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I am so excited to share that, as a part of my masters program, I have created a Discord community space for any writers, filmmakers, or other creators interested in retelling or adapting public domain stories—and anyone curious in exploring these sort of retellings is welcome to join: https://discord.gg/BNm4aDNzCN (and don’t worry if this is your first time using Discord—there is a channel dedicated to learning the basics of Discord!)

Over the summer, I will be sharing additional resources in this Discord server to help structure different ways to think about retellings—especially as a way to interact with the public domain canon and consider how retellings can be a form of counternarratives that share the identities, experiences, and stories that have historically not been told or shared.

Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions—and I would love to see you there ✨

Image ID:

A logo of a laptop embedded in a book with words beneath it that say: you’re invited to join the Storyretellers Discord Community, a space dedicated to writers, artists, filmmakers, and other creators interested in retelling or adapting stories in the public domain

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Full letter/intro to the story:

https://vocal.media/art/clouds-in-the-summer

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You find a box of sad love letters at your doorstep. What do you do?

Experience the story where this scene happens with its original soundtrack here: https://vocal.media/art/clouds-in-the-summer

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Medicine heals the diseases of the body, while wisdom frees the soul from passions.

Democritus, Fragments, B31 (via philosophybits)

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T-Swift said, "make the right choices that feel right for you...someone might think that you’ve been innovative" and I felt that.

As stated in her iHeartRadio Music Awards Speech: Innovator Award

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Taylor Swift performs 'Delicate' at the Eras Tour in Pittsburgh, night two (x)

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there are days in my life and moments like right now where I wish I could give you more true detective content. and maybe there is a point in the future somewhere, perhaps, where I have another story inside me for rust and marty. I already gave so much in ‘wwg’ and I feel like I told everything I needed to tell, but idk. I guess it’s just a yearning for……how good it felt to have them safe in my hands. like missing an old friend who you still have so much fondness for even though you haven’t dropped by to say hello in a long time. 

it’s hard for me to grasp the fact that I was 21 years old when I started writing about them in 2014. I’m 30 years old now. so much has changed, but writing the stories I did about rust and marty undoubtedly shaped me into the writer I am today. then some days I feel like the stories I wrote about them are some of the best stuff I ever put out and I haven’t been able to recreate that same magic in my fiction since. they were just too powerful, lol. it resonated so much

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“I needed to examine the truth. But if the truth was a fundamentally unstable, contingent quantity, it could only be assayed by indirect, intuitive means. If I could not trust my senses, I decided from a young age that I could at least trust my imagination.”

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Queer reads: My Real Children, by Jo Walton

For day 19, I bring you My Read Children, by Jo Walton. 

(this cover is not the US one, obviously, but look at it! It’s so cool!) 

Jo Walton is a fantastic writer, and I recommend everything she’s written. She has a lot of range, and does stuff that straddles the line between fantasy and literary fiction, and also, Among Others is responsible for getting me into LeGuin and Delany, as well as starting a book club with @higgsboshark​ . Maybe we’ll start that up again, but not at a white-dude-bro-bar. What do you think, Q? 

Anyway, My Real Children is about a woman named Patricia Cowen who is an old lady with memory issues. She’s in an assisted living situation, and her children come to visit her. Only, sometimes it’s different children. Sometimes she remembers one life, and sometimes another. As her memory flits between two possible pasts, we get some gorgeous writing, wonderful characters, and intriguing alternative history. Also, Patricia is queer. In one timeline, she marries a dude, and in another, a lady. 

I want to reread this now. You should read it too. And Among Others. 

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“Aim For The Heart” Creator Spotlight: Sage Mooreland

Happy Monday, everyone! We at Duck Prints Press (the fan-writer run indie Press that publishes the original work of fan creators!) celebrating coming off the first weekend of our stellar Kickstarter launch for Aim For The Heart: Queer Fanworks Inspired by Alexandre Dumas’s “The Three Musketeers” – 68% funded in four days! There’s a lot of campaign to go, though – we’re running through July 15th, 2023, and not only are we expecting to hit our initial goal of $8,000, we’re optimistic that, with your help (by backing, by signal boosting, by telling your friends about the campaign, etc.), we might even reach our first stretch goal of $12,000!

Every day between now and the end of the campaign, we’ll be focusing on another contributor. Today, let’s met author Sage Mooreland!

Glass Hearts by Sage Mooreland

About the Author: Sage Mooreland (they/them) is a city-dwelling gremlin from Chicago. They are embarking on the adventure that is their 40s equipped with three amazing partners, one very ridiculous eighteen-year-old biological offspring, and a fleet of teenagers and twentysomethings that adopted them through work over the last several years. Sage put themselves through the torture of grad school, and now holds a Bachelor’s in English and a Master’s in English and Creative Writing – Fiction, to which they say, “Now I have expensive pieces of paper that make it seem like I know what I’m talking about.”

Sage has been writing since they were wee small, entering their first writing contest in fifth grade/at ten years old. In high school and college, they made small offerings to school literary magazines, and have done eighteen years of National Novel Writing Month. As their writing career grows, they hope to provide stories that are entertaining, caring, inclusive of all, and full of the stuff of which dreams are made.

Story Teasers:

Athos leaned against the wall of the high rise across the street from his destination, trying to catch his breath. He was bleeding from too many places to count—many of the wounds were superficial, but a few were deep and concerning. He had to get them bandaged or he was going to be in serious trouble. Standing across the street from help would be a stupid place to bleed out, even if it would be vaguely satisfying to get blood all over the pavement of one of Chicago’s wealthiest neighborhoods.

He watched a while longer; the lights inside the house created a faint glow he could see even through closed blinds. The occasional shadow told him that someonewas home. He refused to consider that he was looking at a second ambush. They had to be there, safe and sound, or all of this had been for absolutely nothing. Athos took a deep breath. Standing here—well, leaning here—wasn’t getting him anywhere, and he’d watched long enough to be sure he hadn’t been followed. He forced himself upright and carefully crossed the street, climbed the stairs, and rang the bell.

Tags: alcohol use (casual), alternate universe, be gay do crimes, blackmail, car chase, character injury (graphic descriptions), Chicago, established relationship, guns, hacker, m/m, m/m/m (past), modern, past tense, pov third person limited, reunion, teasing, undercover, united states of america, violence (non-graphic descriptions)

Uh oh! Athos is in trouble! What do? Back the campaign, read the story, and find out!

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“ Once upon a dream , Humans live in harmony with Starkind.

As time passed , though , humanity grew to fear these celestial beings.

Fear turned to rage, and rage quickly led to war.

Naturally, something had to be done , so the astralfolk fought for their lives.

The cosmos themselves were released upon humanity , but were soon contained underground just as it's catalysts were.

Humans grew to fear the stars as these beings grew to fear the dark ; each awaiting a savior that would never arrive. ”

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I swear, some days writing my fiction is the only thing keeping me from utter destruction

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Last Line With A Twist

Thank you @kaylinalexanderbooks for the tag!

Rules: share the last line you wrote, then tag as many people as there are words.

From The American Icarus: Volume I:

The candle before me seemed to echo that fireplace, burning with a quiet passion against the odd streaks of moonlight and darkness otherwise.

Oof, 23?? Well, here goes:

Tagging: @sunset-a-story @blind-the-winds @therevwriter @minutiaewriter @queerfox-tales @a-moon-eclipsed @my-deer-friend @kiraofthewind and anyone else who wants to play along.

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Goddess-Touched Snippet - (11/?)

Happy Millennium Saga Monday!! Word count: 490 Content warnings: N/A (shoot me a message or ask if I missed one!) POV: Dusk In which Lakia hides something, and Dusk trips up.

Lakia's question isn’t aimed at me like her curiosity.

Instead, it’s aimed at Tieling.

“How long’s the ride?”

The end of his ear flicks, a spark of annoyance. “Don’t start. It’s been an hour.”

Something petty in me flickers, then, and before I’ve thought better of it, I’ve already spoken. “If you answer now, we don’t need to ask later. How long?”

A deeper, longer-burning annoyance alights on his chest, gusting into the wind in his wake as he tosses a glare to me over his shoulder and grinds out, “Six hours, if we keep pace.”

I nod, at once satisfied with the answer and guilty for invoking the oath so casually. Next to me, though, Lakia’s curiosity ebbs, giving way to a vicious satisfaction that’s just pointed enough on the ends to jab me.

“Well, he answers you nicely, don’t he?” she says after a few minutes of quiet, a certain tone in her voice that I can’t quite place mixing with a strange, cutting feeling enmeshed in her gaze.

I shrug, wishing I had a book in my lap as an excuse to avoid the nausea her scrutiny brings.

“Funny,” she mutters, something sharp under her tongue. “He didn’t used to do that. What changed, d’you think?”

“Don’t know,” I say, trying not to watch her too intently, trying not to get caught trying to parse the flickering war of emotion all over her that no one else sees. “Delya changed his mind, maybe.”

She tsks. “Don’t think so. You did somethin’, didn’t you?”

Something about the way she says it makes fear tickle up my arms. “Think what you want.”

“Hm.” A few paces of sand blur under the feet of her lizard, her eye pinned to the horizon. “You want a trade?”

“There’s nothing to trade.”

“Isn’t there?” She looks at me, then, knowing, cunning.

The metal clasp on my cloak comes undone.

“I know you’re curious,” she mutters, as I fight not to stare as I fix it back into place. “So how’s a few answers for you, few answers for me sound?”

And even though something in the back of mind screams at me not to do it, not to push my luck, I can’t help but offer a gloved hand and a, “Your answers now, and all of mine?”

She looks at my hand, and for a moment I think she’s going to agree.

And then her lips pull into a smug smirk.

“That the oath you trapped him with?” When I pull my hand away, a sensation almost like being stung striking through my bones, she scoffs. “Clever.”

And she nudges her lizard with the heels of her boots and rides ahead, leaving me to kick myself for underestimating her like I promised myself I wouldn’t. Leaving me to watch the anger that’s taken up roost around her head slither down her braid and wrap itself around her chest like a corset.