Forever Home

Sixteen other agents have tried and failed to sell the house at 104 Fern Street. Sixteen less ambitious agents have walked in and then immediately fled the location. All sixteen have a different horror story to tell. 

It’s not real, though. 

Stepping out of my car, I let it chirp loudly as I lock the doors. I have potential clients coming in half an hour. There isn’t really anything I can do about the dilapidated white picket fence shedding its paint and tipping forward as if it too is trying to escape the weathered house. Dried foxtails lean onto the sidewalk. They tangle with each other, strangling the life from one another as effectively as a killer smothering his final victim. 

God. I need to clear my head, paste on a smile, and pretend I didn’t hear all of the nonsense from the other people who came here. 

They don’t tell the same story. It’s not like sixteen people came here and saw a woman on the stairs in a white sheet. Some heard a door slam while they were supposed to be alone at the location. Others swear there was a face outside of a window looking in on them. A single woman refused to answer my call and instead sent me an email saying to never set foot at 104. 

Well, here goes nothing. 

I undo the rusted latch and fight back against the weeds to push open the gate. The foxtails cling to my legs as I step onto the cement walk leading up to the house like fingers of the dead trying to drag me down to the pits of Hell. They’re just weeds, though, and I kick through without much of an issue. 

The two steps up to the porch scream as I step onto them. Definitely water damage. Nobody has lived here in over twenty years. The buyers know this. They’re willing to put in the work to get this old place back to its original glory. I just have to sell it as a great place for their project. 

No ghosts, no killers, no skeletons in the closet. 

The gold key in my hand, I reach for the door. I don’t need it. The latch has been broken for some time, a cobweb dangles between the door and its frame as if to taunt me into believing this place is the crypt everyone describes. 

Rolling my eyes, I press the door forward. It swings in on creaking hinges to reveal a dark hallway. Yellow, stained wallpaper peels down from the top of the walls, curling in on the once flowery pattern. The light switch flicks and causes a thin buzzing, but the bulb in the center of the hall doesn’t flicker to life. I leave the door open behind me as I move forward. 

A door to the left pushes open into a garage right out of the 1980s. The last owners didn’t bother to clean anything out. There’s now vintage toys sticking out of cracked bins on a shelf along the furthest wall. Everything is caked in several inches of dust and debris. A vacuum three times the size of the modern model is tipped over by a car covered in a brown sheet. If it’s something classic, I bet I could add it to the owner’s acquisition to sweeten the deal. 

My fingers bunch around the dirty fabric and I pull. There’s a slam behind me. I drop the sheet without seeing the car and backtrack to the hall. 

It’s just the front door. There was a wind warning out this morning. Perhaps the storm has rolled in faster than anticipated. 

Twenty-four minutes until I’m supposed to be ready for the clients. Shutting the door to the garage, I continue deeper into the house. The hall gives way to a dining room. An oak table lays on its side in the center of the room. Old glassware is scattered around it. There’s no sign of a tablecloth. Likely looters or vagrants. Houses without locks are the best place for those kinds of people. 

I’m going to paint this room as a sunny place. Imagine a new couple dancing in this space, their dinner in the oven and new speakers sitting in the windowsill instead of this clunky air conditioning unit. A bit of elbow grease and a newly staged table and it would be a heavenly expanse for someone trying to get their first house. 

Moving past it, I step into the door on the left. The kitchen is in worse disrepair. The tiled counter is chipped. That’s definitely mold growing behind the faucet drip, drip, dripping into the soiled sink. More broken dishes litter this area. 

There was definitely lime green paint on these walls at one point. A terrible choice, but entirely normal for the era. It’s mostly discolored into a diminished brown. Some splats of a questionable liquid speckle the area closest to the stove missing its door. I’ll joke that the previous owner didn’t know how to cook and hopefully the new clients won’t ask about the possible murder in this space. 

I simply am not going to mention it. The details will be in the paperwork. Nothing grotesque. Just the facts. A woman went mad here. Police tried to intervene. She killed her husband and then herself after taking down six trained officers. It’s a story right out of a novel, but it’s in the past. 

This place has a great foundation. I know it has a brighter future. 

Clicking on the flashlight on my phone, I notice the black widows nesting in all four corners of the stove. Spiders can be scary. They’re not the end of the world. I’ll personally offer to get some spray and sweep them out of here if that’ll comfort my buyers. 

Wind groans through the boards covering the large window over the sink. I hope my clients aren’t caught out in this storm. Perhaps if this old place can offer a little solace from the rain and cold they’ll feel better about being here for all the time it’ll take to fix it up. 

I try to turn on the lights. The buzz of electricity zings through the old walls. Nothing comes to life. Totally fine. That’s why I have a flashlight. 

Backtracking through the dining area, I step down into what was once the living room. I’ll have to warn my clients. We wouldn’t want any unnecessary accidents happening here. 

Dark brown carpet covers the space. A thick, tangy cloud hangs over the area. From the scratches on the wall and the smell, I can assume feral cats made this their home for a little while. Putting a handkerchief over my nose, I pull the bottle of air freshener from my pocket and start spraying. The fake scent of lilacs lingers with the acidic scent, making something I’ve never experienced before and truly hope I never have to smell again. 

There used to be a couch here. The imprints from the feet of it are still on the carpet. Couch along this wall and some kind of entertainment center on the other. The coffee table is the only thing that remains, a makeshift Ouija board discarded on its scratched surface among empty beer cans. 

Kids. Miscreants. No ghosts. 

The bathroom on this level has a functioning toilet. No mirror. No leftover decorations. Just a toilet with a smattering of rat pellets around it. I suppose that’s all that’s really needed.

I take the carpeted stairs up to the second floor. Cracked frames still line the walls. The pictures are long gone. Glass shines on every stair. We’ll all wear our shoes, so not an issue. 

I can still make this work. I’m going to make this work. If I can get this sale, I can sell any house. The promotion waiting back at the office for me… It’s worth inhaling two decades of mostly undisturbed dust. 

Stopping on the top stair, I look at the ground. Clear footsteps lead from here to the master bedroom. Bare feet. Like someone just got home and shuffled off to their room. 

Except I’m the only one here. 

I know better than to yell ‘hello’ out into the black expanse behind the cracked door. Unclipping the bottle of pepper spray from my belt, I shake the can and then ready myself. I’ve dealt with plenty in my six years at this job. No crazy person is going to ruin my sale. 

Skipping the bathroom by the stairs, I step up to the master bedroom and shove the door in. It slams against the other wall. My flashlight cuts a triangle of visible space into the room. There. Something moved. I try to chase it with my light, but it’s gone as soon as I manage to catch up to it. 

I step in, swiping my flashlight around the rest of the space. A bed. Dirty. Wet. It’s the only furniture. The closet door is open.

If there’s someone here…

I clear my throat. “I don’t want to hurt you. You should just leave.”

Plastic hangers clink together. I’m not alone. Someone is in here with me. 

“Don’t make me tell you again,” I say, trying to steady my voice as I keep my arms extended, light on the space and pepper spray at the ready. 

No answer returns. I take a tentative step forward. I can see the half dozen hangers bouncing slightly as if an invisible hand just brushed through them to search for a perfect shirt. A dirty sheet lays rumpled in the right corner. 

Closer. One more step. I angle the light into the left corner. 

Nothing. 

A voice calls out from the bottom floor. “Anybody home?”

All of the anxiety of the past moment releases in a jolt down my spine. I drop my phone and spray. Shit. Fuck. I pick up the phone first, checking it for any cracks before turning the light back towards the closet. The little canister isn’t there. 

“Hello?”

Not the voice from downstairs. Something quiet. Cold breath on the edge of my ear. I’m not alone. 

I try to turn and see it. Not it. Her. It was a woman’s voice. 

I don’t get the chance. 

The closet door slams into me. Too quickly, the floor reaches up to meet my fall. Knees cracking on patchy carpet, I let out a groan as my forehead makes contact with the back of the closet. 

I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t believe in ghosts. The stories aren’t real. Ghosts aren’t real. 

This is a bad prank. Someone is trying to catch me on camera losing my mind. 

That’s not going to happen. 

I have everything under control. 

I repeat the words over and over again as I catch my breath and turn around. The door is ajar. There wasn’t enough force for it to knock me forward and latch shut. Deep scratches mar the interior of it. Too big to be a cat. Too high to be those of a child. Someone else was locked in here. 

Scrambling to my feet, I push out of the closet and check the room. Nobody. Nothing. 

“Hello?”

A woman. Downstairs. My clients are early. 

“Hello,” the other voice responds, a murmur that grazes my cheek. 

Cold air whooshes by me. It rattles the closet door as I step further from it. The bedroom door swings haphazardly, promising to seal me in here for the foreseeable future. I grab the copper knob and tug it open, staggering around it before I can become just another story to tell about house 104. 

There’s an explanation for all of this. I should have ignored the stories before. Old houses echo and creak and groan and shift all of their own accord. Things aren’t built today the same way they were before the turn of the century. This place just has a bigger personality than the condos I’m used to selling twenty miles from here. My mind has gotten frazzled from the overload of information and it’s playing tricks on me. 

Nothing is going to happen to me. 

Ghosts aren’t real. 

Houses aren’t really ever haunted. 

I’m going to walk downstairs and sell this place. 

“Is anyone there?” A man this time. The husband. They’re going to get impatient with me very soon. 

I’m halfway down the stairs, my eyes on my watch as I curse about their punctuality and the way I seemed to have lost fifteen minutes up in the bedroom. “Here,” that other voice answers, an invisible hand resting on my shoulder as if she is clinging to me in order to move down the stairs. 

I jerk back. The weight on my shoulder disappears. It reappears on my lower back. I don’t have time to yelp. She pushes. The rest of the stairs meet me, biting into my forearms, my ribs, and raking splintered fingernails across my spine. 

I’ve hit my head again. Not good. Definitely not the recipe for a perfect sale. Pushing up from the hard floor, the acidic scent of the living room washing back over me, I hold a hand out in front of my face. Fuzzy. Five fingers, but they’re fuzzy around the edges, blurring as I move my head from side to side. I probably have a concussion. I’m sore and winded, but, otherwise, fine. 

The show must go on. 

Distantly, I can hear the couple call out to me. I must have made quite a lot of noise tumbling down those stairs. They’re good people. I can just make out their trepidatious footsteps down the hall to my position. 

Up. I have to get up. They’re here and this is not so easily explained away if I’m still sprawled across the floor like one of the bloody victims of the past. 

They round the corner from the dining room as I manage to make it to my feet. Smile. Smile wider. This has to be real, professional, a silly misunderstanding. 

The woman puts her hands over her mouth, her brown eyes widening as she takes me in. “Are you alright?”

“Alright,” the apparition growls beside me, sinking fingers into my arm as she sidles up to me like an unapproved lover at a society ball. 

I ignore her. This isn’t important. I need to sell this house. 

“You know old homes,” I start, chuckling mildly as I dab a smear of blood from my forehead with a tissue from my pocket. “They should come with warning signs. I wasn’t paying attention to my footing on the stairs, so we’ll all have to be most careful managing these when we go to the upper floor.”

The husband murmurs something to his wife. She seems unconvinced by my explanation, but pastes on a polite smile. Good. We can move through this place together, then. 

Us and the pressure on my arm. 

I try to shrug it off as I motion for them to head back towards the kitchen. The couple turns away as I glance to my side. My mouth goes dry. I don’t feel my heart beating. The hand isn’t invisible. 

The deaths happened in this house over twenty years ago. I should be face to face with a corpse. I should see a skeleton with worms wiggling through the eye sockets. That’s what happens in the movies. Instead, I see the woman whose picture was pasted across every newspaper in the state. A teacher, a wife, a good woman. A redhead with blue eyes and a smattering of freckles across her straight nose. She smiles at me. Her lips move, pinning up on either side, but it doesn’t touch her gaze. 

“Who are you?” I ask, already well aware of the answer as I try to tug my arm away and she holds with all the might of a wolf fighting for the last morsel of food in a decaying forest. 

“You.”

Very funny. I didn’t realize ghosts could be a nuisance and comedic. Grumbling more to myself than her, I pull again. 

“We have clients to see.”

“See,” she echoes back, less terrifying and more annoying. 

I would say more. I would continue to argue with the deceased, but she finally budges, gliding along beside me. 

Fine. I can make this work. 

I’ve sold plenty of houses with metaphorical skeletons in their closets. I’ve mentioned ghouls to clients. There have been police reports to go through and scary stories to skim over. I’ve held the hand of skittish buyers and painted pictures of how beautiful their home would be filled with love and a few layers of fresh paint. 

I’ve never done any of that with a dead woman on my arm. 

The ghost doesn’t speak again as I step out of the living area and pass the tipped over table in the dining room. My clients are in the kitchen. The woman is glued to her husband’s side, a few shades too pale to look healthy. They’re murmuring between themselves. She wants yellow curtains. He thinks he has a guy who can put in a stained glass window over the dripping sink. 

Neither of them seem to notice the man at the oven. 

Not man. 

A shadow. Something composed of black silk and despair. It presses dark hands onto the rusted burners. Turning over its left shoulder, it opens its mouth wide, wider, far too wide for a regular man. It screams. 

I can’t clap my hands over my ears fast enough. The sound vibrates through my clenched teeth, loosening the fillings put in last July. The ghost at my arm releases me and I find myself on the ground once more, pinned between torn up tiles and the sound of Hell unleashing on a guilty soul. 

Eyes shut, hands on my ears, knees pulled to my chest, I wait for what could only be thirty seconds yet feels like an eternity as the grating scream moves over me with the ferocity of a thunderstorm. Then, nothing. Silence. Not a drip in the sink. Not a patter of mouse paws. All is deathly silent in 104. 

Not yet trusting the change in noise levels, I slowly peel my eyelids apart and look around. The man is gone. The ghostly woman is gone. My clients are gone. 

Dammit. 

I’m going to lose the sale. 

Scrambling back to my feet, I stagger out of the kitchen. I push myself to jog through the dining room, past the door to the garage, and into the hall. There. The man, shadow, monster with hideous vocal cords. He seems to glance at me over his shoulder as he pries open the door and steps outside.

Who? What? Why?

Questions plaster themselves to the front of my mind as I stumble forward, my sweaty left hand leaving a smear across the wall with every step. Outside. I just need to make it outside. I think if I could feel the sun on my skin and that raging wind on my face, I’ll be okay. 

It seems to take forever, but I’m finally at the end of the hall. My fingertips wrap around the flimsy piece of wood. I pull. 

Nothing happens. 

Again. 

The door wobbles, but moves no further. 

Trapped. Entombed. Sealed off from the rest of the world. 

I can’t get air into my lungs. Sweat gathers at my hairline. It burns as it passes through the gash on my forehead. There has to be another way out of here. 

Garage. 

There was a car in there. The door should open. I didn’t receive a clicker for it, so it should be manual. 

I can lift a garage door. 

Retracing my steps, I pause at the entrance to the garage. The woman is back. My red-headed ghost. She stands with her hands folded in front of her, watching from the end of the hall with disappointment clouding her gaze. 

Palms slick, I manage to get the door open and squeeze through it without breaking eye contact with her. It slams behind me, severing our visual connection. I don’t care. I’m getting out of here. I still have more questions than answers, but I have a plan and I’m going to follow it through before fully contending with anything else here. 

More cobwebs guard the footpath to the garage door. I stomp through them without hesitation. A spider bite is the least of my concerns now. 

My fingers wrap around the cold, metal grooves of the garage door. I tug. Nothing. 

It doesn’t budge. It doesn’t rattle or shiver from my aggrieved movements. It’s simply as stuck as the front door. 

Whirling back around, I look around me. There’s a solid metal mechanism attached to the ceiling. There’s a way to automatically open this door. I just have to find the key. 

Sixteen other agents came here and walked right back out. None of them mentioned a garage door clicker. Some of them didn’t make it past the hall. 

I did, though.

If they didn’t have the key, then it should be around here somewhere. My eyes move quicker than my frazzled mind. 

Car. 

If it was up to me, I would keep it in the car. 

Lurching forward, I dig my fingers into that dusty sheet and pull. There’s no slamming door to stop me this time. I tug again. Nothing is getting in my way of breaking into this car. The sheet snags on the front fender. I pull again. 

It gives way. 

My clients are underneath. Not the passive woman with a shy smile and a firm grip on her husband that I met in the living area. Just her corpse. 

Her hands are still wrapped around his bicep. Eyes blankly staring ahead at the garage wall, they sit with their temples pressed together. Dust has gathered in the creases of their decaying skin. Their wedding bands have dulled with the passing of time. Nothing and no one can take them away from each other now. 

My feet finally pull me back. I’m still holding the sheet. I can’t get my fingers to unclench.

Someone else put this sheet on the car. People have come to this house. Yet, these bodies weren’t discovered. 

“How…?”

I’m asking myself. I’m asking the greater powers of the universe if they’re any out there showing pity on my current situation. I’m asking because my mind is cracking and if I’m trapped forever like these poor fools I want an answer. 

“How,” the woman whispers from the doorway, grief etching hard lines into her features as the hall door creaks open and comes to a gentle stop on the opposite wall. 

The sheet falls out of my hands as I raise them to her. “What is happening?”

Her thin shoulder shrugs. “Happening,” she responds, only ever an echo of the present. 

The lights flicker. She’s there, looking like a woman who never met her end except for the odd way she floats around the floor, and then she’s not. Gunshots ring out. Blood gushes down her plain, yellow dress. She holds her hands out to me, her mouth forming a silent cry for help just before her head whips back. 

A faceless ghoul, she steps into the garage. Blood drips onto the concrete flooring. It drips and drips and drips, creating a trail from her to me as it curdles on the ground. 

The past and the present are fast friends. They collide more often than we know. 

I have nowhere to run. I have no way to escape. I lose my footing as she floats ever closer, one hand extended. 

She doesn’t swipe at my face. She doesn’t come at me with a weapon. She beckons me forward while my spine continues to press into the hard, dusty shelf. 

I let my fingers slip through her cold, wet ones. Bound together, she drags me back to the rest of the house, away from the door I cannot use, and into the dining room. 

My supposed clients are back, they’re standing by the stairs as we linger by the table, guilt crinkling their brows. I think the man tries to offer a silent apology. I’m not paying attention because I’m counting us. Me, the red-headed teacher who plays my host, and the couple. We’re all here except for the shadowy man from the kitchen. He’s vanished completely while the rest of us congregate here. 

My ghost host squeezes my arm. She needs me to focus instead of puzzling through this situation. There’s something more important than the whereabouts of the shadow. 

My gaze follows her finger.

I barely recognize myself. That’s my body, though, with the suit I put on this morning. My phone is cracked, forgotten closer to the middle of the living room as the flashlight burns a red circle into the old carpet. I didn’t make it down from the master bedroom. 

Or…I did, but not in the mortal realm. 

The woman at my side holds up her other hand. My can of pepper spray materializes and then drops to the floor. We can’t leave, she says with her actions more than her mouth as her regular features squelch back into place, but we can do things within this house. 

Right. Okay. I wipe my free hand over my eyes. 

That’s still me. I haven’t just given myself a concussion I’ll laugh about at the office in a few days. Three ghosts keep me company as my mind works through this predicament. 

“So, we can’t leave?”

The husband and wife look to the woman at my side, respecting her response as her murmur fills the room. “Leave,” she echoes, shaking her head. 

“But we’re not trapped forever?”

The other man traded me spaces. I know now why he so aggressively came after me. He wanted out a little bit more than these other souls trapped in 104. 

“Forever…” she trails off, shrugging a shoulder as if to suggest it’s easier to stay and accept our fate than to fight to leave. 

That’s not for me. I’ve never laid down and accepted anything. I was the agent who was going to sell this house. 

“We’ll have to hide my body or else others will be scared off too quickly.”

The ghosts don’t argue. Whether grief or time has lessened their sense of urgency, they listen silently to my plan, the way my voice rambles off as I try to stay focused on one step after another. Someone is going to come looking for me. A friend, a coworker, a curious agent from the office. When they do, I’ll be more than ready.

I settle on the edge of the tipped over table and squeeze the cold hand still clinging to me. I won’t be the agent that sells 104 to its next owner, but I’m more than prepared to make it someone else’s forever home.

Author’s Note

Happy Friday readers! Is it ever too early to start making spooky stories?

This particular story I wrote for an anthology competition. I got the rejection letter this Tuesday. Which is fine, great, expected. It’s one more to pin to the wall and celebrate. My work is out there, it’s being read, and it’s not going to be forgotten.

I’m still incredibly proud of this piece. As typically a romance and fantasy writer, shifting to horror and studying the genre was a big leap for me. I had a great time reviewing old Stephen King and staring at macabre setting aesthetics online.

I got some great feedback from my first readers, so I want to share it here as well to see what the rest of you think! Let me know in the comments if you enjoyed this piece, if it hit the ‘spook’ factor for you, and if there’s anything else you would have wanted from it.

A writer can’t live in an isolation tank. They just stagnate then, creating the same things over and over again in a vicious cycle. We need feedback and opposing views and challenges to help us become the best version of ourselves.

Keep writing. Keep reading. Stay spooky, readers.

Happy Anniversary

Today, five years ago, I married the love of my life. I thought it would be fun to share my vows with my audience here.

. . .

We may have known each other for seven years, but we started dating only about a year and a half ago as a steady couple. During this time, we took a women’s literature class. I got to fall in love with you over words in black and white, words that expressed individuality, words that gave life to romance, adventure, and the possibility of bravery in the face of this world. My favorite book from this time was Jane Eyre.

For those that don’t know, Jane Eyre was revolutionary for its time period. Revolutionary in that it was written by a woman, expressing different views from society, and giving an almost equal relationship between the protagonists. Revolutionary like the way this relationship has completely changed my life. 

One of the best quotes from the novel comes at the end one which Jane states, “Reader, I married him.”

And, well, friends and family who came here today, my story begins with “I married her.”

Love, I vow to write you a fairytale filled with good night kisses and waffles for breakfast. Working towards our happily ever after, I promise to give you a lifetime of adventures with me by your side. I’m sure some days will be more of a drama than the romantic comedy we deserve, so I vow to give you my unwavering support through every hardship with the promise that we will make it through, we will find a way, and we will be happy.

To make you smile will be my life’s greatest goal. To remind you of your beauty will be a daily challenge. To be here with you now is my fairytale coming true. You have my heart, my future, and now my last name. I love you.

. . .

It’s been officially five years. Our lives have changed drastically. We’ve gone through an entire pandemic. We’ve struggled through different jobs and making ends meet in order to keep our home and our loved ones safe.

We’ve had amazing days. We’ve faced devastation. We’ve survived.

My goals haven’t changed, love. You are my everything.

It’s only right to make amendments to vows though, so here’s something I’ve thought of while we sweat through the heat together, working on our separate projects thigh to thigh because we can’t bear to be an inch apart:

• I vow to fill your water bottle whenever you ask. You’re a succulent in terrible need of liquids and a knack for forgetting water is important.
• I vow to listen to every new album by Taylor Swift, staying up to odd hours of the night to get the latest snippet from your favorite singer and listen to your interesting opinions on every single one of them.
• I vow to fold the laundry within two to five business days because your favorite pair of socks are likely at the bottom of it.
• I vow to make you s’mores and warmed cookies and all the little treats you could request while your face is lit by a computer screen as you keep our family afloat with your incredible knack for online work.
• I vow to be here, love. Everyday. In every way.

You, Mrs. Reece, have challenged my every ideal of what the future was supposed to look like for me. I still don’t have a real grasp of what it will be. Perhaps my name will be one remembered for literary genius or artistic value. Perhaps, though, and far more importantly, history will forget me altogether because I never thought to care about anyone’s opinion beyond yours.

Wherever we end up in the next five, ten, twenty years, love, it will be enough simply because you are here beside me.

Happy anniversary. I love you.

You, love. Beautiful as ever.

Lore Edits: Week One

Exciting news over here, readers!

I’ve officially started the arduous process of editing Lore. Week one covered the first three chapters as well as a brainstorming sesh to figure out what is really the most important elements to keep in this final version.

Here’s what we got from week one:

• Ummmm, we still absolutely love Ashby and Lucy and their spontaneous meeting that starts with stealing a wallet and making demands to see each other again
• The setting is intact, which is a huge success for me. Typically, I am incredibly vague on the setting and have to put in a lot of work to make the story actually happen somewhere rather than in a vague, bland space with a half-assed backdrop.
• Seth. My editor loves him. In a previous drafted novel, he died for the greater good. I’ve resurrected him for this series and have to give him a much more pronounced character arc if he’s going to be kept in the story.
• This was written for kindle vella. I had to make the first three episodes incredibly packed full in order to grab people’s attention, which was fun, but didn’t give me time to really build the world and drama behind the characters. With the adjustment to making this into a full-size, publishable novel rather than an episodic story, I have more room to play around with building up the story before my romance pairing run into each other.

I have pages of notes and ideas and places to go as I start the rewrite here in a couple of weeks. Lucy and Ashby are characters that are integral to the larger scale of my series, so they’re never far from my mind, but it’s going to be incredibly fun to pick up their initial story once more.

The rewriting step is typically where I get stuck. I LOVE rewriting. It gives me time and space to make different things happen that I didn’t notice or wasn’t brave enough to write down the first time. Creation isn’t something that is done perfectly the first, second, or third draft. My characters are vapid liars who need several different chances to give me the full and total truth to their stories.

I can’t wait to see what Lucy and Ashby’s story looks like in a few months. It’s going to be a bumpy ride!

Looking Forward

What are you most excited about for the future?

I have a lot of trouble looking towards the future on a general basis. I have a lot of trouble staying still in the current moment. It’s easier to fall prey to the demons of the past and feed the anxiety prickling under my skin every moment of every day.

It’s nearly impossible to depend on a dream of the future with the current political climate. There’s no guarantee I will have rights as a queer woman in the next ten to sixty years. I have no idea if I will be able to stay in my current country or have to flee to save myself and my loved ones in what will definitely become a war meant for the history books.

Other generations had dreams of flying cars and technology aided homes. Mine, though, isn’t dreaming. We’re asking for basic pay to afford basic food and amenities in a basic little home.

Not all of my thoughts are quite so cynical.

This morning, well before I opened this prompt, I got in the car with my wife and drove to work like we do five days out of every week. Stopped at a red light, she pointed out a couple of chubby brown birds on the sidewalk. We had a brief conversation on the activities of the birds, giving a bigger story to their actions as we sent them on a metaphorical Pixar-like story. Driving off, she reached over the center console and squeezed my leg.

“You know, we’re going to be those old people that birdwatch.”

It wasn’t a question. Just a statement. I laughed and thought about that simple sentence for the next few hours, continuously circling back around to the innocence of such words.

We don’t know what the future holds for us. Every step forward feels shaky. Surviving our mid-twenties sometimes feels like an unfeasible act mitigated by evenings together in our kitchen enjoying a few treats before going back out into the work day.

Birds, though. I’d like to think there will still be birds in the future. No matter the breed, no matter if we’re sharing a porch or wandering along a random boulevard, I’d like to think there will be plenty of birds to look at while I hold her hand.

June 15th

Happy Thursday, readers!

I have been almost too excited to write this blog since finishing The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab last week. My wife read it and told me it was her new favorite book over a year ago and that I needed to absorb the incredible message as well. That being said, I do everything in my power to avoid reading things that’ll be emotionally triggering and cause me to spiral for a few days, so I put off this book for quite some time while I immersed myself in fantasy landscapes and easy romances.

Picture taken by my wife in a flower field while head over heels in love with this particular novel

The wait was worth it.

Every word, sentence, paragraph was crafted so well. The edition I read came with a foreword by Schwab on how she came about writing Addie’s story and I was completely in love with the concept and the author before the narrative had a chance to begin.

Addie LaRue is a female protagonist that bares her teeth at the men and societal expectations imposed on her life. This story takes you through a fragmented history encompassing three hundred years as she fights to not survive, but thrive in a cruel and complicated world while testing the boundaries of her deal with a mischievous god. It is captivating and relevant and gives you a clear person to cheer for through Addie’s long life.

Loneliness and grief and misery tangle with flashes of joy, excitement, and discovery. Addie sees wars and suffers through plagues and the ramifications of being born a woman in this world. She lives through French Enlightenment and finds herself in art. Fighting every step of the way, she makes it into the modern era and loses herself in music and food and people.

There’s a catch, though. Nobody can remember her once she is out of their line of sight. So, she goes through life alone besides the god who punishes and mocks and complicates her attempt at existence.

My wife’s book birthday set-up; her favorite book making an appearance

Until, that is, her story runs headlong into Henry Strauss. Without giving too much away here about the love story that comes from these two finding solace in each other, Henry is the person I instantly found relatable. As in, he is me. Depression and feelings of not being enough are explored through his character as he makes his own deal with the devil: a chance at happiness on a limited timeframe. He’s a writer, fiddling with his work, but not getting anywhere for long patches of time. He works in a bookstore, goes through the motion of living, but simply exists as a storm cloud that rages alone while the rest of the world moves on by.

The romance, the tension, the tete-a-tete between Addie and her dark god…it was a whirlwind that I breezed through all too fast, finishing this novel at 2am with not enough tissues while I cheered on these fantastic characters.

It is June, so this book has made it onto my list to mention this month not because I read it recently and adored every page, but because it has clear queer representation. In an interview I read by Schwab, I knew she was queer and believed in writing queer characters into everything because they deserve literary space as much as everyone else. I’ve seen plenty of attempts by other writers to make the page a queer space, but none have succeeded as well as Schwab in this particular novel. Both Addie and Henry go through several partners through the duration of the story, both loving and being loved by people of the same gender before finding one another. It is a breath of fresh air to see pansexual characters not thrust under a microscope, but allowed to live and exist and make mistakes with their partners without being questioned and forced to “come out” in the stereotypical ways. It was beautiful. It give me hope that with more people like Schwab in the world, we can eventually reach a time and place in which all sorts of people can live peacefully without fear of simply being themselves or choosing to love someone society doesn’t approve.

If you haven’t read it yet, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is a must from me. The history, the romance, the character development, and moral ambiguity is weaved together in such a way that I hope this book long outlasts us and becomes literature cherished for generations to come.

Did I mention my wife loves this book? This is her, a goddess in a flower field, catching the fading sunset on her passionate approval of this novel.

As always, thank you for reading. Leave a comment down below to let me know if you’ve read this book or have your own June recommendations. ❤

…

And to my wife, thank you for all of the pictures, for being here while I dragged my feet and refused to read your amazing recommendation, and for holding my hand while I sobbed through the end, not because it was terribly sad, but because I was lost in the hope of the moment, the fight, and the realization that I would go head to head against any midnight god to keep you here by my side. There once was a girl born with a broken heart…I remember you…I love you always.

Just a June Post

Hey, readers!

Since I’m going to be here anyway rambling about myself and my passions and projects and the audacity to think I can get away with any of it, I thought it would be fun to review some queer works that inspire me. This week, I’m going to be going over Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston.

Me. Picture courtesy of my wife. August 5, 2019.

This is the first book I read where being queer wasn’t just a big scary coming out event. It was a novel that built up the two separate characters as individual people with their own problems outside of their sexuality. McQuiston gave us young celebrities who were just barely managing to take on the world and then had to also deal with the fact that they had fallen in love with the wrong goddamn person.

And it doesn’t matter.

Love is love. It’s big and momentous and world shattering. The two characters have to make individual choices to come to terms with themselves and each other and then take the additional step to announce it to their families and the surrounding world. It’s on such a larger scale than most of us queer people will ever personally experience, but it’s written in such a way that every pitfall and success of their relationship is completely relatable.

It’s also the first novel that I read and saw myself in a character. Not some quirk here or there that oversized publishing houses push to try to make the female character ‘one size fit all’ for its readers. Henry deals with familial obligations and the stress of trying to fit into a perfect mold. He’s everything to be expected out of this kind of story.

Alex, though, is brave and loud and incredibly stupid. He’s me. He has a sequence in the book where he has to call an old friend and ask if some of their after dark hours were just friendly or straight up gay. It’s an incredibly small piece McQuiston snuck in, but it has stuck with me for years and made me laugh when I recently reread the novel.

My wife and I will have been friends for twelve years this August. We’ve been more or less inseparable since meeting in high school. She’s my first kiss, my first sexual experience, my first everything and I almost threw away the rest of our happy lives together because I was terrified of committing to something more than friends and labeling myself as a queer woman.

This book shines a light on those rough few months I experienced and the repercussions that seem to come from every decision. Nothing I could do or say was the right thing for a very long time. The world constantly felt like it would rupture and fall right out from under my feet.

Choosing my wife, though, even on the hard days, was the only thing I could do. It’s still the only thing I can do. I wake up every morning with that mindset. No matter what troubles are foisted from their dark realms, she and I are going to get through them together.

McQusiton has fully captured the magic that comes from loving someone fully as yourself for who they are. If you’re looking for something heartwarming this June, I cannot suggest this novel enough.

A Farewell to May

Spring slunk back into my life like a stray cat making my stoop its home. It was small things at first: the sun coming out a little earlier each day, the temperature rising with it, leaves coming in one by one and then all at once on the tree in the backyard. Before I knew it, there was grass in the yard and roses sprinkled along the fence.

I don’t take enough time to notice the small things like the snail earnestly trying to crawl up the side of our gutter spout or the curling petals of the jasmine growing in a corner of the yard. The days are getting longer, but time is still going too quickly. If winter slow things down, then spring has barged in just to let my borrowed seconds slip away.

There isn’t enough hours in the day to get the dishes done and the laundry folded after a full work shift. Somewhere in there, we have to make dinner and declutter the house. Hobbies are nearly a myth, my paint set now out in the living room, but hardly being used. Work seems to tail us home, my wife curling up on one end of the couch while I begrudgingly bring over my devices to get some writing done.

There are no words for the screen. I can’t focus on the flurry of voices in the back of my mind. The stories are there, they have plots and details and passionate narrators, but my eyes are catching on a stray stream of light from the front window and the way it runs golden fingers over the wrinkled edge of a blanket.

I am here. I am writing. I am getting nothing done.

But that isn’t true.

I have a brand new series coming out on kindle vella in TWO DAYS. I’m a writer coming to grips that this little project is going to be visible to all sorts of readers in a matter of hours. It might flop. It might be everything I’m hoping. Most of the time, I think it’s easier to live with fantasies instead of pushing forward to reality.

I’ve been working hard and I am much better at plugging away at projects than having them seen and admired or rejected. This is the curse of a writer. Someone who sees the world and wants to tell their version of it has to face the fact that the rest of the world will have access to their thoughts and opinions and silly romance stories.

So, May has been a month of highs and lows, but June is right around the corner.

It’s time for rainbows and summer treats and late night conversations with the person I love most tucked into bed beside me. When I started writing for this little blog a year ago, I wasn’t sure who my online persona was going to be. I didn’t plan ahead or really have any clue what I was doing. I wrote stories and passively received compliments, happy to do the bare minimum as a person who calls themselves a writer.

This June is different.

I’m more and more prepared to by myself when I write these blogs to the great maw of online criticism. So, for those new here or who haven’t met me beyond the characters I obsess over, my name is Angelica Reece. I am a proudly married woman madly in love with her best friend who happens to share the same gender. I’m preparing to share books and music by other queer creators here and on my Instagram and just be obnoxiously LOUD about the way I deserve to live and love in a world that is increasingly dangerous for people like me.

If that’s something you’re interested in, please follow along. I’m sure we’re going to make it a June to remember. ❤

May 24th

It has been a busy week, readers!

A new episode of A Secret in the Thorns was uploaded Monday. You can’t catch up on my queer Beauty and the Beast retelling here: A Secret in the Thorns

I printed out the entirety of Lore for my editor to go through. It’s a huge stack of paper full of potential. I am excited and overwhelmed with the prospect of trimming down the 130,000 words to make a debut novel. We’re going to salvage certain scenes for the sequel I’ll start work on in a few months. It’s a project that now looms on the kitchen table.

My other big project got it’s official name this week. Phoenix Fantasies is scheduled to go live June 2nd. Four episodes will be dropping on kindle vella. Be sure to follow along here and on Instagram @adreecewriting to get all the latest news on this spicy paranormal romance.

In other news, the wife and I have spent our evenings playing the latest Zelda game. I finished an embroidery project. I’ve started a couple of paintings. The laundry managed to get hung up.

Life as a writer is all about finding the profound in the simple act of living. It’s balancing a thousand voices in your head telling you to start a new project while there’s still work to do on your main stories. I wash dishes and listen to Ashby tell me about Lucy. Every song that comes on the radio finds a way to tie into my characters, the greedy personalities crawling over each other to be the one in the spotlight for just a moment.

It doesn’t always look like progress. Most of the time, I do something exciting, like submitting a short story to a competition, and then numbly stare at the dim laptop screen. There’s nothing to solid to hold or take a picture of. We have to celebrate our little moments with a deep breath and an expectation that all of this hard work is going to pay off in the future.

So, I wrote a few thousand words today and patted myself on the back. It’ll be time to make dinner here in a few minutes and then I’ll collapse on the couch for a few hours and watch my wife do a much better job of playing video games while I enjoy the artistic details the creators built into the layouts or the story building the writers left for me to relish in the cut scenes.

Life as a writer isn’t glamorous. It’s not always flashy or exciting. Today, it’s full of hope for what’s to come. I’m going to hang onto that for as long as I can.

What a Wednesday

What have I been up to, readers?

Mostly flipping from one existential crisis to another. Letting myself be crushed by self-doubt and trepidation. Groaning about my predicament and not getting enough work done.

Enough, though, isn’t a real value. My ‘enough’ isn’t the same as someone else’s. Honestly, I’ll never be able to be enough because I’m caught up in the idea of where I want to be rather than the actual journey to get there.

I have been writing. I’ve composed the third draft of a scary story I’ll be submitting to an anthology competition. I’ve crafted two and half episodes for my newest vella idea. I published another episode of Henri. I am tip tapping away most days on my keyboard, coming up with a delightful mixture of nonsense along with all of the real progress I’m making each session.

A year ago, I wasn’t writing very much at all. I was fiddling with the same novel I’d already written seventeen other times, tweaking things here and there, but never making a dent in the real work that goes into creating a full book. The person I was a year ago would have crumbled under the strain of balancing multiple projects and running a blog and posting on social media. A year ago I wouldn’t have been able to manage any of my now weekly goals.

Which is crazy.

I’m typically so busy with my nose in a book or my eyes on my screen that I don’t notice time going by. I need to take a deep breath. One year ago, I had a partial project to my name. I was a college dropout with no real plan for the future. I was barely writing.

Since then, I‘ve written an entirely new novel on a side character who took hold of his story. I have people reading my writing. It’s online and on kindle vella, officially published for people to see and admire and judge. It has been terrifying just hitting publish over and over again.

What if the next thing I write down is a colossal failure?

What if my writing never amounts to anything important or real or successful?

Am I wasting my time?

It’s too easy to slip off of a mental high point and loathe myself. It’s too easy to judge myself for taking an evening off or forgetting to post on Instagram. It’s too damn easy to give up.

So, I am going to start making an effort to celebrate the small stuff because I have no idea who I’ll be a year from now, but that writer deserves someone rooting for her rather than tearing her down.

To those who have been following along with my writing journey, thank you for giving me the support and confidence to continue.

And to my wife, who will undoubtedly read this a few minutes after I hit publish, thank you. For talking me off a ledge this morning and every time up to this point. I would have given up on writing years before I got good at it if it wasn’t for your gentle belief in me and your unwavering dedication to the little voices in my head.

Today was a hard one as a writer. Tomorrow will be better.

Hello Thursday!

My editor yelled at me this morning. We commute together. I was talking about book ideas and the next things coming while she’s busy editing Carter into a real novel. There were a lot of maybes between us.

Maybe I start another vella.

Maybe I look into doing a patreon account.

Maybe I stuff my head into the ground and pump out a whole novel over the next two months.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

All of my ideas stopped hard at a metaphorical wall, though. Yes, I finished a project and I’m excited to move on with new things, but what if they aren’t good?

And I kept saying it.

I could do (insert project idea), but… and reason after reason would pour out of me for why it wouldn’t work out.

She stopped me, though. Hands on the wheel, eyes on the road, she spoke to me like I was crazy.

“Everything you do will be good.”

Not because we’re married and she has read the drivel I put out twelve years ago when I first caught inspiration to be a writer. Not because she’s heard me say all of these things before and watched me pull through. Rather because I have put in the hard work and diligence to continually persevere the onslaught of imposter syndrome and bad days that just seem to come with being creative.

Everything I do won’t be publishable.

But everything I do will have something good we can salvage.

Writers write because we have to. There’s voices in our heads and stories in our veins that only we can tell. Nothing gets better if we keep trying to perfect the first two lines of each project.

I’m not an outliner. I sit down at my keyboard and spew gibberish half the time. I stand at the kitchen sink and disentangle the jagged details. I think and think and think and still can’t see the difference between my good and bad days.

My editor can, though.

So, find yourself someone you trust, someone who knows you through thick and thin, and really listen when they tell you that it’ll be good. It’ll work out. The next novel will be better. The next idea will pan out.

Nothing is perfect, but getting stuck in the pit of overthinking helps no one.

You can do this, writers. Just put down the next line. Trust your editor.

And always keep writing.