I was on the program to read a piece of writing I wrote for Shannon, called “I know, Shannon.” Because I did know, I do know. I understand the depths of a great depression that can convince a beautiful brilliant woman like Shannon that the only option left in her life is to take her life.

I spoke before on my experience of writing groups, both good and bad. Shannon was (and is and always will be) an excellent leader of the Etchings in Time Writing Community. She was foundational in me becoming the writer I am today.

Before Shannon, and the Etchings in Time Writing Community, I was unrecognizable to the person I am today.

I couldn’t meet people’s eyes.

I had no self-confidence.

I had no self-esteem.

I thought my writing sucked and was trash.

Shannon changed all of that.

With Shannon’s guidance, I learned how to meet people’s eyes when talking, how to have confidence in myself, how to write bravely. She even gave me the ability to stand on stage, and read to a crowd.

So I wrote a piece on Shannon to read at her homegoing service. If she was alive to hear her own eulogy, I know she’d have praised it.

Here’s what I wrote on January 15^th, and read aloud at Shannon’s homegoing on January 17, 2026.

I know, Shannon.

I know what it’s like to be in that dark place where all the colors have turned grey, and there doesn’t seem to be anyway out.

I wish I knew you were in that place, Shannon.

I know what its like to put on a smile, and say “I’m fine” while on the inside, you’re screaming.

I wish I knew you were wearing that mask, Shannon.

I know what it’s like to have a running stream of thoughts to end it all, and you can’t hear God’s voice anymore.

I wish I knew you were thinking those thoughts, Shannon.

Did you know, Shannon, that I know?

I know what it’s like to feel so unloved. I know what it’s like to think my life doesn’t matter. I know what it’s like to think no one would care if I didn’t exist anymore.

I know Shannon. But I wish I knew you felt that way. But I didn’t know. And now I can’t tell you that I know. I also know you’re not gone. I know you’re resting peacefully in the arms of the Lord our God.

Shannon, I still wish I knew, I wish I knew how you felt. But I know its okay. Jesus is with you now, and you’re not suffering anymore. I know that as described in 1 Thessalonians 4:13–14, that Shannon is asleep, will come again through Jesus, and I will see her on that day. So I do not have to grieve as others do who have no hope. I have hope, we all do.

See you then, Shannon.

Writing this piece, I began crying. So I had to pause and catch my breath before I kept writing. I finished it, and stepped away for about a day. I came back the night before the funeral, about 11ish, and edited it, and practiced reading it aloud.

At the homegoing service, I practiced staying calm so I wouldn’t get tearful. I kept looking away from people crying, because seeing people cry makes me cry. I didn’t go visit Shannon’s body one last time, because seeing my dear friend in a casket again would make me break down. I didn’t watch them close the casket, because I remember seeing them close the casket at my grandma’s funeral nearly made me lose it.

So I kept looking away, looking away, and avoided watching all the mourning, so I could read my piece without any tears.

It was my time to read, so I went up there, kept my eyes down at my piece (though I know it’s better to read looking up to make eye contact, I just wanted to read, and get back down) I read “I know, Shannon” and finished within the 2 minute timeframe.

I got a round of applause after I read, and went to sit down. The funeral eventually wrapped up, and when it was almost time for the recessional, one of the family members gave me his contact information because he wanted a copy of my piece.

I had printed two copies just in case anyone had wanted it, so I gave him one. My mom had already suggested that I definitely give one to Shannon’s 18 year old son.

It was time for the repast, and I decided to go to the bathroom first. A woman there eagerly approached me, hugged me, prayed over me vehemently, and gave me a whole sermon on being “fearfully and wonderfully made,” that I have to walk with my head up, and that there is no one like me.

I got pulled to the side multiple times, uncountable times, of people thanking me, hugging me, blessing me. I was showered with love for what I wrote. I ended up collecting a list of emails of people who wanted me to send them the piece I wrote.

Honestly…one of the last posts I made was about how I had little confidence in my writing, and thought my writing was trash. This homegoing service, reading my writing aloud, and everyone afterwards telling me how beautiful my writing was, how much it affected them, thanking me for writing it, hugging me, telling me how honest it was… I can’t tell myself my writing is trash anymore.

My writing isn’t trash. I may have low moods, and doubts, and feel wishy-washy about the quality of my writing, but its certainly not trash. The amount of love poured on me and my writing I will use to combat that self-hatred that sometimes rises up in me. The hugs I received, the smiles I got, the profuse compliments, the support that people gave me. These were people I’ve never seen before but they rallied around me like we’ve known each other for years.

Bonded by my writing, loving my writing, moved by my writing. And I say “my writing,” but I write because of God. God sowed into my being a gift of writing, a love of writing, a desire to write so strong that I write every day without fail.

So it wasn’t me that they were drawn to, that their support, that they love…but it’s the voice of God that they are hearing through my writing. I pray before each writing session, and if I forget to pray before I write, then I pray after I write. So it’s all God.

And I thank everyone who’s supported me so far, and I thank everyone who’s continued to support me, and those who will support me.

And I thank you Shannon. Thank you for supporting me, thank you building in me a foundation to become the writer I’ve started to become, and the writer I’m continuing to be.

I wish you were here to see where else I’m going to be. I also wish you would see where your son will go on to become. I wish you would have grown old together with your husband. I wish your parents hadn’t had to bury another child. I wish I knew you were wearing that fake smile. I wish I had been able to reach you.

But these wishes, these thoughts, theses hopes, they can’t reach Shannon anymore. They can reach someone who’s still here, still struggling, still fighting. The voices in your head can be so loud they drown out everything else. I know. I once had a voice that said kill yourself over and over and over, to the point I couldn’t hear anything else.

I tried to jump out of a moving car. Literally, I unbuckled my seat belt, unlocked the car, and tried to jump out while my mom drove at 70mph heading to my psych appointment. She had to hold onto my arm to keep me in the car, while I begged her to let me go, so I could just…jump out and get run over to death.

Those voices can be so loud that insist that you should just end it.

Think about it.

Who exactly would benefit from you just ending your life? Probably someone who doesn’t want you to keep living. Someone who would rather you didn’t share with the world the gift God gave you.

The Holy Bible is very clear we have a clear and present enemy who roams the world seeking whom he may devour, and according to Ephesians 6:12 that we don’t fight flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. You may not believe, and that’s fine, but it won’t hurt to talk back next time you hear the voice encouraging you to hurt yourself, hate yourself and kill yourself, and say no to it, because that’s not really your thoughts, and it’s certainly not of God.

So talking of the enemy who will benefit if you end it all, you really do have a gift, God does give us all gifts, innate gifts for all of us. Even if you haven’t discovered it yet. A gift of ministry, the gift of testimony, the gift of speaking well, gift of being able to reach others, the gift of prophecy (just knowing what will happen sometimes, not like fortunetelling) or other gifts, such as gift of art, music, storytelling. And you use these gifts to help others.

If you feel you don’t know your gift, you can ask God to reveal it to you. Or if you don’t believe in God, but still want to know what you are innately good at it, start trying out different things wholeheartedly. Choose something you’ve always been interested in, and work hard at learning it. Give yourself a reason to stay.

So, to wrap this post up, Shannon Martin, the leader of my writing group Etchings in Time Writing Community took her own life and overdosed on Jan 7^th. I went to her homegoing service on Saturday, Jan 17^th and I wrote a piece that I read aloud. After I read a lot (and I mean a lot) of people pulled me aside to thank me for what I wrote, I got 3 separate people who prayed over me and blessed me, and I got a list of emails from people who wanted me to send them the piece. I received such an outpouring of love and support over me and my writing that it convinced me to never call my work trash again. It was heartbreaking saying goodbye to Shannon, who was a beautiful woman and a brilliant writer, yet a genesis for me. I’ll keep writing with my gift and give my writing to the world. Find your gift, cultivate it, and start sharing it. After all, you don’t keep a gift to yourself, right?

Thank you for reading, and until next time,

A. E. Costello.

NAIARA

Bright purple light flashed in a circular motion, and two people jumped out of it. The purple light flashed into nothing, gone as quickly as it appeared, and left behind the two Iamerians who had crossed through it.

Naiara Goethe wrapped her shawl tighter around her neck, and glanced down at the bundle she held tight in her arms. The newborn’s face was slack in sleep, the young Dorgia without any knowledge of the civil war she had just escaped from.

Naiara looked at the man who had crossed through the archway with her, Lucardis Deganello. He cut an imposing figure, over seven feet tall, his form molded with muscle born from combat. He clasped his gaizo in both hands and slid into a guard stance, yet the forested road was empty.

“No one has come after us,” said Naiara, breathing out gust of condensed air, cold seized her lungs and her skin bubbled with goosebumps. “It is freezing.”

Bitter cold wind swept down the curving dirt road, the towering dark trees rustled and eerie music sung from the leaves. It was dark, the moon shrouded in clouds, and no sign of life.

“We must move,” said Lucardis, heading down the empty expanse. “We do not know where we are. Assassins can come at any moment. How is the babe?”

“She sleeps,” said Naiara as she rushed to Lucardis’s side. “When hunger wakes her, what shall we do?”

Lucardis just made a low grunt in answer. Naiara gritted her teeth. He was always like this. If he was unsure, he simply said nothing. How the royal Dorgia ever appointed Lucardis to join Naiara on this mission, it was not clear to her. They did not even know where they were, they were all each other had. At least he could attempt conversation or give a plan.

Shining lights along with a low growling sound made both Iamerians leap to the forested side of the road. Lucardis raised his gaizo to striking position, while Naiara clasped the young Dorgia to her chest with both arms, summoning a barrier to protect her and the child, whom she had sworn to do so.

Far be it from a Tresillian assassin, it was a box on wheels. A large box with lights attached to the front, and it growled and roared by on four wheels, leaving behind in its wake an acid stark smell in the air.

Naiara swallowed back a slew of curses, and only managed a single question.

“What was that?”

Lucardis was silent for a few moments, before he answered. “This place…is very strange.”

Understatement. Naiara’s chest heaved up and down as she inhaled crisp cold air, and something tiny and wet landed on her eyelash. She looked up as the sky birthed little specks of white.

She smiled.

“It is snowing.”

Something familiar at last.

“Come,” said Lucardis, walking again. “We are out in the open. We must hide.”

“We have to decide what we will do next.” Naiara agreed they needed to get inside, as the wind swirled white and the cold burned through her loose fabrics. Iameri was hot this time of year however through the archway was snow. Her toes burned with cold, her thong sandals did nothing to protect them from the elements.

The forest thinned out, and the road shifted from dirt to hard smooth rock with painted stripes on it. There was a series of miniature houses connected in a row, and a sign out front that Naiara could not understand, but she supposed it held the landowner’s name. Out front were several of the boxes, they were in different sizes and shapes, but all had the wheels from the loud box before.

“Let us go in,” said Lucardis, who’s bald head was white with snow, his thick muscles wracking with shivers. “Maybe we will get a house of our own.”

Naiara nodded and they entered the building that had all the lights on, and had windows. Inside warm air rushed over Naiara, and her skin tensed up, like getting into a deep hot bath. The man at the desk looked up, and blinked at the two. His nametag said David.

David said, “What the heck? What’s with the outfits? You know its like thirty outside, right? You’re covered in snow.”

Naiara and Lucardis looked at each other. Whatever language this man was speaking, they did not know it.

Naiara said to him, “We have foreseen this. The archway was made in haste, we did not know where we would cross into. Let me pray.”

Lucardis nodded and stepped out of the way.

Naiara dusted the snow off her foot and used it to spread it in a circle. She closed her eyes and prayed out loud, “I beseech you O Lord, I humble myself to You. Bless me and Lucardis, to hear and speak to our enemy.”

The snow melted into blue sparks.

David said, “Oh, are you foreigners? Um, I don’t speak…whatever that was. Can I help you?”

He made exaggerated movements of his arms in an attempt to use body language to communicate.

Lucardis said, “We speak your tongue. We require a house.”

The man blinked. “Oh, so you do speak English. A house? Uh, you can’t buy these rooms. It’s a motel, you just pay to stay for a few nights or a week or so. How long can you pay for?”

Lucardis reached into his pouch, and pulled out a handful of Dorgian coins, sliding them across the desk towards the man. While his hand was still over the coins, he said through blue light flittering from his teeth, “This is enough to pay.”

Lucardis lifted his hand, and the coins were now a stack of green bills featuring faces and symbols that Naiara didn’t know.

David picked it up, and counted it. “Yup, that’s enough for a night. Let me see your ID, and I’ll get you a room key.”

Naiara and Lucardis said together, blue light shimmering between the words, “We have shown you the ID.”

“That’s all in order,” said David, getting a room key. “Here you are. Room number six, outside to your left.”

Lucardis took the key, and led the way back outside. It took several attempts to use it correctly, but finally the Iamerians were inside a warm dark room.

“Lights,” said Naiara, and a gold glow appeared in the center of the room. It held furniture, a chair, a desk, and what had to be a sleeping pad.

Naiara sat down on the cushioned surface and rested the bundle over her lap, rubbing at her sore arms from carrying the newborn.

Lucardis paced, stroking his gaizo up and down, and checked the sharp point. It was still green, the poison had not been destroyed in the cold weather.

Naiara glanced at him, and read the focused expression on his face, dark skin modeled with a decision.

“You have a plan.”

“Yes,” said Lucardis, averting his eyes for a moment before meeting hers. “We should split up.”

Naiara gently placed the baby in between two pillows, then got to her feet in a furious movement.

“Are you senile?” She spoke in a low shout, not wanting to wake the young Dorgia. Lucardis could not be meaning what he was saying, it was asinine, no, it was a betrayal, of the worst kind. “How am I supposed to survive without an warrior? You were assigned to protect me and Belindthraz’s daughter!”

Lucardis said, “Maybe if- We will have a better chance of survival. If we were to separate. The Tresillian assassins will be forced to split as well, to track two different Iamerian signatures. This makes sense.”

Naiara stared at him, into his bright green eyes, and saw the truth. He was afraid. He was in a world where they had already seen things they didn’t understand or speak the language, not knowing what ID is or what a motel is.

Worse, they couldn’t even use magic to help as the Iamerian signature within a strange world is the method to track them by. He was a coward. He doubted his ability to protect Naiara and the young Dorgia, so he proposes they slit up, a way to run from his responsibility, his last assignment from their former Ruler.

Naiara seethed. “You know we have a better chance with the two of us fighting together. We are in a strange world and its frightening, yes, but we need each other. This is what Belindthraz ordered us to do, to protect her child!”

Lucardis shook his head, and went to the door. “I wish you luck. We shall meet again, in Iameri, when the time comes.”

Naira shook her head. Her jaw firmed and she lifted her chin. “Lucardis, if we meet again, you will sorely regret that you abandoned us today.”

In answer, the door closed behind him solidly. The babe on the sleeping pad jolted and began to cry.

Naiara picked up the child, and looked at the round dark face, and the shining tears on her face.

“Hush Zakkie,” Naiara said to her, lightly jiggling the babe. “Zakariya Dorgia, hush.”

The babe sniffled and looked up at Naiara with slim yellow eyes, like her mother’s. Naiara’s chest ached with a sharp heavy throb. She was in a new world, abandoned by her warrior, left defenseless and helpless to raise the heir Dorgia. But that didn’t mean she was alone. She can do this. She have to do this. She will fulfil Belindthraz’s final orders. Protect her child, and when the time was right, bring her back to Iameri.

Naiara held the babe to her chest, closed her eyes and prayed.

“Lord God is faithful, pray that thy strengthen me, and guide me. Protect Zakariya from the evil one. We take refuge you in O Lord, please protect us, and surround us with a shield.”

Blue light shined from Naiara’s head down to her toes.

Yes. The Lord is faithful.

There was a shout from outside, and flashing blue lights.

She got up and pulled off the blanket on the sleeping pad, and took the linens that were on the pillows. She wrapped Zakariya in those, and herself in the big blanket. There was a sliding door at the back. And she stepped outside into the swirling white.

The End of NAIARA. Next Friday : ZAKARIYA.

I hope you enjoyed!

Until next time, A. E.

Hi Storytellers,

A. E. here.

Writing groups. A community of like-minded writers who come and write together, experience life together and generally become close friends and comrades. At least that’s what a writing group is supposed to be like, isn’t it?

Let’s talk about writing groups, Storytellers.

For most of my life, I was a solo act. I didn’t know anyone else who was a writer, and so I wrote alone for years. I became desperate to meet other writers, and to have a community, to have someone else to talk to about writing and write together.

I didn’t meet another writer until I went to undergrad at University of West Georgia, and I heard that the creative writing department had a student writing group, called The Creative Writing Guild.

A small disclaimer that this is my personal experience with the Creative Writing Guild at the University of West Georgia. Now the group went defunct soon after I joined because it was full of senior students, and when they all graduated I was the last member.

I am talking about the 2013-2014/2015 Creative Writing Guild that was not so welcoming and not so creative. I then reached out to the professor about reworking the club so it would accept and let students who write sci-fi and fantasy take part. I never heard back from the professor, and that was the end of the Creative Writing Guild while I still attended the school.

If the Creative Writing Guild has gotten back together and started being more open to other genres besides poetry and literary fiction, then that is not the Guild I am talking about. So that’s the disclaimer, and on to my personal story.

This takes place during my beginning years at UWG, so I’m not fully aware about the elitist academic attitude towards creative writing yet, but I’ve definitely started to get a bad feeling overall. I’ve had several creative writing classes with professors who’ve proven themselves to dislike any genre of writing that’s not poetry, literary fiction or creative nonfiction. I’ve heard them say the words “cheap, generic, trash” anytime I mention my love of fantasy and sci-fi.

Again, I’ve never met any other writers, and I’m longing for connection. So, I went to join the Creative Writing Guild, full of joy and excitement and anticipation. Only to be met with students who had the same elitist snobby attitude towards sci-fi and fantasy.

When I first entered the room, they were standoffish and cliquey, they didn’t talk to me or try to make me feel welcome. The majority of the students there didn’t even come over and introduce themselves to me.

There were two people who talked to me, one who was the leader. The other I had shared a creative writing class with, we even sat next to each other, so I hoped she would be my friend (as I didn’t have any friends just yet.)

So when I mentioned I liked to write fantasy, the woman I was talking to, let’s call her Alice, smiled in this really sardonic way. At the same time, a group of students were coming into the room. And she called a man over, let’s call him Travis, and told him with that same smirk that I just told her I liked to write fantasy.

Travis, didn’t even attempt to talk to me, he in fact his turned face away from me and said he refuses to talk about it and stalked away.

That moment, watching this grown man put his nose in the air and adamantly refuse to talk about fantasy genre like its something so beneath him that he wouldn’t waste his breath, I knew I had made a big mistake. This was NOT a creative writing guild. I watched him go and sit down with a group of others.

Imagine the room at this point. It was rather spacious, and had a lot of windows. The seating had couches and armchairs at one side. And the opposite end was several circle tables with chairs. The Creative Writing Guild sat at the tables.

I was sitting alone on the couch.

They never once called me over to sit with them, they never once introduced themselves, they didn’t attempt to bring me into the conversation or ask me my name or anything. They were a group, and I was an outsider.

I guess I should mention that I was the only black person there and everyone else was white, but I honestly didn’t get the idea that this was a race thing. This was an elitist thing. They believed any genre besides poetry and literary fiction was worthless and not even worth talking about. I had ousted myself as “cheap, generic and trash” by admitting I liked fantasy, and was therefore not one of them.

That was my first meeting with the Creative Writing Guild. The second time, it was more of the same. They all got together in their big group, talking and laughing, and literally left me sitting at another table alone. At this point I still didn’t know anyone’s name, no one had asked me my name, they didn’t have me join the conversation.

Nothing.

So I left, and I never went back. Everyone in the group graduated, and like I said, when I reached out to the overseeing professor about restarting the Creative Writing Guild, and this time being more open to other genres, the professor never got back to me.

And that was the end of the Not-So Creative Writing Guild during the time I went there.

After that, I made a friend finally, let’s call her Wanda, and we decided to make our writing group, and we named it Writing Partners in Good Deeds (instead of In Crime, get it?) So we’d meet up either in my dorm or in her dorm, and write for two hours together. And even if we couldn’t meet up, we’d email each other our work to read it and comment on it. But this became rare over time especially after graduation and eventually Writing Partners in Good Deeds just slowly disappeared.

Simultaneously I joined a writing group at my church, and I did finally find community there. It was amazing! The group fully welcomed me, and I began to blossom not only as a writer but as a person. I learned confidence, and was even able to read my work out loud in front of an audience. One of the leaders of that writing group attended my undergrad graduation from University of West Georgia. This group was foundational in helping my confidence the same time UWG’s creative writing department was crumbling it. I promise I’ll talk about how bad UWG was soon.

Eventually that writing group came to an end, so I decided to host my own writing group at the church, and I named it Tell Your Story. It was short-lived. People rarely showed up, but when they did it was fun.

So I briefly mentioned Grub Street classes in my last post, which you can read here. It was in that class that I was meant to get a new writing group. The leader of the class said that in these classes the writers find a new time to meet after the class, and stay together to make their own writing group without Grub Street. So we did, and one of the writers made a form for everyone to vote. I pointed out the one time that I couldn’t meet. And that’s the time everyone else voted to meet, by deciding to have their meetings on the same time I said I wasn’t available. So I was effectively voted out of the group. I had noticed that whenever I emailed anyone I never got a response, so I suppose I was never really liked to begin with.

So I got discouraged about writing groups after that one. It’s hard to keep one, they dissolve after a while, people don’t stay consistent in one, or they don’t really accept you.

Then thanks to going to the Broadleaf Writers Association Conference, which I talked about my experience there here, I made a connection, and was able to join a new writing group. There I heard, “Welcome to the Group A. E.” with everyone clapping for me and man did I feel so incredibly welcomed.

I was able to hit my writing goal due to the support of the women there, and the amicable conversation was wonderful. I look forward to continuing to attend the group and I hope it’s a long-lasting writing community.

All I’ve ever wanted as a writer is to find someplace to belong. During my writing journey, (and as a human being really) I’ve been an outcast, shunned and rejected. So joining a zoom, and having a group of people cheer “A.E.!” because they had been expecting me, waiting to meet me, and happy to see me, well, that’s something I can’t ever take for granted.

That’s it for today, Storytellers.

Until next time, A.E.

Don’t Follow Me Home

It was 2:30 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon.

The dead were restless. A storm approached and the blue-black sky trembled with thunder. Nature stirred up the dead, spirits, ghosts, ghouls, all of that good stuff. Thunderstorms and lightning strikes made them antsy. The cemetery was on my walk home. Me in a cemetery with the restless dead?

I pushed on my headphones and hit the music app on my phone. The rock band Havoc’s crashing drums, shrieking chords, and steady beats blasted too loud to be safe for my eardrums.

I headed down the clear path through the cemetery. I could go around, and add fifteen minutes to the walk home, or take the lanes through and come out only a block away from my shared apartment with my mom. I swiftly took to the familiar road, I started at a brisk pace and began my walk through my hometown’s cemetery.

Not that being from Fairwater Narrows was anything to brag about. It was a small town nestled in a forested area and an extremely dreary place. Everyone seemed to grow old and sick early, lose hope or not have many aspirations. Families tend to be broken here. And no one seemed to really be able to leave. I’m 17, and I’ve been here my entire life.

I hadn’t been walking long when a shiver went up my spine, and that burning rock settled in my stomach. The dead knew I was there.

I hit pause on my music. I took in a breath, steadied my shoulders, and kept walking when I heard the tattle-tale sound of a hoarsely drawn breath. Like someone inhaling that shouldn’t have, their lungs long since shriveled up dry.

I slowly turned around to face what my powers had risen from the grave. Hulking over three gravestones, and two more crouched over the lanes were ghouls. They were greenish-black in color, with overlong limbs, tattered burial clothing, and dank thin hair that curled to the ground. Their stretched misshapen faces twisted into expressions of frozen horror. They all stared at me with black eyes.

“Stay,” I said.

I turned around and kept walking. The skittering noises from behind me had me whirling around. The ghouls followed me, on their knuckled fingers and clawed toes, blackened eyes on me, earnestly coming after me.

I sighed heavily.

“Don’t follow me home,” I said sternly. “All of you, be still, be gone, and be at rest.”

I pushed my hand forward at them then swiped my hand up, down, across, and pushed my palm forward again. At the last sign, the ghouls all swirled backwards in a gust of wind, their specific graves opened wide in a maw, and swallowed them up in silence.

I breathed out with relief. Then a gentle warmth brimmed through me and like a pale and translucent wisp with two dark holes on the smooth white face, Maddy Scott, my ghost best friend appeared next to me.

“You okay?”

I shrug a shoulder and put on a brave grin.

“Yeah,” I say.

Maddy smiles again, her smile curls up to her ears, her pitch black grave eyes stretch down into her cheeks and up into her forehead, her nose pulls into a small dot.

“Goodie.”

Maddy claps her ghostly hands together and swirled around me excitedly. If she had feet, they’d be kicking back and forth like she was swimming, but Maddy’s lower body ended in a wispy tail.

“Let’s do something fun,” says Maddie. “It’s Saturday, and you don’t have to go home until dinnertime. We should hang out!”

“Do something like what?” I ask.

Loud voices had me look over.

I was standing outside of Vinci’s Pizzeria. The big glass store front was decorated with large signs of their menu. Besides pizza, they also serve meatball subs, calzones, and garlic breads.

And coming out was a large group, Teyana, Curtis, Jon, Leslie, Peter and Lacy.

They had all been laughing and smiling, but seeing me, the smiles slid off their faces. Their expressions went from being happy to dark and cold.

“Look,” says Curtis with a quick, harsh laugh. “It’s the spook. What are you doing out of the cemetery, spook?”

Spook.

That’s what they call me.

As in ‘spooky.’ Because I can raise the dead. It’s definitely not a nice word to call me. They’re using it to hurt me, to point out that I’m not one of them.

Yeah,” says Jon, and glares at me behind his glasses. “Don’t you have some roadkill to raise?”

Pain struck me in the chest. They must have seen me with the roadkill dog following me home Friday after school. Other people get little kittens who want to adopt them, I get ghouls and roadkill.

Leslie says, “Is it just me, or did I see you talking to yourself just now?”

“Yeah, for real!” Teyana glares at me. “Who are you talking to? God, you’re such a creep, Keira Hason! You talk to the air! Schizo spook!”

I lift my chin.

I say, “No, actually, I wasn’t talking to myself. I was talking to Maddy.”

They laugh, shake their heads and made loud jokes.

“Who the hell is Maddy?” Jon made circles at his temple at me. “You are a schizo spook, you got that? Talking to yourself, hanging around in the cemetery, having dead dogs following you home.”

“Please,” I say, starting to feel desperate.

Lacy shot back. “You don’t even look like us! You’re so creepy! You’re so thin. Like a skeleton.”

It’s not like I wanted to be thin. But it was like I couldn’t gain weight. I’m taller than everyone since sixth grade, lean with no figure, so I’m a skinny tall weirdo and I have yellow eyes. That was more than enough to be singled out.

But it gets worse.

When I was younger, I didn’t really see a difference between the living and the dead. One time I brought home a friend to play with not realizing he was dead child who had drowned at the local pond. I’ve raised the dead frogs and fetal pigs in science class as ghouls and made all the specimens get back up in dissection class. Roadkill gets up and follows me home, then I’d ask my mom if we can adopt an undead pet.

Maddy swung around them all, and a wind blew about their hair, and clothes. Curtis and Theo met eyes and slightly shook their heads. I deal with the dead. Ghosts and ghouls. I can’t read minds, still, I am a pretty good judge of character and intuition. I can read the unease on their face.

Kai accuses, “Cut it out with that creepy spooky shit, Hason! Whatever you’re doing it, make it stop! You’re such a weirdo spook! Just get away from us already!”

Then he shoves me hard with both hands. I trip over my feet, and land hard on my butt, and my hands behind my back. My right palm presses flat against the ground. I burned a hot strong command into the ground.

Rise! Come to my aid!

I stare up at the scowling seventeen year olds as the call pulsed from my palm through the ground, coursing through vines, tumbling off rocks, bursting into graves and sinking into buried bodies. Then the call is answered.

I hear the shuffled steps coming from behind me the same moment I see from the look on their faces that they saw the ghouls coming. I know what ghouls look like, and I glance over my shoulder to look at them approaching from The Narrows Cemetery.

The ghouls. Their skin is greenish color, and they wear tattered burial clothes draping on shrunken bodies. Their stretched misshapen faces into expressions of frozen horror. Shriveled, dank, thin hair twisting in the wind. A blue light shines from the depths of the eyes. I know that light. My call bringing the dead back to life. They thud up the sidewalk with lurching footsteps and raised their arms up at the bullies.

I held up my right palm. Everything built up in me. The name calling. The bullying. The rejection. They didn’t even see me as human. I couldn’t take it anymore. If they didn’t want me…then I’d give them a reason to fear me.

I gave the order.

“Get them.”

With groans and growls, the ghouls lunged at the teens.

Screaming, Teyana, Curtis, Jon, Leslie, Peter and Lacy all ran in the opposite direction. Maddy followed, using ghostly wind to pick up sticks and stones and leaves to pelt at their heads and backs.

I yell after them, “And keep the word spook out of your mouths! Got that!”

Once they’re around the bend Maddy soars upwards, then swoops around my body several times.

“We did it!” she says. “We got them back!”

I speak in soft dull voice as tears fill my eyes, “Is that you call it? Winning?”

Maddy swung down to hover at my side. She held out her semi-transparent white hands

“How about a draw?”

Maddy swirls around me a few times, and rests on my shoulder, like a friendly weightless warmth.

I get harassed by those my age but I have a friendly ghost by my side, and give me silent warm comfort.

I say, “I don’t want to raise the dead by accident. I don’t mean to make ghouls follow me. I don’t want to make friends with ghosts.”

“We’re not so bad,” says Maddy.

Maddy smiles and her smile curls up to her ears, her pitch black grave eyes stretch down into her cheeks and up into her forehead, her nose pulls into a small dot.

She said, “And I won’t take that as an insult. I know you want living friends.”

I nod, and wipe the tears on my face.

She smiles again, the corners of her mouth touch her ears.

“It’s okay, Keira.”

“As Mom says,” I said, and swallowed hard. “If my father was here, he’d show me how to control it…make it stop.”

I fell silent as it was getting dark and colder. Maddy inclined her black-eyed face towards the road and cocked her head.

“Yeah I know,” I sighed. “I gotta go home. Thanks for keeping me company.”

“Anytime…”

I got up, waved at the dearly departed spirit, and the ghost shimmered into a gust of transparent wind.

I shoved my headphones on back on, and scrolled the music app until I clicked the rock group Phantasm, song “Hypnotize” and played my music. I head home, It didn’t take long to reach the apartment, and head to the elevator. I freeze.

Darcy Clarkson, the landlady of our apartment building stood there in the lobby, on the way up. I backed up. I was on the tenth floor, but I’d rather take the stairs than ride with Clarkson. She is fine with Mom because my mom always paid the rent on time and respected the property. As for me…ever since I accidentally raised her dead son who had killed himself, and brought him from the grave back home, she’d hated me. I laid him to rest and apologized profusely, I didn’t mean to do it, but Darcy has never been able to forgive me.

She stared at me with dark brown eyes, rife with old pain and fresh hatred at the sight of me. She was short and plump with a steel-gray lumpy afro. Dark marks patterned her cheeks and nose from popped pimples.

“Aren’t you getting on?” she asked in a sharp tone.

“Yes ma’am,” I said respectfully, stepping into the elevator, and pressing the tenth floor button.

The doors dinged closed and suffocated me.

Darcy Clarkson was staring at me.

She asked in a harsh crisp voice, “Raised the dead lately?”

I gripped my fists and hid them in my hoodie’s front pocket.

What kind of question is that? Does she expect me to answer honestly?

I said, “Not really. Some ghouls earlier today, though.”

Darcy stared at me, her dark eyes burning as I dumped fuel on the fire. I quickly turned my face away, and scolded myself for saying anything. The elevator opened on the third floor, and Darcy stormed off without looking back. I hit the close door button and rode the elevator to the tenth floor. I used my key to unlock the door. I turned off my music as I came inside the small two-bedroom apartment.

“I’m home,” I call.

My mom, Rion Hason looked up from the kitchen table. The spread of papers and books on the table told me she’d brought work home with her. She worked on a number of committees and did grants for city council.

“How was class today, Keira?” she asked.

I slipped out of my shoes and hung up my wet coat, pushing my headphones to hang around my neck. I threw myself down on the chair across from her.

I debated what to tell her. Go into a full-blown rant about how horrible it all was? She’s busy, she has so much work to do. Burden her with my problems…no. I’d give her the rated G for General version.

I said, “Same stuff. Kids talked smack about me in class. Teacher seemed afraid of me. And a few ghouls tried to follow me home so I put them to rest. That’s about it.”

“Mm hmm,” said Mom, adjusting her glasses on her nose, and looking down at a series of grant paperwork. “I’m sure if your father was here he’d teach you about not raising ghouls by your presence. You must be using magic instinctively. He’d teach you how to control it.”

“Right, right,” I said, crossing my arms on top of the table, then laying my head down. “This father of mine who’s never been around.”

She said quietly. “I’m sure something very important must be keeping him away.”

I sighed and closed my eyes. I saw the misshapen droopy face of the ghouls, with their black eyes and frozen horrified expressions. Life after death must be really bad for a ghoul.

I opened my eyes.

“Keira Jolie Hason.”

The disapproval in her tone only made me flinch a little.

Mom says, “I also got some very concerning calls from the parents of your friends at school about getting chased by ghouls.”

“They’re not my friends!”

I whirl around and face her, my fists clenched, my eyes wide all around, mouth grimaced.

Mom stares at me and put her hands on her hips. She raises her brows.

She says, “Friends or not. Is that true?”

I mutter, “I did sic the ghouls on them.”

She sighs, “Try to get along, okay? Siccing ghouls on kids is why they are beating you up rejecting you. It’s not funny.”

She says that because I had begun to laugh.

I stopped laughing, because she didn’t get it.

I say, “Mom, those kids don’t want to be my friend, or get along with me. I raise the dead, and that’s all they need to never want anything to do with me.”

Mom looked at me with sad, deep brown eyes. Yes I didn’t get from her, my eyes are yellow, like an eagles. One more thing to get picked on about, something I can’t even control.

“But it doesn’t help with you using your magic on them,” she says.

I shook my head, and say, “You don’t get it.”

Mom stood up quickly. “If I don’t get it, it’s because you won’t explain. You aren’t making good grades-”

I snap, “The teachers discriminate on me, Mom!”

She sighs and hugs me, and presses a kiss to the top of my head.

“My only baby,” she whispers. “And you’re doing this to yourself!”

Hot, frothy tears fill my eyes.

“I don’t belong here, Mom,” I whisper in a dull voice and press my face into her soft, full chest. “Everyone makes it clear I’m not one of them.”

“You’re a half one of us,” she says softly, and squeezed me. “If you act enough to fit in-”

“They don’t let me fit in,” I say angrily, and push away from her arms. “That’s the point! At every time I’ve tried to they just point out how I’m not one of them.”

Mom looks at me helplessly.

“So that’s it then,” she says. “They insult you and reject you so you sic ghouls on them. When does it end? When one of you severely gets hurt?”

I shake my head, and stare at the ground. I don’t know when it ends. They make it clear I don’t belong. And never the twain shall mix.

Then I say, “They called me a schizo spook, that I’m creepy.”

Mom sighs.

Then she says, “Maybe there is something else you can do to-”

I cut her off. “They told me I’m not human like them, Mom, and to stay away from them.”

Mom flinches. Then she put her forehead in her hands, and stares down.

I put my hands down and look at her.

I say, “Mom, you have to face it. These kids…they don’t want anything to do with me. They don’t accept me, they won’t accept me. I might as well be a monster to them.”

Mom protests, “Don’t call yourself a monster!”

I say, “Mom, that’s how they see me. Mom, I am telling you. Let’s leave Fairwater Narrows! It sucks here! This town is a miserable hellhole!”

Mom moves her hand from her forehead down to her face, like she was shielding herself from me.

I step back from her, shaking my head several times. I clench my fists tightly, hot bubbles in my stomach, flooding up my chest and burning up in my throat. My jaw fused together and wrench apart.

Mom watches me as I yell at her. Everything came out. How the kids talk about me in class, how much they hate me, how I don’t belong, how ghouls want to follow me home, and how ghosts comfort me and my father abandoned me before I was born and how much I hate it here-

A loud banging on the door had us jumping up, right as Mom gasps.

I’ve definitely raised something, and considering how angry I am, it’s probably nothing good. But the knocking on the door doesn’t sound good either.

“Keira Hason! Rion Hason! Get out here!”

That didn’t even sound like the police.

I walk over angrily to the door.

“Keira, wait!”

I swing the door open, my Mom scrambling behind me.

Outside on the front lawn is a group of parents, and I recognize with them, Teyana, Curtis, Jon, Leslie, Peter and Lacy. They’re all holding random household objects, pitchforks, baseball bats, crowbars, tire irons.

It’s an angry mob.

“Oh my God,” whispers my Mom.

Jon’s father points a baseball bat fitted with nails at me.

“You, Hason ghoul girl,” he says with gritted teeth. “I’ve had it with you and your tireless bullying of my son!”

My jaw drops. “I bully him? He-”

Jon’s father cut me off. “He tells me how you torment him with some ghost at school! And then you chase him with ghouls! You purposefully taunt and scare him! All the kids here have the same story!”

Everyone is nodding, agreeing with each other, glaring at me.

There it is.

The line in the sand.

Them against me.

The normal, and the other.

My fists clench.

Mom whispers, “Keira, please.”

Teyana’s father hosts a steel pipe against his shoulder.

“We all had a town meeting last night,” he says.

Mom says sharply. “Shouldn’t I have been a part of this meeting?”

Lacy’s mom, who was armed with a drillmaster, says quietly, “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be, Rion.”

Mom gasps.

I slowly began to not feel anything. They were all here to kill me. Take care of their annoying little dead-raising pest problem.

Teyana’s father continues. “She’s got to go, Rion. She’s getting older, and her power is out of control. She’s too dangerous. Siccing ghouls on our kids now?”

The mob is getting louder with angry scared sounds, glaring at me, and the Common kids bend down, looking for stones to throw.

This was how it ends.

Except…I can see the ghouls coming up from behind the mob, who are so focused on me that they aren’t watching their six.

It’s a horde of maybe twenty or thirty ghouls. And these guys aren’t like the ghouls I normally raised, placid, timid, and sometimes able to hold a conversation. These ghouls are slavering, arms outstretched, and the gnashing of their teeth, and how they groan, told me these ghouls were not only wild, but hungry. My anger had raised them like this. And the fact this is a horde of them, meant I had put much, much more power into my unbidden call.

I say nothing as the ghouls came closer, and closer, then before the first stone could be thrown, the ghouls leapt onto the angry mob. I turn my face away as seconds later, I hear the desperate screams at the same time goosebumps riddle up my skin.

Mom cries out, “Keira!” as the screams continue. “Keira, stop! What are you doing!”

I look now, and I’m frozen. I’ve never seen ghouls mauling anyone before. The horde is fueled by my pain and anger and desire for revenge. Fairwater Narrows is a smalltown and anyone who saw the ghouls raising from The Narrows cemetery knew they were heading to “The Hason house.” Since Jon’s dad said there was a town meeting, they knew that there was going to be stoning this Sunday morning.

Now there is a massacre happening right outside.

Mom grabs my shoulder, and pushes me back and forth.

“Do something Keira, please!” she cries. “You can’t just do nothing!”

I feel dissociated, divorced, distanced, as I dimly watch the scene of ghouls vs them who have done nothing but berate me, reject me, treat me like trash. Isn’t getting eaten alive by ghouls more than fitting?

They deserve this.

Mom grabs onto my forearm so tight, and dug in her nails, the sharp pain tugs into me, and I finally manage to look into her deep brown eyes, normal human eyes that I don’t have. Maybe if I had them, I’d have been accepted.

“I’m begging you Keira,” she says, looking at me with watery eyes. “There has got to be another way. But not this way. Please. Call them off.”

I stare at her.

Then I say, “For you, Mom.”

I turn to face the ghouls feasting, I hold up my right hand as I call on my natural gift, my curse.

I say loud and clear, “Stop!”

The ghouls froze mid-devouring of the angry mob, the kids who bullied me, and their parents who came to kill me.

I walk forward and kept my hand up. “Release them.”

With some shambling moans, the ghouls backed away from their Common meals.

I look at the waiting horde. They look at me, standing mostly still or slouched. The wild hungry glaze in their eyes was gone and instead the calming blue light of my sorcell within them. Blood covers their mouths and hands and down their clothes.

I faced them. “Go back to your graves, go back and rest. Don’t roam anymore.”

With soft groans, they turn and shuffle away. I knew they would do as told, go and lay down back in their graves then rest. The mob laid around in piles of blood and ripped clothes and wounds, groaning in pain. My Mom came over, on her cellphone calling emergency services.

No one was dead, not yet.

Unlike fairytales, people bitten by ghouls don’t automatically become ghouls themselves like some sort of virus or curse. They’ll just die of their injuries, game over. Not unless someone decides to raise them as a ghoul, like the way I do.

As the sirens wails, my Mom hugs me from behind. She presses her face behind my shoulders, and squeezes me.

“No matter what,” she whispers. “I won’t let them take you away. You stay home with me, where you are safe. I’ll protect you, I promise.”

I don’t say anything.

That’s all! Thanks for reading, Storytellers!

Question: Was it bad that Keira sicced the ghouls on her bullies, or should she have been “the bigger person” and let them keep bullying her? I was pretty conflicted! Did I go too far in letting someone who’s been bullied getting their revenge and did Keira simply become a villain herself? Also would you read a novel-length version of this story? Let me know!

Until next time,

A. E.

Hi Storytellers! A. E. here.

I turned 35 years old on October 7, 2025 and that’s made me want to look back over how far I’ve come to get to where I am now. I’ve gone through a lot as my writer’s journey has spanned three decades since I started writing around 5 years old. This one is kind of long, and has a lot of images in it, but come along and experience this journey with me.

I’ve been a writer since 1995.

When I was kid, my imagination was fearless, unending, wouldn’t quit, could never quit. As long as I was reading, my mind thought “but what if this happened instead?” and there I was, off writing my own story. My mind churned out stories and my hands could barely keep up. I wrote so fast that my handwriting became so sloppy my stories were unreadable. My handwriting today is still pretty illegible, though I am practicing my legibility for the sake of my comic writing.

I wrote and illustrated three children’s books as a child. Only two survived to modern day, and I’ve shared them with you below.

Writing books since I was a kid came about because of reading. In order to write you need to read, and I was reading constantly. My mother is a librarian, so I grew up surrounded by books in libraries where I used to spend a lot of my time, and we had books at home. Then I picked up the pencil to start telling my own stories, even though I hadn’t totally learned how to spell yet.

I also wrote comic strips as a child. I love drawing, I loved writing, so why not put them together?

My comics featured animal characters learning moral lessons, because I loved Aseop’s Fables, and I loved fairytales and stories with animal characters.

I was inspired to draw by reading the New York Times Sunday funnies. My biggest inspiration in comics was The Boondocks by Aaron McGruder, namely Huey Freeman. I still try to draw him regularly to see if my art skills are getting any better.

So what was I reading while I growing up? Well, in the 90s and very early 2000s, I rarely to never read books by black authors. I actually only remember seeing Little Bill and The Snowy Day as a black character on the shelves when I was a kid. The kidlit books I read were Harry Potter, Charlie Bone, Artemis Fowl, Animorphs, Goosebumps and Spooksville and The Magic Treehouse series.

My main genre I read growing up was romance. Historical romance, paranormal romance, romantic suspense, as long as the genre had the word “romance” in it then I was reading it.

Harlequins.

If I was reading anything, it was going to be a Harlequin.

“The Greek’s Forbidden Mistress” or “Captured by the Sheik” or “His Secret Wife.” If that was the title, I was reading it. I was literally like 8, 10, 11, years old, reading this stuff. I couldn’t get enough.

Yet at the same time, I didn’t write romance despite that being a good majority of what I read. I tried my hand at it once, I wrote a story called “The Business Man’s Secretary” and didn’t really like it. Romance wasn’t for me to write, though I loved to read it.

Instead, between 5 and 13, I mainly wrote about animals like horses, wolves, cats and dogs that could talk and go on adventures, because I read and loved Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, The Black Stallion by Walter Farley, White Fang by Jack London and A Dog’s Life: The Autobiography of a Stray by Ann. M. Martin.

I also wrote about werewolves and teenagers with magic powers, because I read the Anita Blake series (my mom forbid me to read it since I was like 10 years old and I just snuck in her room and read it anyway.)

I also wrote about dragons, unicorns and centaurs but none survived far as I can tell. Maybe they’re on a floppy disc somewhere.

Anyway. Between 14 to 18, I had totally abandoned writing about animals and was full into fantasy, despite mainly reading romance.

I still have not read Lord of the Rings (love the movies.) I did listen to half of The Hobbit on audio book. I haven’t read any famous fantasy novels like the Game of Thrones (nor watched the show.) I didn’t read Wheels of Time series or Discworld.

I only read romance and only writing fantasy.

My work now featured necromancy, shapeshifters, and vampires. And then I discovered world-building. I began to craft cultures and religions and naming traditions and new races. I did this naturally out of shear love of storytelling and needing more stories, and loving creation, loving worlds, loving writing.

At the point of writing these stories N. K. Jemisin and Tomi Ayedemi weren’t a thing yet, and I hadn’t heard of Toni Morrison or Octavia Butler. I had no influence by black authors, and I am still mainly reading romance, not fantasy.

So how am I writing stories about magic and wizards and ancient cultures?

Well…because the romances I read now had these elements. Harlequins at this point have mostly been left behind though I still own about 300 of them, no lie. I was deep into paranormal romance. I was reading The Carpathian series by Christine Feehan. I read everything by Angela Knight and she writes with supernatural characters all the time. I read Emma Holly, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Susan Krinard and Kelley Armstrong. Without reading fantasy novels, I was getting plenty of the genre within romance. Even Linda Howard did a few books with reincarnated couples and psychic main characters.

It actually wasn’t until I decided to seriously work on publishing a novel, did I realize all my current work was all fantasy and sci-fi despite not reading in that specific genre.

That’s the same time I went to college to pursue an English Degree and a creative writing minor. I wanted to learn how to “officially” write because by my early twenties I hadn’t yet taken a creative writing class.

Everything I wrote was instinctive, self-taught.

And I haven’t even mentioned fan-fiction. Let’s not go there.

So age 23, I’m accepted to the University of West Georgia in August of 2013, all wide-eyed and breathless, eager to learn to write and maybe get taught how to publish a novel.

At UWG I came face to face with creative writing professors who thought only literary fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction were “real” writing and everything else is trash. Hearing what I write is trash began to turn into “I’m trash” and nuked my self-confidence in myself, and my writing. I’ll definitely talk about this in another essay.

I’ll never forget going into workshop and having my piece flung on the floor by the professor and called trash.

That “trash” is my debut novel, now available on Amazon for purchase and I’m working on getting the title transferred to IngramSpark so it can be available elsewhere.

I started a writing blog in 2018 to start detailing my writing journey, and you can find my official author page here. If UWG creative writing department did anything for me besides destroying my confidence as a writer, I had finally been introduced to Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, N.K. Jemisin, Tomi Ayedemi, Walter Mosley, Nichelle Nichols, Nalo Hopkinson, Justina Ireland, Karen Lord, Nisi Shawl, Samuel R. Delany, Ishmael Reed among others. I had learned that there were black authors with black characters to read and aspire too.

After graduating from UWG in 2019, and now having self-published my first novel, I took a break from my school, needing to nurse my wounds. I spent time trying to market The Other Side, and build my online presence.

I started my Facebook author page at aecostellowrites and tried to grow it, and attempted Twitter. Both were pretty disastrous as I had no idea as how to do social media or marketing. I did some in person events, and held tables in Chicago and in Georgia. Those are successful when I hold them but I fade away once I’m back home.

After a few years break, I was ready to go back to school. As I was researching grad programs, I felt like I was getting a lot of information that MFAs were expensive and people online kept saying you didn’t need the degree. I also knew how to write already, and didn’t really want to be told what to write.

But still, I love school and I love learning, and I really needed a writing community, and there was a lot more pros to MFAs then there was cons. I was tired of the self-taught avenue and tired of writing alone. I wanted to be surrounded by writers who also love writing and would accept me, unlike how I had been shunned at UWG.

I applied to Emerson College, and got rejected. That burned my confidence in a way I hadn’t experienced before. The sensation that I simply wasn’t good enough made me feel so small, insignificant, unworthy, I think it put me in a state of shock.

With my mother’s help, I joined a few classes at Grub Street and began writing again, and re-gained my confidence. Then with my Aunt’s mentoring, I applied to a second school, Goddard College (rip). I got in.

I was so happy! I felt like I had come home. I attended residency online and felt the flames of the burning school through the screen. I only spent a semester there before hopping off that sinking ship, and the school closed after I left.

After Goddard, I had to make a choice. Did I want to go for another grad program in writing, or pursue my other love in life, art? I had realized that I was letting my drawing skills slip away, and that I really missed drawing comics. So I began to research programs again, and I discovered Lesley University, which seemed perfect.

I applied to two different tracks there, the Writing For Young People track and the Graphic Novels and Comics track. I was accepted to both but had to choose one. I decided on Graphic Novels and Comics. I wanted to learn how to do something I didn’t know how to do, and that was comics. I had drawn them when I was a kid, but I hadn’t done them since, and had forgotten how.

So in Summer 2023 I joined Lesley University, and I again felt like I was home. It didn’t last. I wrote about my experience at Lesley in my post The Not So Better Lesley.

And I did over time finally learn how to draw comics!

That was the goal and I am very satisfied with the time I spent at Lesley. I am sad I won’t graduate from this program, the reasons why I’ve already talked about.

My writing journey is in someways only just getting started. Like here on Substack. I created Tell Your Story in 2024 and was too afraid to post on it, didn’t know how to start. It took me 9 months before I finally did my first post. And it took months after that to finally post short fiction. I hope to start serializing fiction here too.

And now, after all of this, my next steps in my writing journey is to maybe join another MFA program (Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing I’m looking at you,) post consistently on Substack with articles and short stories, finish a novel in 2025, and keep writing, writing, writing.

That’s my writing journey for the past three decades, and that’s the path forward I want to keep journeying forward.

What about you, Storyteller? What do you see when you look back on your journey, whatever it may be, musician, artist, graphic designer, novelist? How did you become a writer? A race car driver? A poet? A nurse or doctor or singer?

I’ll end on this. I’ve seen it around before but don’t know where so I’ll share it here:

Forget about the past, you can’t change it. Forget about the future, you can’t predict it. What matters is what lays before you. Reach out and grasp it.

You’ve got this.

Don’t let anyone tell you that You Can’t. Because You Can!

Seriously. YOU CAN. I CAN. And we will. I hope you stuck around to the end. You might find the motivation and inspiration you need to keep going. Don’t worry too much.

Just keep going.

Until next time, Storytellers,

A. E.

Hark

“Ghosts are not real,” said my therapist, slow and clear, as if to drill it into my head.

“Uh, yeah we are,” said the ghost of my cousin in my ear. “Tell her, Endor. Tell her I’m real.”

I can’t see my cousin, Zemira Graves, anymore. She took her own life last year. But I hear her every day. She speaks in a ghastly voice, like someone whispering creepily from behind a veil. That’s just how ghosts talk.

I said, “Ghosts are not real.”

Madison Scott sat back, writing down something in her clipboard.

“Good,” she said, “We’re making progress.”

I could hardly hear that, over Zemira throwing a fit.

“How could you say that!” Zemira yelled. “I am real! You know I’m real!”

Madison’s clipboard dropped from her hands like it had gotten smacked out.

“Whoops,” said Madison, bending down. “Hands kind of let go there.”

No they didn’t.

I whispered, “Zemira, calm down.”

Madison sat up straight with her clipboard, and looked at me.

“What was that? I didn’t hear you.”

I said, “Nothing. Ah, are we almost done?”

Zemira said, “Blah, blah, blah! This is boring! Can we go now? I hate therapy! She doesn’t even believe I exist!”

Madison said, “Endor? Endor? Endor!”

I jerked and looked at her.

“Um, right,” I said, waving my hand at the side of my head. I can’t see Zemira, so I don’t know if she was really there or not, but the signal should tell her to buzz off for a minute.

Madison was staring at me, and I swallowed.

She sat back, and wrote on her clipboard.

Then she began to flip back in the chart, way back.

“You know, Endor,” she said. “When we began to see each other, and for a long time, you reported you could hear voices. Have you been hearing them again lately?”

“She’s always heard them,” said Zemira, in a matter-of-fact ghastly voice, and answering the question like Madison could hear her. “Since Endor was a baby, she could hear ghosts! And I could see them. So we were best of friends, I’d tell her what I saw, she’d tell me what they were saying. We were inseparable, weren’t we, Endor?”

“Yea, we were,” I said, my voice choked. “Until you crossed the veil, Zemi. You went a place I couldn’t follow.”

Zemira’s voice from behind the veil whispered against my ear, “I couldn’t take seeing them anymore…when I saw…that thing…and you heard it…!”

I covered my face, and ended up bursting into tears.

Madison calmed me down, gave me tissues and a bottle of water.

Then she said, “Zemi…that is your nickname for Zemira, Zemira Graves your cousin, am I right? She took her own life last year. Are you pretending she’s still with you?”

I slowly lowered my tissues from my face, and stared at the face of my therapist. She had no clue. Just no clue at all. I focused on her, because I had to let her know.

I began to hear it. The whispers of the ghosts of her past.

A voice spoke out from Madison’s shoulder.

So I began to repeat what the voice was saying.

“Maddy, I’m sorry,” I said, and watched the blood drain from her face. “Maddy, I didn’t mean to lock you in the closet. I was a bad mother, I really was, but I’m sorry.”

“Stop it,” ordered my therapist, standing up from kneeling next to me.

I concentrated harder on her, and focused on a different voice from the ghosts of her past.

“Maddigirl,” I said, and she made a terrified face. “I miss you so much. I’m waiting for you, I’m waiting for you.”

Madison screamed. “Get out!”

I stood up and grabbed my bag.

Madison yelled after me, “And don’t ever come back!”

Zemira cackled gleefully as I walked out of the therapist office.

“That was legit! Got her back for saying I don’t exist!”

Outside, surrounded by people…everyone’s ghosts of their pasts began to blare. Ghastly creepy voices whispering from behind veils from everyone. They can’t hear the dead trying to communicate to them but I can.

“I’m sorry-”

“Listen to me-”

“Forgive me-”

“I hate you!”

“Talk to me-”

“Can’t you hear me-”

I put on my big noise-cancelling headphones.

I said softly, “I’m putting on music now, Zemira.”

“Ah man,” she whined.

I pressed play on my phone. Mistress by the post-grunge and hard rock band The Vanguard blasted into my ears, drowning out all the ghostly whispers with the drums and the bass rocking out.

The lead singer crooned in a deep husky voice, “Terrifying villain. Enraged and in pain. She’s half woman and half demon. Mistress I’m pulling up in your lair. Twisting your hair and smashing your dreams.”

I got on the bus, scanned the app on my phone and walked straight to the back of the bus, getting a window seat and turning to face the window. The headphones banged drums and bass and beat in my ears, I couldn’t hear Zemira, I couldn’t hear anyone else’s ghosts, just music.

The leader singer did his classic hoarse yell, “Blinded by me, you can’t see!”

The Vanguard dropped the beat and rocked out.

“Just call my NAME, ‘cause I’ll hear you SCREAM! Faithless! Mistress!

The band rocked out.

“Just call my NAME, ‘cause I’ll hear you SCREAM! Faithless! Mistress!”

I rode the subway back home listening to The Vanguard rock music still blasting in my ears.

I reached my apartment building, rode the elevator up to the tenth floor, and used my key to unlock the door. I turned off my music as I came inside the small two-bedroom apartment. I slipped out of my shoes and hung up my coat, pushing my headphones to hang around my neck.

“I’m home,” I called.

My mother looked up from the kitchen table. The spread of papers and books on the table told me she’d brought work home with her. She worked on a number of committees and did grants for city council.

“How was therapy today, Endor?” she asked.

I threw myself down on the chair across from her and debated what to tell her. Go into a full-blown rant about how horrible the appointment all was? The truth was that I terrified my therapist and she threw me out of her office and told me to never come back. My mom is busy, she has so much work to do. Burden her with my problems…no. I’d give her the rated G for General version.

I said, “Same, typical. She asked how class was, how I’m doing, yada, yada. It’s fine. That’s about it.”

“Mm hmm,” said Mom, adjusting her glasses on her nose, and looking down at a series of grant paperwork. “Well…that’s not what the call I received said.”

I froze.

Mom looked up at me, and took off her glasses and looked at me directly in the eyes, like an owl sighting down a mouse in the grass.

She said, “You know that your attendance in Roxbury High is contingent on you staying in therapy, Endor. The moment the principal and superintendent hear you’ve been kicked out of therapy, they’ll give you a week to find a new therapist, or you’re expelled. At this point, we’ll run out of schools who can accept you. So why, tell me why you scared Ms. Scott so badly, and are ruining this?”

Zemira said in my ear, “She deserved it, that’s why. She tried to say I wasn’t real, but I am real. Tell her, Endy. Tell her Zemira is still here, I’m always here.”

I sighed, and crossed my arms over my knees, and hung my head.

“I’m sorry,” I said, closing my eyes tight as they burned hot. “I got upset.”

Mom said, “Being upset isn’t an excuse,” the same time Zemira said, “So what? She deserved it.”

Hearing voices overlay like that was very annoying and distracting, but I was used to it.

Zemira said, “Why do you even want to go to school? Stay home with me instead.”

Ignoring her, I said, “I do want to go to school, Mom.”

“Then stay in therapy, and pay attention in class,” instructed Mom.

“It’s hard to pay attention,” I said softly. “Zemira keeps distracting me. And everyone else’s ghosts too.”

Zemira began laughing as Mom sent me a sharp glance.

“Your cousin Zemira is gone,” Mom said. “She passed away last year. And stop saying about ghosts Endor. We’ve been over this. Ghosts aren’t what’s causing you hearing voices. Did you take your medicine today?”

I stood up.

“I’m going to my room,” I said softly. “I’m sorry, Mom, that I’m like this. I’m sorry Dad left. But Zemira is still here. She’s talking to me, always. And other people’s ghosts talk to me. Your ghosts talk to me. The only thing I can do is drown them out with music…and pray someone helps me.”

I turned to leave, giving her my back.

Mom said, “Wait, Endor.”

I looked back.

Mom got up and sighed heavily. Then she hugged me. I cringed, because this close and physical contact, the ghosts around her came closer to me too, and I could hear them. Their ghastly voices crowded into my ears, speaking over one another.

“Neriah, please, I’m sorry.”

“Are you listening to me? Neriah, are you listening?”

“I want to come back, I shouldn’t have left. I want us to be together.”

“Wait for me! I’m waiting for you, I’m here, I’m here!”

“GET BACK HERE YOU!”

I shoved my mom away with both hands, and the voices shuttered, those ghosts were the ghosts of Mom’s past, the skeletons of her closet. They were talking to her not me.

My heart pounded, and sickness rolled in my stomach.

Zemira whispered, “What was that thing? What is that thing in Auntie Neriah’s past?”

Mom said, “Endor! What did you do that for?”

I stared at her. Mom had such a kind sweet face. I didn’t look like her. Whatever it was that was demanding her attention so fiercely like that, she was keeping that to herself. I didn’t want to know.

I said, “I…I don’t want hugs okay? I don’t need hugs or kisses. I need the voices to stop. If you don’t have anything that will help that, then…I’m just going to my room.”

Mom bit her lower lip, and looked guilty and sad.

Then she sighed.

“I wanted to…” she pushed her fingers together and squeezed them. “I wanted to try and raise you as…normal as possible, Endor.”

I didn’t say anything. I’m used to being told I’m not normal. It doesn’t even hurt.

Mom said, “I had hoped that if I kept you in public or even private schools with other normal children, maybe you’d turn out like them. I guess it was silly, a mom’s pipe dream. You turned out just like your father after all.”

Now that one did hurt.

I smiled, tears rimming my eyes.

“So that’s it then, isn’t it?” I said with a shaky laugh. “Then I should pack up and leave. I’ll be exactly like him.”

“That’s not what I meant,” said Mom. “I mean you have his power, Endor.”

I wobbled, stumbled then made my way back to sit down before I fell down. Mom sat back down too.

She put her elbows on the table, and held up her forehead with both hands and stared at the table.

She said, “Everyone told me Javan was crazy but he showed me the world of the paranormals. I thought it was fantastic, and I wanted to be a paranormal too.”

I said, “Mom, what are you talking about?”

“But it got him killed,” she said, like I hadn’t spoken.

“What!” I yelled. “My father was killed?”

Mom kept going, ignoring me, “So I took you, and ran, and pretended you are a normal, like me, a normal child.”

My jaw was likely on the floor. I gaped at her, unable to even speak at all.

Mom put her hand out to me, but didn’t touch me.

“I swear I never meant to hurt you by keeping all of this from you,” she said. “I wanted to protect you.”

My eyes watered again.

“You knew,” I whispered. “You knew all along it wasn’t schizophrenia or bipolar or anything like that. But you had me on meds and in mental hospitals and going to therapy anyway.”

Mom whispered, “It was all a needed cover for you to be in the normal world. And I, I thought that maybe those things would help damper your power, that the power of thought would suppress it. But then Zemira messed it up.”

I gasped, and so did Zemira in my ear.

“Mom!” I yelled the same time Zemira yelled, “Auntie!”

Mom clasped her face for a second then put her hand down.

She said, “You may have been able to be convinced that you were a normal girl with psychosis, if Zemira wasn’t talking in your ear all the time. With Zemira always there you are fully convinced you have powers, which you do. So my plans failed. And now you are so powerful that ghosts are constantly around you.”

I croaked as Zemira howled wordlessly, and I did my best to ignore her, but she was right. The utter and complete betrayal.

Then I stood up and wroth spewed from my mouth, heat and fire and boiled words from deep within me.

Mom slapped me across the face.

She stared me down.

“I don’t care how upset you get child,” she whispered. “But don’t think you can haul off and talk to me any which way you want to. I’m not booboo the fool from down the street, understand?”

I touched the little bubble of my swelling upper lip. Zemira threw the chair from the kitchen table I had been sitting in, crashing it against the wall.

Mom stepped back from me, and whispered, “Stop it, Endy. Stop acting out like this.”

I whirled around and stormed to the front door. Zemira opened it, and slammed it behind me. Outside I barreled down the hallway and threw myself into the stairwell, running down the stairs and skipping steps as fast and hard as I could. I burst out into the lobby and ran out into the city.

As soon as I did, like foghorns, people and ghosts began talking, making the nightlife of the city streets twice as loud. A couple walking by talked to each other, but so did the ghosts of their deceased parents, right next to them, trying to get their attention. The homeless man on the street, he was surrounded with the ghosts of previous homeless, all yelling at him. He couldn’t hear them, but I could. The man standing at the corner with a street prophesying the end of the world, he had a crowd of ghosts with them, all screaming into the void. All the voices all banged and collided into my ears. I couldn’t see any of the ghosts, I could only hear everything.

I ran anyway, trying to escape, but there was nowhere to go, the ghosts were everywhere. Everyone had ghosts, everyone had someone from beyond the veil trying to talk to them, begging for attention, for forgiveness, to listen, to see them, to answer them.

I collapsed in the corner of an alleyway, pressing my hands against my ears. I had dropped my earphones somewhere. I curled into a ball, digging my knees into my forehead, and ducking my head down against my thighs. Voices crowded around me.

“Hey, she can hear us!”

“Please, tell my son that I love him.”

“Back off, that’s my cousin! She only listens to me! Endy, tell them you only talk to me.”

“I need him to hear me, to know I’m sorry!”

“Listen to me. I have a story to tell, just listen to my story. Please, if you listen to me, I can pass without regrets.”

“No, stop, leave Endy alone! That’s my cousin, she only listens to me!”

Tears poured down my face. All of the voices were ghastly, ghoulish, like horrible whispering behind a curtain. Not normal talking. They sounded like the dead who shouldn’t be talking.

I groaned, “Leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone.”

Then suddenly there was a loud gross sound like someone vomiting, but somehow backwards. Just a throaty visceral gulping consumption noise. And all the ghosts began screaming, protesting, shrill noises of abject fear. I heard Zemira make a noise of pure desperation. The screams of the petrified ghosts had me rocking back and forth sobbing.

Then there was silence.

Then a hand touched my shoulder, gently. “Are you alright?”

I shakily opened my eyes, but they were so covered with tears I couldn’t see anything. Someone wiped my eyes with their sleeve, and I was looking into a sweet brown face. She looked chubby and warm and kind.

“You alright there?” she said again. “You were all screaming and crying.”

I sat up, and looked around.

“Zemira?” I asked, but no answer.

The woman hunkered next to me looked concerned.

“Zemira?” she said softly. “There’s no one with you, honey. You’re all alone. Are you okay?”

I wiped the tears off my face. All the ghosts that had been bombarding me. They were all gone. One moment they had been surrounding me, begging me…the next they were the ones screaming for help. Now they’re gone. Zemira is gone too.

I looked at her, this kind savior.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“My name is Kakoi Keres,” she said with a soft smile. “And you are?”

All of a sudden, I got this stern feeling to not give this person my real name. I’ve heard of gut instincts and intuition and little voices that tell people things. Well, this felt like a huge voice.

I said, “Madison Scott.”

“Ah,” said Kakoi Keres, and she had a definite expression of disappointment.

Not who you were looking for…holy moly. I think I dodged a massive bullet.

“Well then,” said Keres, standing up, and I did too. “You should be getting home, Miss Scott. It’s dangerous to wander around by yourself. Who knows what’s out here that could scoop up little girls, right?”

Yeah, like you? I gotta get out here.

I forced a smile, and nodded.

“Yes ma’am,” I said, with another fake smile. “I’ll head home then. Thank you.”

“Have a good evening,” said Keres, and she turned away, but not before I saw her kind smile totally shatter. She looked cold and calculating, and was looking around.

Is she looking for…Endor Harken. What would have happened if I gave my real name?

I turned and ran back home.

I burst in the door, and looking up from the living room was my mother, and a woman I had never seen before.

“Ah,” said my Mom, getting up quickly. “Endor! I’m so glad you’re back. This is Lorene Rinn.”

The other woman stood up. She had white hair in a French braid and dark eyes and wore all white. She lightly inclined her head to me.

Mom said, “She used to work with your father. She came right away when I told her you’d run away from home.”

I breathed heavily.

I said, “I just ran into someone named Kakoi Keres. Is that a name I should be worried about?”

The way Mom and Rinn looked directly at each other with fierce faces told me that yes, I was.

Rinn turned back to me.

“Let’s talk.”

I sat down in the living room on the loveseat, Rinn took the armchair to the right and my Mom sat on the couch.

We all tried to talk at once.

Mom said, “Running away from home was so dangerous and irresponsible.”

I said, “Okay, I need everything explained to me, right now.”

Rinn said, “What exactly did Keres say? Did she talk to you, touch you? What happened?”

We all stopped talking at the same time since all of our words clanged into each other.

Rinn gestured to Mom, and put her hand up at me.

Mom thanked her and stared at me.

“I understand we had a bad argument,” she said first. “And I’m sorry I’ve hurt you, both emotionally and physically. But please understand how dangerous running away was. Especially the moment you did, you ran into Kakoi Keres!”

I yelled, “I don’t even know who that is!”

Mom yelled back, “She killed your father!”

I stood up, my fists clenched at my sides and bellowed, “I didn’t know that! You didn’t explain anything my entire life! You lied to me about being mentally ill and kept me on pills! So why should I believe anything you say now!”

“Let’s calm down,” said Rinn, and gestured to me to sit down, but I didn’t. “Please sit down, please. I said let’s talk, so let’s talk.”

I slowly sat down, but realized I couldn’t. Because the sofa was levitating.

“Zemira, stop it,” I said, but Zemira didn’t reply.

Rinn was staring at me.

“It’s not Zemira,” she said softly, “It was never Zemira.”

“What?” I said, my heart beginning to skip beats, and a hot feeling burning underneath my skin. “What are you talking about?”

Rinn said, “Slamming doors, throwing chairs, now levitating the sofa. That was never Zemira. That was always your power, Endor. Now open your palms, turn them flat towards the ground, and lower your fists. Slowly.”

I followed her directions, and the sofa lowered to the ground, and thumped on the hardwood floor. I slumped onto the sofa, and exhaled, and so did Mom, she was holding her breath too.

Rinn said, “You are a cross compound paranormal, Endor.”

“What?” I said shakily, staring into her cocoa colored eyes.

Rinn said, “A paranormal who has powers that cross designations. In your case, you have the powers of Ghoul and Psychokinetic designations. You can Hear beyond and the Veil and have the psychokinetic ability of telekinesis. That is the ability to control and move objects with your mind. That is a cross designation ability and it is incredibly rare.”

I nodded slowly, trying to process this. Earlier today I was told that ghosts aren’t real and I need to take my meds. Now I’m being told I’m an incredibly rare cross compound paranormal.

“Okay great,” I said. “Now what the hell is up Kakoi Keres?”

Rinn leaned in. “Did anything happen when you meet her?”

She stared at me intently.

I nodded.

“Yeah,” I said.

I explained about the ghosts bombarding me, driving me to tears and in the fetal position. Then it was the ghosts who were screaming for help, sounding petrified. There was this disgusting vomiting sound, but weird, more like a gross swallowing sound. And all the ghosts went silent all at once.

Rinn looked very upset, and Mom highly concerned.

“What?” I asked, sitting up straight. “What the heck?”

Rinn said, “Keres lives up to her last name, death spirit. She is a Consumer.”

“A consumer?” I repeated.

“She can eat or consume dead spirits,” said Rinn in a grave tone. “She’s a literal Ghost Eater. When she does, she takes in all of their knowledge and abilities and becomes more youthful. She will kill other paranormals, then once they become ghosts, eat their spirits, thusly gaining all of their knowledge and abilities. She is the most vicious and dangerous paranormal alive.”

I stared at Rinn in shock.

I whispered, “So it was a good thing I gave her a fake name.”

“Absolutely,” the two women said together.

Rin said, “If you had told Keres your name was Endor Harken, she would have killed you immediately, more than likely. She is your enemy. She killed your father Javan, and killing Javan’s Daughter likely makes her stomach growl.”

“Stop it,” snapped my mother as I gagged. “Are you trying to frighten her half to death!”

“Only make the seriousness of the situation clear,” said Rinn, leaning forward. “So here’s what we’ll do. I’ll be your “therapist” Endor, so you can continue attending Roxbury High. However during your therapy sessions I’ll train you on how to use your powers.”

My eyes widened and then my teeth gritted.

Powers.

Not “ghosts aren’t real” that’s been shoved down my throat all my life. Ghosts are real. I’m a rare paranormal. My father didn’t abandon the family, he was murdered and now his murderer wants to kill me too.

“Zemira,” I suddenly said. “What happened to Zemira?”

Rinn said, “Your cousin, am I right? A ghost who spends her afterlife around you?”

“That’s right,” I said, “I heard her with me in the alleyway but when Kakoi Keres showed up she stopped saying anything.”

Rinn looked saddened.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “However Keres consumes ghosts. I’m afraid Zemira was also consumed or eaten by Keres. She’s gone now.”

I breathed shakily and stared at the floor, my eyes burning. Zemira. My talkative possessive cousin who’s clung to me since she’s died, and was my best friend while she’s alive…is gone.

“Okay,” I whispered tightly. “Keres is officially on my shit list…she’s going down.”

Rinn said firmly, “That’s not something you can hope to accomplish. Not even close at the skill level you are now.”

Mom stood up.

“It’s late,” she said, right as I cut a jaw-splitting yawn. “Endor had a long day, and I think there’s been a lot of talk. Endy, get some sleep. You still have school tomorrow.”

“Therapy session with me after,” said Rinn firmly.

I nodded with another sleepy yawn.

“Got it,” I said with a soft wheeze. “See you then.”

“I’ll walk you out,” said Mom. “Endor, bed.”

“Yes Mom,” I said.

Don’t have to tell me twice. I’m exhausted.

Showered and in nightclothes, I laid down in bed, and realized how quiet it was. No Zemira.

Tears burned in my eyes then followed by a hot flushed feeling in my skin.

Kakoi Keres.

She killed my father, she’s consumed my cousin. And now she’s after me too? Why is she so bloodthirsty? Why is she killing everyone she comes into contact with? Well I won’t let her kill me. I don’t care how many “therapy” sessions it takes. I’ll up my skill levels, and take down Keres!

***

Back at Roxbury High the next day like everything was normal, and not like I had meet my father’s killer face to face last night is wild. But I kept my cool and headed into History with Mr. Feras. Once I walked in a rush of whispers and gasps went through the room, people who were slumped over sat up straight, and everyone was staring at me with hate, with disgust. I flushed on my dark cheeks.

“Quiet down,” said Mr. Feras in an Arabic-accented voice.

I took my normal seat in the back and heard the colliding whispers. Classmates talking to each other, and their ghosts talking to them, trying to get their attention, all clashing into my ears. The voices yelled, pushed, combated, fought over each other.

“He never answers me.”

“Why won’t she look at me?”

“Can anyone hear me?”

“I’m sorry, so sorry.”

“I shouldn’t have done it.”

“Forgive me. I keep saying forgive me.”

“I hate everyone. That’s why I did it. I hate all of you.”

“Look at me. Look me in the face, and say you’re sorry.”

I touched at my ears. Right. I lost my earphones last night. Today I’ll have to deal with the noise of ghosts until Mom comes home with new headphones after work. I pulled my hoodie over my head, and slouched down in my seat, staring at the middle of my desk with my eyes braced wide as I struggled to ignore it all.

Mr. Feras said, “Pay attention to the history lesson. Not knowing your history makes you doomed to repeat it. Here we go now, continuing.”

Mr. Feras resumed the history lecture. I hadn’t even noticed when he started class. I pulled my hoodie tightly against my ears with both hands, and stared up at the ceiling. Everyone’s ghosts crowded against me, all yelling and talking over each other. Like too many mixtapes blaring at the same time.

“Talk to me, please!”

“Can you hear me?”

“Tell him I’m sorry.”

“I’ll do it again if I could!”

“Just wait until it’s your turn, I’ll be waiting!”

When the bell rang, I bolted out of class. But rather than running to find someplace quiet to decompress, someone was waiting for me.

“Hi, Endor right?”

She waved. She had rusted red hair down past her shoulders, and jade green eyes. Her skin was pale white with a smattering of red freckles of her cheeks and nose.

“I’m Fionúir Delvin,” she said cheerfully. “And you are Endor, right?”

She had a little Irish brogue that made her words should even more happy. I’ve never had anyone speak to me like that, like they actually wanted to talk to me.

I paused then said lowly, “Yeah. Endor. Endor Harken. You know me?”

“Dr. Rinn’s been telling us all about the new girl,” said Fionúir with another cheerful smile. “Besides, I saw all the ghosts bothering you, so I could figure out who you were.”

My eyes widened. “You did what?”

“Ah I see, literally, I see,” said Fionúir, pointing at her eyes then pointing at me. “I’m a Seer. A paranormal who can See beyond the Veil.”

I whispered. “The Veil. That’s the curtain that separates the dead and the living.”

“That’s right,” said Fionúir. “And I saw all the ghosts that were hounding around you. They sure were begging for attention!”

She said that like ghosts were dogs wanting treats and not like audio monsters ruining my life.

The warning bell rang, so we said goodbye, with Fionúir chirping, “See you at therapy, Endor!”

I headed to the science lab with Mrs. Beltrán. The room had a large window into the room, inside was a bunch of science equipment, black tables and stools. I normally sat alone in the back, but this time a Japanese boy was sitting next to my assigned seat. He waved eagerly at me.

I inhaled slowly. I’ve never had this before. I slowly walked over. He smiled at me, and I lost that inhaled breath, he was so pretty, he could be a member of a J-pop band.

“Hey, the newcomer that Dr. Rinn told us about,” said the Japanese boy, nodding at me. “Oh, I’m Reinosuke Sato, by the way.”

I said, “I’m Endor Harken. Ah so um you can hear or see ghosts too, I guess?”

He patted the seat next to him, and I sat down.

Then he shook his head and said, “I’m a Sensate. I’m a paranormal who “senses” the Veil by feeling through the senses. I can have a physical sensation but I don’t see or hear or talk to anything beyond the veil.”

I sat leaned a little in the lab stool and my brain scrambled to comprehend what was going on right now.

Mrs. Beltrán called the science class to start, and I had to stop talking. But my brain was going haywire.

After class, Reinosuke waved. “See you at therapy!”

He winked, and trotted away.

Right. Therapy.

Now though I had Mr. Thiago Guzmán for Geography. The room’s walls were covered with different maps. I took an empty seat at the far end by a large window.

A black kid next to me leaned into me, whispering under his breath, “You’re the new girl, right? A cross compound paranormal, really?”

I nodded, and said softly, “Um yeah.”

He stuck his hand out. “Imamu Zawadi. Call me Ima.”

I winced and waved my hand from side to side.

“I don’t really shake hands, Ima,” I whispered. “I’m Endor Harken. Endor is good.”

Mr. Guzmán loomed over us. We quickly faced front, and went quiet.

Mr. Guzmán nodded, and continued lecturing.

About forty minutes later, a bell rang and everyone got up.

“4^th Class,” said Ima. “What do you have?”

“Miss Harris, Philosophy,” I said, staring as Ima was giving me a handsome grin.

Ima is tall, broad-shouldered, his complexion smooth sepia brown, his ears pierced with obsidian studs in both lobes and a silver chain looped over his neck. I’m used to boys giving me disgusted looks and telling me I’m weird, overlayed with their ghosts yelling and begging over them. Not smiling at me.

I blurted, “You know I can hear ghosts, right?”

“Sure. A Hearken and a telekinetic.” said Ima, looking at me with dazzling ebony eyes. “A Ghoul and Psychokinetic compound paranormal is insanely rare.”

“T-thanks,” I said, and lowered my head, heat burning my cheeks.

The warning bell rang and Ima waved.

“Catch you later,” said Ima, flicking up two fingers. “In the therapy room.”

“Therapy room, right,” I said. “Where is that?”

But Ima was already gone, and the warning bell was ringing.

I had lunch now, but Roxbury High’s cafeteria is a hellscape of screaming ghosts, so I simply go outside in the courtyard behind the cafeteria, and sit down alone.

I was there but a few minutes when I was approached by a teenage boy around my age. He had silky chocolate brown hair and kind hazel eyes, with even a kinder smile.

He said, “Hugh Grimm. I’m a Sonant. A paranormal who can talk with those beyond the veil.”

I blinked. He was getting straight to the point.

I said, “I’m Endor Harken.”

“Harken,” Hugh said quietly. “That is an interesting last name.”

“Why?” I said. “I mean, what’s funny about it?”

“Well,” he said. “A Hearken is what we call a paranormal who can hear those beyond the Veil.”

I swallowed hard. Right. The Veil between the living and the dead. Paranormal. Hearken. Me. Javan’s Daughter. Kakoi Keres.

I said, “See you at therapy.”

Hugh saluted me. “At therapy, Harken.”

“Endor is fine,” I said, but he was already walking away.

I had two more classes after lunch, Drama with Miss Davis and Politics with Mrs. Macleod. But finally, finally, class was over, and I headed to the therapy room. My heart pounded and I focused on my breathing. It’s fine, it’s normal. It’s a normal every day occurrence to find out your father was murdered and his murderer wants to suck you dry. and now there’s a group of kids who have powers like you do and you have to learn to control your powers so that you can survive it. Right?

I stopped in front of the white wood door. A blue construction paper with the words Therapy Room written on it in black sharpie marker had been taped to it.

“Uh wow, that’s janky,” I muttered. Still, I turned the knob and stepped inside.

The room had mirrored windows on one side, so we could see out, no one can see it. The seating was fluffy and soft, and the walls padded, the floor hard, and there were round tables, and a desk at the corner. Looking up were all the kids I had meet, Finouri, Ima, Reinosuke and Hugh.

They all smiled to see me, and chorused, “Endor!”

Tears immediately rushed to my eyes. I’ve never once seen this. People happy to see me.

Fionúir waved me down. “Come and sit with us! We were just gossiping about you.”

“Hey,” I said, even as I came over with a little skip in my step. “You’re talking behind my back?”

“Not exactly,” said Ima with another deadly grin. “We’re talking about different cross-compound designations.”

“Yeah, right,” I said, sitting down with them. “Okay hold on. How many designations are there? I’m hearing Hearken and Sensate and Sonant?”

“Well listing them all would take a while,” said Reinosuke. “But basically there’s different types of paranormals. The people at this table are Ghoul paranormals.”

I whispered, “Ghoul?”

“Yup,” said Fionúir, “We all are paranormals that deal with the dead, ghoulish powers. There is also Psychokinetic paranormals, like powers that deal with the mind, you know, telepaths and telekinetic.”

I clasped my temples because my brain was about to explode.

“All of that stuff is real,” I gasped. “I thought that was fantasy, like in sci-fi movies.”

“Well they had to get that from somewhere,” laughed Hugh. “Did you think they made it up out of mid-air? It’s real alright. Interesting, though, isn’t it? A Hearken named Harken. A coincidence?”

“Paranormals don’t believe in coincidences, Mr. Grimm,” said a clear ringing older woman’s voice.

Everyone’s chatter stopped immediately.

I looked up.

Standing in the entrance was Lorene Rinn. She had white hair in a French braid and dark eyes. She was wearing an all white power suit and tall white heeled boots. Her arms were crossed. She was holding a folder tucked underneath her hand. She walked over and nodded at all of us.

“Let’s begin.”

The End.

Hope you enjoyed, Storytellers! I’ve noticed I really don’t know how to end short stories, I’m too inclined to write novels! Should I continue this? What stories are you writing? Let me know!

Until next time,

A. E.

Immortal Being

I woke up in a body bag, laying flat on an ice-cold tray. I scrunched my face, and winced as a bullet squirmed its way out of my forehead, and skittered over my cheek. Ah, who killed me this time? It would take some time to remember my death, especially with a traumatic brain injury like a bullet blasting through the soft gray tissues of my mind the faster than the speed of sound.

I tried to sit up, and hit my head. Dammit. I’m inside a refrigeration unit. A morgue. Doesn’t seem like I’ve been embalmed. Or autopsied. The tickling sensation might have woken me up sooner.

I laid back down, and scooted, then began kicking. I broke open the door of the unit, and wiggled my way out of there. I tore open the body bag, and plucked off the toe tag.

“What the hell is going on?!”

The door burst open, and two people ran in at all the noise I was making, looked like the medical examiner and an assistant.

I was standing there in my death-day suit with the ruins of my body bag around my feet, and fresh blood running down my forehead from the bullet exit wound.

I put my hands up for peace.

“Stay calm,” I said slowly and clearly. “Everything is fine.”

The assistant screamed shrilly. “Zombie! It’s a zombie! Fuck, shit! Zombie!”

“I’m not a zombie,” I said as calmly as possible. “Clearly I’m talking to you with logic and sense, and not groaning numbly for brains.”

The assistant stabbed his finger at me. “Vampire! You’re a vampire!”

“Ang!” I made a buzzer noise. “Wrong again. You get a third try. Hey. I’m standing here naked. Can I get the clothes I was wearing please?”

The medical examiner said in a quiet stilted voice, “You came from the ER as a DOA. Bullet wound at the front…the entire back of your head was gone. Brains blown. And now you’re standing here-”

“Naked,” I interjected firmly. “I’m standing here naked. Clothes. Now. Would be nice.”

“Necromancer!” The assistant yelled in this triumphant way. “You’re a necromancer!”

“Totally wrong,” I said, trying not to fully lose my temper. “Necromancers raise the dead, they aren’t undead themselves. If I have to ask for clothes one more time, I’m going to lose it.”

The medical examiner said, “The bag of your effects were by your legs inside the refrigeration unit.”

He pointed. “Seems like you’ve kicked the bag over there…while destroying your way out of the body bag.”

I looked over, saw the wrapped plastic bag, and went over, opening it, pulled out my clothes and began to get dressed, ignoring the fact that my shirt was covered in brains and skull fragments.

“Okay wait,” said the assistant, staring at me. “I did my three tries, now you have to tell me what you are! A ghoul? A ghost? A lich? Or a wight?”

I stood up dressed and sighed heavily then said, “How about human?”

The two said together, “Bullshit.”

I had to smile.

“I’m human,” I said. “And I only ever lie about one thing.”

The assistant said, “About being human.”

I put a finger up. “About being mortal. I’m a human. I’m simply not mortal. Watch.”

I looked around with interest at the morgue room I had woken up not-dead in. Most times when someone has decided to off me, and I wake up not-dead, I tend to be alone. Crawling my way out of a shallow grave in the woods, or sitting up straight in an abandoned corn field. My favorite waking up not-dead was when I woke up with my head facing a bloodied axe leaning on tree stump with the reflection on a mirrored edge showing my legs, arms and torso in separate areas. That’s when I learned I can survive being decapitated and dismembered. My body just pulls back together like popping off a Barbie doll’s limbs then popping them back into place. Fun times.

Here though…here was quite new. Tools, all sort of tools. Cutting instruments, bread boards, and chemical test strips. Jars and containers. Waxed string to sew up bodies. Curved needles that looked like upholstery needles. Trays and pans and chain mail gloves.

Yet what I picked up was a sharp instrument I didn’t know the name of. Maybe a scalpel? But it didn’t look like the scalpels I’ve seen on medical TV shows. The handle was thick and black for a firm grip, and the blade was long, like a foot long, and it was also several inches wide.

The medical examiner and assistant exclaimed fearfully and put up their hands and waved them around, acting and sounding like I was about to attack them.

“Oh its not for you,” I said, facing them. “See?”

I sunk the blade into my chest, into my heart, until the grip bruised my skin. Then I pulled it right out, blood pouring from the injury, and I pushed my shirt up so they could watch. The ruptured skin spurted out a few more drops of blood but that stopped as the meat bubbled and pulled back together, the skin slid up closed and in seconds, the injury was gone.

“There, good as new,” I said, wiping the blood off. “A simple stab wound like that heals within seconds. Being shot in the head knocked me out for a few hours, seeing as it took out the back of my cranial cavity.”

The assistant yelled again, “What about that is human?”

“I’m The Healer,” I said, my inflection putting emphasis on the title. “I’m the Healer. I can heal any injury, got it? I heal so well that I can’t die. Well, far as I see it, I just haven’t found the right type of injury that I can’t heal from yet. Anyway, the guessing game was fun and so was show-and-tell, but I gotta go. I just remembered who blew my brains out, and I should be on my way. They’ll probably be coming here to check that the deed was done, and since it’s not, they’ll attempt their second try and well, I’d rather not be around for that. Tootles.”

I dropped the blade on the floor, and headed out the exit doors, not looking back. I needed new clothes, stat. I checked the pockets of my dirtied pants, my wallet was gone. Did I get robbed after I was faux-murdered?

“Jake Murphy.”

I slowly turned around at the sound of my name. And not one of my countless pseuds. My birth name.

Standing against the wall by the exit door looked like a fed, some girl boss in a suit. She flipped a badge at me, too fast for me to read it, only enough for me to see a fancy silver shield.

“I’m Agent Leila López,” she said, as if I cared. “I work with Sector 17. Would you mind coming in with me?”

I said, “Are you the people who blew the back of my brains out?”

“No,” she said dryly. “But you won’t have to worry about those people if you come with me. As a plus, I’ll get you some new clothes on the way.”

I shrugged. It’s not like I had anything else to do.

With some new duds, I hopped in a ride with Agent López.

“So where are you taking me?” I asked.

“To Atkinson Bio-Systems and Genetic Engineering’s head lab,” she said. “Sector 17 has been tracking your movements but now Atkinson needs someone with your…talents.”

I rolled my eyes. So experimentation.

I said, “I’m not interested in being your little lab rat, lady.”

Agent López said, “I’ll let the Chief Control Officer explain what he needs from you. But far as I know, it’s a job they’d like to recruit you for, not experimentation.”

“Recruit?”

I looked out of the window as Agent López turned down a lane to the science facility. I could see the words AB-SGE on the sides of the building. Agent López drove us into an underground parking garage.

“Let’s head up,” she said. “Chief Control Officer Halbert Godwin is practically salivating to meet you.”

“Salivating,” I repeated. “Like he’s hungry to devour me? Like I said, experimentation, dissection.”

“Just hear what he has to say.”

Up the elevator, down the hall, I noticed how white, crisp and clean the place was. It was also heavily guarded by men in riot gear holding either guns or electric batons. Even the grounds had dogs on chains with guards patrolling.

I said dryly, “This is just a science lab?”

“Genetics lab,” said Agent López, taking out an identification card, and coding in on the door. The pad flashed green. “There are somethings that are best kept on the campus.”

“Prisoners,” I said.

“Government property,” she said, in a correcting tone with a small smile.

Maybe I should get the hell out of here.

The door opened.

Inside was a giant machine to the right, and to the left a massive control panel. There were about twenty lab coats inside, all rushing about, with clipboards and tablets, talking to each other, and collaborating. Only one looked up, and immediately looked at me.

Chief Control Officer Halbert Godwin I assume.

He rushed over, making me brace myself, but all he did was put his hands out for a shake. I slowly did, and he clasped my hand with both of his and shook heartily up and down.

“Jake Murphy,” he said eagerly and grinned widely, his eyes bright behind his glasses. “The man, the myth, the legend, himself! Right in front of me! It’s a honor, sir.”

Grossed out, I jerked my hand away from him.

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Listen. I’m not signing up to be a lab rat, so let me out of here, Godwin.”

The CCO put his hands up peacefully.

“No lab rat, not at all,” he said with a grin. “How does interdimensional traveler sound?”

I stared at him, then slowly looked at the giant machine. In the center of the mass of cords, beams, and steel rods was a chair.

“What is this?” I asked lowly.

“Let me explain,” said Godwin. “Atkinson Bio-Systems and Genetic Engineering works in a secret division called Sector 17. Sector 17, underneath the leadership called The Secretary. Sector 17 has fingers in many pies of secret government organizations with working in different companies to gain research and skills, with genetic engineering only being one. Our part is to create genetically enhanced government superior soldiers.”

I crossed my arms. “And what do you need me for? To copy my genes for creating the super-healing gene?”

Godwin waved that away.

“We figured that out ages ago,” he said. “And it’s actually because we figured that out that we began working on another project. Interdimensional travel. The Chair.”

He pointed to the machine. “The Chair is a machine that cross dimensions. While we have confirmed the chair can cross the barrier, everyone or thing else that has made the journey has been torn to bits. Even our genetically enhanced superior soldiers can’t heal from it. You however…”

I said slowly, “I am immortal. I can survive the trip.”

Godwin nodded, looking a mixture of serious and grave. “You can either survive it, or find out the one way you can’t survive. I’ve gotten to read your case file. You’ve survived many, many things that humans should have died.”

“Hung, shot, dismembered and beheaded, run over flat, brains blow out, sure,” I said, crossing my arms again. “Now you said torn to bits. How small bits are we talking about?”

A nearby lab coat handed me a file folder with pictures. I flipped through it, and while I have a strong stomach, it felt like my brain was trying to protect me from what I was looking at.

I said, “Are these people and animals, or strawberry smoothies you poured all over The Chair?”

Godwin said, “This is a recruitment, Jake Murphy. You’re not being forced or experimented on. Everyone here agrees that this maybe enough force to actually kill you, The Immortal, may not survive a trip crossing dimensions. So it’s fully your decision. Do you want to do this?”

I stared at the smoothies then looked at The Chair. I’ve lived for so long, and tried to die for so long, that now confronted with an actual death, a true death, that butterflies began to flap in my stomach.

I said quietly, “Have you gotten any readings about the other dimensions?”

“Oh yes,” said Godwin, his eyes bright with excitement. “It exists. Many dimensions exist. We’ve plotted them. It’s an Expanse. We are just one out of billions. Jake, you’re the only Immortal here. What if you’re even from one of these Expansions? What if you meet someone like you? Imagine what we can learn from the new dimensions with each crossing? Cure for diseases, bio-enhancement, even weaponry. But again.”

Godwin breathed in and out. “This is wholly your decision.”

I chanced one more glanced at the strawberry smoothie pictures then back to the interdimensional chair machine. Did I want to chance it? Chance my immortality against seeing another dimension? I’ve tried and tried to die only to watch as my body pulled itself back together, as my eyes opened again and again. This could be my one chance I can taste the sweet relief of death.

“And if I don’t?” I turned back to the CCO. “What if I don’t die? What if I cross the dimension? Can you bring me back?”

“You’ll join the team.” Agent López stepped forward. “Become part of Sector 17. Work for the Secretary. You’ll be an elite member, the only one of us capable of riding the Chair. I can speak for the Secretary when I say we’ll get you whatever you want. You’ll be a priceless asset.”

I pointed to the back of my skull. “And the people who blew the back of my brains out?”

Agent López drew a line with her thumb over her neck. “Consider the matter handled, Agent Murphy. Do we have a deal?”

She put her hand out.

I inhaled, held my breath, then I shook her hand.

“Deal.”

Chief Control Officer clapped his hands loudly, and made me jump.

“We’re a go, people,” he called out. “Let’s rig the chair for Ride #18, let’s go.”

I said sharply, “18? You’ve killed 18 people?”

“We’ve tested 17 times,” corrected Godwin. “And it wasn’t always human test trails. Now we don’t have to worry about it.”

He clapped my shoulder friendly-like. “We’ve got you now, Agent Murphy. Let’s get you cleaned up, and in riding gear.”

An hour later, washed, disinfected, and now decked in a bodysuit that wouldn’t look out of place in a sci-fi convention, I sat down in The Chair. They buckled my legs and my waist to the chair, and my collarbone and my head, and my arms. There was a button by my right and left hands that would automatically pop the restraints off to allow me to get out of The Chair. My ears and eyes had nodules, the control room would be able to see and hear what I did with a mouthpiece so I could talk back to the control room.

“Let’s get ready for the ride,” said CCO from the control panel. “Boot up the system. Full power. Five, four, three, two, one. Let it rip!”

The Machine’s rods and beams began to coil and twist, then the lasers fired off in brilliant colors of red, orange, gold and purple. The Chair began to burn very hot. The Chair vibrated like one of those twirl-a-whirl coasters I got on once, and never again since it made me want to be sick. My vision went white, and my skin peeled off my bones, my guts boiled their way to the surface out of my body, I tried to scream but my esophagus was twisted inside out.

Then The Chair landed with a thud on a grainy surface. After a seconds, my smoothie body slipped and slurped back together. My head lolled back and forth then I blinked open my eyes. I inhaled quickly, and from the sharp pain in my lungs, I wasn’t breathing oxygen, yet my immortal body simply healed from the poisoning and let me kept breathing anyway.

I looked up at the purple and blue clouds slowly roiling over the surface of this dimension. Then I looked ahead at the wide world and in fact, it really reminded me of an American city, like New York or London or something. There was tall towering skyscrapers and low slung buildings. There were bill boards with signs and giant television screens. Vehicles rushed along the streets and I saw highways way up in the sky, twisting around like a metal snake.

And there were people, but they weren’t human. Everyone else all had tails, fangs, and scaly lizard-like bodies. Their lips pulling back to bare their sharp teeth and their forked tongues flicking out as they made loud shrill hissing sounds. It was like when a cat hisses at someone, showing its teeth.

I said lowly under my breath, “Ah yeah, um, are you guys seeing this?”

There was no answer. The rough ride had torn apart my communications devices. Also the lizard people had gotten what had to be their military, because they were in matching uniform, holding what had to be guns, and what looked like sci-fi bows made out of metal strapped to their back.

The lizards slowly approached me, two had their guns out, and one was making a sign at me, holding the hand out palm at me then curled it backwards itself, like pulling me towards it.

Come here.

I don’t think so.

I realized then there was no return button on my chair. I had no way to signal to the control room that I wanted to come back. My comms was down, it shattered pieces somewhere along the way of crossing dimensions. And now I’m slowly getting surrounded by well-armed lizard alien-things.

For the first time in a long time, since the moment I realized I couldn’t die no matter what, I prayed.

God, if there is a God, get me out of here. I know I’ve always wanted to die, and I still kind of do want to die, but I don’t want to die like this. So please. Amen.

The Chair began to grow hot, and violently shake like twirl-a-whirl. I closed my eyes tight, and began praising intently. The lizards began growling and hissing again but with lasers of red, blue, orange and purple swirling around me, I disappeared from them, and reappeared in the control room.

I was a smoothie again, but my body slimed its way back into a human form, and I pressed the button to release itself from the prison of The Chair. I stumbled off it, gasping and inhaling. The science nerds pushed themselves around me, spraying me with disinfectant and holding clipboards and tablets and trying to talk to me.

I walked up to the CCO and grabbed his collar with both trembling hands. He put his hands up peacefully, grinning at me.

“Well,” he said, his eyes dancing behind his glasses. “How was the ride?”

I breathed heavily, my fists shakily clenching his collar.

Then I said, “Let’s do it again.”

The End.

I also like sci-fi, so I tried my hand at it. Hope you enjoyed, Storytellers!

Until next time,

A. E.

Hello Storytellers~

I want to talk about My Broadleaf Writers Association 10^th Annual Conference Experience! So, if you don’t know what Broadleaf is this is straight from them:

The Broadleaf Writers Association’s mission is to enrich and advance the craft of writing for all writers through education, inspiration and community. We’re here to help you become the best writer you can be.

The founder and director of Broadleaf is Zachary Steele, and he is a former coworker and friend of my mother, Elizabeth Costello. Due to that connection, I was able to join the 10^th Annual Conference.

I was extremely nervous, as this was my first writers conference and I didn’t know anyone personally besides Zachary, and even that relationship was more through my mother than directly me. I really felt like a bunny rabbit, I felt small, like I didn’t totally belong there. Everyone else were accomplished published writers, and I didn’t think that my single self-published novel from 2018 meant anything.

I am an introvert and I have little social skills (blame my upbringing, I was badly bullied and an outcast, so I don’t really know how to talk to people, still learning.) I kept finding places to sit alone and don’t know how to approach others and start conversation.

However those I did talk to were outstanding. Its very hard for me to remember faces, because my eyesight is very bad even with glasses, so I don’t know what anyone looks like and can’t recognize anyone, and my memory is bad, so I don’t remember anyone’s names.

But!

This time I’ve managed to remember two names, and I’ll remember two faces. These two people left such an impact on me, I doubt I’ll ever forget them.

Benji Carr and Kim Poovey.

There’s no way to talk about them in order of importance, so I’ll write about them in order of appearance.

I met Kim Poovey on Day 1.

It was lunch time, and I was having trouble finding a place to sit. Everyone else already had filled up the tables, and no one else was really making a place for me. So I was sort of just standing there, looking around hoping I’d find a place where there was no place.

Until Kim Poovey very kindly not only said I could sit with her, she made room for me. She invited me to sit with her, moved her things, made space for me, and assured me she was happy to have me sit with her. She also made room for someone else who came over looking lost and needing a place to sit down in the crowded area.

That alone immediately set her apart. She’s kind, sweet, looks out for others and makes room for people, especially those who are alone.

Once I was seated next to her, we started talking. Our conversation was so natural, like we’ve known each other forever. No awkwardness. We spoke on the importance of libraries, and that my mother and my sister are librarians. I told her a story about how much I loved romance novels when I was growing up and how I snuck around to read Harlequin romance novels when I was like 8 or 10 in the library and got caught by the head librarian. I suppose my experience growing up in libraries is a good piece for another article.

Then we spoke about black characters in fiction, because I showed her my book The Other Side on Amazon, and she loved the fact that I have a black character on the cover. Right then she bought my book, and I signed it for her. The instant support meant so much to me. I’ve found it difficult to make and keep friends as a writer, people keep disappearing or not making tight bonds.

Meeting Kim on Day 1 made my day that day.

On Day 2, I met Benji Carr. He was presenting a flash fiction/short story class, and I went to it because I’ve decided to start posting my short stories on “Tell Your Story” and I wanted to know how to do it. I’ve posted two short fiction stories here on my newsletter, Queen Rae of Blood and Bone, and The Blood Queen’s Army. Check them out here, and here.

I hadn’t really talked to Benji yet, but watching him in other panels, he’s funny, and warm, and really smart. I sat in the front row, because I wouldn’t be able to really see. I’ve had 3 eye surgeries, and they’ve taken their toll. I’ve realized that at Broadleaf, that if I sit too far back, I can’t make out the presenter name tags or if there’s a slideshow, I can’t read the slideshow. So front row for me.

Anyway, Benji had these really neat story prompt dice and he had us roll them and write a story based on the image that came up on the dice, along with the prompt he gave us. I’m not giving the class any justice, by the way. It was much better than I am describing it. Especially with the way Benji talks and presents, he’s charismatic and how he talks to the class and not at the class.

My first dice roll came up with an image that looked like a little boy chained to a monster made out of his shadow. So I wrote the following short story in the five minutes we were allotted. Any weird errors about it are genuine, I’ve simply transcribed it from my notebook.

The boy’s shadow had turned into a monster. At first it was a small mewling thing. No one even noticed. But the boy noticed. He fed his monster table scraps at the dining table and pet its head when it curled up next to his pillow at night. The boy and his shadow were like friends. Until the fights began. The boy didn’t understand. Were his parents mad at him? why did they yell at each other like that? The slammed doors, the thrown couch pillows, the crying into hands. Was he the one at fault? The monster grew without table scraps. His claws lengthened, his wide mouth spurted fangs and his white eyes were wide and white, and his tall ears could hear everything. The boy’s feet were chained to the monster’s feet. He was his shadow after all.

My memory fails me here. I know I got applause, and I don’t remember what Benji said anymore. It was after we did our second prompt, that I will likely not forget what Benji said. When we were done writing, Benji asked if anyone would like to share. I said I’d share if no one else wanted to. No one else raised their hands, so I shared. This was that prompt, and I think we were given 7 minutes this time? Naturally I don’t remember. My memory is a sieve. Anything wonky is simply the way I transcribed it. Also the formatting is how I wrote it in my notebook.

The turtle drifted alone for eons. Or has it been only seconds?

The turtle couldn’t remember.

“Who’se out there?” The turtle cried out, desperate for connection, for anyone, someone.

Nothing.

Silence.

The abyss had no answers.

Then there was a light, there, in the distance.

The turtle drifted towards it, with slow paddles of its giant feet.

There was no telling what the light illuminated but anything other than the abyss.

The turtle didn’t know how long the journey to the light took, maybe eons again but the light remained.

The turtle peered at the small burning glow.

Staring up at the turtle were eyes.

“What are you?” The turtle asked.

The eyes had no mouth to speak with.

The turtle with great comprehension realized they were the beginning and the end. It was the turtle who created the eyes. It was the turtle who’s voice had the power to bring forth what they will.

The turtle said, “I grant you eyes to see with, a mouth to speak with, a body to move with. I grant you life.”

The bird appeared, stretching its wings, opening it’s mouth, and said, “I am here.”

The turtle saw it was good, and was pleased.

That entire above short story came from the dice image that was only a turtle. After I read out loud, I recall the room being in a sort of stunned silence. And Benji Carr was looking at me with the strangest look on his face, I’ve never seen someone look at me like that. It felt like he was beholding me.

Then he said, in this awed voice, “Has anyone ever told you how good at this you are?”

I don’t tend to remember what people say to me. I am very much “in one ear out the other.” I tend to be very distracted in conversation, my attention is getting nabbed by things moving around me, the whole “look squirrel” thing. Or I’m listening the voices in my head, focusing on random story elements and ideas that I am thinking up and end up just accidentally not really listening. Someone introduces themselves to me and I’ve forgotten their name instantly.

But not this time. This time, I heard what he said, and it held on to me. It stuck with me.

I said to him, “I was told in undergrad that what I write is trash.”

And he said, “Fuck those guys.”

I don’t believe I’ve ever remembered an entire conversation word for word before. Internalizing a conversation? I can remember how someone made me feel, or remember vaguely what we talked about.

This is different, this is new.

But I think what made this hit so hard, is only five minutes before I took that class, I was writing a journal in the hallway outside the room that I’ll put a little snippet of here.

my writing is shit

Yup. So one minute journalling how awful my writing is, the next having Benji Carr, a journalist, storyteller and playwright who’s work has been featured in The Guardian, ArtsATL and Pembroke Magazine, and has done tons of other things, is telling me how good I am at writing.

Naturally I barely was able to process the compliment.

After the class, we ended up talking again, along with Shaun Hamil (author of A Cosmology of Monsters and The Dissonance and has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop), and another author who I never got her name, and this other woman who I had no idea who she was, mainly about genre basis, and how terribly we’ve been treated by higher-ed programs when writing fantasy and sci-fi in undergrad English and MFA programs.

When talking with Benji Carr again, he was encouraging me so much, really pouring into the wounds that were left by my undergrad program. Then he said two sentences that I haven’t forgotten.

“You aren’t small. You are a creator of worlds.” - Benji Carr

How can you possibly forget something like that?

I entered Broadleaf’s 10^th Annual Conference feeling small. I left with more confidence that maybe, just maybe, I can really work at this “be an author” dream that I’ve had since childhood.

I heard so much about publishing, marketing, branding, that it was more daunting than encouraging. But none of it made me want to give up. It all simply made me want to try harder.

It made me believe that maybe I can do it. It gave me more tools to work with, and gave me a solid idea about what to do. It also made me realize I wasn’t alone. I spend most of my days alone, writing and drawing by myself. Though I have online groups, it’s not the same as human interaction. It’s one thing to post on a Substack wall, and get maybe a like, or maybe a comment, and another to be surrounded by other authors talking to me in real life and validating my existence.

In the end, the Broadleaf conference made me feel like I’m actually a writer, though I already claimed being a writer because I write every day and I have self-published a book, it made me feel like I can actually succeed as a writer. I saw a path ahead that I could climb, rather than tirelessly write alone. Make friends, a way to publish, develop my career.

It was truly amazing and I hope I can go against next year.

Until next time Storytellers,

A.E.

The Blood Queen’s Army

The Blood Queen ordered me to raise her army so I needed the House of Lords to bequeath their loyalty, and their soldiers to fight underneath her banner.

With the power as the General of the Queen’s Army, I summoned a Lord’s Hall to be held. My second-in-command Lieutenant General Ishionte Eshari greeted me.

“General Silvenor,” he said, with a salute. “The House Lords have all gathered in the Lord’s Hall.”

“All Seven?” I asked.

Lieutenant General nodded. “Lords of Houses Therían, Ciarán, Iridián, Lí, Bernón, Deontè and Aedán are all present, General.”

I clasped the iron claw-shaped ring on my finger, and turned it back and forth. The black ring curved like a claw with a red dip at the end, and a painted droplet at the center. The mark of the Blood Queen. Wearing her ring proved that I had her favor, and my words are her words. The Lords are to listen to me as if the Queen spoke to them.

The Lieutenant General said, “General Silvenor? Are you ready, sir?”

I gave one last look at the reflection glass to address my appearance. I wore the Blood Queen’s black uniform, the long sleeves clung to the contours of my biceps, and the slopes of the torso flattered the tight lines of my abdomen with black trousers and the vested uniform slimmed down my bust that pressed against the tunic.

“I’m ready,” I said.

I adjusted the cape against my shoulders and swung away from the mirror with crisp clicks of my booted heels on the smooth black tiled floors. I left Lieutenant General Eshari rushing to catch up.

The Lord’s Hall bustled with the chatter of low voices, the clinks of wine goblets, and the hearty burps now and then from good meat. The two guards at the door saw us arriving and pulled the double doors open to let us in.

The herald blew the horn and after garnering attention of the room he called out, “The General of the Queen’s Army, Silva Silvenor and the Lieutenant General Ishionte Eshari!”

The seven House Lords looked up from dining and consorting. Valdrin Therían from the House of Therían, Cade Ciarán from the House of Ciarán. Isaura Iridián from the House of Iridián, Takai Lí from the House of Lí. Slavo Bernón from the House of Bernón, Dajia Deonté from the House of Deontè and lastly Adelina Aedán from the House of Aedán.

“Let’s be seated, House Lords,” I said.

I gestured to the High Table at the front of the room. Behind each tall seat was the banner for each house. In the center seat was the banner of the Blood Queen, and there I sat, representing the Queen herself.

The House Lords met eyes then all took their seats.

The herald blew the horn. “Let the meeting commence!”

I flicked my finger to the scribe, and he began to take the notes.

I said, “I’ll get straight to the heart of the matter. The Queen is declaring war on the Open Lands.”

The House Lords reacted. Valdrin Therían, from the House of Therían, lifted his broad chin. Takai Lí, from the House of Lí, he only slightly narrowed his dark slim eyes. Adelina Aedán, from the House of Aedán and the only female Lord, she clicked her teeth and shook her head. The other House Lords gasped with shock and looked about anxiously.

Then one asked, “Is it true?”

I said, “It is true. Her patience has run dry with the Open Land’s rebellion for the past 10 years. The Blood Queen has survived her last assassination attempt and now she will crush those who have stood up to her and her rule. The Queen requires the House Lords to loyally give over your soldiers underneath my command, and arise as the Blood Queen’s Army.”

Isaura Iridián from the House of Iridián spoke.

“You know what this means, don’t you General?” he said. “For the Army leave the Underground Realms and lay siege to the Open Lands? It’s madness.”

“Ay take care how ya speak in the Queen’s name,” spoke up Slavo Bernón from the House of Bernón, who’s always been quick to defend the Queen, even in her absence. “Don ya know she’s tha most powerful Queen we’ve had in centuries? I, Slavo Bernón of the House of Bernón, loyally offer the Bernón troops to the Blood Queen’s Army.”

I slid over the royal decree, and Slavo Bernón stamped his lord’s signature on the scroll.

Dajia Deonté from the House of Deontè twirled his finger around his long dark braid that dangled in the front of his smooth brown face, the rest of his braids bound at the back of his head.

“Alright,” he said deeply. “Say we sign this. How soon does the Queen of Blood and Bone expect our troops rallied and ready for war?”

“Be ready at any time,” I said. “We are going to war. 10 years of assassination attempts during our Queen’s rules, let alone the attempts before her coronation has finally worn the Queen down. She will not be passive any longer.”

Cade Ciarán from the House of Ciarán, and the only House Lord who’s a powerful sorcerer able to summon dark beings and has defensive black magic, said, “Very well. It won’t bode well to deny the Blood Queen anything. I, Cade Ciarán, of the House of Ciarán loyally offer the Ciarán troops to the Blood Queen’s Army.”

It was Ciarán to next stamp his House Lord’s signature onto the royal decree scroll.

After that the other House Lords fell into line until it was the only female Lord left, Adelina Aedán from the House of Aedán.

She asked, “Does the Queen of Blood and Bone have any idea who is behind the assassination attempts?”

“That is not the point of this meeting,” I said. “Do you loyally offer the Aedán troops to the Blood Queen’s Army?”

Adelina Aedán looked around and saw the rest of the House Lords all looking at her. She exhaled, and nodded.

I pushed the six-stamped royal decree to her.

She said, “I, Adelina Aedán, of the House of Aedán loyally offer the Aedán troops to the Blood Queen’s Army.”

I accepted the royal decree scroll and looked at it, reading down the list of the names.

Slavo Bernón, House of Bernón.

Cade Ciarán, House of Ciarán.

Dajia Deonté, House of Deontè.

Valdrin Therían, House of Therían.

Isaura Iridián, House of Iridián.

Takai Lí, House of Lí.

Adelina Aedán, House of Aedán.

I nodded firmly, and rolled up the royal decree. All the House Lords had signed. The Queen would be pleased.

“So we’re agreed,” I said. “The Blood Queen’s Army will rise.”

The House Lords all hailed, “All Hail the Blood Queen’s Army!”

I twisted the iron claw ring on my finger.

It is done, my queen.

The End.

I hope you enjoyed, Storytellers! That’s all from Queen of Blood & Bone! I’ll be going forward with short stories on Fridays.

Until next time,

A. E.

Queen Rae of Blood and Bone

The assassin twirled his dagger around in nimble well-trained fingers.

“Let’s have a joke,” he said. “If you make me laugh, I’ll grant you a painless death. If I don’t laugh, I’ll enjoy carrying out a slow tortuous death. So? Let’s have a joke.”

Personally, I found this situation rather hilarious myself. Its two nights before the crowning, and my enemies yet make another last ditch attempt to end my life. A joke, huh? I’ve never had the greatest sense of humor. After all, I’ve got an assassin threatening my life right now, and I want to laugh.

“Very well,” I said, my voice cooled. “What a joke it is that you believe you can kill me. I do wonder however, if you can laugh with lungs full of blood. Let’s hear it. Give me a nice bloody laugh.”

The assassin’s cocky smile dropped, and without attempting to laugh, he swung his dagger for my throat.

The blow didn’t connect as the tendons in his wrist snapped, and his fingers spasmed, dropping the weapon.

He screamed but as I said, his lungs filled with blood, and he choked on the gush traveling up his throat. He fell to his knees, coughing out pleads of mercy, while I stood in front of him. I purposefully stepped in his life blood as he curled into the fetal position at my feet.

I said, “Isn’t this funny? You tried to kill me, soon to be crowned Queen of Blood and Bone. With my powers to control the blood of any living thing, that truly is a laugh at the idea of a successful assassination. So who is laughing now?”

I turned my back on the gurgling last breaths of the would-be assassin and called for a maid.

Ten Years Later

I rested on my throne, one hand on the arm, slowly clicking my black iron-clawed fingers. My other palm I used as a chin rest. My eyes stared down like black coal at the peasant on his knees before me. He was pleading about something and I was barely listening.

Ten Years.

Ten years ago today I first sat on this throne, crowned Queen Rae of Blood and Bone, and started my reign of the people in the Underground Realm.

Yet for those ten years unrest had been stirring. I killed all the assassins sent after me to stop my accession to the throne, yet the ones who sent them remained.

“I suppose,” I spoke suddenly, cutting into the peasants tearful chatter. “That you’ve been sent to spy on me.”

The peasants face slackened and the tear production slowed. Caught off guard.

I said, “Sent to see the condition of my court, and seek out any willing to speak against me in exchange for a few coins.”

“My Queen,” started the peasant, his voice not as wet, not as shaky. “No, that’s not.”

I stared at him, red lights flickering to life in the pit of my pupils.

“I wonder,” I said. “How you can tell your employers my secrets, with lungs full of blood?”

With a slow scratch of my claw on the throne armrest, my coal black eyes staring at the spy as his lungs bubbled with hot fresh blood, and a red river poured out of his mouth.

I smiled, listening to the sweet sound of his pleas over the bubbling and gurgling with blood filling up his windpipe. He collapsed into the fetal position, and blood pooled around him.

“General,” I said.

She snapped to attention at my side.

“Yes, my Queen?”

“Gather the Blood Queen’s Army.” I said in a dark order. “We are going to war.”

The End…or To Be Continued?

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed!

Hey, Storytellers! Do you have a Story to Tell? Short story, micro, flash, novella? Send it to aecostellowrites@gmail.com with your preferred published name, genre of the piece and word count! At the end of the year, all the Stories will be collected and published in the Tell Your Story Compendium by Storytellers Anthology! More details about the Tell Your Story Compendium by Storytellers Anthology to follow in the upcoming newsletter!

Until next time, A.E.

I want this MFA for my own reasons.

For one, I simply want an MFA. I got my bachelors, I want a MFA, and then I want a PhD. I also intend on getting a second bachelors and likely a second MFA.

I love being in school and I love learning.

Two, the MFA will grant meeting the best in the business. I’ll meet agents, editors, famous authors.

Three, I’ll make connections and gather a community of writers and I hope to make lifelong friends. Those are the reasons I want an MFA. And that’s why I’m traveling this road to get it so badly.

Disclaimer finished.

I am beyond happy to finally make it to Lesley University.

I’ve weathered through some storms, beaten, bruised and battered going through a traumatic experience at the University of West Georgia, being rejected from Emerson College, jumping ship from Goddard College but ready to continue my Master’s Journey to get my coveted MFA in Creative Writing.

To set the scene, the MFA of Creative Writing program at Lesley University is a low residency model. Which means students only come to campus for an intensive 8 days to study with seminars, readings and other events.

Then after the residency, you go home and work remotely for the next 16 weeks of the semester, by emailing packets of works to your mentor who email back responses.

You communicate with zoom calls or however else the student/mentors decide. There are students from all over the world and all over the state. I live over 1000 miles away from Lesley University’s campus in Cambridge, MA.

And so, I fly out to Cambridge for Lesley’s residency and sure enough, it’s everything I’ve ever dreamed of, and even more.

Based on an analogy I had during a conversation with someone else, and it’s his idea, not mine, after a lifetime of going into rooms where people responded to me with “what are you doing here? We don’t want you here,” Lesley was like walking into a room and everyone cheered “wow! You’re finally here! We’ve been waiting for you.”

At Lesley I felt such a sense of belonging, and expectation, and a lot like a superstar. Everyone knew my name. They all wanted to meet me, talk to me.

I had taken my younger sister to Cambridge with me for my first residency. I had called her “my emotional support human,” and she was invaluable to me. I am extremely introverted, and I needed her like an emotional lifeline.

My first residency experience at Lesley’s was outstanding. There was so much to do. It was rife with love, laughs and experience, with activities. The vibe was off the charts. There were so many people. Pictures being taken. Hugs. Joy.

I can’t even explain it. I’ve never experienced anything like it. It was nothing like what I had gone through at my undergrad English department at University of West Georgia. UWG tried to rip my soul out.

Lesley was like giving me my soul back…PLUS ULTRA (iykyk). It was beyond amazing.

I went back home floating on air. Exhausted, but exhilarated. I hid in my room like a hermit for like four days recovering not willing to see or talk to anyone.

Then disaster strikes. I’m forced to need to take a massive leave of absence from Lesley due to health emergencies.

Finally I returned to Lesley for my second residency after two years and 5 surgeries.

It was like leaving a bomb shelter to go back outside.

Lesley’s lush forest had turned into a desolate desert, completely deforested, cleared out and dead.

From the first day at my second residency, I knew immediately something was wrong.

The vibe…toast.

Secondly, the attendance. I thought where is everyone? Literally. Imagine going from one residency where there were about well over 100 maybe 200 people in attendance, to a residency where there wasn’t even 20 people.

There was no one. I couldn’t believe how empty the room was.

I didn’t know what was going on. But people were talking. Students, mentors and faculty alike quickly began to fill me in. And the horror stories were atrocious.

The dread crept in. I realized I walked into a total and complete nightmare. Like I had been blindfolded and lead into a burning building.

However I’m at residency, 1000 miles from home, 8 days long, and it was only day 1, and my only hope is to survive it until I can get on my return flight, and get out. I began counting the days (and searching for new creative writing programs once I got back to my dorm).

So, the horror stories. What exactly had gone so wrong at Lesley? Why had the lush forest been totally cut down?

Well… “Better Lesley” happened. Better Lesley is a slogan that appeared and repeated when the school began getting “changes” done to I believe when a new president accepted a position at the university.

I was still in a wheelchair at home when this happened, so I was only dimly aware of what was going on due to emails I kept getting in the school’s email inbox. However I wasn’t totally keeping update with that email, and it rarely sent me notifications anyway.

I only knew I kept seeing “Better Lesley” and that they were changing things.

But I knew there students complaints, and programs getting cut, and the new president got a raise, and then…the MFA in Creative Writing program’s coordinator got sacked, suddenly, with no warning. It was shocking, and undeserved.

That was the first super red flag. And after that, rumors began to circulate that our program was being sunset. The program began getting changes made to it, changes that were cutting the legs out of it.

They stopped accepting new students to it, twice.

The signs were on the wall that the MFA in Creative Writing was going to die, while at the same time these rumors were going on, others were trying to insist it wasn’t true.

It was all so confusing. The whole time I’m home attempting to heal and recover from multiple surgeries, and transferring from wheelchair to walker to boot, and really not exactly having an entire clue on what’s happening.

Until I’m fully recovered, and I pay almost $2k out of pocket (requiring a payment plan,) and I fly out to Lesley’s residency, and realize just what a massive mistake I made.

Lesley isn’t what it once was. The program I bought into isn’t here anymore. I’ll finish out my last semester, and then I’m taking a break from pursuing my MFA.

I’ve decided to focus more my writing goals, business goals and art goals, than my student goals for right now. Once higher education has finished with its current upheavals, I’ll go back.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still massively thankful I went to Lesley. I met great people, and I have no regrets.

I am sad. So, so sad.

The troubles everyone is going through, the people who have been fired, or scalped or have quit. The students who aren’t getting the high-class education they’ve paid for.

It feels like this MFA program was a beautiful jewel, and it was purposefully crushed. I wish I had come here sooner.

I don’t know if Lesley University is going to close, or if its only the MFA program that will maybe get shutdown. I don’t know anything.

All I know is its for my best interest to not go to this school anymore.

As of this moment, the MFA at Creative Writing Lesley is still going. There’s been no one saying its closing, it’s just how it looks to me. And since they aren’t accepting students, I’m the only 2nd semester student. It’s like being in a high school and I’m the only freshman. The school can’t offer me a robust program anymore.

There’s other problems that I haven’t even mentioned yet. Like the mentors I wanted to work with no longer work there. They’ve cancelled programs that drew me towards the school, like publishing opportunities. So main draws of the program are no longer present.

I’ve spoken with one of the department heads and was told even though the school cannot keep its promises, I can’t sue because I had been on a leave of absence, and the fact the school changed while I was out means they aren’t liable.

So yeah. I can’t stay at Lesley anymore. The residency I experienced lacked resources like mentors and classes, so I spent a lot of time just wasting time, having nothing to do. So I spent the end of my days in my dorm researching new creative writing programs. I did find one, so, after my break from school, since I really need one, I’ll go there.

I have a bunch of other MFA and BFA stories in me. It’s been a journey. I’ll keep telling my story, especially once I go to my next creative writing graduate program.

What’s your story? Any college or high school or middle school experiences with writing teachers or writing classes? Tell us! Let’s all hear your story in the comments.

I call that Riding the Carousel. You keep getting in a new ride, a new writing idea, and jump from idea to idea, a writing a new story, a new story, over and over again, and the ride never ends. A story, a novel, a poem, whatever the writing project is, nothing ever gets finished, does it?

Riding the Carousel.

That’s what I call the Curse of the Shiny New Idea.

I Rode the Carousel for 7 years (and will be 8 if I don’t finish/publish a novel this year) after I published my debut novel, The Other Side (you can currently only find it here). I couldn’t stick to my “next novel” after I had finally finished my first one.

Do I write a series? Another standalone? A middle grade? A young adult? Fantasy? Magic? Vampires? Werewolves? Magic school?

The possibilities were endless. My mind was popping off ideas left, write (pun intended) and center. New idea, new idea, new idea. Change my story, change my story. Different main character, new title, not a series, it’s a standalone, now it’s a series, changed my mind again.

The Shiny New Idea was definitely a curse. I literally couldn’t get off the Carousel. The dizzying spin of the ride was starting to make me sick.

I needed to choose one story and stick with it already.

So eventually, I decided to ask the people (meaning my close friends and family) what book they most wanted to read next. I made a document featuring a collection of opening pages from the current novels I had started that was almost 15k words long, and sent it out asking them to give me ratings on which one they all most wanted to read. Then with their replies, I tallied up which story got the most votes. Which ever one was most highly rated, I’d write that story.

In the end, I had to take the choice out of my hands and was the only way to forcefully pull me off the Carousel.

And with 5 novels in the running, and 7 people voting, I got one story that had 4 votes, and was higher rated than any other.

It’s a middle grade novel currently titled Powers, though like I also said, I think it needs a new title. It takes place in an alternate 90s-era world where superpowered people exist alongside normal people (called powers and norms).

My main character, the 12 year old norm Craig Applebottom randomly manifests his super powers from a norm into a speedster. He is forced to leave his regular 6^th grade class for Specific Purpose or colloquially known as Superpowers Classes.

There is a lot more to that, like building a superhero team of his peers to face a national threat of domestic terrorist powers.

Also, the entire story came to me while I was sleeping. It was a night I had seen the first two episodes of The Boys with my mother and sister. I went to bed. Then I woke up at midnight and I sat up straight in bed with the name Craig Applebottom in my head, and began writing like two chapters in the middle of the night.

That was in 2022.

Then instead of finishing the novel, I got a “shiny new idea” and started writing something else.

Well, the people have spoken, and Powers was the story they most wanted to read. So that’s the next A. E. Costello book you’ll see on the shelves next. And it’ll actually BE on the shelves because I won’t publish with Amazon’d KDP this time! Lesson learned.

Do you all ever “Ride the Carousel?” Have you been struck with the Curse of the Shiny New Idea? Get off the ride! Just keep writing and finish Telling Your Story!

I said this in January/February of 2024. It’s now April of 2025. The Novel is not finished.

I had a plan, though, I really did.

I’d focus on ONE novel. I made a goal of writing 1000 words a day for 30 days while using pomodoro timers of 20 mins to write and 10 minutes to rest in order to keep myself on track, and to keep writing steadily.

I joined several writing communities, such as Scribophile’s Writing Together that meets by zoom Monday through Friday mornings 10-11am ET. I also took online free writing classes, all meant to get me into the zone, and to keep my motivation and intent up.

But what happened? Why with all of this perfect planning and motivation did I still not finish my novel?

Well for one, my bad habits of procrastinating persisted. Several days would stretch by where I hadn’t touched my WIP.

And for two, I did realize that my biggest enemy is myself. I stand in my own way.

Three, I asked God for help, I got on my knees and told God I wasn’t able to do this on my own, because I kept failing, and I needed His strength.

I kept writing, and life kept going. I was in grad school, changed what I was working on multiple times.

Disaster struck.

In under two years, I’ve had multiple surgeries (and fifth one coming up April 25^th.) Two on my ankle, which I had broken in multiple places, and two on my right eye, the upcoming fifth surgery is on my left eye.

Due to the surgeries, and the sudden breaking of my ankle, I had to take a break from grad school. I lost a best friend over this, who was upset I wouldn’t be there on campus for her last semester, and she rage quit our relationship.

Heartbroken by losing her, I abruptly stopped writing, and stopped drawing, for several months, I lost all of my creative impetus. But then I did get back up.

Getting dumped as a best friend, even as an adult, didn’t stop hurting. I swallowed the pain that I wasn’t wanted anymore, and turned my attention towards healing my ankle, and getting back into my writing.

I started journaling again, after all, what more to tell your journal that your best friend has abandoned you?

I picked up my sketchbook again. I started finding new author channels to watch on YouTube, and joined a bunch of new online writing and artist communities. I joined Substack (though that took me forever to get over my fear of publishing on it, but hey, here I am!)

I wanted to find people who do want me, and won’t throw me away once I’ve lost my usefulness.

And I did find them. I also realized I already had them. I already had long-lasting friends who have been with me this entire time who never pushed me away, and thrown me away and treated me like they don’t care about me anymore, for any reason, have never made me feel unloved. They’ve been here, and when I told them what happened, they helped me see the truth of what the entire relationship was like, and were there to help me heal.

I’ve made a commitment to not just finishing my novel, but to my career to be a successful novelist, as well as I want to draw comics and make graphic novels. My only enemy is myself, and I’m not standing for it anymore. Outline, no outline, I’m getting the writing done.

I’ve figured out why I kept not finishing a novel. The real reason I keep starting all over, is I feel that the story isn’t good enough. I can see that the draft is heading to a dead end, so I just scrap it, and start writing a different story. Over and over, rather than write a failing story, I try to start over with writing a perfect story. So I end up with nothing done.

My current W.I.P. has changed titles, and main characters and new plots and redone settings over and over and over again.

I think I just forgot that a rough draft isn’t supposed to be perfect. Rough drafts are supposed to ugly and dirty and messy. They’re supposed to be something you want to hide away, and don’t let anyone see. And that’s why you then clean it up, and tidy it up, and edit it, and make a second draft or third draft. Then it’s the child that’s well-clothed and fit enough to go out in public to be viewed, those better cleaned up drafts that you let others read and get feedback on.

Write it anyway.

Write through the pain of a non-perfect first draft.

Stephen King said a first draft should only take 3 months, so that’s what I am aiming for.

Of course its now going on 5 months into the new year, since I’ve procrastinated so much, but I’ll let that go, and focus going forward. I’ll do my best to finish my novel in 3 months from now.

I am finishing my novel in 2025.

Period, dot, dot.

Thanks for listening, Storytellers.

Are you writing a novel? How long have you been writing it? Do you have a goal to finish what you’re writing?

Let’s talk about it in the comments!

I’m done living in fear. I HAVE to live out the calling God has given me and assured me success. It’s only me holding me back.

I am going to write a fearless first Substack post and post it. And it doesn’t matter if no one responds or not. I don’t need a flood of comments to praise me. It’s okay if I receive radio silence. The point is it’s BEEN NINE MONTHS since I started my “Tell Your Story” Substack and never posted.

I let the enemy get in the way AGAIN.

He’s a defeated enemy but I kept letting him bully me.

No more.

Enough.

The Lord didn’t give me the spirit of fear but of faith, power and a strong mind. He also promised that if I submit my ways to Him and trust Him that He will order my steps and make my path straight.

So I’ve got no business being too afraid of failure to post and too afraid of succeeding to even try.

Give it to God, and He’ll do the rest. So my first Substack isn’t really about writing. It’s about letting go of being afraid and letting God.

My fear of rejection and talking to the void of disinterested readers isn’t mine. That’s the enemy.

The enemy crept in with his discouragement and put out my fires.

Well after a rousing women’s event at my church Monday night and becoming so full of the Holy Spirit that the evil spirits messing with me became sick of His holiness within me, I woke up before the sun and wrote this after nine months of my words being blocked behind fear and worrying and doubts.

Stronghold destroyed.

So here’s to my first Substack post, as messy and incomprehensible as it is. I did it. I don’t care anymore about anything else. It is done.

And here’s to many more.

You can find my debut novel here. I know everyone hates Amazon, but it’s the only place my book, e-book and audiobook is available.

Thank you for hanging out with me this long. Thank you for reading.

Until next time, A. E.

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