#PennedPossibilities 916.1 — Your MC wakes up as a wolf (or if a wolf / werewolf, a rabbit / wererabbit), what do they do, how do they react? #substitoot

For MC Bolt, this would be a disaster. She has an almost obsessive pride in the beauty and strength of her wings (she's an athletic day angel who loves to fly). Becoming a creature living in two-dimensions would crush her. She'd cry and rage, neither typical of her. When hunger forced her to hunt, she'd be horrified. People don't eat meat as far as she knows, and eating fish doesn't prepare her for looking at a living breathing mammal as food. This would be totally bad for her.

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@floofpaldi I started rewatching Beastars and have a certain wolf and rabbit "friendship" on my mind. 😋

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#WordWeavers 2026.01.29 — Have you ever written a pet into one of your stories?

Rainy Days has had many pets. She likes to pet them, too. They've all been men, however, so, despite them all being animals, I am guessing they don't count for this question! 🤪

Otherwise, no.

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.01.29 — Which phrase, paragraph, or page are you most proud of writing this month? CW: Mildly NSFW.

This page. A lot being unwrapped here and explaining it would take the entire earlier part of the book. I hope it isn't too confusing! Suffice it to say that it appears to be a magical world where day angels, like the POV, fly. The narrator is sharing some things the reader is barely familiar with as she buys a gift for a student boyfriend.

#Excerpt

The clerk I'd spoken with had spotted me and fast walked to the counter to meet me, immediately ducking into the display case to find the passion tools I'd considered, the expensive ones since the cheap ones had sold.

"Which?" she asked, grinning.

I wanted to surprise Molt, who'd been a fun and informative companion, and I really wanted to see him smile. If I didn't spend my coin, eventually Boss Mead would claim it to keep me dependent. So… "The one with the—" Human stuck in my throat. "—remnant."

"You'll have to register it."

Which meant the civil ID I hadn't used since running from the constables and from home. I looked around. Students. Respectable professors. Nobody likely tied to the mob. "Can I give you the number? I don't have the card on me…" I said, patting my pockets for what I'd burnt a dozen years ago.

"Sure. I'll need to record your eye and primary feather color, and describe your idi—not that anyone checks, considering the sanctions the Bureau of Human Trafficking levies if it's fraudulent." She gave me a tilt-headed grin saying she didn't think I was stupid.

I was stupid. The number, were Boss Mead to get it, would allow him to trace former-me to my family. Him terrorizing them or using them against me would be catastrophic.

Unlikely. Not a zero chance, though.

I turned around and lifted my wings causing my primaries to brush the ceiling. It revealed my harnesses-and-leather-traces idioglyph. I flexed and flaunted the muscles below my wing joints because I could, and I was feeling good, powerful even—or telling myself I was—so why not? I knew from looking in a mirror that it made the black pigmented lines and circles wiggle.

"Guy move." The clerk snorted as she sketched it using a pen.

I blithely gave her the number with a return chuckle. I'd always been more comfortable with men, acting masculine, sometimes wondering why I'd not been born a man—until I rode one again and understood my privilege being born a woman.

The clerk wrapped the rectangular box in a swatch of appropriately dark pink satin, tying it with blue string she had to get from another department.

—From Reluctant Courier (for the Mob)

This earlier post is related, though only slightly more NSFW: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/115981082493477428

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#EroticMusings 2026.01.04 — Week 32 (January 4-10) Setting: Do you make use of symbolism? For erotic and/or romantic purposes, or other reasons?

In a literary sense, symbolism is inputing additional or extraordinary meaning or emotion into an otherwise prosaic object, person, or event. I don't create symbols as a rule, but I recognize them when they appear. In one story, the MC fights off a man who tries to murder her and discovers that not only can she fight, that she likes fighting. "The Monster" becomes an important symbol thence forward of her internal struggle between principled aggression and evil, which she employs in stressful or unwontedly successful moments.

As for the second question, thinking it through made me realize that the current WIP does indeed use symbolism for romantic and erotic purposes. True to the way I write these things, the narrator (in 1st person POV) goes to great pains not to describe a particular "scientific" tool she is buying to share with her male friend (a 19-year-old university student and she's 30) as a dildo, but there should be no doubt in the reader's mind. A recent passionate scene demonstrates she's throughly enjoying the guy's ingenuity and initiative, but her gift to him to "measure her" might never be delivered and reappears in a few scenes. Her gift, wrapped in pink with a blue string, becomes a tragic symbol of the cruelty of the mob-controlled world in which the MC and her boyfriends are entangled, as well as a reminder that, to quote Dorothy, "Toto, I've A Feeling We're Not In Kansas Anymore."

Indubitably.

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#EroticMusings 2026.01.25 — Week 35 (January 25-31) Culture: Porn, romance, erotica, smut, etc. - how do you define and distinguish them? Does it matter?

Romance is a story involving two or more people in a relationship dealing with physical attraction and friendship against the backdrop of societal constraints. Erotica is often romance, works best if it stems from romance—but is sometimes only social commentary—in which the sexual interactions of the people involved is emphasized. Porn might be considered erotica where the story is radically de-emphasized to the point it is non-existent, meaningless, or forgotten part way through as an excuse to put a scenario in motion in service of gratuitous sexual situations that are, by design, more important than verisimilitude. Romance is desire. Erotica is sexy. Porn is sex. Smut is a derogatory term applied to any of the above if the critic takes exception to anything in the work. The word labels the critic as a hypocrite—they've either read/viewed the work or have accepted hearsay—and a zealot. The epithet ought not be appropriated by an author as a badge of honor. In my opinion, it degrades the work and essential human behavior that ought never be institutionally maligned.

These words matter to potential readers. Even the slanderous word not worthy of repetition will signal to the misguided to avoid a defamed work.

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#PennedPossibilities 916 — How would your MC react to being mocked or made fun of?

The answer is situational.

The story opens with Bolt (a day angel) perched on a ledge, photographing [redacted]. A man uses a racial epithet to gain her attention. She flutters down to street level, stares him down, and spits an equally foul epithet in his face. She appears proud, athletic. Just returning from "work," her hair is glued into a crest of spikes, black steel facial piercings gleam in her cheek, nose, and eyebrow, and she wears heavy black leather accessories with black metal clasps. Scary. By design. Even if it's only a reflexive façade, a facsimile of her remembered self from a dozen years ago when she lost her freedom.

Bolt works for the mob. Involuntarily. If a "coworker" or her boss were to mock her, she wouldn't flinch. She wouldn't meet their eyes. She's endured more despair than ought be humanly possible. She doesn't want to be there, anywhere, so badly she's forgetting parts of her life. She's a kicked puppy that has learned if it moves it will be noticed. Apathy's claws have sunk in so deep they touch bone, but she's too numb to feel them.

Bolt's story is a journey back from the edge of suicide to becoming a person again.

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#WordWeavers 2026.01.28 — If your MC and SC each got 3 wishes from a genie, would any of their wishes cause problems for the other?

Undoubtedly, even if I don't include the SCs that are antagonists. The MC Bolt would rollback the clock a dozen years before her disastrous decision. Her new male friends would be 7, 9, 12, and 16 as a result, and living in different towns.

Blue, a male SC, is secretly possessive, and would wish Bolt to be reliably attracted to him and always hanging around. This would ultimately cause him issues with his family and socially, not to mention that Bolt is a butterfly who enjoys visiting all the flowers; it would affect her personality.

Shugh, the newspaper reporter, is ambitious but is faced with social and gender role pressures to overcome. Breaking social norms with a wish would be classically evil as it could change a lot of social interactions that favor Bolt, who is admittedly sexist despite her progressive bent. She would dislike the less deferential more aggro guy who results.

Molt, the university student who lives down the hall, would wish never to have been orphaned. I just learned his hidden motivator! Molt's lack of family and being raised in this world's answer to an orphanage (a Men's Association†) resulted in him becoming a scholar who would eventually earn a scholarship in Men's Studies at the University of Home at Home City (UHHC), meaning he would never have met Bolt.

The devil-girl would wish the main series antagonist dead. That would result in the world dying a swift death in a matter of weeks. This ought to result in the devil-girl either wishing her alive again, or the devil-girl wishing to take over the responsibilities of the woman she considers pure evil, which would delight the now dead antagonist, which might result in the devil-girl wishing her alive with her final wish. Whew! :blob_sweat: Bolt would be terrified and horrified, though she learns about the devil-girl's feelings toward the end of the book.

That type of stuff.

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† Child care is a stereotypically male role.

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#ScribesAndMakers 2026.01.28 — What's the most stressful thing about your creativity?

When high expectation encounters low energy, compounded by unrealistic deadlines.

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#ScribesAndMakers 2026.01.27 — Are you good at threading needles?

I think I am becoming expert at threading the needle while writing. My stories are subversive on many levels, so if a narrative were immediately and blatantly to telegraph how radical it really is, those folk with figuratively weak hearts might well grow faint and not buy, or horror of horrors, stop reading. My food for the mind is spicy, but I try to make it a gourmet treat by not directly describing what's funky or excitingly and unexpectedly savory. Word choice matters, especially when a word or a passage can say different things when read in different contexts. What's romantic could well be erotic, without salacious words or anatomy mentioned. What's left out becomes revelation when the mystery comes together. What's eloquent moves the soul while cloaking a disturbing melody with cloying music until an ear worm is born. When a character's role or gender is unexpected or unusual, stereotypes don't apply until they do. Shockingly. Color fades to grey. Grey goes to stark, unmistakable, black and white.

Thusly, I thread the needle.

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#PennedPossibilities 915 — In your SC’s opinion, what would be the worst way to die?

Another timely question since the SC Molt†, in the passage I am currently writing, had an hour ago been assaulted by one of the MC's miscreant mob associates. Molt thought he was going to die, broken and bleeding in the street. At the moment he is so upset that he is packing his aerie apartment to leave Home City, in train to jettison a scholarship to the most prestigious public university on the planet for his personal safety. Bolt is going to have a tremendously hard time convincing him otherwise. As hard as he's worked to achieve what he's achieved, to have had his dream of service having been rendered meaningless by someone's fist and greed, beaten to a pulp and left to die, at the moment, is to him the worst way he could die.

Bolt, who is his friend and more, is not happy with her co-worker.

=-=-=-=-=-=
† Molt is his nickname. When the MC met him, he was molting and she'd caught him shedding feathers in the public areas of their building, areas she felt tasked with cleaning up. They met when she confronted him with his discourtesy.

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#WordWeavers 2026.01.27 — Is it difficult for you if your partner or closest friends don’t enjoy books?

Let's refine that to that either they don't read the genre I write or only read non-fiction. It's difficult, because a parent or a spouse seems like a great "safe" reader to at least take the temperature of a story, if not necessarily a good critic. Disappointing is a word, too. But I understand. This isn't to say they aren't a cheering section, but that's not something that's most needful.

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.01.27 — What’s a technical skill you think should be more widespread?

The skill of writing in the past tense, including in the past of the past, and in the future of the past, with an understanding of the conditional. Anything but a simple narrative suffers without this skill. I'm thinking of a best-selling author who writes in first person present, but when the protagonist relates what happened to her before that present, the writing breaks down. Worse, why didn't the editors notice?

The POV below briefly narrates from the present to past to the past of the past with thoughts of a future—and back to the present.

I pressed my back into the rough bark, panting, sweat dripping into my right eye, checking the load in the flintlock desperately. The smoke of my burning carriage tainted the air. The memory of those first days at the academy needled me hatefully: Prince Charming syndrome.

I had "bumped" into him at the student welcoming party; he'd caught my feigned stumble, righted me, then bowed, his blond hair, tall stature, dulcet voice setting his crystal blue eyes ablaze in a way most memorable for that teenaged girl. In the moment, I had seen myself married to this man when I would be 20, him having become my king consort, holding me tight (and fabulously more) in my chambers, his body my fireplace dispelling the cold of the winter night.

Before the academy, I had endured naught but the loneliness of no siblings compounded by the tyranny of palace tutors. Those years had been a hell devoid of friends not arranged for me, all safely bland, never genuine, in no wise suitors. Those would be arranged for me at my majority, but I had had Henry intimately by then. My condition would complicate matters.

Never whilst courting Henry those four years, had I ever imagined my dream of love and companionship would lead to marrying a regicide husband, a most beautifully clever cad determined to assassinate his spouse to assume the throne as a regent king over our baby prince.

I held the cool metal barrel of the flintlock two-handed, pointing up, touching my cheek. I stood snugged against that shadowing tree trunk, ears deafened by my thumping heart as they strained for the faintest sound of the wolf stalking me.

A stick cracked underfoot yards behind.

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#PennedPossibilities 914 — Does your antagonist have any redeeming qualities?

Boss Mead, the mob boss, has plenty of redeeming qualities, starting with that he went bad by saving the life of a suicidal classmate, which was arguably heroic. For one, he's a caring lover but, because of who he is, he has little chance to show it, other than leaving Bolt (the MC) somewhat confused. His effect on people, were he not to abuse it to maintain the crime syndicate that formed around him, would help lots of people live better lives. Sadly, in the current story his back story is just that: background. The thing is that he is redeemable if not entirely forgivable, and certainly not in the current WIP. In the WIP, he is central to the story's mystery beyond being the central antagonist.

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.01.26 — Do you include things you personally find repellent in your work?

To the extent that it is necessary, yes. It's unavoidable since I write social commentary that touches on feminist topics and puts gender roles under a microscope. Amongst various things, my MC comes off as sexist. She's a woman. Were she male, it would be far more obvious and feel all too familiar, thought not to the level of toxic masculinity. No. Everything is not hunky-dory in the society where she lives, even if it could be arguably said it's better than in ours.

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#PennedPossibilities 913 — How could someone locate your MC in a crowd?

I write 1st person. This question is about as easy as telling someone who's never met me how to spot me. Hard. I've failed plenty. It is complicated by that my MC, Bolt, wears nothing, well, that would stand out.

As a day angel who can fly around town, she's never in crowds on the pavement (sidewalk) or the metro. You might find her at a crowded rooftop food court amongst the red popup food tents slurping cheap ramen with all the other day angels, but even her blue feathers aren't uncommon. She wears facial piercings, but usually only wears them while working to look dangerous, which means mostly flying and avoiding crowds. I don't even know her hair, skin, or eye color as she isn't one to admire herself in the mirror. I know only what she narrates. Her vanity extends solely to her muscles, which because of low body fat… are pretty impressive, well defined, but not bulky. Plenty of athletic looking day angels, though more often male—but she's not particularly feminine and scores low on any womanly curve index. Face to face, nobody would mistake her for a man, nor would she let them.

Here's the only standout possibility, and it depends on timing. Her hobby is street photography. If it's late in the day and you see a day angel trying to be invisible discreetly taking photos of people doing normal unremarkable things with a black body camera, often held at chest level, then moving on through the crowds like a ghost—and she's athletic with blue wings—that may well be be Bolt.

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#WordWeavers 2026.01.25 — If traumatic events happen, do your characters process it on page for longer than a chapter?

No rule.

Depends on the character.

In one instance, a character wakes from being knocked out by a monster, who's also a man, who is about to murder her. That's chapter 13. By the end of the chapter, she's either killed him or at very least made it impossible for him ever to reproduce—and is ecstatic having done so. One hundred and fifty-three chapters later, over two sequels, she still refers to "The Monster" who taught her she could fight against all odds and win. She sometimes wonders what person she would have become had she not been so headstrong as to get into a situation where she would encounter him. What if he had never savaged her? Whenever she thinks how much she enjoys fighting, despite the pain, she wonders if she's becoming evil like him.

Her trauma is a frenemy who keeps coming by to say, "How've you been?"

Ain't drama grand?

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.01.25 — What comes first: setting, character, plot? What comes next?

I don't agree with the assertion that these three concepts are atomic, or represent the complete periodic table. While I am tempted to say character comes first, what comes first to me is a synthesis of subparticles that includes a sense of a person's personality, problems, goals, and aspirations together with the brick wall that stands in the way of their satisfaction or satiation that motivates them forward, as well as possible solutions, resolutions, (and, yes) necessary revelation or final convolutions to a mystery the final synthesized character must work through or work out. That brick wall could be a real brick wall or a dragon that exists only in someone's mind, other characters, or events that must unfold as part of on-going plot. While I can only think of one of these components at a time, they coalesce conceptually into a bright shiny bauble as a story forms in my mind until I think, "Ohhh! Sparkly!"

The only thing I can state with certainty is what comes last: As I compose and complete the story, something resembling a plot becomes apparent. It's only then that I finish backfilling missing plot elements, foreshadowing, and tying up what—if the story underwent literary analysis—might be dubbed a plot.

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#PennedPossibilities 912 — Describe your MC to us. (Looks, flaws, character attributes, their struggles, etc.)

After writing and refining my reply, I realized there were simply too many spoilers. I am keeping my original in my notes. More vaguely—

Bolt has a third pair of limbs—wings with blue feathers—and can fly extremely well. She is strikingly athletic, "cut" without bulk and extremely proud of it, but not particularly feminine in appearance. Despite this, she makes men she's attracted to quickly aware that she's indeed a woman. She's earnest as she is cagey, which doesn't seem to go together until you understand that she works as a courier for the mob. As a result, she avoids letting "innocents" enter her lonely life, which thanks to events in her story becomes increasingly unavoidable. The part of her mind that can justify doing what she knows is wrong (she considers herself "poison") works overtime to let her "juggle" having new friends, even as she perpetually worries for their safety. She's playful when not anxious, but acts like a kicked puppy often enough that people want to help her. She reacts not with gratitude but by helping and supporting her friends instead, becoming emotionally torn when she fails. She's a good person, despite being a criminal. She was blackmailed into her job, but knows full well that the constabulary won't care if she's caught.

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#WordWeavers 2026.01.12 — Does your MC have a good support system?

For Bolt, it is definitely a work-in-progress. She starts the story with zilch, and is so apathetic that she thinks she'd be okay if she died. Her earnestness—and talents she doesn't acknowledge but shares rather freely—builds that system around her, though she doesn't realize it. The test will be, of course, when these people discover she's been blackmailed by the mob.

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.01.24 — Share something you’re proud of but had to cut from a work.

If I am proud of something substantial I've cut from a work, that's usually because I've overdone working on a character's back story. My first published novel was that. The cuttings, whether passages or ideas, often ends up with me writing a side story using that material. My current WIP is essentially of that breed, backstory that was too good to ignore. The WIP is the glue between a set of what might be three or four other stories.

Sometimes a good sentence or paragraph will be great but unnecessary or contradictory. Occasionally I save the scrap, but usually I simply delete it.

Nothing to share, here.

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