In a single sentence: I'm a writer w/ a background in web application devlopment and running any tabletop rpg I could get my hands on.
The slightly longer version: I crave experiences. Stumbling through the indie web led to me wanting to craft a home for my writing with a more personal touch than most websites will allow. Where else am I going to be allowed to indulge in creating pixel art of my characters on a whim and displaying them alongside my writing?
Then I asked a better question. Why do I need anyone's permission to create and share the art that brings my life joy?
Long story short: This site was inevitable. A seer took one look at me before warning you all. "Here there be dragons."
There is a story in my heart I've longed to tell.
One about a girl named Jill who lit a fire in my heart. My every attempt at putting words to her needs spans about 250 pages. She's been many things, to even more people. But to me, she's been something special that remained consistent across attempts... Even if I could never pin her down into any one thing.
Until I realized that Jill is my need for change, personified. If there is a length I am willing to go, Jill has questioned it. If there is a yearning in my heart, Jill has sought it out. (Never have I flustered myself more than when writing for Jill.) If I ever had any doubts, Jill would gently assure anyone listening that everything is going to be okay. (Especially when she herself is not okay.)
I've never written a happy ending for Jill. Over half of the intimate scenes I've ever composed involve Jill in some fashion. Yet, not a single one of those relationships across the many works in progress have ever been enough for her or me.
I want to fix this. To do that, I feel compelled to present Jill as she is in her entirety: Not only as her loved ones see her, or as torn between worlds as she has always been, but as wholely hesitant as she has always been to carve a place in the world where she can find peace in the entirety of herself.
Maybe that sounds weird to you. But to me? The first public web serial I set out to write demanded I put into words what I crave in a story. So I filled it with a cast that refused to be easily defined: An ailing heart of storms dashed itself against the rocks, leaving two distinctly different protagonists yearning for change. Their friends ranged from an entire insect colony piloting a facimile of a body to several identical fox sisters who pretend to be each other. Their mentors are entities of ever shifting dreams that we share together or an entire chorus of shadows linked by the light reflected off their amulets. All of them are under the sway and guidance of a dragon headmistress whose capacity to voice words aloud is strained to the point of requiring she bend other sounds into place of syllables she can no longer utter.
You can read the resulting Ruinous Hearts here, if you want. As my first attempt at a web serial, I lost control of the narrative between one arc and the next. Vessel's desire to change what they are, at least, is very much complete and has received a lot of praise. Side characters like those identical fox sisters named Amari found their catharsis in other stories, like Depths of Promises Sworn. (Which I consider a much more complete and impressive tale, even if I'm still editing it for print.)
But that's not why I made this page. I mention Depths because when I decided that I wasn't getting anywhere with Jill, I took her appetite for change and wrote a nonbinary vampire 'prince' named Ayre in her place. Ayre even has to deal with living on in place of a dead sister. So much of that story is still in dialog with what I want to do here.
Jill, as I endeavor to present her, is torn between grim truths and pretty lies papered over the life she's led. By the time you meet her, she will be grappling with a lifetime of conditioning as a blighted experiment kept on a tight leash. Streets she once stalked as a nightmare that kept folk up at night, now know her by a different name penned in flowery advertisements. Folk ask her to pass on food and coin to a woman named Devii, who has endeavored to catch anyone who slips through the city's cracks. While appreciative of being one of Devii's catches, Jillian longs for the comfort of cage held by a Crown authority that no longer exists. It would be so much simpler than having to be seen as an uncertain girl instead of responding to every stimulus as a prized experiment.
The rest of the world has moved on without Jill, thought lost in the rebellion. Guilds now rich with coin and the weight of laws penned in ink seek to take the Crown's place, dividing the city into upper and lower layers. All the while enterprising Guild academics seek to unearth and continue promising Crown experiments. Volatile substances, like the blighted vats that Crown's researchers used to change Jillian into what she is now, begin finding their way into the under city Jillian now feels responsible for.
The more Jillian gets involved, the more she will come to recognize that the hands now running the city's Guilds once served the Crown's interests. Unless Jillian can put a stop to the experiments once and for all, she is likely to find herself hunted by whatever took her place. Or worse, the one who once held her leash will come searching for her long lost prize.
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