Though I got other votes the majority seem to want Rising Madness. I am literally 3 poems away from completing Graphic Disturbances. As I am currently covered over at Fae Corps Publishing it will probably be July before I am capable of releasing it.
I Will be sure to let you know when I have more information about the release.
okay first thing I am doing Fae Corps Publishing’s MerMay challenge. This means I will be continuing to post daily for the month of May. That means I will be still on hiatus for the daily normal posts.
Second, I am paying for the blog to allow the use of more images here. it will adjust the website for my blog page slightly. That should take effect on the third.
I hope you enjoy the art.
I may try to post some poetry just to keep my blog somewhat writing based. lol
So I normally do a small break of sorts during two months of the year from my normal posts. April and November. The reason for this is I am posting daily poetry and the other posts are just a bit much to add on. I will return to the weekly posts in May (Maybe. I am considering doing mermay this year. Which would mean an art post daily instead via instagram links.) Regardless there will be content, just not the Same posts I usually do.
my desk is piled high and I am desperately trying trying to get caught up.
I am so far behind because of the flare that I am struggling to keep from sending my body back in to a meltdown state.
so I may not be able to meet deadlines. I am going to try. but I am not aiming to be down again.
To be honest I did not know what to say this week.
How often can you complain about the same thing before even you start to see it as just whining? And that is often the thing with chronic illness…we end up feeling like we are whining. No one wants to hear that it hurts for the millionth time. We can’t do anything that remotely feels useful.
Sometimes I wonder if anyone is interested in the dribble I do have to say. Then I think about it and realize that it doesn’t matter. I still need to speak my truth. I still have to get up and fight every day. Giving up is not in the cards.
So, Though I really didn’t know what to say today…I wanted to at the very least say HI. I Exist!
I am terrible at accountability posting.
I keep meaning to post my word counts for the day on my Facebook account. I update them as I write anything for my own personal ability to keep track of where I am and I mean to post it. I move on to other things that I have to do and I forget to go back more often than not.
And the way I have my work listed may end up making people confused. Things only stay on the list until they are done. Then the list occasionally will not sync. so I get random mistakes in it as to how much is in a poetry volume. Or I have a notification on the top saying that it has a conflict from another version.
I love the feeling of accomplishment I feel when I do share the word counts. it feels like I am saying hey I am making progress. Unfortunately I mostly end up feeling ashamed because I forgot to post it.
I think that’s one of the main problems with juggling so much. The dropped balls become shame. I try to make sure that I only drop the ones that will bounce. I might be capable of catching them and then I can get them in the next pass.
Tuesday I mentioned that I was going in for an MRI. I said I would explain it today.
I have always called my issues with closed spaces Claustrophobia. I knew where I got the fear from…but NOTHING I did could overcome that. Someone once told me that there was two types of fear. The kind where you are in a life or death situation and the type where you can overcome it. For my brain the being locked in somewhere is a life or death situation. It is not Claustrophobia in the normal sense though. I told my therapist about it, and the panic that just the thought of the MRI was giving me…and she identified it as a PTSD trigger.
I survived the test. It wasn’t even as bad as I had expected it to be. It was not as bad as previous MRI’s have been. Maybe that is because I was able to prepare. I was able to compartmentalize and tell myself I was not in danger. I am no longer the nine year old child being locked in the trunk of a car and being told I will die. I am healing.
okay Tomorrow is Valentines day.
The history is interesting, but I have issues with the implementation.
Dates don’t have to be expensive. the best dates I have had were sitting down by the creek and talking.
the pressure to buying gifts for each other is really uncomfortable.
I enjoy buying gifts and getting gifts without the strings attached.
I would rather capitalism not control my life.
Politics are a nasty thing. They always have been. I take after my grandmother where politics are concerned and I am fairly proud of that.
She didn’t read newspapers or watch the news because she didn’t want to feel any worse about the way things were. I don’t do either, but nowadays all a person has to do is open social media and they will find themselves bombarded with current events.
Quite a few of my friends are talking about taking social media breaks because of the mental health strain that comes with the current events. The problem is that for some of us social media is the only time we actually do socialize. Loneliness doesn’t help mental health issues.
This is why we need books and art. We need creative people to make the world less hard to accept. Music, movies, books and art bring the world a light and right now the world is so very dark.
So I will be doing my best to post more art, and make more poetry and stories to bring a light to the world. I ask everyone to do what they can to do the same.
The Reaper’s Child
By Serena Mossgraves
The world seems to be a place where myths are taken for granted. Everyone knows the Myth of the pilot of the River Styx. The Ferryman who ferries souls over to the afterlife for a cost. They all have it wrong though. The Reaper doesn’t want coin. They are an immortal being. Such creatures have no need for money. The ferry driver instead takes the best story each soul has to tell. Sometimes just the telling of the story is too much for a soul to bear. Words carry weight. They are the most painful things in existence. They can also be the most gratifying things that life has to offer.
The ferryman has so many names, and most of them are just the myths coming to signify the way the mortal beings see them. For me, they are my creator. I guess you could call me the reaper’s child. It is not exactly correct, but it is the closest term for what I am. I am a story that became too much for even an immortal mind to bear. So, I grew sentience. Now I search the world for the others like myself, dark stories and memories that weigh heavy on mortality. Stories of killers, and crime, heartache, and such twisted thoughts that they are relegated to impossible fiction. That is the sort of thing that I collect. Like the ferryman I take these weights from the ones who cannot bear them any longer. I think of it as saving those souls who would break under such terrible weights.
I save each story in a notebook, lovingly hand written. My creator kept the stories told to them in perfect memory…I am not quite that blessed. Instead I will keep my notebooks…Stacked full of nightmares. The only story I have been able to remember without writing it down is the one that caused my creation. Perhaps someday I will meet the snowman…I would love to collect all of Frosty’s stories. I can only imagine what notebooks I could fill with that.
I have collected the tale of a vampire that would use it’s victims for the creation of art.
And the tale of the ghost who used to be a mercenary in a rainforest expedition that went badly. He was a wealth of stories. He gave me my own nightmares for weeks after taking his stories.
I collected the story of the nun who was cursed with immortality. It drove her mad. She spoke of becoming a killer, and how it was a kindness to save the women from the hands of the priests.
Each tale has it’s own power to describe a different aspect of life, a different aspect of death.
The story of the woman who went back after she died to steal away the child that her husband loved more than he loved her…She sang it sweet lullabies as she took it to the edge of the River Styx.
I could easily entertain so many with my tales. Which story should I share? Perhaps about the creature named Harvey? The flesh-eater that enjoyed driving it’s meals mad first?
I have considered passing myself off as a horror writer. Telling my tales as if they were fiction to see if anyone would recognize. It is not as if I do not have thousands of dark and dismal tales.
There is the one about the three ghosts who tried to get a rich man to change his ways before it was too late.
or the one about the Witch who gave five teens their wish…but at what cost?
My notebooks are a treasure. I do not write the story whilst the teller yet lives. I make sure to leave them a tale to pay the ferry with. I can at least be that kind. Though I have considered what would happen in this world if there where not enough stories left to pay the ferry. Would all of the storytellers end up stuck here? And if they did would that just create more interesting tales?
I don’t dare allow myself to consider it too closely. I might just decide that I want all of the stories.
Okay….1. That is the first flash Fiction in Stacked Nightmares. 2. How many of Serena’s Stories can you see a nod to in that? I will say that one of the stories she refers to is not Serena’s to tell. It belongs to Malachi Nocturm. However, He is very uncertain about how good his writing is…so I don’t know if I can talk him into finishing it and then allowing me to publish it. So I used a small nod because I love the idea. This is the first thing I have been able to write (Other than Poetry) in 2 weeks. It has a word count of 680. So I had to share it.
Also Serena’s Story Heat & Ice was Accepted by Fractured Mind Publishing for their A Monster I Love Anthology. I will post more as I have details.
Pattimouse 