying to grit his teeth through the holidays, scheming aro co-workers, a whole lot of cross-stitch, another moment of aromantic discovery, and many, many mugs.

Length: 9, 702 words / 29 PDF pages.

Why I liked writing it: Giving voice to the pain of gift exchanges as a trans person in many ways made this Christmas easier for me; it felt like validation of something that my culture tells me shouldn’t be a problem. While this story is a straight-up found-family aromantic fantasy (in the “improbable” sense of the term, not the genre), it’s no more a fantasy than countless holiday romances. While many of we don’t yet live in the world we want, need and deserve, I like to think validating stories about the world that should exist help us hold on in our fight to build it. Trans aros, too, need our holiday stories!

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And that’s it! Twenty-one pieces! So many pieces, in fact, that this post took nearly a week to write and I’m not certain I listed everything in correct chronological order. Thank you for reading this massive post all the way through!

I hope everyone has a safe and empowering 2020 ahead of them filled with art, representation and, for my fellow disabled folks, the best state of comfort our disabled bodies will allow us to attain.

In personal news, I have been diagnosed with coeliac disease. This means I get the joy of avoiding anything containing wheat, barley, rye and oats–along with the joy of realising just how many things in the Western diet contain wheat or barley. (Malt! It’s everywhere!) Autism makes this difficult, in the sense that I’m having to cope with a body that needs change and a brain that gets overwhelmed by differences in taste and texture (not to mention change generally). Having to try new foods? Having to accept that some alternatives won’t taste or feel quite the same as the gluten-containing versions to which I am used? Nor is there any easing into this; I’ve had to learn a great deal in a short space of time and then communicate most of that knowledge to other people while trying to avoid as many missteps as possible.

I now need to write a fantasy novel, or at least a series of shorter stories, in a Western-ish setting where the protagonist has to avoid gluten while on a quest to Save The World. What’s the good of having coeliac if I can’t give it to my characters?

(Is lembas gluten free? It’s made from a Middle-Earth wheat-ish grain, but that doesn’t mean it is wheat. Is it bad that I now want to write a story where the magical elfish waybread is gluten-free? Where its ability to stay fresh for a long time without going stale or crumbly is why it’s magical? Is it bad that I’m going to end up writing a story about elves with coeliac disease? But can’t you imagine the sheer, unbridled joy of a human with coeliac discovering that their elfish quest companion also has coeliac and has a stock of gluten-free waybread?)

Despite this taking up a fair amount of time and my chronic pain and anxiety being awful/disabling, I have managed a few fiction pieces over the last two months.

Readers should note that the narrating protagonists of Monstrous, The Vampire Conundrum, The Pride Conspiracy and The Sorcerous Compendium of Postmortem Query are aromantics who experience sexual attraction. The narrating protagonist of When Quiver Meets Quill doesn’t specify any orientation identity that isn’t aromanticism. The narrating protagonist of King’s Pawn is allosexual and alloromantic.

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[image error] Monstrous: A world where sexual attraction sans alloromantic attraction takes on fangs and teeth–and a pansexual’s aro liberation means accepting monstrosity.

It’s a common allo-aro experience to feel as though perpetually cast as a predator, something that I felt had resonance enough with werewolf narratives to work as a short story where allosexual aromanticism is cast as (what society thinks is) an actual monster. (Fur and fang is a poor metric for true monstrosity, just as the presence of romantic attraction is a poor metric for human worth.) This shouldn’t be regarded as a metaphor that suits or even acknowledges all aromantics; it’s a story very much for and about allo-aros.

If you prefer reading as a digital book, you can find the most recent PDF, EPUB and MOBI files on Patreon.

[image error]Jessie’s casing an art gallery affords an opportunity to discuss a queerplatonic relationship. The phrase “I don’t love” encompasses more than a prince’s lack of romantic attraction. A gay aromantic makes a game of his alloromantic co-workers’ inability to accept him. Alida finds an accomplice in petty revenge after hir friend sets hir up on a date. An aro-ace wanderer invents their own fairy tales free of weddings as a happily ever after. And a demiromantic witch learns about aromanticism from her allo-aro cousin after an escapade with an unwanted romantic admirer.

When Quiver Meets Quill collects fourteen fantasy and contemporary aromantic stories about amatonormativity, friendship and connection.

I decided that I could make a collection focused on my aromantic fiction. Most stories in here are focused on allo-aro characters (and are Hallo, Aro stories) but there are protagonists who are aro-ace or don’t identify their aromanticism as accompanying a sexual orientation identity.

The three new stories are listed below:

Alida Quill is just fine spending hir holidays alone with a book if it means freedom from hir family’s continued expectation to court and wed. When hir co-worker Ede sets hir up with a friend and won’t take no for an answer, Alida plots an extravagant, public refusal scene to show everyone once and for all that ze will not date. Ever.

Ze doesn’t expect to meet Antonius Quiver, a man with his own abrupt, startling declarations on the subject of romance.

It isn’t courting if he schemes with hir to pay back Ede … is it?

The title for this collection came before this story. My brain, for reasons I don’t understand in any logical way, decided to build it into a narrative … which resulted in my borrowing from my Dutch heritage with a new non-binary, autistic protagonist. I also wanted to experiment with the idea of what a Sheldon Cooper-esque character may look and sound like should he be written sympathetically instead of as a joke for allistic audiences, which gives us Antonius.

I’m thinking of a series of stories with Alida and Antonius’s navigating standard amatonormative/neuronormative life events in their “screw normality” style (although Antonius will never, ever phrase it that way). Alida’s meeting Antonius’s family? Deciding to live together in a haven from the rest of the world? Trying to buy a house for said haven? There’s so many autistic-and-aromantic-affirming possibilities here!

When Rowan Ross is pressured into placing an aromantic pride mug on his desk, he doesn’t know how to react when his co-workers don’t notice it. Don’t they realise he spent a weekend rehearsing answers for questions unasked? Then again, if nobody knows what aromanticism is, can’t he display a growing collection of pride merch without a repeat of his coming out as trans? Be visible with impunity through their ignorance?

He can endure their thinking him a fan of archery, comic-book superheroes and glittery vampire movies. It’s not like anyone in the office is an archer. (Are they?) But when a patch on his bag results in a massive misconception, correcting it means doing the one thing he most fears: making a scene.

After all, his name isn’t Aro.

I’ve written many stories with trans protagonists. I hadn’t yet written a story, not even The King of Gears and Bone, that focuses on the intersection between aromantic and transgender identities and experiences. Since the aromantic-themed play on words was a trans narrative with regards names and naming, this was the perfect opportunity to do so. I don’t plan on writing contemporary pieces often, but modern terminology and slang really lets me give voice to real-life frustration and alienation. It’s a delight to write a character referring to “allos” in a tone of high exasperation!

December isn’t the best time of year for a trans aromantic like Rowan Ross, although his co-workers probably won’t give him perfume and gift cards to women’s clothing shops. (Probably?) How does he explain to cis people that while golf balls don’t trigger his dysphoria, he wants to be seen as more than a masculine stereotype? At least cissexism means he needn’t worry about his relatives asking him about dating, and he has the perfect idea for Melanie in the office gift exchange. He can grit his teeth through Aunt Laura’s presents and pass off cheap boxes of chocolates to his housemates. At least he knows what shape of tinselled hell to expect, right? Isn’t showing up to the family Christmas better than enduring unexpected consequences if he doesn’t?

Except that no longer being the only aromantic in the office means all sorts of surprise goings-on. To survive the onslaught of ribbon and cellophane with his new aro kin, Rowan’s going to have to get comfortable with embracing the unknown.

I don’t revel in writing Christmas-related stories, speaking as someone from a lapsed-Catholic background with many of Rowan’s feelings towards the holiday. (I won’t say how much of this story is slightly-paraphrased real life, but the line between author and protagonist–thin in most instances–is thinner than usual with Rowan.) This gave me a chance to explore the way cis people make gift exchanges difficult as a trans person as well as something unusual in the Christmas-narrative canon–an aro-friendly piece with a happy ending that isn’t about romance or falling in love!

You can download the PDF, MOBI and EPUB files from Patreon or read the PDF directly in your browser.

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[image error]When Efe and Aysun Kadri meet Master Ayako to discuss the hiring of a magically-talented mercenary guard, Efe doesn’t expect said mercenary to come with a laundry list of warnings.

This takes place a few weeks after One Strange Man and shortly before The Adventurer King, detailing some of the background to the events of the latter novelette, showing up some of Darius’s misconceptions about Efe and Siya along with some of Efe’s misconceptions about Darius.

Efe Kadri is an uncomfortable character to write. He’s not trans or non-binary, he’s not aromantic, he’s not autistic, he’s not mentally ill, he’s not disabled. We’re both multisexual, but the largest entry point I have to his character is a lifetime of the ableist assumptions in how allistics regard autism–in that I know him through the mechanism of what ableism says I should be. If it weren’t for the fact that I adore writing characters with opinions on other viewpoint characters and the world needs to see an allistic man learn how to rethink his understanding of autism, I’d have written another story.

This piece is about showing the baseline of what not-obviously-ableist to allistics looks like; it should be regarded as the beginning of an allistic’s journey, not the end.

Subscribers can read this story over on Patreon or download it in the collection Bones, Belts and Bewitchments.

[image error] Necromancer Mara Hill has waited weeks for the Thinning: the one night the dead walk freely amongst the living. Her wandering great-aunt, Rosie, was wise in the way of magic and the world, and Mara knows of none other to ask. Books and magic alike haven’t restored her fading love, and Benjamin Lisabet is too wonderful to risk losing. Why can’t Mara keep herself from falling out of love whenever the girl she yearns for dares love her back?

She’s sure that Aunt Rosie’s spirit will offer up needed advice. She just doesn’t expect a deluge of deceased villagers set on unravelling everything Mara knows about what it means to love and be in love.

This isn’t a new piece, but it is an edited, digital-book version of a story that’s been long in want of it!

You can download the PDF, EPUB and MOBI files from Patreon, read the PDF directly in your browser or get this story in the When Quiver Meets Quill collection.

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Happy holidays to everyone who celebrates at this time of year. Special affection goes to folks with food allergies, food intolerances and coeliac, because I am learning just how difficult it is to navigate a holiday season studded with so many food-access pitfalls!

Clearly doing this on a regular basis is a pipe dream, but it would be nice to periodically gather my recent pieces in the one spot.

Most Fridays, I post one of my free books to Patreon. These posts are public, so you don’t need to be a patron or subscriber to access and download. Through Patreon, I have something I’ve been wanting for a long time–a public-accessible, no-sign-up needed post capable of hosting all my book files. This way, nobody needs to make an account with a vendor to download the file or files of their choice (PDF, EPUB or MOBI) direct to their computer, phone or tablet.

It should be noted that every narrating protagonist here is somewhere on the aromantic spectrum and experiences some shape of sexual attraction.

[image error]Neuronormative: An autistic allosexual aromantic struggling to deal with the ways alloromanticism and aromanticism alike are binary, neuronormative ways of looking at the romantic attraction spectrum.

This is less fiction and more a slightly-creative take on non-fiction, but I wanted to give voice to the ways what is and isn’t romantic is tied to neuronormative assumptions. Even the construct of aromanticism itself feels neuronormative to me. I’ve long reached a point where I’ll use aro as a general term but my aromanticism is better described by words like arovague, nebularomantic and idemromantic. To not centre my neurodiversity as a component of my aromanticism is to fail to speak of my aromanticism at all.

If you prefer reading as a digital book, you can find the most recent PDF, EPUB and MOBI files on Patreon.

[image error]I put the third Darius story up this month on Patreon as a preview for patrons.

How can the want for another person make an intelligent man gift something so precious?

When Akash’s former lover refuses to return a family heirloom, Darius knows only one way to help his mate—even if it means ignoring several laws in the process. The magic he mastered in surviving the College and the mercenaries has surprising utility in the art of larceny, at least once he gets past the stomach-knotting anxiety. When Darius makes the mistake of asking Akash why, however, getting caught in a stranger’s third-floor bedroom seems like nothing compared to comprehending the mysteries of romance and friendship.

You’ll need to have read Love in the House of the Ravens for this story to make the best sense.

Few folks will know that I was once paid $2 NZD to climb up to wriggle through a stranger’s campervan side window and unlock their door, being the smallest teenager in the caravan park at the time. (In reflection … that wasn’t a lot, given that I saved a couple from needing to get a locksmith.) This story has nothing to do with that, but it was in my mind as I wrote Darius’s misadventures on climbing a wall and falling through a window. Being somewhat diminutive is not always a disadvantage.

(Long ago, I used to write improbably tall characters for Non-Human Fantasy Species Reasons. It took longer than I care to admit to figure out why. Now my protagonists range from Darius and Kit to Esher and Nevo, but I have a special fondness for my pony-riding vertically-challenged characters.)

Another Patreon exclusive that I will be publishing later on, currently available in three parts: one, two and three.

Stiff fingers, an aching knee and a headache are the smallest prices Darius pays for last night’s escapades when a furious Halima knocks on Akash’s door. Darius, groggy and slurring, needs to convince her to accept a restitution that doesn’t involve his arrest, but there’s nothing easy about forging compromise when Akash and Halima wield schemes of their own. And how does Darius keep all this secret from the belt…?

You’ll need to have read One Strange Man for this to make the least amount of sense.

There are more narratives that treat challenging (correction: not acceptable to allistics) autistic behaviours as deserving of scorn, shame, frustration or mockery. There are far fewer narratives that treat them in a more neutral way, as something difficult that can be handled and navigated without a burden of shame placed on the autistic person experiencing them. Nor are too many of those narratives centred on an adult autistic treated as an adult by his adult allistic friends. So many narratives with adult autistic characters focus on the quirkiness, our autism rendered safer and cutesy for allistic audiences; anything that complicates this gets shuttled off to the delete folder.

My autism is smashing my hands on the desk while fighting to at least keep from breaking my keyboard–and knowing that anyone seeing me will be ashamed for me. My autism is the chronic pain the allistic pain doctors don’t know how to treat. My autism is fearing and avoiding even happiness, excitement and accomplishment because my expressions of these provoked almost as much criticism and embarrassment as my meltdowns. My autism, as much as it should be otherwise, is the ableism engraved on my bones.

This story is about what it means to be a palatable allistic when my autism isn’t quirky or cutesy.

This is a prequel series to the Eagle Court books about a cast of characters who don’t live in a palace, set two years before Their Courts of Crows. This series of stories gradually draws closer to mirroring the events of Paide and Ein’s books … just from the perspective of living nd working on the wrong side of the wall that divides the city of Ihrne. I’ve been wanting to show what Paide’s war, surrender and laws look like from the perspective of people who’ve too long seen law as meaningless and shake their heads at a trans king. Being able to work in a sense of language and direction that’s completely absent from the other Eagle Court books makes these stories a lot of fun to write. Paide doesn’t recognise the wall as relevant; Nevo and Harper never get to stop noticing it.

Nevolin ein Yinne sells books, curses low ceilings, promises his father that he won’t get himself killed and looks a little too hard at pretty men. Men he wants to date, men he can’t date, men–even in Ihrne’s queer underground–who expect a comprehension of romance he doesn’t possess.

Harper Mitzin Seili serves dishes, never removes his gloves, promises his mother that he won’t get himself killed and has no idea how to comprehend an interest in people that won’t stop changing. An interest bordering on irrelevant while he keeps secret the nature of his masculinity.

Nevo isn’t good at pretending to be straight.

Harper isn’t good at pretending to be unremarkable.

Different in Other Ways is a series of sketches and vignettes about gender, abrosexuality, quoiromanticism, customer service, working-class queerness and friendship.

Links to samples for all the DiOW pieces can be found on Aro Worlds, should you not be a patron and wish a little taste of this project.

Booksellers Who Know Things: An ordinary day of selling, shelving and mending becomes less ordinary when a mysterious stranger saves Nevo from disaster while asking questions about fairy tales.

Men Bound by Blood: Nevo learns his mystery man’s name, but Harper’s slip of the tongue forces Nevo to make a promise to his father he may not be able to keep.

Jeile: A risky disclosure at the bookstore allows Nevo to welcome another queer to the underground, but Jeile is more mystery than co-conspirator.

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Yuissa is the only partner Adelin wants, but survival in Ihrne requires both girls to keep secret their truth. No matter: they’re only a year away from having coin enough to escape to a cottage in Greenstone, a paradise of vegetable gardens, rescued cats and unrestrained affection. They can survive anything until then, right? Yet when Adelin’s worried mother and grandmother plot to solve Adelin’s unwed state by forcing her to court a male acquaintance, Yuissa thinks a beard the only answer.

A queer-seeming bookseller called Nevolin ein Yinne may do, but the process of asking isn’t quite so simple…

This series will be more amusing if you’re aware from the beginning that Nevo thinks Adelin meant it when she asked him out, but none of Nevo’s stories are required to read this. People may also wish to be aware that this piece crosses, defies or ignores the romantic/non-romantic binary. I’m not sure if Adelin’s love for Yuissa is romantic or queerplatonic/alterous: it’s a case example for the I can’t tell the difference between platonic and romantic problem I talk about in Neuronormative.

Part One: Adelin’s morning is thrown into chaos when Grandmam decides it’s high time to arrange her wedding.

The first part of this was written and edited (read: “edited”) in five days because I wanted a bonus piece to post for my birthday.

I am yet to find satisfying any allistic-authored book on an allistic’s accepting, loving or supporting an autistic. An autistic author can authentically observe how autistic-centred acceptance by allistics is still unusual or examine the ways that ableism hampers our ability to build relationships with most allistics. At the hands of an allistic author, it feels like my autism becomes a tool to indicate an allistic character’s exceptional progressiveness; I never not feel othered by it. I’d much rather them write a fantasy world where everyone accepts autistics than be subjected to an allistic telling me how wonderful their allistic protagonist is for … usually, the barest minimum of acceptance.

This piece is rough, but I place no limits on writing stories about allistic characters caring for their autistic friends, siblings and/or partners while still accepting them as autistic against a setting where I can also discuss and depict ableism and its impact.

(Efe Kadri does begin his adventures with Darius thinking himself a bit progressive for hiring an autistic magician/mercenary guard. The key word there is begin. Darius’s character arc involves trusting Efe, but Efe’s character arc involves first becoming deserving of it.)

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[image error]When Paide ein Iteme says the words “I don’t love”, he doesn’t just refer to romantic relationships.

Content Advisory: Non-detailed references to war, violence, abuse, ableism, cissexism and suicidal ideation; depictions of heterosexism and heterosexist slurs/sex negative language.

Links: PDF | EPUB | MOBI | Patreon

(PDF, EPUB and MOBI files are also available for download from Patreon.)

Length: 1, 000 words / 4 PDF pages.

Note: I haven’t been posting all the Hallo, Aro stories here, but this piece takes place between A Prince of the Dead and The King of Gears and Bone. As it details a conversation important for events in The King of Gears and Bone, I wanted to be sure folks didn’t miss it.

I always planned to elaborate on Paide’s statement of love later in the series (and have done so in the drafts of the sequel novel, Birds of a Feather). The need for empowering, sympathetic fictional representation of loveless aros and aros with complicated relationships to love provoked me to tell this shorter version of the story now. Seeing the aromantic community’s excitement over posts and stories that stress all aros love in some way or are never without love leaves me fairly alienated from my own. I can’t seem to say it often enough or well enough in essay format for my fellow aros to remember that love isn’t what makes us human, so let’s try it in fiction.

(To be clear: aros who love non-romantically are great! Hell, I write about this myself! Aros who insist that we all love, on the other hand? Aros who write stories on the premise that loving non-romantically is an inherent part of being aromantic as opposed to being one of many shapes of aromanticism? Not so great.)

I wanted a character with a background of abuse and disregard wielded by those who love him, a character who is neurodiverse, a character who isn’t faultless but can’t be mistaken for an antagonist. A character telling the world something of what it can mean to be loveless–and why it doesn’t have to be a tragedy.

Little does this world hate more than a loveless man, save perhaps a loveless woman.

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“He connects, attaches, to things.” Paide lets the words roll over his thoughts before speaking, unsure how to convey his meaning to someone unknowing of his brother’s nature. “Trinkets, odds and ends, textured bits he can hold in his hands. One year he went everywhere stroking a wooden spoon! I don’t mean a bribe. A token, showing him that we accept him in this way, so we may be trusted in others.” He glances across the table. “Do you still make your bits of beads and jewellery?”

Thereva called his sketches on maps and missives “bits of drawings”, but even she spent the quiet nights of the war working with wood and thread.

“I have something.” She almost smiles, her fingers still atop her last jade counter. “I also think you lied before, sir. Paide.”

Is this another declaration he’ll dislike hearing? “How so?”

“You said you didn’t love. How isn’t that love? It just isn’t romantic.” She shifts the piece two squares. “Your move.”

The board shows Paide another loss.

At least this one lacks consequence.

“I didn’t lie.” He didn’t correct her earlier assumption, but she did listen to him when all others denied his truth. Why not also in this? “You’re looking, I think, for something you’d rather see in my words. Something preferable. I meant how I said it.” He pauses for the space presaging impact, even here unable to cast aside his orator’s tricks. “Little does this world hate more than a loveless man, save perhaps a loveless woman.”

Thereva leans over the table, fine brows raised, her eyes searching his. Looking, maybe, for the shadows of the man that spoke of suicide? “I … I don’t know what that is! Princely pity shrouded in princely verbiage? Depression? Your debility?” She shakes her head. “What do you need of me? What are you asking by saying that?”

It means something that she asks.

It also means something that she thinks him hale enough for teasing.

“I don’t think love is something I want or need. I don’t think I should keep what I thought was love, having seen what it wrought.”

She blinks, frowning. “I understood that as you don’t wish a husband or a wife. How do you mean it, then?”

For the first time in months, the world feels steady underneath his chair. Perhaps it’s that today Paide reached the nadir of desperation, his sanity too rent to be further tarnished. Perhaps it’s the conclusion of a journey that shaped every use of his queerness as a weapon to discourage his father from pressing marriage, now unnecessary. Perhaps it’s the strange freedom come after casting the rest of his life to the pyre.

Their expectations denied his humanity. Why respect those few still within his ability?

“I don’t. I like … liked…? Like sex.” He laughs, as though Thereva didn’t see people emerge from his tent at odd hours, as though sex hasn’t become memory and history over hope. “I want a friend. I don’t love elsewise. I never have. But…” He exhales in the old habit of delay, speaking’s breath hissing over his lips. “My father loved me, but that didn’t stop me enduring his judgement, angels forbid he have a cocksucker for a son! Mamman loved my father, but that didn’t stop him from dying at her hands. Mamman loves my brother enough to war for him, but that didn’t stop his wooden spoon from shattering under her hands … or me applauding her anger. I thought…”

Thereva shifts her weight, preternaturally patient.

Is there any magical order of words, Paide wonders, that convey depth of feeling without implying self-pity?

“I thought I loved my people, my country. I thought to save Ihrne from the tyranny of a necromancer with power to void law. I thought I loved them, and they me, and I thought that love justified my war.” He halts, thinking of armies of bones, the bearing of corpses from the battlefield while the enemy claimed his living allies, a conflict that brought blood, loss and deprivation. “It gained Ihrne nothing.”

He lost his title, his crown, his heartbeat, his future.

For what? Death?

Thereva, commander of soldiers and forced co-conspirator in Paide’s useless idealism, nods at him … but her lips press, colourless, into a thin line.

“Lovelessness is a byword for hatred, horror and cruelty. But my family’s love is nothing but horror and cruelty. Our love justifies anything that follows, no matter how questionable, how wrong. Why isn’t it better to be loveless?”

Thereva’s brow furrows. She speaks with care, but it may mean anything; Paide has never found her easy to read. “My understanding … my understanding is that isn’t real love. False love, hate masquerading as love.”

Paide remembers too late her family: kin accepting of her womanhood if she denies herself expression, affection and connection.

If that’s what the world names love, why value it?

“Too many people too often call abuse ‘love’ for me to think it a false reckoning,” he says slowly. “What if it’s meant to justify what should be incomprehensible? Not a flaw, but a feature? Love didn’t shelter my brother from us. Is love, then, what’s required to craft kindness or governance? To rule? To protect?”

Her lips part, soundless, before she shakes her head. “I can’t say, truly, that it is.”

“I need acceptance more than love, Thereva Asigne. So does my brother.”

She sits, statuesque if not for the rise and fall of her chest, before reaching across the table, glancing at his hand. He nods; she closes her fingers about his. “Accept, then.”

Her faith, he thinks, empowers him more than a kingdom of love.

Paide ein Iteme, loveless prince-regent of Ihrne. It doesn’t sound like a tragedy this side of war, not when love failed to provide safety and sanity in his current shape of life. It sounds like a beginning, a renewal.

It sounds like hope.

He nods at the board. “New game?”

[image error]Lovers’ Day is good trading for a witch who deals in enchantments, ribbons and dyed flowers. For Mara Hill, it’s long been a holiday of tedious assumptions and painful conversations—once best handled by casting petty curses on annoying customers. This year, when a girl asks about love spells, it may be time to instead channel a little Aunt Rosie.

Contains: A sapphic, allosexual, lithromantic trans witch enduring the most amatonormative holiday extant–in a small town still in want of open conversations about aromanticism.

Setting: A year and a half after The Sorcerous Compendium of Postmortem Query and a year before Love is the Reckoning. I don’t spend much time going over the events of the night Mara spoke to Aunt Rosie about aromanticism, so reading Compendium first is recommended.

Links: Patreon | WordPress

PDF, EPUB and MOBI editions are available for download from Patreon.

Length: 3, 429 words / 10 PDF pages.

Mara and Esher Reading Order: The Sorcerous Compendium of Postmortem Query | Love Spells, Rainbows and Rosie | Love is the Reckoning | Absence of Language

I’ve posted digital editions of this side story to my Patreon (where I’m enjoying the ability to attach files directly to my posts). The web edition has also been updated with the new version, for folks who prefer reading online.

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I’ve added 400 words to make this story more readable as a midpoint between Compendium and Reckoning for anyone who hasn’t or doesn’t want to read Reckoning. The other major change is more reflection on the parallels and differences between Mara’s wanting a love spell to change herself and transition magic for her brother. These things aren’t the same, particularly within a social context where Esher and Mara’s shapes of gender are accepted and their shapes aromanticism provoke question. Yet they both concern queerness, identity, feeling and one’s place in the world, so much so that it felt necessary to acknowledge this contrast.

A change I’m making to Compendium is more examination on the role of love spells in the Marchverse. People know they exist, and non-magic-workers tend to have a poor understanding of the restrictions surrounding them (as shown by Abelia and Mara’s need for a sign on the door). For magic workers, especially those from a school or country sworn to the Accords, there’s a much greater awareness of problems like consent and all the ways magic can be used to void it–one of the reasons Mara struggled to find information about love spells in the first place. I feel like Love Spells, Rainbows and Rosie doesn’t fit with the current version of Compendium as much as it should, but it will!

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A dragon in need of a human attendant finds providence in the arrival of a magician in need of a library, but more than phalanges and history binds Azhra and Darius in companionship.

Setting: Several hundred years after the short stories Friendship and Attraction; several months before Certain Eldritch Artefacts, during Darius’s first year away from the College. Reading these stories isn’t required for comprehension, but this story is written with the expectation that readers will find enjoyment in Azhra being Azhra and Darius being Darius.

Content advisory: Casual references to fantasy violence involving fire, carnivores and dragons, ageism, autistic-targeted ableism and the medicalisation of the autism spectrum.

Length: 4, 047 words / 12 PDF pages.

Note the first: This short story is an exclusive for Patreon supporters. It’s also available in the Marchverse collection Bones, Belts and Bewitchments.

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Azhra breathes the tart, acidic aura of magic for an hour before the sweating human makes it up the incline. With no attendant, ze can’t brush hir hide, but ze wipes hir emerald snout and copper claws on the closest patch of grass, hoping to appear presentable. Humans are more agreeable the more they can pretend dragons aren’t the ultimate apex predator. Even if this one has no interest in staying, they can still speak of hir to their family and friends.

Hope quickens hir breath and quivers hir tail.

What if ze can convince a human to remain?

A few centuries ago, no dragon lacked service. Nobles viewed them as an opportunity for their children to meet other nobles, sending more princesses than wanted by the most affable of dragons. Now, Azhra can go a year without speaking to even the census-takers, nervous scholars hoping to determine the number of cattle Rajad, Siya and Khaloun will lose to a dragon’s gullet.

Telling their few visitors that Council will pay fair wages for willing workers gets them nowhere. The town in the valley refuses to deal with any dragon after Heisa’s incident. What stories are humans now telling about dragons in Rajad and Khaloun? Surely there’s people in need of supporting their kinsfolk or leaving them, people who won’t object to magic and adventure? The Athenaeum sends the odd historian and academic to catalogue hoards, but none since Faiza show interest in the work of a companion—and Faiza’s family didn’t permit them to remain in Tierre.

Dwelling on the old days does no dragon good, but even quiet reflection brings envy and pessimism. The last human to stay for a lifetime was a duchess’s daughter from a Western country—a small province since swallowed up by the former Astreuch empire.

What was her name?

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If all goes well, when this post goes up I should be escaping my GP’s office after another biopsy on my hand: an another adventure in our long-running quest to discover what is causing my dermatitis. I can’t say that I need this experience again, but at least I can write about wounds and blood with verisimilitude, and I’ve two characters for which this is quite important. Small mercies, right?

I am struggling at the moment in keeping up with everything in a consistent manner, which I think you know based on the the dust bunnies covering this blog. (I mean, I still haven’t updated my books with my new pronouns.) But, since I have written and made a couple of things, I think it’s worth gathering them here in the quest to appear accomplished.

[image error]Hallo, Aro: Existence: For me, one of the more profound allo-aro experiences is the truth that it’s difficult to find information about aromanticism as separate from asexuality. This story adds a little bit of creative licence to autobiography and is in no way a complete rendition of my experiences, but the core of this, in terms of someone else’s inability to offer the word aromantic, is true.

(You can also read this on Tumblr or in PDF and EPUB formats.)

Love in the House of the Ravens: I’m posting the story of how Darius learns about the word “aromantic” in shorter snippets over April, Autism Acceptance Month. I’m quite excited at being able to post these stories about how autism and ableism impact his ability to come to terms with his aromanticism: it’s been a while since autism has been as central in my storytelling. This will become its own book, a sequel to Certain Eldritch Artefacts; I just thought I’d do something a bit different with how I initially post it.

(You can keep up via my tag on Tumblr and category on WordPress. I may do a proper linked master post when my hand heals.)

[image error]Allo-Aro Sylvanian Pride Dress: Given that I made an aromantic pride dress for one of my Sylvanian Families figurines, it was absurd not to make an allosexual aromantic pride dress as well. I struggled with this one, both in the sense that my brain couldn’t do things like space out the stripes and that my brain isn’t happy with this failure being so visible. Sometimes I find spatial orientation or correctly placing the sewing needle difficult, and since I know I can do (and have done) better, I find it hard to live with those times when it’s obvious that I can’t. (Internalised ableism, how are you doing?) It’s still a cute dress, but I’m bothered by its failure to match the image in my head.

Allo-Aro Pride Watercolour: This doesn’t look too bad given that I a) have no painting or colour blending skills, b) had the worst cheap child’s paint set with amazingly chalky paint, and c) used paper in no way designed for this purpose. But, with a little transparency, it doesn’t look too bad as a flag overlay. If you want to use it for anything, have at it.

[image error]K-Mart Squishy Plush (one, two): K-Mart have released their own off-brand squishy plush and they are amazing. I recommend buying these in-store because the density varies and I prefer the softer ones, but I absolutely recommend these as cuter, cheaper versions of the Squeezamal squishy plush.

K-Mart Stretchy Carrot: K-Mart has Easter stim toys this year, so I grabbed their stretchy, sand-filled silicone carrot. I will say, after having written that review, that the chemical battery-acid smell has faded more than I thought it would, but it still doesn’t smell that great.

K-Mart Crunchimals: These are squishy plush toys filled with crinkle plastic (a sheet of cellophane) so they make a scrunching sound when squished. I don’t like the appearance very much, but I do like the sound and the recent price reduction to something far more affordable. I want to try making my own!

Aro-Spec Artist Profile: I’m trying to get this series going again, so I thought if I did one, other people may feel inspired to follow. Turns out that this hasn’t yet succeeded in provoking someone else to participate, but if you want to get to know me a little better in terms of how I feel about being both aromantic and creative, you can!

(You can also read this on Tumblr.)

The Allosexual Aromantic Erasure Guide: I’ve noticed there’s a tendency to assume allo-aro experiences of erasure are similar to, and easily compared with, the erasure had by aro-aces and aro-specs who are also ace-spec. I’ve also noticed a lack of discussion on how being allosexual intersects with aromanticism when it comes to erasure, especially of the sort that centres asexual-spectrum identities. So here’s forty-five (sometimes similar, often overlapping) ways allo-aros experience erasure in a-spec and aro-spec spaces.

(I’ve made some a-spec community discussion posts/rants on my @alloaroworlds Tumblr, but I’m working on combining these into a more organised resource. There’s a real need for informative posts about allo-aro experiences, concerns, identity and inclusion.)