laikacore

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OUT NOW for FREE, Laika Wallace’s second novel, Lured to the Lake

cover art by @snommie​

Learning how to love your family, love yourself, and love the people right in front of you…

The second installment in the Shimmering Lake Summer Camp series, Lured to the Lake follows Ava and Sid as they attend the second session of camp, one year after Ronnie and Morgan did. 

Ava and her siblings, Gwen and Henry, have lived a long life of hardship. Even now that they’re living happily with their adoptive family, they struggle to handle the way life has treated them. Ava feels she will never be free of the shadow of their father, with Henry mirroring him more and more every day. When even the camp proves to not be a safe escape for her, it takes a lot, from love to magic, for her to feel safe again. But at the end of the summer, she discovers she is more than a scared little girl. 

Meanwhile, Sid finds himself caught in this strange world. He thinks he’s falling in love with a fellow camper, Hafsa, who can turn into a lion. He’s trying to wrangle Gwen as she creeps around in the swamp on cryptic missions. He’s not even able to sleep through the night with the mourning wailing of a kelpie– not just any kelpie, but his glittering white stallion– floating through his head like a magical song. He’s not sure why, but he might be falling in love with him, too.

But they’re not the only thing lurking in the waters of Shimmering Lake, and a love triangle is the least of Sid’s problems…

Trigger warnings for this book include: physical assault (on screen), child abuse, parent death, grandparent death, animal death (on screen), animal sickness (on screen), bullying (on screen), racism, transphobia, homophobia, animal attack (on screen), near drowning (on screen), mental health struggles

It is now available on the Internet Archive for FREE!

It is also available for $1.99 on many ebook stores like Apple, Kobo, and Smashwords.

Clickable links in first reblog.

[laikacore]

Now available for free, Laika Wallace’s second novella, LOVE LIKE THIS

Link in first reblog to website where you can read it for free as a downloadable PDF or in browser

cover by laika wallace

She had never known a love like this…

After Morgan, Laurie, and Cherry make the brave– and maybe a little crazy– jump to move out of their family homes as teenagers, they are quickly faced with the struggles of living together for the first time. In this heartwarming novella, picking up where the story left off at the end of Whisper in the Woods, the three girls come into their own while navigating each other’s family dynamics and learning how to be young adults. Away from the abuse in their pasts, they find support and care in each other, forge new relationships, build themselves a true family, discover their new world, and finally know the depths of love.

Trigger warnings for this story include: abusive families, dysphoria, financial hardships, divorce, homophobia, alcohol, underage drinking.

It is now available on the Internet Archive for FREE!

It is also available for $1.99 on many ebook stores like Apple, Kobo, and Smashwords.

Clickable links in first reblog.

[laikacore]

Now available for FREE, Laika Wallace’s first novel... WHISPER IN THE WOODS

Cover art by @bijillion​

A boy who thinks he’s the only strange thing in the world, and a girl who knows that she isn’t…

The first installment in the Shimmering Lake Summer camp series, Whisper in the Woods follows Ronnie and Morgan, two teenagers with turbulent home lives, as they attend the first session of a summer camp focused on helping troubled youth connect to each other, themselves, and the world around them.

Ronnie has just been through a traumatizing event that he can’t understand, and is being left in the dark about it by his own mother. Meanwhile, he struggles to piece together why he’s been raised to believe he and his mother are the only vampires in the world.

Like most things in Morgan’s life, going to camp was sprung on her without her consent, but it gets her away from her painful home life and offers a glimpse into the world of Silent Woods, where she, a werewolf, might find more belonging than the suburbs of Ottawa.

But there’s more to the camp than what anyone is telling them, and a long standing conflict bubbling up in the lake…

It is now available on the Internet Archive for FREE!

It is also available for $1.99 on many ebook stores like Apple, Kobo, and Smashwords.

Clickable links in first reblog.

Trigger warnings for this story include: abusive parents (verbal), parent death, physical assault and flashbacks, mental health struggles, animal death on screen, transphobia

[laikacore]

Town Ghosts by Laika Wallace: now available to read FOR FREE!

cover by @scummetski​

Two towns, two halves of one story, two ghosts, two halves of one life…

When Marnie moved with her parents from her home in busy downtown Ottawa to tiny Pryeville– a town barely on the map– she didn’t have high hopes for any part of their new life. She’d left behind all her friends in Ottawa, just to start middle school in a building so small, both grades were taught in the same room. But meeting Sophia changed everything, sending her life spiraling along to the beat of the ethereal hooves that seemed to follow her…

For Edgar, too, life seemed like it couldn’t get worse. Stuck with his cruel, uncaring father, all he wanted to do was build himself a computer and maybe figure out what his new friend, Donald, really made him feel. But with this new girl living in the town over from him, from where he lived in Sowridge, spelling trouble of a different kind, a kind he comes face to face with himself one night…

It is suddenly up to four middle schoolers to solve the mystery of the two towns and their ghosts, whatever it takes, no matter how much their lives will change in the process…

Read it on the Internet Archive ( laikacore.neocities.org ) for FREE!

Or purchase as an ebook for $1.99 on many storefronts like Smashwords, Kobo, and Apple!

Clickable links on pinned post & in first reblog.

Tips optional but appreciated; see pinned post <3

Trigger warnings for this story include: homophobia, child abuse, eating disorder triggering content, illness, and off screen animal death.

[laikacore]

[laikacore]

Kent Rogowski: Love = Love, 2006-2008

Love=Love is a series of collages that were created using pieces of over 60 store bought puzzles. Although puzzle pieces are unique, and can only fit into one place within a puzzle, they are sometimes interchangeable within a brand. These puzzles were cut using the same die, but depict unrelated images. Using only the flowers and skies from each of the puzzles, I created a series of entirely new compositions by recombining the puzzle pieces. These spectacular, fantastical and surreal landscapes sit in direct contrast to the banal and bucolic images of the original puzzles. (artist statement)

[laikacore]

buoyant, 2025, oil on canvas, 90 x 120 cm

[laikacore]

Personality hire

Working Cats

[laikacore]

the worm poem

(i decided to make my worm poem into its own post. so. get wormt.)

a worm that's cut in two will die, not grow into more worms

i learned this fact on accident, i'm sorry to confirm

when i was six i heard the lie and lifted every rock

i gathered all the worms at once, a mighty writhing crop

i cut and cut and cut at them, and only did i stop

when every worm was split in twain, no bodies left to chop

---

i put the halves in shelter with some water and some food

i hoped to wake the next day and go see what i'd accrued

my dream of worms legion was dead, as were the worms inside

i learned that love can kill its host, the worms my fratricide

i sat there on the summer grass and cried and cried and cried.

---

i left the lawn to climb a tree, to hide my shame from God

in the game of men vs trees vs Him, trees only died when sawed

whereas God got tree'd in eden first, then twice in Golgotha

i sat and stayed and feared for Hell until my mom came up

---

"you okay?" she asked me and i trusted her The Most

i explained how all the worms were gone, all dead, and now i'd roast

in worm hell for all eternity, a just and honest post

she coaxed me down from my tall tree and lead me to compost

---

"we have such worms," she asid to me, her hands wrist deep in rot

she pulled them out in big handfuls, a mighty squirming crop

"and the worms you killed, you kill from love, a feeling worms know well

they have six hearts to love you know, nor bones to pick as well,

when you stand before St. Peter, no worm will sentence you to hell."

---

based on this story

[laikacore]

Last week I went out to a lake in Appalachia and I made a zine about changing, about moving forward, about the most frightening and meaningful dream I've ever had.

[laikacore]

yes actually that is a knife in my pocket i am not happy to see you at all.

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North Poles by Samia

insp. heavensghost

[laikacore]

MY EX’S BROTHER KILLED HIMSELF THREE WEEKS AGO and saying “my ex’s brother” is kind of shitty of me i think. but i also can’t say “my friend” because we weren’t friends, and i can’t say “my friend’s brother” because now that we’re exes we’re not really friends, and also there’s a difference between “friends” and “grew up in the church together” and that’s a lot to say to someone who doesn’t have the whole picture. but it’s better to include “ex” in there somewhere, because when people hear “ex” they like to assign some bitterness to it, and it’s kind of refreshing to hear “do not meet him for coffee who cares if he’s grieving he’s an ex for a reason” instead of the run-of-the-mill scrambling for something polite and respectful to say. and then when i do meet him for coffee and his hair’s grown out again to where i once told him i like it and he tells me about his next tattoo and that he’s saving up for another motorcycle and apologizes for something he barely did two years ago and tells me that he’s single again, i can joke around with my best friend about how he still wants me if his instagram likes have anything to say about it, and i don’t have to think about how tired he looks or that, like me, he hasn’t said a word about God in six years. i don’t have to sit in the church i haven’t sat in since high school and wonder if this is the funeral—sorry, celebration of life for someone who didn’t even want to be here—my ex’s brother would have wanted. i don’t have to watch the back of my ex’s head and wonder how he can stand any of this because nobody here will shut the fuck up about God. i don’t have to sit in the back of the congregation and selfishly think WHEN I DIE I HOPE NOBODY TALKS ABOUT GOD for three hours. and usually my purse is relatively neat but right now it’s stuffed full with tissues and waterproof mascara and packets of wildflower seeds and i wonder if my ex’s brother really did like planting wildflowers or if they just told us that so we’d spread them.

later that week when i spend the night at my sister’s she tells me the exchange student she brought home for thanksgiving a few years ago was in an accident. i want to apologize because ever since i was a child i’ve felt like death follows me around somehow. his instagram says he was doing what he loved and he’s with God now. i hug my sister while she cries and i think WHEN I DIE I HOPE NOBODY TALKS ABOUT GOD. in a few days i will text her at midnight because i had a dream that i don’t necessarily remember but i do remember wishing she was still alive. and i won’t tell her that but i’ll ask her what she’s wearing to the bridal shower and she’ll say the same thing she wore to the funeral because she doesn’t have anything else, and i’ll do that too since we were asked not to wear black and the blue i wore is much more suited to a happy occasion anyway. the brides will make a toast to loved ones lost while i’m wearing the same dress i wore to celebrate the life of a dead boy and my grandmother will pray to bless the union and i’ll arrange flowers and play little games with the women in my family and all i can think is WHEN I DIE I HOPE NOBODY TALKS ABOUT GOD.

whenever i tell people my cousin drowned they always ask if he’s okay and that always surprises me because i feel like the word drowned has a finality to it; it’s an end result, and if he was okay i would have said almost drowned but i didn’t. and sometimes when i talk about someone in the past tense people will say what do you mean was? is he not your uncle anymore? as if the concept of death is so far-fetched and archaic that it only happens to the elderly and the extremely unlucky and people on tv. these are the same people who keep talking about Heaven and eternal life and how death is just the beginning and nobody’s really gone and i smile politely but i want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them and say fuck you. MY EX’S BROTHER KILLED HIMSELF THREE WEEKS AGO and i am drawing pictures and watching a trashy reality show when one of the contestants announces his early departure because his sister has died.

why do you write so much about death? what is everyone else writing about if not death? a few years ago i found out people think i’m obsessed with the idea of dying. i am not. i didn’t know there were people out there who have not experienced tragedy at all. i say tragedy and people think it just means loss. i am not talking about old men passing peacefully in their sleep. i am talking about a drowned fourteen year old and a fiancé whose heart suddenly gave out and a new grandfather t-boned by a drunk driver. these are too unrealistic for fiction. you write too much about death. i am not afraid of death and i’m not sure if that’s leftover from teenage suicidal tendencies or the result of years of exposure but i am afraid that i will die unexpectedly and nobody will know who to tell and so none of the right people will find out. and then the only people at my funeral will be family members who keep talking about God and Heaven and eternal life and give out packets of wildflower seeds, and i will watch from inside my casket even though i wanted to be cremated and i’ll scream EVERYONE SHUT UP ABOUT GOD until i can almost feel my throat but nobody will hear me because i am dead and no longer have a throat. my friends will keep texting me and wonder if i’m angry with them.

my ex’s brother killed himself three weeks ago. after the funeral i take a day off of work to sit in my kitchen and think WHEN I DIE I HOPE NOBODY TALKS ABOUT GOD.

[laikacore]

Town Ghosts by Laika Wallace: now available to read FOR FREE!

cover by @scummetski​

Two towns, two halves of one story, two ghosts, two halves of one life…

When Marnie moved with her parents from her home in busy downtown Ottawa to tiny Pryeville– a town barely on the map– she didn’t have high hopes for any part of their new life. She’d left behind all her friends in Ottawa, just to start middle school in a building so small, both grades were taught in the same room. But meeting Sophia changed everything, sending her life spiraling along to the beat of the ethereal hooves that seemed to follow her…

For Edgar, too, life seemed like it couldn’t get worse. Stuck with his cruel, uncaring father, all he wanted to do was build himself a computer and maybe figure out what his new friend, Donald, really made him feel. But with this new girl living in the town over from him, from where he lived in Sowridge, spelling trouble of a different kind, a kind he comes face to face with himself one night…

It is suddenly up to four middle schoolers to solve the mystery of the two towns and their ghosts, whatever it takes, no matter how much their lives will change in the process…

Read it on the Internet Archive ( laikacore.neocities.org ) for FREE!

Or purchase as an ebook for $1.99 on many storefronts like Smashwords, Kobo, and Apple!

Clickable links on pinned post & in first reblog.

Tips optional but appreciated; see pinned post <3

Trigger warnings for this story include: homophobia, child abuse, eating disorder triggering content, illness, and off screen animal death.

[laikacore]

I don't want to wear my skin

[laikacore]

a comic/zine about coyotes

[laikacore]

How do you say goodbye to an organ of your own body?

Sometimes I wonder what was missing to give that story a truly proper ending.

I'm quite clear that the love was no longer enough.

I was clinging to the lifeless body of a relationship that had been born six years ago without permission, not even caring if it was appropriate at the time or not.

When I finally decided to let it go, my heart was already broken into such tiny pieces. I found it strange it wasn't externally noticeable.

The world kept spinning, friends continued to laugh and the wind kept blowing.

It was very inconsiderate of nature not to have mourned the very moment of our goodbye.

First came the physical separation, that hug that never happened because I simply couldn't move.

I couldn't say goodbye to him forever. It was as insane as calmly asking Pluto to stop orbiting the sun.

Even distant and cold, his presence remained the axis of my orbit. I don't know how he couldn't understand when he asked:

"Do you really want the goodbye to be like this?"

The answer kept stuck in my heart. What could I tell him at that cold Departure Gate?

At least we saw our inside joke of "we're never boring" through to the end. And it wasn't boring. What could I tell him?

How do you say goodbye to an organ of your own body?

—InkEmpathy