Tag Archives: series: the unnatural philosophy of kit march

Linkspam Friday: October 19

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Last week, I had four medical appointments at the end of the week and nowhere near the organisational skills required to get a post organised before then–a feat not helped by a dire lack of content to post about.

This week, I still don’t have a lot of @aroworlds content. I’ve been working on the long-awaited post collecting allosexual aromantic media and hammering out a last-minute first draft for a vaguely-Halloween-ish short story about a necromancer’s summoning her outspoken great-aunt’s ghost to talk about her struggles with cute girls and romantic attraction. It results in a whole horde of local ghosts coming out as various shades of aro-spec and a terrible overuse of the word “bosom”. I would have appreciated the idea coming to mind sooner than Tuesday night, but, on the positive side, I have a complete 7k first draft written in three days despite more pain than I like (because I am not recovered from Kit March, of course). I think that’s the fastest I’ve ever, without stopping, written a complete story like that; more often, I write, get distracted by something else in the middle and finish the story days, weeks or months later.

I want to publish it properly, because it works wonderfully as a prequel for Love is the Reckoning, but I’ll post it here sometime before Halloween regardless of its polishing. I think having a friend, the fabulous @crimsonsquare, encourage me on its progress has helped me be able to sit and work to get it done. It’s easier to write when I feel like someone not me is interested in the story…

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Authorial Rambling, March Style

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This week isn’t a linkspam post, because when I’ve hammered out 40k words on the conclusion of the first draft of the Kit March book, I don’t have time for anything else. At all. On the positive side, I’ve found a way I can strap my wrist and still type, although my occupational therapist may not be best pleased by this. I’m pretty sure that disability aids aren’t meant to assist my flagrant disregard of how one should manage severe chronic pain by enabling me to ignore it for longer. Because the strapping doesn’t decrease my pain; it just gives me a little more time before it goes from moderate to lying on my bed sobbing because I really want to type and my body won’t let me.

One day I’ll write about how I hide from being moderately depressed by throwing myself into a project, meaning that I’m often incredibly productive when showing a score of other signs mental health professionals consider concerning. But that isn’t nearly as important as the upshot. This monstrous book that I’ve been trying to write for three years, now? This book that was making me feel like my aspirations to novels were more illusion and less substance? This book that was defying my will to figure out a halfway-decent first act (first book) conclusion? This book I’ve spent the last six months despairing over while pretending that I hadn’t developed a desperate fear of being unable to finish it? A complete 190 000k word first draft.

I’m trying to find politer or more eloquent ways to phrase it, but I can’t move past the simplicity of fuck, it’s sweet.

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Linkspam Friday: September 28

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This is one of those weeks that hasn’t been all that remarkable, beyond the worst migraine of my life, to the point that I was considering discussing the terror that strikes the autistic-inertia of my heart every time I open up my dashboard and see WordPress cheerfully promoting the Gutenburg editor. (I still use the .org layout because it’s quicker to load than the current “improved” editor, which never seemed in any way improved to me.) In some ways I feel change doesn’t bother me too much, at least in the sense of someone asking me to go somewhere without little preparation or offering up an unexpected activity; I can handle the disruption of someone coming in and upending my plan for the day. When people ask me about change, that’s the sort of thing that comes to mind. Of course I can handle it … can’t I?

Thinking on any change to WordPress has my toes clenching. (Tumblr is a disaster of constant changes I don’t like; the new coloured text ability is just awful, partly from the glare of the green against a backlit screen and mostly because I’m not accustomed to seeing coloured text. Thank all gods for XKit.) Changes to foods I like are a nightmare of why did they do that made worse by the narrow selection of foods I do like and the horror of trying new ones. Then when I consider the nightmare in going somewhere new and how many panic attacks I had last week over a new therapist, I realise that yes, I do not handle change. Not to mention that all the worst mental health spirals I have suffered took place against the context of change for which I wasn’t prepared for or supported in…

In many ways, I don’t understand it myself. I like learning new things and I like experimenting with design: part of the reason I find Adobe CS enjoyable is the wealth of discovery! I love trying out new crafts I saw online. It seems as though these things should be similar, change and learning, but they’re not, and I don’t know why I like trying new things in a complex program while I fall apart at the thought of having to try a new brand of microwave rice.

All this has made me realise that my goal in Kit March is to get both Darius and Tes comfortable in a new place and circumstance: to showcase the growth of a sense of stability after a change neither can quite handle, and then (perhaps not metaphorically) burn the house down. I have no plan to end the story there, mind, but I do plan to disrupt what looks like a happy mid-point.

Lastly, my severe anxiety has left me struggling with a few ordinary things like checking my PayPal account. This is an extremely belated expression of gratitude for this reason, but I do want to thank the people who have been so kind as to buy me a ko-fi. Thank you, so very much, for your support: it means the absolute world to me!

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Linkspam Friday: August 31

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I’m still getting used to my new desk arrangement, but I’m finally able to sit at my desk chair for more than half an hour. Excuse me while I sigh, for I’d love to own a body that doesn’t react to new positions with migraines and pain in places that aren’t chronic pain sites. A former psychologist of mine used to argue that I’ve got the advantage of having experienced much of the pain and limitations that come with aging early, as though experience is a consolation prize for not being able to spend my twenties and thirties doing things I should take for granted. In truth, all it does is make me wonder how much worse my life is going to be when I’m sixty if I can’t cope now.

I rather suspect that kind of reframing doesn’t well work on the autistic and anxious.

It breaks me, sometimes, to think on how little I knew about good-for-me psychology and how much difficulty, struggle and trauma it’s taken to even recognise what my needs are. I’ve spent a lifetime trying not to be autistic such that, two years in, I only have an incomplete sense of what doesn’t work. What does work is a grey space of vagary, an eternal question mark. I think that question underpins everything I write–that it’s all one long, rambling conversation between an autistic and their subconscious trying to figure out what’s needed from the world.

Post – My New Desk Arrangement: Here’s a photo of my desk, my new chair height, temporary footstool and test sideways mouse, along with a little rambling on the lack of conversation about office accessibility for tall/short people.

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Linkspam Friday: August 3

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This week I went to a chronic pain information session where the attending psychologist lovingly spoke of mindfulness for far longer than I find comfortable. I, on the other hand, sat there as a stubborn autistic in an unreachable state of hell, no. I think she knew it, too, because she tried to talk to me after the event. Thankfully, the (good!) psychiatrist I’m seeing as part of the same program is really on board with autism, told me that we do not have to go there with mindfulness and I don’t have to see the program psychologists, so it’s more an annoyance than a problem.

On the positive side, this information session didn’t spent three hours demonising pain medication like most others I’ve been to. For a government-funded pain clinic, that’s actually impressive: the information sessions I went to at the first clinic were basically Pain Medication Is The Devil propaganda. It was close to the same addiction/opioid crisis spiel I get from “normal” people with a little more medical jargon thrown in, but one should never underestimate the ableism in medicine. I don’t. I can’t. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard pain specialists talk about pain meds as a “crutch” to a room of disabled pain patients while forgetting that a crutch is a mobility aid and not a ball and chain. It’s remarkable when I don’t have to sigh at it.

So! What else have I done this week?

Header text: Aro Worlds: Connecting aro creatives and aro audiences. Header is in antique black type above an ornate divider.

Ask – Character Tropes and Identity: In which an anon asks me about a character trope that might be read as aromisia and writing an ace character who doesn’t use the split-attraction model, and I talk writing a world full of a-spec in response. I also make an addition on the Tumblr post in talking about allowing creators to prioritise one’s own marginalised identity over broader representation in our protagonists, which I should have mentioned in the original.

Post – The Quiver and the Quill: I’ve been murmuring about starting a collective for independent aro-spec writers, given the lack of specialised community, promotion and support–especially for those of us who can’t find it in asexual spaces. In this post I both offered up a name and underestimated the aro-spec community’s love for subtle puns and alliteration!

Fiction – What If It Isn’t: A month ago, I posted a short story to Tumblr, so this week I posted it to the WordPress site as well. If you want a cute, fluffy, unresearched piece about adorable sapphics planning to figure out a QPR after robbing an art gallery, plus an obligatory autistic aro-spec protagonist, this is for you. Also available in PDF and EPUB, because I can.

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Change One: Books and Availability

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This is the first announcement of several that I’ll be making over the next few weeks as I work to make my writing contribute at least a little to good causes like food, medication and therapy.

So, to this end, I’m going to be making some changes that can be summarised thus: fewer books available for free but wider availability.

A cartoony-vector-style image of a somewhat-overgrown garden against a grey stone wall, with a wooden signpost embedded in the grass just in front of the wall. Three wooden picture frames are nailed into the signpost, enclosing the cover images for Conception, The Adventurer King and The King of Gears and Bone. A wooden plank nailed above the sign post bears the text "updates" in white. Two bushes--one with orange tulip-style flowers and the other with yellow roses--sit in front of the sign, and a pink rose climbs the wall behind it. Trailing ivy and brambles climb over the edges of the signpost and hang down over it, slightly obscuring the covers in the picture frames.

From July 1, the only free complete works will be Old Fashioned, Certain Eldritch Artefacts, Their Courts of Crows, The Wind and the Stars and Crooked Words, plus any assorted side stories I post for fun. Everything else will have a price tag, unless you wish to provide donations or patronage (the method of how you might go about this will be the subject of another announcement post). If you do seek to support me outside of buying books directly, everything I self-publish will be made available to you for free.

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Fiction: The Adventurer King

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Cover image for The Adventurer King by K. A. Cook. Cover features a red leather-bound journal sitting on a wood panel background, like that of a tabletop or floor, with the text sitting on top of the book image in a gold fantasy-style handdrawn type. Objects sit on top of the book cover: a blue pen with a gold nib dripping ink, a screwed-up piece of white paper, a cream scroll with a green seal, a cream and silver compass, and a piece of rope. A grey single-edged sword blade sits underneath the book, and black handdrawn type atop the blade reads "an efe and darius story". The images have a cartoony, vectory feel.Seven years ago, Darius Liviu met a talking sword belt in the Great Souk, an eldritch being who changed his life forever. In that time, he has learnt something of the sword, mastered strange magic and survived dangerous jobs, but while he has friends in Rajad, he still feels out of place—too divergent to be welcomed and accepted as mercenary and magician.

When an unexpected meeting with potential employers goes wrong, his first instinct is to flee. But a wandering monarch, Efe Kadri, has an offer that might provide the certainty for which Darius has been searching, if only he has the courage to say yes…

Vendors: [Smashwords]

Formats: [PDF] | [EPUB]

Length: 11, 350 words / 40 pages.

This is the last of the Marchverse rewrites, aside from, eventually, Kit March itself. At the moment, I have the bones of a story that comprises the first half of Darius and Efe’s doings in Ashad, and an earlier story, now called Blood and the Ravens, that will cover Darius’s beginnings with Eren Adalet and show his connections with the Ravens, because that is going to become more important later on. There’s a wealth of story material in Darius’s years with Efe and Aysun should I ever find myself at a want for more to write, but I see The Adventurer King as the first in a rough trilogy of novelettes that form the beginning of Darius and Efe’s relationship, and then I’d like to stop for a little while.

In terms of timeline, The Adventurer King takes place seven years after Certain Eldritch Artefacts and seven years before Tes arrives at the College. Darius has been six years a student and one year a mercenary.

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Short Fiction: Ringbound, a Kit March Story

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Cover image for Ringbound by K. A. Cook. Cover shows an eight-pane window set into a cream brick wall above a stone and wood table or bench, with various items sitting on the table--candles in vases, bottles, a large shell, a white vase filled with flowers, two gold rings propped against the vase. The text is written in brown fantasy-style handdrawn type. Through the window, scrubby green trees and a blue-green sky is visible. The subtitle "a marchverse short story" is written in white handdrawn type.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?

It’s Aromantic Awareness Week, and it was bothering me that I wouldn’t have anything new for it. Two of my current projects feature aromantic protagonists (one pansexual aro, the other aro-ace) but there is no way I’ll get either done this week. I’m usually up for some absurdity when it comes to trying to do things impossible, but even I know my body won’t allow for that.

Then I remembered this line Kit said to Amelia in Old Fashioned:

It explains so much about the time I panicked and, uh, climbed out the window to escape a Malvadan merchant who wanted to introduce me to his parents. I admit it wasn’t the most well-thought-out decision I’d ever made…

If that isn’t crying out for a story, I don’t know what is.

Links: PDF (read in browser) | Patreon

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

Word count: 1871 words.

Content advisory: This is about the pain of an aromantic man trying to deal with being aromantic while possessing no understanding of it, who makes a questionable decision in abandoning his partner. Other than that, I don’t think there’s anything worth advising for.

Note the first: This is an experiment for me in producing flash fiction, in that I wrote a completed first draft a few hours after beginning and gave myself time limits for all the steps that followed—forty minutes for cover design, half an hour for formatting, etc. I wanted to see what I could make if I shifted my focus to efficient production instead of agonising over appearance and presentation, and I’m quite proud that I’ve been able to do this. Twenty-four hours after having the idea for this piece, it is a very short ebook, however imperfect.

Note the second: This scene isn’t quite the way Kit described it above, but it isn’t in Kit’s character to speak the unedited truth. It is in his character to cut the pain and heart out of past events to make of them a lighthearted story.

Note the third: I have been in a situation where there is no reason by the mores of society that I shouldn’t date, other than the confusing, bewildering feeling that I can’t. In hindsight, I see my aromanticism writ large, but at the time I had no comprehension of what I felt or why, and nothing society had to say about being human gave me an explanation. This story, in a way, is voicing that past me—the me that didn’t have the language to say why.

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A Project of Threes

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Does anyone want to know what projects I have settled on for the next couple of months?

I have decided to take more time over All The Trees in the Sky, but I still want to try having two more stories – with autistic protagonists – available for April, because there is no such thing as too many stories about trans, autistic characters being trans and autistic.

I would also like to post the next Kit March chapter in the next few weeks. I don’t know how consistent I will be with this, because pain leaves me a liar every time I try to put a date or schedule to my work, but I am trying to post a chapter every two months or so.

The Adventurer King

Cover image for The Adventurer King by K. A. Cook. Cover features a red leather-bound journal sitting on a wood panel background, like that of a tabletop or floor, with the text sitting on top of the book image in a gold fantasy-style handdrawn type. Objects sit on top of the book cover: a blue pen with a gold nib dripping ink, a screwed-up piece of white paper, a cream scroll with a green seal, a cream and silver compass, and a piece of rope. A grey single-edged sword blade sits underneath the book, and black handdrawn type atop the blade reads "an efe and darius story". The images have a cartoony, vectory feel.This is getting a re-write, but more from a matter of consistency and character/setting development than anything else. When I wrote this, I had the idea of following it up with a story or two showing Darius’s progression from thinking himself alloromantic to realising that he’s an aro trying to be alloromantic, but I’ve realised that this isn’t a narrative I wish to draw out. (This was why Darius didn’t respond to the belt, incidentally – that and it’s pretty obvious that the belt has narrow views on the nature of human sexuality.) There aren’t enough aro protagonists in the world (especially trans, autistic, allosexual aro protagonists) to make aro readers wait, and I find the idea of a following story where Darius is just aro and dealing with the allo Efe far more entertaining than the “shades, am I aromantic” or coming-out story.

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Updates and Anticipatory Ramblings, v2

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Image of a wooden sign with the word "updates" written in brown fantasy-style handdrawn type. The sign sits on a grassy rise surrounded by scrubby bushes and low trees with twisted branches, looking something like tea-tree or paperbarks. The image is surrounded by a tan brown wooden frame.

This is the “periodic whenever I remember to do it” ramble about what I’m working on, just to give folks some indication of where I’m going and what I hope to be producing. Right now, I’m pretty much neck-deep in The King of Gears and Bone, but I really should switch to the next Kit March chapter for a bit. I also have daydreams of getting All the Trees in the Sky done for a sometime-in-April publication date, as it would be cool to have a story that is so bound up in what it means to be the autistic shape of human to publish in Autism Acceptance Month. We’ll see what my chronic pain has to say about this, since it’s generally quite loud on this sort of subject!

I also want to write a personal essay about my experiences last year with regards running a daily-updating blog, conversations on accessibility in disability spaces, how the pressures to be as accessible as possible have resulted in my becoming more disabled, and why I think we need to change how we talk accessibility when talking to other disabled people. The truth is that I stopped having the spoons for doing something I love–fiction writing–by throwing all my spoons into trying to make my blog accessible for others, and I’ve gained new chronic pain sites in the attempt. I’m not sure when I’ll have the spoons for this, but it is something I very desperately wish to explore and articulate.

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