Ash Vale Updates: July 2024
After Pride comes Wrath!!!
Monthly Updates
My short story I Met My Wife in the Woods is now available to read, ahhhh!! I’m being very chill!!! For now, it’s only available to Heartlines Spec subscribers (18$ CAD for the year, that’s like 2$ USD right..just saying, or it’s 2$ CAD for a month! Pennies for Americans!) OR for purchase on kindle/kobo/smashwords! The paperback version is coming but not available quite yet, so check back! The story will be free to read online Sept 3rd. This is the first piece I’ve ever published 😭
https://www.heartlines-spec.com/issue-5/I GM’ed a super fun Monster of the Week game raising money for Able Gamers this month! Felt great to flex some creative muscles in a way other than writing
In other news it’s fuckin hot send help
Writing
I’ve written a few bigger short pieces this month (please welcome to the stage Bigger Shorts) and then some tiny things
A horror story about a pregnant woman eating her own hair
A short story about a boy sneaking a troll in his pocket on the way to a new country
Weird little 100-word story about anti-corporatism and feelings in bottles
A few small poems about climate grief, parenthood, loss, BLM, etc
Novel progress has been slow and I mostly blame FFXIV and Coral Island I’ll be real with you. I am over 30k words though!
Reading
I finished A Bone in His Teeth by Kellen Graves this month and WOO BOY it was so freaking good. It’s a m/m dark fantasy/horror romance with aquatic weirdness, spicy mermaids and lighthouses. The MC is a disabled trans man who is SO complex and interesting. This book really had me by the teeth (har har) the whole way through. The mermaid also has 2 dicks I’m just throwing it out there
Read The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed and reaaaally enjoyed it. It’s a dark fantasy novella (super quick read) about a forest no one should enter, two children who get lost in it, and a desperate attempt to save them. It was heart-pounding the whole way through!
Media Recs
Loneliness Universe by Eugenia Triantafyllou in Uncanny Magazine - such a beautiful story about people slowly losing the ability to talk to their friends and family except through social media. It’s so poignant and heartbreaking.
I love you in any universe.
Linden Honey, Blackcurrant Wine by M. R. Robinson in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. This one is about tradition, sapphic yearning and magic, and has some absolutely stunning storytelling mixed with folklore.
On the long journey north from Hladov, Irena had tried to prepare herself for every possibility: bitterness, resentment, cold confusion. But she had not thought to prepare herself for gentleness, and she can only answer with a nod.
Poolhorse by Samir Sirk Morató - this flash horror story won a 48 hour contest I entered and it’s very obvious why it won! Perfect aquatic horror: tense, gross, and tragic.
It’s all starved gaps between bone, rubbery skin, and oily horse stench.
Something Extra
I’m in my feels for this newsletter so here’s a small poem I wrote recently about climate change and the Jasper wildfire. Stay safe and cool, folks!
the sweltering summer heat of my childhood thirty degrees, maybe seems laughable now skin sweats in thirty two
dogs pant in thirty four
forests ignite in thirty six we trade summer storms
and warm rain
for the hot exhale of wildfire smoke my home
my prairies
burn
Thanks for reading, and don't let the monsters under your bed get you, unless you're into that! I don't judge!
Ash Vale (they/them) is a queer, non-binary, neurodivergent cryptid writing short stories in horror and fantasy, and working on a sapphic romance novel.