[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA.]

SMELL-O-MATIC 7000

TL;DR: In the continuing covert competition with her boyfriend as to who is the best fantasy writer, Writer X installs an experimental piece of technology in her nose to take her writing to the next level and prove she’s the Next Big Epic Fantasy Writer of All Time. What could go wrong?

Hello, All! Melanie here.

When last we heard from Writer X, she and Tryxy took a walk in the Gloomy Woods to beat the high heat we’ve had here in New Hampshire. It offered all the things you can expect in a place called the Gloomy Woods; black apples, an undead creature named Clementine, and the last big epic fantasy writer of all time’s right arm.

Would you believe August marks the third year of Writer X?

Without further ado…

---

Subject: TRYXY’S A HAIRBALL NOW

Dear Gladys,

Cat dander defies all known laws of invariable mass. With the crazy hot days we’ve been getting, #bestkitten is shedding like a mamma-jamma and we can’t keep up. Every time someone opens the front door, a draft slides in and the house looks like a snowstorm of swirling cat hair clumps!!!!

Just last Thursday, we got the Roomba out to suck up the day’s sheddings, and by noon we had enough shedded cat hair to create FOUR whole life size #bestkitten sculptures and put them in the front yard where they were promptly devoured by a pygmy marmoset.

And if that weren’t bad enough, the Roomba bit the dust by Friday and my boyfriend, award-nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, and I had to call a special Cat Dander Rescue Squad to come in and locate Tryxy who’d been walled off in his room by a dense tide of white fluff.

Have you ever noticed that there’s lots of YouTube videos showing you what to do when your cat gets a hairball but there are NO VIDEOS TELLING YOU WHAT TO DO IF YOU GET A HAIRBALL?????

Anyhoo, I’m sure you’re dying to know how my writing is going. WELL IT’S ABOUT TO BE BETTER THAN EVER GLADYS AND YOU’LL NEVER GUESS WHY. But I need you to sit down because you are going to be so incredibly excited at the news I am sharing with you.

I actually wrote last week. A short story in fact. It’s possibly the most brilliant thing ever written, but a lot of people who read it will probably just be jealous and try to say that it “needs another draft” or “doesn’t have any sensory detail” or “is a great start to something.” Whatever people think of themselves, you’d be surprised how few people can stand in the shadow of true greatness!!!!!!

In fact, I showed it to my boyfriend as soon as I wrote it and when he read it he said, “Wow. That’s a great start to something. Your plot is really strong, but I think the story might do even more of what you want it to do if you added sensory detail. That stuff’s really critical to helping a reader feel immersed in a story.”

To which I pretended to have cat hair in my eye and left the room so that I could secretly look up whatever the heck “sensory detail” is and a great little article called “SWITCHEROO: How to make a writing critique partner feel stupid and inferior.”

When I was done, I came back and casually said, “I hear what you’re saying about sensory detail in which a writer uses the five senses to add depth of detail to writing, but is it possible you’re missing what I’m really trying to do here? Because obviously I know what sensory detail is and if I would have wanted it in there, I would have added it.”

“Really? In the first draft? I usually have to go back in subsequent drafts and add sensory detail, enriching it pass by pass. For example, lots of writers include sight and sound in their descriptions but smell is one of the least represented senses. I’m always impressed when a writer invokes our sense of smell. Smell is so powerful. And the English language has more words for sights and sounds than it does smell making smell even more challenging. I’m curious,…what were you trying to accomplish by leaving out sensory details?”

To which I pretended to give a loud sneeze and said, “Oh, I think Tryxy is calling me, be right back” and I left the room and looked up “english has more sight words than smell” and I couldn’t find ANYTHING, but I did find out that there are actually EIGHT senses to use in writing and that was just the juice I needed to go back and really ZING my boyfriend and his know-it-all-ness. I was fuming!!!!

“Actually, smell isn’t the most challenging of the sensory details to include. Personally, I rarely see writers include vestibule, prophylactics, and interrogation.”

My boyfriend held up his hand. “Wait. Wait. Do you mean vestibular, proprioceptive, and interoceptive?”

“No. I USED THE WORDS I WANTED, TOD BOADKINS.”

“I prefer to just called it balance, movement, and internal senses—”

“NO ONE IS ASKING YOU WHAT YOUR PREFERENCES ARE!!!!”

“I’m sorry. I think I offended you. Did I offend you?”

“OF COURSE NOT. YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND MY WRITING.”

ANd I would have shouted a lot more just so he could see how stupid he was being but I had sucked in a floating hairball the size of a golf ball and it took ten minutes of my boyfriend giving me the Heimlich maneuver and peanut butter to get it out.

Fortunately for me, I found the Smell-o-matic 7000 soon after. If you’re not familiar, it’s the latest and greatest in writing assistive technology. Originally it was created for people who wanted to have a sense of smell 35x better than dogs so that dogs stop feeling so gosh darn superior, but its uses for writers were IMMEDIATELY APPARENT.

IT works by ratcheting up your sense of smell so that you smell things so acutely, you will be 72% more likely to write scent into your writing. BUT THAT’S NOT ALL. The creators of the Smell-o-matic 7000 created a special synaptic pulse that connects what you write to the olfactory parts of your brain so that if you write “LEATHER SOFA” you immediately SMELL A LEATHER SOFA and can describe it!!!!!!!

What’s great is that my boyfriend has no idea the Smell-o-matic 7000 exists and when he sees my next draft, he is going to be absolutely FLOORED!!!!!

About a half hour ago I inserted the device into my nostrils where it quickly melted into my nasal tissue. The instructions say that it takes about thirty minutes to an hour for the device to get to full power. Then, the device effect naturally wears off in anywhere between 7 and 374 days!!!!!! What’s even better is I think a mouse died in one of our walls and this device will DEFINITELY help me find it!!!!! And if that’s not the cherry on top, I misplaced a chocolate bar somewhere last Hogwatch and I spent three weeks looking high and low for it with no luck, but this device is gonna help me find all my lost stuff!!!!!!!

Gladys!!! I think it’s starting to work!!!!! I smell something!!!!

I smell…the seedy, warm smell of unwashed hair. And lots of it. ACK. It’s almost like a linseed oil factory in here!!!! What is that god awful smell???

I THINK IT’S THE CAT HAIR!!!!!! Oh no! Why did I write cat hair??? The second I wrote it, I got another wave of the unwashed hair straight to the back of my throat!!!!!

MY EYES ARE WATERING GLADYS!!!! Do you know how awful tears smell????? How salty they are!!!! It doesn’t smell like the ocean!!!! It’s like sitting on the inside of a brined turkey!!!!

I could vomit. Why did I say vomit? Why did I choose to invoke one of the worst smells to human kind?? The sweet, rancid, roiling, upchuck-inducing smell of vomit. The way its sickly sweet savor tickles the back of your throat like a feather daring you to gag even a little!!!! That is ALMOST the worst smell known to human kind and it’s a fact. Everyone knows that. The only thing worse than that

WAIT A MINUTE!!!! I almost said it. But there’s no way I’m typing that!!!! OH BUT I THOUGHT IT!!!! CONTROL ALT DELETE!!!! CONTROL ALT DELETE!!!!

FRESH FLOWERS FRESH FLOWERS FRESH FLOWERS. NOOOOOOO. THAT WAS TOO MANY!!!! IT SMELLS LIKE A YANKEE CANDLE SHOP NOW!!!! I’M BEING PUNCHED IN THE BRAIN. OH THE VANILLA AND INDISCRIMINATE FLORAL CINNAMON AGONY!!!!!

GOD HELP US ALL GLADYS. EVERYONE KNOWS THAT YANKEE CANDLE SHOPS ARE NOTHING MORE THAN COVERT CHEMICAL WARFARE PLANTED IN OUR MIDST!!!!!

GLADYS, DO YOU HAVE A NOSE PLUNGER???? I NEED THIS OUT IMMEDIATELY!!!!!! DON’T TELL MY BOYFRIEND HE CAN’T KNOW!!!!!!

THERE IS A DOG WHIZZING IN THE YARD ACROSS THE STREET AND A SPARROW SHITTING ON A PIECE OF SIDE-WALK BAKED BUBBLE GUM!!! WHY DOES EVERYTHING EVIL SMELL SWEET????

I HAVE TO GO!!!!! I NEED TO CALL POISON CONTROL AND THE PRESIDENT AND THE POLICE!!!!!!

Pages next week, Galdsy!

xox,

X

DON’T

TELL X

BUT I

ACCIDENTALLY

ATE HER

CHOCOLATE

BAR LAST

HOGWATCH

AND EVEN

HELPED

HER LOOK

FOR IT

BECAUSE

I DIDN’T

HAVE THE

HEART TO

TELL HER

AND NOW

IT’S GONE

ON SO

LONG I’M

COMMITTED

TO THE

LIE.

[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA.]

THE GLOOMY WOOD

TL;DR: Writer X and the demon Tryxy take a walk through the Gloomy Wood to beat the heat and get good selfies, but Tryxy’s perfectionism gets them lost.

Hello, All! Melanie here.

It’s the third year in a row in which extremities of weather in New England have been the main feature of summer rather than the backdrop.

Two years ago, New Hampshire was as hot as it’s ever been. Local appliance shops sold out of air conditioners and neighbors donned camouflage face paint, whittled spears, and hid in rhododendron bushes with the aim to ambush and abscond with some unsuspecting fool’s new AC unit.

Last year, it was the flood. I dug up some actual footage of my basement.

This year brings a bouquet of yo-yo temperatures, frequent lightning storms, and a spriggy flourish of…tornadoes.

This is all fine.

We all have our ways of coping with the weather, as does Writer X and Tryxy. 

Without further ado…

---

Subject: How Do You Like Them Apples?

Dear Gladys,

Did you catch the news about the Weregophers? Are they an invasive species or something?

ANyhoo, I’m sure you’re dying to know how my writing is going, especially since I’m a local celebrity. Well, I’m very well rested after my walk with Tryxy in the gloomy wood behind Local College. PLEASE TELL TRYXY I’M A LOCAL CELEBRITY. Not only did I win a flash fiction contest, I was interviewed on Mr. Morgan’s Podcast Emporium about whether I liked the new store brand chicken nuggets just last week!!!!!

THEY’RE SAWDUST, GLADYS!!!!

Only the popular kids know this, but it’s always twenty to thirty degrees cooler in the gloomy wood than it is everywhere else. Which is good. Because after our A/C broke and the HVAC guy got a restraining order against me, I wasn’t getting ANY writing done!!!!

IT IS STATISTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO BE A GENIUS IF YOUR FACE IS MELTING OFF!!!! How am I supposed to become the world’s next big epic fantasy writer when two liters of sweat is trickling down the backs of my thighs every five minutes???

We decided go to the glloomy wood three days ago before my boyfriend sent out that searching party. There’s nothing like walking through a cool gloomy wood to make you feel like you’re about to write the next bestselling horror novel, and Tryxy was excited because he’s doing everything for the ‘gram these days. The photos were a little tricky, and there’s a sign saying not to take them, but we got the hang of them. It’s totally fine!!!!!

Actually, I should probably tell you a little more so that you can know where to go. You know how there’s the Local College new campus with the state of the art facilities?? Don’t go there.

Go two miles south of the campus and you’ll see a weathered sign with cracked and peeling paint that reads “Help Me, Clementine,” in a shaky scrawl with ribbons of tattered crime scene tape blowing in the wind. THAT’S THE SPOT!!!!

Tryxy and I were seriously melting when we climbed out of the car. We couldn’t get into the gloomy wood fast enough!!! Mostly because we couldn’t find the trail entrance and there was a big DOT sign that said:

____________________

Gloomy Wood Forest Trails Guide:
Visitors are advised not to leave the marked trails at any time.
Use the designated entrance. It’s three miles downhill. 
Do not speak to anyone you see who is not in your party.
Do not feed anyone you meet. Ever.
Do not take food from anyone you meet. Ever.
Photos are not advised.
We can’t believe we have to say this, but move in the OPPOSITE direction of the screams.
Trust us.
We really mean it.
Moss grows on any damn side of the tree.
Thank you to those of you who got the Gloomy Wood repeated entries in the Darwin Awards.
Leave Clementine alone.

______________________

The trees around the parking lot were so thick with birches, red oaks, and aspen, we could hardly get over the treeline. Tryxy and I crashed around for about a half hour as branches and thorns tore at our faces and arms. Whatever the sign said, we were FINE BECAUSE IT WAS SIXTY FIVE DEGREES WHICH IS THE TEMPERATURE THE GODS INTENDED FOR WRITERS!!!!

As soon as we found the trail, Tryxy celebrated the occasion with a cute selfie. I look my best when I’m sweaty—my face is nice and hot pink—but Tryxy got super picky for some reason.

“This isn’t a good one,” he said.

“What do you mean, I look amazing????”

“Yes, but do you see the severed, bloody arm hanging from the branches behind our heads. It’s RUINING the photo.”

“No one cares about a bloody arm, Tryxy, it’s part of nature just like a misty lake!!!!! Look at my cheekbone definition!!!! That’s the cheekbone definition of the next big epic fantasy writer of all time!!!!”

“And that’s probably the severed arm of the last big epic fantasy writer of all time! Let’s try again. Only we’ll turn around and put the rocks behind us. It’ll be fun. Duck lips!”

So we turned around but this time a goat on roller skates photobombed us. Then we tried again but that’s when something bit Tryxy’s foot and we were pretty sure it was a weregopher but Tryxy was determined to get a good picture and that’s when things went south between us.

“You have several good pictures of me, why don’t you want to share any of them?”

Tryxy grumbled and said something about, “Let’s just keep going.”

Instagram is a cruel master, Galdsy. No matter what pic he took, there was always something Tryxy didn’t like about it. He had a double chin. He didn’t like the silhouette of a hanging man over his left shoulder. Or the disfigured tree that bled from every knothole was too bloody. Or my eyes were crossed.

“I just don’t understand why the photos you already have aren’t good enough!!! I’m hungry and starting to get cold,” I said.

“You don’t understand. A local celebrity liked one of my photos, and now I have a lot of pressure on my shoulders to perform.”

I was instantly stabbed in the heart. How could Tryxy call someone a local celebrity??? He never called ME a local celebrity!!!! We’ve been friends all these years and he never called me a local celebrity. I demanded to know who this so called local celebrity was.

“I don’t want you to get jealous.”

“WHO’S JEALOUS???? I’m a local celebrity.”

Tryxy pursed his lips but he couldn’t stop himself from shaking his head in disagreement.

“I am so!!! I won the local flash fiction contest last year!!!!! Stop shaking your head. IT’s true!!!”

“Yeah, but she does the school closures on the radio. I just feel like that’s more of a celebrity.”

I was fuming. I could see there was no reasoning with Tryxy.

Tryxy was chagrined but hellbent on getting his photo and marched us down one trail to the next and then forgot which trails we had taken so we were stuck looking for help. Lucky for us, someone was screaming!!!!!

We moved in the direction of the screams when we found a one-armed green haired woman who smelled like a swamp and had fresh beet juice running down her face and shoulders (that’s the only explanation GLADYS!!!!) and we asked her which trail would take us out of the wood.

She pointed deeper into the wood and screamed and we said thank you and Tryxy said, “Oh, if you’re looking for your other arm, I think you left it back that way.”

Meanwhile, Tryxy and I weren’t talking to each other. I was absolutely stunned at the fact that my own BFF thought I wasn’t local celebrity enough!!!! It turns out that was mostly my blood sugar because right about then we came across a big black tree full of black apples with a make shift sign that read: “Clementine’s Apples. Don’T Touch.”

Tryxy and I were both hungry so we looked over our shoulder to make sure the one armed lady wasn’t around and picked a few of the apples. I think the site of food lifted Tryxy’s spirits because he said: “You’re my best friend, and sometimes your ego is breathtaking.”

I gasped. No one had ever told me something so SWEET!!!!! “You think I”m breathtaking???”

Tryxy gave me a sweet smile and put the apples down long enough to hug me. “Yeah. You’re the best. ”

“You’re my best friend, too” I said.

“Let’s take a pic under the tree,” he said.

And we both passed out because the apples were delicious but slightly poisonous. I don’t remember anything beyond the first bite.

Fortunately, Tryxy uploaded the photo to instagram with geolocation on and my boyfriend was able to send a rescue party after us. We both woke up with search lights angled in our faces, feeling cool and well rested just this morning and then we heard the news on the radio about a weregopher sighting and somehow that made me remember that you really love apples.

Have you tried the black apples in the gloomy wood??? SO GOOD!!!!! Bring a pillow and a blanket!!!

But no, really, PLEASE TELL TRYXY I’M A CELEBRITY BUT MAKE IT LOOK LIKE IT WAS YOUR IDEA

Pages next week, Gladys!!!!

xox,

X

CLEMENTINE

SENDS

HER

LOVE.

AND

HER

RIGHT

ARM.

SHE’S A

LOCAL

CELEBRITY, TOO.

[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA.]

DAVY JONES’ TIKI TRUNK

TL;DR: Writer X and friends discover the danger of visiting a place made by a writer with a slippery grasp on Setting.

Hello, All! Melanie here.

Last week was the first time we’d heard directly from Writer X since she broke her wrists in a time machine-related mishap.

She, her boyfriend Tod, and her best friend Tryxy the Demon are back in our favorite crazy town of Cradensburg, NH, and in the writerly, summerly swing of things. 

In her last email, X learned of the Barguwar, a magical, shy creature responsible for relieving writers of our dumbest or undeveloped ideas. Tod—who has “Irish skin”—was suffering from sunburn on the soles of his feet, and Tryxy let us know why we hadn’t heard from him in several weeks. The town of Cradensburg was also taken over by forty-two vaguely Renaissance festivals. 

Without further ado…

---

Subject: White walls and talking heads!!!!!

Dear Gladys,

Have you gone to the new bar and grill in town called Davy Jones”ss Tiki Trunk??? DO NOT RECOMMEND!!!!!

It all started innocently enough. Tryxy was depressed over his Instagram followers and needed something fresh to serve his raving fans (all sixteen of them,) and I was feeling like my significance as a writer was disintegrating with every passing day.

That’s when my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, wandered into the living room in a bathrobe with his phone floating in front of his face and said, “Can you believe Mike Slovens started a tiki bar?”

Tryxy sat straight up. “A tiki bar???? Where??? Does it have good lighting??”

“Tryxy,” I said. “You have a cat hair.”

“Where?”

“Right here.” I pointed to my upper lip and Tryxy groped around until he found one of #bestkitten’s stray white hairs and drew it off his face. Then, he placed it on the arm of the sofa for #bestkitten to find later.

My unsuspecting boyfriend showed Tryxy his phone screen. “In town. You didn’t see?”

“Booooorrrrring,” I yawned, but not because I meant it. I was just cranky because I didn’t see how a tiki bar was going to make me feel like the next big epic fantasy writer of all time and neither of them were focusing on MY crisis.

“ZOMGS!!!! It has nautical decor!!!! I don’t have any pics with nautical decor!!!!” (Tryxy.)

“Yeah. It’s Mike Slovens, though. You shouldn’t take any decor for granted.” (My boyfriend.)

“None of this has anything to do with my crisis.” I said this a little more loudly than I had said “Boooooorrrrring.”

“What crisis is this?” asked my boyfriend over his shoulder.

“I don’t see what any of this has to do with my writing.”

My boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, smirked. “Are you honest-to-god going to actually write something?”

“Of course not,” I snapped at his smirk. “How am I supposed to write something if I don’t feel like the next big epic fantasy writer of all time???”

“It’s already got five stars on Yelp!” Tryxy pointed this comment at me. Tryxy was giving me his best puppy dog eyes.

“What are you looking at me for?”

“Because you’re my bestie and you have to come with me so that I don’t look like a loser going to a new tiki bar by myself. We have to pose for pictures and look like we’re having a good time.”

“Good luck with that,” said my boyfriend. “You won’t catch me anywhere Mike Slovens has made.”

“But it has five stars on Yelp.” (Tryxy.)

“Why? What’s wrong with Mike Slovens???”

“Remember how I told you I used to have a writing critique partner before I found our current group??”

“…maybe.”

“Well, he was a pretty good writer, but his use of setting was incredibly uneven.”

I sat straight up in my chair. “You never told me Mike Slovens is a writer!! He’s never met me. You can’t have a writer friend who hasn’t met me. How come you’re hiding a writing friend who hasn’t met me??”

“How was his setting uneven?” asked Tryxy.

“Oh, you know. His stories always started strong. Adequate sense of being in a specific place and time. Cool worldbuilding. But as the scenes went on, it just turned into white walls and talking heads.”

“It has five stars on Yelp, though.”

“You can’t have a writer friend that I don’t have. That’s not fair!!!”

A half hour later, Tryxy and I strode into the muggy coconut and fry oil scented air of Davy Jones’s Tiki Trunk. My boyfriend, still in his bathrobe, slunk in behind us and hid behind a paper cut out of Long John Silver complete with wooden leg and parrot on his shoulder. A lone jukebox by the door blared “A Pirate Looks At Forty” so that the bass notes on the guitar made the speakers buzz so violently it was impossible to decipher the key.

Brightly colored parrots hung from the ceiling on little metal wires. Someone had suspended one bird too close to a ceiling fan and every time the blades smacked the parrot, the bird would ricochet widely on its string, thumping against the ceiling only to swing back to be battered by another stroke of the fan. 

My boyfriend looked shiftily to his left and right.

“I hope we get a good seat,” said Tryxy. And by “good seat,” he meant something that would look good for the ‘gram.

“Why is there straw on the floor?” I asked.

The host seated us at a table with chair backs were made from nautical wheels. There were pictures from Gilligan’s Island on the wall lit by a blacklight that made all the white parts glow an eery blue. I asked the host if they knew if the owner was in but they gestured to their ears and then the overly-loud jukebox to let me know they couldn’t hear me.

“Oooo! Black light photo op!” said Tryxy.

I searched the scenery for the movements of any writer I didn’t know lurking in the shadows. You have to watch writers, Gladys. They scuttle like crabs.

“So why isn’t he your critique partner anymore?” I shouted at my boyfriend whose face got as red as his beard. Not from the sunburn. Just from embarrassment.

“I told you, his use of setting is incredibly uneven.”

“Why does it look like you’re trying to disappear under the table?” Tryxy bellowed above the music as “A Pirate Looks At Forty” ended and the jukebox launched into another round of the same song.

“I’m not,” I yelled.

“No. I meant Tod,” shouted Tryxy.

“I can’t believe you’re such a writing snob. You’re just too conscious about class and status,” I said to my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins.

“I’m not a writing snob,” he hissed. “Okay, I am a little. But this has nothing to do with me being a writing snob and everything to do with—Oh god!” My boyfriend jumped but it was only the host bringing us some menus they forgot. “Can I get a beer? Any beer? Big. The biggest.”

Our host apparently heard this.

“I’m not a writing snob. He’s just one of those guys that argues with you if you give him an honest critique. Like, he asks you to critique his story and then spends forty-five minutes arguing with you why you’re wrong.”

My nostrils flared. “And??? What’s wrong with that?? Maybe you’re just wrong.”

“I’m not wrong about setting.”

“What’s so important about setting?” asked Tryxy. But he wasn’t looking at us, he had his phone out and was swiveling around the room trying to pick out a spot that might host the world’s most perfect selfie.

My boyfriend gave Tryxy a flat look. “Really? Do you not sense the irony anywhere in there?”

Tryxy was sitting in the lion’s share of the black light.

“Tryxy,” I said. “You have a cat hair.”

“Oh, no! Where?”

“Everywhere.” I gestured over his face, hair, and clothes where about a thousand white cat hairs glowed blue. Tryxy diligently began to pick off each one and set them on the chair next to him for #bestkitten to find later.

Tryxy stopped. “O-M-G. I just had an idea! What if you go find your writer friend and we all take a picture with the owner and I’ll post it????”

“Not gonna happen. No way,” said my boyfriend as the host set a tall frosted mug of cold beer on the table in front of him with a meaningful thunk. 

I smacked the table and knocked over the salt cellar. “Why not??? He hasn’t met me yet. You can’t know a writer that I don’t know!!! How is that fair???”

“Because. My love. My darling. My pinkest of pink. Remember how I told you he used to be my critique partner? I kinda never sorta told him that I wasn’t his critique partner anymore and he sent me a new story kinda sorta last month and is still awaiting my feedback.”

“How was the story?” asked Tryxy.

“The setting was uneven.” My boyfriend gazed down into his beer pointedly. “See? This is what good setting does. Look.”

Tryxy and I craned over my boyfriend’s beer glass. The light over the table threw his shadowy reflection over the liquidy amber surface. Me and Tryxy’s faces appeared beside him, blotting out the light entirely so all there was was shadowy beer. 

“You see that? Good setting isn’t just the painted western town you throw in the back of your cowboy scene. It’s solid.” He knocked on the table. “It tells you where your characters are in relation to each other. It has consequences that affect your character’s choices and show you who they are.” He swept spilled salt into his palm and then threw it over his shoulder. “It has the potential to surprise you.”

There was a snapping sound as a battered parrot fell from the ceiling and onto the empty chair at our table like a member of our party arriving late.   

That’s when it happened, Galdsy.

Or at least that’s when I think it happened.

Something that started almost imperceptibly.

Tryxy was the first to point it out. “Wasn’t there music playing?”

My boyfriend went gray. “Shit. It’s happening. The son of a gun is doing it again. This is why I told you we shouldn’t have come here.” Then, he put both his palms against the table and rocked onto the back legs of his chair. “Oh, no.”

“What is it?” (Was it Tryxy or me saying this? I don’t know!)

“There’s no sound. The chair should creak a little. The setting is failing.”

“Didn’t the chairs have nautical wheels on them?”

“Next thing you know it’s just gonna be a bunch of talking heads. The characters start losing the motivations that make them unique and it’s just plot points. You won’t be able to tell one person from the next.”

“Didn’t we have menus?”

“What is this place anyway? There aren’t any lights.”

“There aren’t any shadows either.”

“Who are you?”

“Who me?”

“I guess. Who are any of us?”

“What sound is my voice making right now?”

“You guys, I don’t have hands!”

“How do we get out of here if there’s no door???”

Anyhoo. Zero out of zero stars!!!! Do not recommend!!!!

Pages next week, Gladys!!!

xox,

X

TURNS

OUT

THE YELP

REVIEW

WAS JUST

A CAT

HAIR.

[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA.]

THE STOWAWAY

Hello, All! Melanie here.

When last we left our heroes, they were in the future of 2029 which is undergoing an inflation crisis no one saw coming. Since Writer X broke both wrists several weeks ago, her boyfriend, Tod Boadkins, has taken over writing these emails on her behalf. 

Writer X, Tod, and X’s BFF Tryxy (a demon college student at Miskatonic Online University and one-half of the band DemonKitty) had jumped to a future when DemonKitty was on its first world tour to learn what songs Tryxy needed to write to become famous. Tryxy’s band has finally had some success. Still, he’s been unable to write enough music to capitalize on that success and play shows.

The good news is that DemonKitty had a world tour in 2029. The bad news is that when Tryxy missed a show here in 2024 last week, the 2029 world tour dates began dissolving in real-time.

It turns out Tryxy has been struggling with more than writing music. Tod began to suspect that Tryxy had ADHD. Last week, he convinced X of this, and they decided to refinance X’s house to take Tryxy out to breakfast and stage an intervention. 

Without further ado…

---

Subject: Back in time

Hi Gladys, 

I’ve been on hold for the last forty minutes with the doctor’s office to see if they take Tryxy’s health insurance while Tryxy’s on hold with the bursar’s office at Miskatonic U. It feels like everything hangs on getting the answer to this call. None of us have been off the phone since we returned from the future. Due to her injuries, not even X, who can’t actuallydial any phone, uses Siri to place calls with varying results. 

About ten minutes ago, X yelled, “Hey Siri, call the pharmacist,” to see if demons are responsive to human ADHD medication. Siri put her in contact with an empathic Botswanan interior decorator in Gaborone, who traded screams with X on the speakerphone for an astonishing amount of time before they both hung up. 

Fortunately, they both resolved whatever stress issues they’d been bottling up before the doctor’s office I was on hold with had picked up, or I’m sure the doctor’s office would have hung up at what can only be described as the sound of Hell splitting open. 

Then I’d have to jump through these hoops all over again.

Once I get through with the doctors, I’ll take X back to her surgeon to have her casts sawn off and replaced because the stink wafting off her wrists has become incredible. 

The doctor’s office thinks X may have an infection and wants her to come in immediately, but you and I know that’s not the case. You will know that’s not the case once I finish writing this email. 

We took Tryxy to breakfast in 2029 the other day to discuss our hunches that he has ADHD. It went as well as it could, and this was likely thanks to X, who can read Tryxy like a book. It’s hard to tell someone you love that you think they need help, especially when they’re already blaming themselves for so much. 

The inflation of 2029 was so terrible that we couldn’t afford much more than toast and jam, and that’s only because jam was complimentary. What event sets that off, I wonder?

Tryxy was still distressed at the cancellation of the first DemonKitty World Tour when we broke the news to him that skipping out on his festival gig in 2024 was likely the trigger that set off the chain of events that led to the tour’s demise. 

Basically, we told Tryxy it was all his fault. Or that’s what it sounded like to him. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about people with ADHD, it’s that they already blame themselves for everything, so what Tryxy had trouble hearing was that we weren’t saying it was his fault; we were saying the problem was ADHD. 

But after some tears and some time, we helped him understand what we were saying. Then Tryxy began to weep in earnest. Apparently, he’d been struggling for a long time. 

Tryxy’s eyes glaze over when he has to do a lot of reading for his courses, and there’s nothing he can do about it except smack himself in the side of the head. He’s been chronically turning assignments in late and having his grades docked. Over a month ago, he received a letter saying that he was losing his scholarship next semester because his GPA was too low. 

Gladys, he’d been sitting on that distressing news for a month without telling any of us. My heart broke for him. 

We outlined a plan of attack to get his life back on track. He would need to contact his Miskatonic U, contact the scholarship program, and see if they’d offer a probationary period, as he suspects he has untreated ADHD. Next, he would contact the promoter and take responsibility for letting the promoter down. After that, he’d need to call his PCP to get a referral to a therapist and then find a therapist. He’d also need to research ADHD to learn more about himself and possibly even journal. 

His eyes glazed over, and Tryxy became subdued. By the time we left the diner, X was covered in jam from head to toe (including dripping out of her casts). I had a sinking feeling that Tryxy wouldn’t do anything we had outlined. 

You can’t just time jump in the future even if you own your own time machine. You have to go to a time port and have your jump approved. Then you have to line up on a time-mac (that’s what they call them instead of tarmac) and wait for clearance. 

I flew the time machine. Tryxy fell asleep in the back. X and I whispered about our suspicions as X poured packets of coffee cream down her casts to “offset the itchiness of the jam.” These were also complimentary at the diner, and X filled her purse with about sixty of those little foil-capped cups. 

“X, how bad will it get before he takes action? I don’t know what to do now. He’s sort of an adult, and it’s up to him to fix this.” 

“Yeah, but he’s also our friend,” said X, pouring a packet of hazelnut-flavored coffee cream down her cast. 

“Yeah, he’s our friend. That’s why we confronted him.”

X used her teeth to tear off four or five foil tops while gripping the coffee cream between her plastered palms. “Maybe he’s jelly.” 

I gaped at X. Her pink velour tracksuit was irretrievable, stained in jam and dust. She had a patch of jam on her cheek beneath a fleck of mustard I have no idea how it got there. I assumed she was talking off the top of her head and didn’t quite know what she meant by that. 

I was wrong. 

“Maybe Tryxy’s jelly. Maybe if you have ADHD, you’re just jelly that moves best at high velocities. If you put it in a trebuchet or shot it out of canon, I’m pretty sure the jelly would go straight until it went splat. But if you slowly pour it on the floor, it will go everywhere because jelly needs a jar. Life is slow jelly. Tryxy is fast jelly. Fast jelly needs a trebuchet. Slow jelly needs a jar. We should be the jar until he can be one for himself.” 

So that’s what we’ve been doing. Since we returned, X’s coffee cream bath has curdled and made her fists smell like feet, and we’ve been helping Tryxy write a daily to-do list to get his life on track. Then, we help him so long as he’s also helping himself. 

It hasn’t been easy. It took forever to get Tryxy in to his PCP for a referral. Then, once we got the referral, we called almost every therapist in the area but they were all booked out. The one with the shortest waitlist for new patients told us they could see Tryxy in November of 2025. You’d think the medical profession would have recovered from the covidshortage by now, but it’s not the case. 

X accidentally called a Greek Potato Whistler and found a therapist who does virtual visits and is available next week. But we can’t get Tryxy in until we know that they accept his health insurance, and the professional soothsayer who can tell whether insurance is in the network was on the line with about sixty other callers ahead of me. 

There have been some wins. We were back just in time to file something with Miskatonic University. With the boom in build-your-own time machines, the school has lost many students to time travel mishaps and has created a special exception for students who fill out the correct forms. Tryxy will be given a couple of weeks to catch up on the classwork he missed, with the understanding that he gets a time-travel waiver just once. This was the best news Tryxy’s had since 2029. 

X has also injected some silver lining into the situation. She pointed out that we now know that DemonKitty is capable of writing music, playing for audiences, and achieving a world tour in just five years. That perked Tryxy’s mind, and he’s been a little more wholehearted in his attempts to fix things. 

He wrote a letter to the promoter, and the promoter said that if Tryxy gets things back on track, the promoter has a show booked at an auditorium in Boston this fall. DemonKitty is welcome back as the opening act’s opening act. And the best part is he’d only have to play three songs. 

Oh! One thing I should have told you about. The stowaway. The stowaway is why we didn’t return from the future untiljust the other day. 

While X and I were talking, we heard noises from a compartment under the floor. We opened the panels and discovered a disheveled economist in a cream-stained polo shirt attempting to hop a ride with us back in time. 

Apparently, the inflation is so bad that economists are being hunted down, put in stocks, and have rotten tomatoes thrown at them by anyone frustrated with their grocery bill. Come to think of it, we saw quite a few economists in button-downs covered with dried tomato seeds with their fists and heads shoved through stocks on our way to the diner. 

It turns out that economists have been banned from time travel. The government is furious with a profession whose sole job is to make predictions, who also has had access to time travel for as long as the general public has, and who still can’t manage to predict a crisis as crazy as the inflation of 2029. There have been a number of economists who have sought to escape persecution by hitching rides on private time machines. 

The heat scanners on the Time Mac caught the economist before we had a chance to jump, but not before I asked him, “But why didn’t you go back in time before it was illegal and choose a different profession?”

“Sir, if I could predict the future, I wouldn’t have become an economist.”   

Well, Gladys, the doctor’s office just picked up my call. I spent the last five minutes in circles with the soothsayer who couldn’t tell me whether they accept Tryxy’s insurance. She told me I needed to call the insurance company directly if I want to know whether her office accepts Tryxy’s insurance.

To which I said, “You don’t understand. He’s a demon. His insurance company headquarters are in Hell.”

To which the soothsayer replied, “Sir, all insurance company headquarters are in Hell. That’s why it’s called Hell-th Care.”

Regards,

TB

[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA.]

ADHD IS EATING THE FUTURE

Hello, All! Melanie here.

When last we left our heroes, they were stranded at a Time Lounge in the future, waiting for a mechanic to repair the time machine that Writer X and Tryxy assembled from parts they had purchased on the internet. X’s boyfriend and fantasy writer, Tod Boadkins, has been writing on X’s behalf since she fell off the clock tower and broke both her wrists in a time travel accident. 

X and Tryxy have taken to time traveling again as a means of reversing X’s wrist injuries and also to cheat. Tryxy has had a big show coming up for his band DemonKitty but still hasn’t written any additional material so that they can fill an hour-long set. Rather than buckle down and write music, Tryxy has decided to jump ahead into the future when DemonKitty is on a world tour and get a glimpse of what songs he should be writing. 

Unfortunately, writing doesn’t work like this. Not even in the future. 

Last week, we learned that Tod believes that Tryxy has ADHD and that he’s worried that Tryxy is jumping through time not because he’s trying to cheat but because the demon is grappling with ADHD overwhelm and paralysis.  

Tod’s desperately trying to get Tryxy help, but he needs X’s support to convince Tryxy of this, too.

Without further ado…

---

Subject: Tod Boadkins is sending you a message courtesy of Time Lounge™

Hi Gladys,

Well, the good news is that I’ve managed to convince X that Tryxy needs help and may have ADHD, but the bad news is much more plentiful. We’re currently in the year 2029, and with world financial markets running so hot, I almost couldn’t afford the fifteen minutes of wifi at the local Time Lounge so that I could send you this message. 

Where to begin? After the time mechanic repaired X and Tryxy’s Ghost Time Machine last week, we went jumping year by year through summers looking for a DemonKitty world tour by perusing the top 100 streaming songs looking for “Ninevah Burns In My Soul,” “Meow,” or “Meow Meow.” Basically, all the songs Tryxy has written for DemonKitty so far. 

We couldn’t find them, which was disheartening for Tryxy. He’s proud of those songs, and it’s hard for any artist to know that their best work still won’t change things for them. 

Meanwhile, we could only average one time jump a day, which meant we spent the better part of the week in the future while DemonKitty’s first festival show got closer and closer in the past—well, in the present: your present; our past. 

I was terrified that DemonKitty would No-Show because Tryxy had spent two weeks jumping through time so that he could learn what songs he would write in the future rather than writing them in the present. I shouldn’t have been worried because, when X asked me to check her email the other day, I learned that the festival promoter had gotten fed up with DemonKitty’s lack of communication and dropped them from the festival performer line-up. 

This was crushing, but it came at the same time as our landing in 2029 and X  discovering this.

When Tryxy saw this, he became convinced that canceling his festival gig would be unimportant. This is a bad idea for any young person to get in their head. X was excited for Tryxy, too, and had come down on his side of things; instead of having a sit down with Tryxy about getting some help in 2024, she spent all yesterday in 2029 looking for tickets to the tour’s opening night in Berlin. 

I already mentioned the financial markets; we had to refinance her home to afford the tickets. I asked X if we should be doing this, and her response was, “We’re not refinancing until 2029, so we have until then to change our minds!!!!” 

That’s when I cornered her about Tryxy not writing any songs, and she gave me the same logic: “They’re on a world tour in the future, so obviously everything works out.” 

And that’s when we found this:  

I think Tryxy bombing out his gig in 2024 due to (possible) ADHD is changing the future as I type.

X still wasn’t convinced that not getting your art made could cancel your future as an artist. And I knew that there was no way Tryxy would get help if X didn’t also agree that he needed it, so I had to push on X. 

And there goes the second wave of bad news. 

The conversation went like this: 

X: “Tryxy is just an artistic artist. Artistic artists don’t ‘show up’ and ‘write on demand.'”

Me: “X, I’m an artist. I write. The only way my writing gets done is by me writing.” 

X: “You’re an artist, yes, but not an artistic artist like me and Tryxy.” 

Me: “What does that even mean?!”

X: “If you were an artistic artist, you’d know.”

Me: “Okay, so what about the fact that we’ve been jumping around space and time for the last two weeks, and Tryxy hasn’t done any homework or checked into any of his college classes? Is that because he’s an artistic student? Will Miskatonic University accept that he’s an ‘artistic’ student who doesn’t get any homework done?”

X lost it. It’s complicated, but I’ll cut to the chase. Some people believe in Santa Claus. Like, they really believe. X believes that all the writing she hasn’t been doing in the last two years will magically get done at some point in the future, and I had to break it to her that if a writer doesn’t write, their writing doesn’t get done.

She wasn’t prepared for this. 

“You mean I won’t wake up tomorrow and be famous as the world’s next big epic fantasy writer of all time because I didn’t write anything for the last two years????” 

She spent the last six hours completely unconsolable, sobbing into a pillow and singing “Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer” as a funeral dirge. 

But I’ve gotten through to her that Tryxy might not be doing his homework or writing music because he needs help. 

Sometimes, it’s hard for a writer to know if they’re not writing because they aren’t showing up for themselves or because they need help. 

I wish we had figured this out a week ago. Tomorrow morning, we’ll take the last of the home equity loan, take Tryxy to breakfast, and talk about his future. 

Wish me luck, Gladys. 

Regards,

TB

[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA.]

DO DEMONS TAKE ADDERALL?

Hello, All! Melanie here.

Last week, our usual routine was disrupted in a rather unexpected way. Instead of the familiar weekly email from Writer X, we found ourselves reading a message from her boyfriend and fellow fantasy writer, Tod Boadkins.

As it happened, X fell off the roof of the town hall in a time machine-related accident and broke both her hands. Tod has informed us that he’ll send weekly emails on her behalf for the next few weeks “lest the world cracks in two” while she heals.

But perhaps, like me, you’re still stuck on the words “time machine-related accident.” X and Tryxy are back to their time machine-related antics. If you’re new to these posts,

Cradensburg, New Hampshire (where X hails from) has a beautiful library from which town residents can check out time machines nearly as easily as they can check out books. The waitlist is long, and X and Tryxy have already been banned from checking out time machines.

So they’ve ordered parts off the internet and built their own, and that’s got Tod Boadkins worried. Tryxy’s been having trouble writing songs for his band DemonKitty. With a festival booking coming up at the end of this month, the demon needs a full roster of songs and doesn’t have them.

The solution? Jump into a future when DemonKitty is on their first world tour and copy the songs Future DemonKitty plays. Unfortunately, art doesn’t work that way, even if time does.

But Tod has a new concern about Tryxy’s behavior that I never considered. I admit, I think he has a point. What do you think?

Without further ado…

---

Subject: Tod Boadkins is sending you a message courtesy of Time Lounge™

Hi Gladys,

I don’t know how much time I have to send this message. I paid for a universal half-hour of connectivity, but Tryxy keeps floating over my shoulder pretending that he isn’t reading my screen and I might have to hit send to keep him from seeing this. If that happens, I’ll send you another message right away, and you can string the fragments togethe

---

Subject: Tod Boadkins is sending you a message courtesy of Time Lounge™

Hey,

I’ll cut to the chase. I want your thoughts on this. Do you think Tryxy may have ADHD?

I’m not playing armchair psychiatrist, but the events of the last few weeks—last few years, as I think of it—have made me concerned for him. I think he might need help, but I’m unsure how to convince him.

My mother is a psychologist. I’d ask her, but she’s been renting her body to a mind named Tingus Morty for the last few weeks. Regardless of how much “squirrel!” is the punchline of ADHD jokes, untreated ADHD isn’t a joke. It has real repercussions and consequences that can make education, career advancement, and primary self-care out of reach for those with it.

I’m worried that if Tryxy doesn’t get help, he’ll be no-show for the Memorial Day festival gig. And I’m a little worried he’s going to get dropped from his college classes agai

---

Subject: Tod Boadkins is sending you a message courtesy of Time Lounge™

Hi again,

As I said earlier, I think “fear of the blank page” is going around. Fear of the blank page is simply when a writer wants to write but is overwhelmed by the expectation to create something brilliant. I started working on a new story last week, and I’ve been hit with a bad case of the stuff.

This is how I ended up writing to you from this time lounge while we wait for X and Tryxy’s time machine to be fixed by an eight-armed time mechanic with a bad temper and a love of gin.

“Lounge” is misleading. Ever been in a depressing truck stop at four in the morning where they rent showers and beds by the hour, and there’s an equally depressing number of cigarette butts and torn condom wrappers swept into corners and a free-to-use microwave that’s been cooking the same depressing frozen burrito for the last six minutes while a bored clerk smokes cigarettes and scrapes scratch off tickets with the pull tab off a beer can while listening to a horse race broadcasting in 1964?

At least they offer a pay-by-the-minute wifi connection that lets you send an email in your Point-of-Origin time.

I’m sorry, Gladys. I had to hop topics like that to throw Tryxy off the scent. He’s gone off to help X scratch under her casts with a ballpoint pen. She will have ink scribbles everywhere when they cut the casts off her.

It’s still true that I’m avoiding working on this new story. That’s a big part of why I decided to come with X and Tryxy on their attempt at time jumping. Someone needs to provide adult supervision.

For the two adults.

Who need supervision.

Here’s what I noticed. I asked Tryxy last week about focusing his efforts on writing one song a day. If he writes one song a day between now and his show, he’ll have fourteen or so new songs. Not all of them will be great, but he’ll at least have the material.

Something about how he’s reacting makes me think that Tryxy isn’t focusing on songwriting because he can’t focus. X said the promoter reached out to Tryxy to ask if DemonKitty needed anything for the show, but Tryxy never responded.

I’ve also noticed that Tryxy’s spent a lot of time doing anything—and I mean anything— random. I haven’t seen him work on school stuff, but I know he’s got finals and papers to write, and I don’t know how a demon with papers to write has so much time to piece together a time machine while X squeaks out directions…in German.

I’m starting to notice other things, too. Tryxy goes on “benders.” There was the time he watched ALL of the Golden Girls. The time he got into “making cozy food” rather than doing his homework. The time he went back in time with X to look for Ursula Le Guin and was dropped from all his courses. He got so involved with time jumping with X that he lost track of time and paid the price.

He would have crashed and burned that semester and lost his scholarship if X hadn’t laid siege to Miskatonic University with a potato gun in exchange for his reinstatement.

If it happens again, I don’t think X can rescue him. For one, X can’t shoot a potato gun with both her hands broken. For two, I think the university installed potato-proof windows.

I spoke to X and

Shit, he’s walking back across the truck stop. Will write again in a few. Regards,

TB

---

Subject: Tod Boadkins is sending you a message courtesy of Time Lounge™

Hi Gladys,

Here’s the problem with writing a new story even when you’ve already written many stories: when you finish writing a story and all its subsequent drafts, you know how to write that story. That story exists. That story has a beginning, middle, end, plot, fleshed-out characters, and hopefully a theme.

But the one you write next? You have to start writing while you know the least about it. The first thirty percent of a new story always feels like a breaking atmosphere. It takes far more fuel to send a rocket into space than to land a space shuttle. And it takes the most nerve, too.

This story will have a romantic subplot; I’ve never written anything romantic before. I’m not sure I’ll be able to pull it

He’s gone back to X. Jeez, this kid has an eighth sense for when he’s being talked about.

Back to what I was saying: do you know if demons can have ADHD? I think Tryxy’s trapped, and he doesn’t know how to ask for help. I threw the idea past X, and she said that “not writing” is how “artistic artists” are.

I don’t know about that. All I know is that I’m stuck in a time lounge with no idea when the time machine will be repaired, and I’m starting to think we need to find a therapist who can help Tryxy rather than enabling him to bomb his music and college career in the same week. ADHD can do that.

Your input is much appreciated. Regards,

TB

[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA.]

YOU CAN NEVER GET AHEAD OF TIME

Hello, All! Melanie here.

I was a little worried when we hadn’t heard from X the week before last. Now, I know she’s occasionally gone silent when things get busy, or she’s been thrown in jail, but this time felt a little different. 

We would have to go without another update this week until this email from Tod Boadkins came in at the last minute, so pardon the late post. 

If you’re new to Writer X or haven’t been following her recently, X has been promoting the music career of her best friend and demon, Tryxy, to varying degrees of disaster and success. Sometimes, the two are indistinguishable.

The silence of the last week was due to a serious injury. X’s boyfriend, award-nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, writes on her behalf.

Without further ado… 

---

Subject: Hi

Hi Gladys,

I’m not sure you heard the news after the lightning storms of this last week, but X has broken both her hands. She’s requested that I write you on her behalf. For some reason, X is convinced that if you don’t receive at least one email from her weekly, something cataclysmic could occur. You’ll receive at least one email from me on her behalf over the next 3-4 weeks as she heals lest the world crack in two. 

I could use your help, namely with X and Tryxy.  

They’re very close. I’ve heard a lot about BFF relationships between writers and demons.

Hemingway’s relationship with an unnamed demon summoned by absinthe and champagne is famous. The speculation about J.K. Rowling is more recent. Everyone knows about Neil Gaiman’s demon bestie Crowley, who inspired much of his work. In these examples, I note two things: 

1.) The demon BFF relationship has a moral gray area that may or may not contribute to excellent writing.  

2.) The relationships are examples of writers and demons who ACTUALLY get writing in as opposed to—well, we both love her, Gladys—but as opposed to what X does. 

What happens when you have a young demon with a love for hot Cheetos, cats, and Lil’ Nas X and a writer with a passion for hot pink, Brandon Sanderson, and destruction? Whatever damage that can happen is mitigated by TIME. If said demon is currently enrolled full-time at Miskatonic Online University and working on their music career, and said writer is writing, there’s only so much trouble the two have the TIME to get into. 

But suppose said writer writes as rarely as the solar eclipse totality we witnessed last month, and said demon is FREAKING OUT about their upcoming festival performance and unwritten songs. In that case, that leaves both with a surplus of TIME, and the sky is generally the limit to how mad things can become. 

And the sky is also a terrible place to fall from. One would be lucky to fall from the sky and survive, having only broken both their hands. 

I digress. 

Where I need your help concerns art, time, and X and Tryxy’s latest plot. 

We all know that X thinks of herself as “the next big epic fantasy writer of all time” and I am envious of this belief in oneself. As it so happens, many (but not all) of the “next big epic fantasy writers of all time” also thought this of themselves, and I fear—deep within my anxious soul—that there is a correlation between this belief and that outcome. 

However, X appears challenged in understanding the correlation between actually writing and becoming the next big epic fantasy writer of all time. 

Tryxy also seems similarly challenged in his own artistic pursuits. He’s had some songwriting success. Everyone knows “Ninevah Burns In My Soul” is the quintessential summer bop. And yet, now that DemonKitty is getting booked for shows, Tryxy seems to have a bit of the old once bitten/twice shy about writing enough original material to fill an hour-long show. DemonKitty is set to perform at a festival at the end of May, but they still have fewer than five songs. 

Maybe “once bitten/twice shy” isn’t appropriate, as I’m not sure what he was actually bitten by. “Fear of the blank page” is better. If you’re not familiar with the phenomenon, it’s when a writer wants to write, but when they try to start, they become overwhelmed by expectations of having to write something brilliant, so they fail to start. 

In fact, fear of the blank page is going around this house with all of its terrifying symptoms, including a total lapse of reason. I’m afraid I’m coming down with it, too. 

With the festival clipping nearer and nothing written, X and Tryxy hatched a plan to get their hands on another time machine and jump into the future when DemonKitty is presumably successful and on world tour. Then, they could watch Future DemonKitty perform and know what songs to write. 

You and I know this is a categorically bad idea, Gladys. Not only because of X and Tryxy’s disastrous history with time travel—what with Tryxy getting stuck in the summer of 1789 in Paris this last fall, and nearly getting banned from time travel altogether, not to mention the whole abduction of Ursula Le Guin to bring the legendary author to come live in a secret tower in our local library while subsequently failing to ever visit her—not only that, but because this isn’t how writing actually works. 

People who are new to writing and haven’t written at all tend to place a great deal of weight on ideas. They believe that great writing consists of great ideas and fail to understand that writing is simply a craft like table making but with words. Ideas don’t make stories; the act of story writing develops ideas. 

To build a table, you have to show up and do the work. That’s where the genius happens. It’s no different for writing. Sure, ideas are a part of it, but they’re a small part. You can’t wait for inspiration to write; if it strikes, you won’t have the craft to make it come together and truly develop it. 

Writing under the auspices of inspiration is likened to being struck by lightning. You can’t wait for lightning to strike; you have to go out day by day, climb the lightning rod, and wave down the lightning. 

Which leads us to X’s injuries. The librarians won’t loan Tryxy the time machine as the last one he borrowed is in the Seine of 1789. So X and Tryxy got to ordering time machine parts online and spent the last week or so piecing a time machine together rather than actually writing. Then, they needed to power it up with a lightning strike because “that’s what the movie clearly said” and…

Lightning struck. 

While X had shimmied to the top of the lightning rod on the town clock tower. And while the lightning struck a quarter mile away, the sonic boom gave X a good startle and she went rolling off the lightning rod and slid down the roof, over the gutters, and plunged headfirst into a dogwood tree, breaking both metacarpals. 

But we still have this damned time machine and two artists, one who actually has a valid excuse for not writing for the first time in her life and the other who has invested two weeks into solving his problems with time travel and is knee-deep in sunk cost fallacy. 

Now they’re talking of using the ghost time machine to first travel back in time and prevent X from falling off the roof, and then forward in time to DemonKitty’s first world tour. 

And X’s casts are itching her so badly that I’m starting to think I should let them. 

I should go. I have to get X some dinner, and then I’m off to a weekly meeting with the Ink Black Coffee Club Critique Group. Following that, I’m going to pop in and say hi to Ursula Le Guin. 

Regards,

TB

P.S. X wants to say something to you and insists on typing it with her tongue. Gah. This is her from her writing from here out.

i t’s f i ne ga ldsy

w et key boar d

P.P.S. Not to mention, how can you ever become famous in the future if you never write in the present? God, this keyboard is GROSS.

[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA.]

THE CANDLE IN YOUR HEART.

Hello, All! Melanie here.

Last week, Cradensburg hosted a Procrastinate-a-thon to raise money for an extra-large wall calendar for the town council. Fortunately, nothing prepares you for procrastination like being a writer. In fact, writers are really professional procrastinators who write on the side. Writer X participated in the fundraiser with a brilliant move: she waited until after the procrastinate-a-thon had already concluded before she began soliciting pledges!

Well, it’s spring in Cradensburg, and that means the weather is finally slightly above freezing. People will want to get outdoors! That is get outdoors for something that isn’t ice fishing or throwing yourself down a mountain while strapped to two waxed slabs of fiberglass!

Without further ado…

---

Subject: MYSTERIOUS NEIGHBORHOOD CAT MIGHT ALSO BE A

Dear Gladys,

I need a list of monsters that can also take the shape of a yowling ring-tailed cat with glowing yellow eyes and teeth made of fire because I think that’s the precise situation we have on our hands.

Anyhoo. This morning started out very differently from the way the evening ended.

We were all very stressed out. Tryxy was disgruntled and became particularly slammy. Slammy is when you slam the fridge and the silverware drawers as an expression to the universe of just how stressed you are but really you have only yourself to blame. Tryxy’s been stressed because he’s getting to the end of his semester at Miskatonic Online University and apparently he never planned for his final project and has to do all of his research in one week instead of four.

I was very stressed because, as you know, the town’s Procrastinate-a-thon was a smashing success. The town was able to raise the $76.42 needed to purchase an extra large wall calendar so that they can have a sense of what they’re supposed to be doing rather than prioritizing things based on whichever crisis had caught on fire.

Once they got the new wall calendar filled in, they discovered they were already late for hosting the first “Evening Author Reading in the Town Green.”

They usually book a local author to read a short story or a selection from a novel. OF COURSE what they SHOULD have done is requested me to come read from my novel-in-progress that I haven’t worked on in at least two years because I’m the next big epic fantasy writer of all time.

But they didn’t. Instead they booked a man who calls himself “Arthur Willingsby” who was nominated for a Push a wagon or Push a wheelbarrow award or something like that.

My meta fiancé, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, was stressed because of the weird noise his car is making lately and he keeps asking me VERY POINTED QUESTIONS about the last time I drove it. He hasn’t made any open accusations yet, but you drive ONE LITTLE CAR off a bridge TWO OR THREE TIMES and people never get over it, Gladys!!!!!

#bestkitten has been the most stressed out of all of us. Firstly there’s the fact that the birds are all coming back to New Hampshire and a family of robins made a nest in the bush outside our front living room window and no matter how much #bestkitten does her best chirping noises, none of the birds so far have climbed into her mouth!!!!!

And then there’s the new cat slinking around our neighborhood. It’s terrorized the squirrels, who have in turn terrorized a sasquatch nest, who have in turn started sasquatch season early and have begun tearing off people’s siding before we’ve even had the chance to repair the siding damage they did last fall!!!!! THIS CAT IS DISRUPTING THE NATURAL CYCLES OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD.

I have tried everything to get this cat to leave. I’ve taken up playing the tuba (everyone knows there’s nothing a cat likes least than someone playing “When the Saints Go Marching in” on tuba except for if you play “When the Saints Go Marching in” on the vacuum cleaner!!!!!) I’ve put out a cat nip trap. I’ve offered the cat an all-expense paid vacation to Sandals, Jamaica, but NOTHING IS WORKING, GALDYS!!!!!

After a day of playing tuba and sending angry emails to the town, we all decided that we’ve gotten a little stir crazy being in the house all week. We begrudgingly chose to go down to the burnt down gazebo in the town green and grit our teeth and listen to the obviously inferior work of the so-called local author “Arthur Willingsby.”

It was a packed house. There were a lot of people who brought lawn chairs and blankets and there was a hot dog cart and a man selling maple sugar floss. Everyone seemed a little disgruntled. Maybe they were also stressed from whatever they have going on in their lives or from the fact that our weather has been yo-yoing, or from the fact that they weren’t going to hear the next big epic fantasy writer of all time. Or maybe they were all annoyed that the town had announced YET ANOTHER event paid for by taxpayers at the last possible moment. 

Fortunately, no one brought any candles like they did for the Neil Gaiman reading.

“Arthur Willingsby” turned out to be a bald man with a strong, beak-like nose and a charming smile. He began his authorial chat with an obviously egotistical comment about how he had been asked at the last possible minute by the town to do this reading and he thought about turning them down because the last author reading hosted by the town ended up in a massive fire. And he has asthma.

Everyone in the audience tittered stiffly, but someone in the crowd, and I’m not saying I know who it was, shouted, “Maybe you should have said no seeing that you’re not the next big epic fantasy writer of all time” and some people are saying it was me BUT if you hear that it was me who said it, Gladys, I need you to correct that rumor right away!!!!!1!

But then, “Arthur Willingsby” took out a story he had published a few years ago and began to read and as he began to read, the audience grew quieter and quieter and their eyes grew wider and wider so that each of the faces in the crowd looked more childlike.

The story was called “Wishes.” It’s about an older woman who had recently buried her adult daughter on the morning she discovers that her house had been put into lien. The older woman starts thinking she would lose her house for sure and how hard it would be to start life in a little apartment at her age with so many memories already built into the house she has.

The older woman finds an injured fairy in the butterfly garden her daughter built in the back yard and she nurses the fairy back to health with all the care she had showed her daughter while her daughter was in hospice. The fairy then gives the old woman three wishes with a warning that wishing someone back from the grave never works the way one wants.

And Galdsy, I can’t tell you how it all happened or how it all made sense the way it did, but somehow “Arthur Willingsby” wrote this story so that when the woman decides instead to take up all the things her daughter never got to finish and the fairy disappears into the fairy world for ever, it made it so that a tiny, glowing candle was lit in each of our hearts.

Which is good that it was a candle in our hearts because of what happened the last time we had so many candles at the town green.

Anyhoo, when “Arthur Willingsby” finished his story, we all sat in silence for several seconds before bursting into tearful applause. But it was like the quiet never left us. Sitting under those stars on a chilly spring night with blankets wrapped around our shoulders as the cry of a lone sasquatch tearing the siding off a barn echoed into the night.

It’s funny what a story does to us, isn’t it Gladys? How you start a story as one person, and you end the story as a slightly different person?

But I must get back to my tuba!!! This cat isn’t going to catch itself!!!!

Pages next week, Galdsy!!!!

xox,

X

IF I

WERE

OFFERED

THREE

WISHES,

I WOULD

WISH THAT

PAST ME

HAD BEEN

KINDER

TO FUTURE

ME AND

DID THEIR

RESEARCH

WHEN THEY

WERE

SUPPOSED

TO. :-/

[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA.]

THE PROCRASTINATE-A-THON

Hello, All! Melanie here.

Last week, Writer X was met with some strange behavior from her boyfriend and fellow writer, Tod Boadkins. In previous weeks, Tod had promised X a “romantic gift” if she could refrain from defending her BFF’s feelings with violence.

Surprise, surprise! X did this. She was rewarded with a gift and a comment that the gift had been made possible by the money Tod had saved on bail money. It was a pair of hot pink boxing gloves.

X immediately put these to use in settling the score between her and an unpleasant visitor from Massachusetts. That’s when Tod started acting strangely anxious. It turns out the pair of boxing gloves weren’t the present, but served as a sort of “wrapper” for the real present…

Which was a ring.

In the meanwhile, Tryxy the Demon and #bestkitten were flush with excitement from their latest gig. They’re supposed to be writing music and launching a website for their band, but sometimes we don’t do what we’re supposed to do.

Without further ado…

---

Subject: PROCRASTINATE-A-THON

Dear Gladys,

As you know, the town has announced at the very last possible minute that it’s holding a procrastinate-a-thon to raise money to purchase an extra large wall calendar for the town council so that they can see what they should be working on and when it should be done by.

Previously the town would prioritize tasks by rushing off to whatever thing had caught on fire at the moment, but after the grease fire in the kitchen of the parks department, it was clear that new approaches had to be put in place!!!

The extra large wall calendar should fix this, but they have a stretch goal that would allow them to get a large monkey to periodically set fire to the extra large wall calendar as a means of encouraging them to not ignore the calendar in the ways that calendars are obviously designed to be ignored.

I have come up with an incredibly genius plan to beat EVERYONE and raise the MOST money!!!!

The way it works is that participants select a task that they’re going to procrastinate about and get pledges from friends and family. For every hour the participant procrastinates on their task, the pledgers agree to pay whatever amount to the Extra Large Wall Calendar Fund. There are also bonus pledges allowed if the task that is being procrastinated is something you really have no business procrastinating about.

Now Gladys, you can bet that most participants are going to be uncreative. They’re going to procrastinate on all the usual things. Things like cleaning your gutters, or exercising, or doing your taxes, or seeing your doctor about the peculiar smell of pickled mangos that keeps wafting from your feet after you go running which is why you keep putting off exercising. BUT MY PLAN IS AMAZING!!!!!

Oh, and all of my friends at the Ink Black Coffee Club Critique Group have decided that since we’ve all been procrastinating about our latest writing projects, that it made sense to keep doing it for a good cause. Every single one of them has filled out their pledge sheet with the name of their latest work-in-progress. And they’re ALL gloating because everyone knows that writers are professional procrastinators so CLEARLY NO ONE IN TOWN KNOWS WHAT THEY’RE IN FOR!!!!!!!

Taxes??? They’re procrastinating on something as easy as taxes???? No one wants to do their taxes, it’s EASY to procrastinate on doing your taxes. BUT WRITING. Oh, YES, WRITING!!!!! Writing is something literally no one cares if you do and may suddenly get a glazed over expression if you bring it up at parties so the only reason to write IS BECAUSE YOU REALLY REALLY REALLY LOVE IT!!!!!!

And who procrastinates doing stuff they really really love????? WRITERS!!!!!!1

We’re AMAZING.

BUT WITH THIS PLAN I’M GOING TO BEAT ALL THE WRITERS, TOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I just need to borrow your dishwasher. If you could just throw it in your car and bring it to me now, that’d be perfect.

Anyhoo, I’m sure you’re dying to know how my love life is going.

The ring that my meta fiancé, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins gave me FITS PERFECTLY!!!!!! And of course I said yes to whatever it was he was asking. Which it turns out is to be meta-engaged!!!!! I’m META ENGAGED, GLAYDS!!!!!!!!!

I’m going to be married eventually!!!!!

Of course you probably don’t know what meta engaged means because you’re behind the times and we’re very progressive so I guess I’ll explain. My meta fiancé has had several long talks with his therapist who’s pointed out that he’s afraid to “seriously commit to anything else but writing” and “why does he have such a hard time trusting others enough to express commitment” and “isn’t it time he face this tendency head on?”

That’s when he had the brilliant idea of proposing because we already mostly live together and, according to him, the thought of me marrying him makes him “incredibly happy” about sixty percent of the time and “incredibly panicked” the other forty percent.

And that when he came up with the idea of a meta-engagement. This means that it is probably going to take years for us to actually get married because our engagement is more “abstract” than “concrete.” A meta-engagement is to engagements what metaphilosophy is to philosophy which basically means that you can’t earn a college degree on the topic but you can use it to make people feel like you MIGHT be smarter than them.

In the meanwhile, Tryxy and #bestkitten are in a slump. They were so giddy last week about making a website and writing new music, but now they have what Tryxy is calling the No Upcoming Gig Blues. They SHOULD be working on planning their website and writing new music, but neither of them has the motivation since their festival gig isn’t until late May when New England can be very-nearly-but-not-quite safe from having four feet of snow suddenly dumped on us.

Instead, Tryxy is trudging around the house in his favorite velour tracksuit and matching house slippers, doomscrolling, and drinking coffeemate directly from the bottle with no chaser. The more he drinks, the more sluggish he gets because apparently he needs the stimulation of a weekly gig to plan websites and work on new songs. And #bestkitten is a cat.

Anyhoo, what else was I saying???? Oh yes!!!!

This is how I’m going to win the Procrastinate-a-thon.

I’m not just procrastinating on writing my latest work-in-progress, I’M PROCRASTINATING EVEN THINKING ABOUT WHAT MY LATEST WORK IN PROGReSS WILL Be!!!!!!!

But that’s not all.

The most ingenius part of what I’m doing to win is that the Procrastinate-a-thon OFFICIALLY ENDeD thIS MORNING!!!!!

Yes, Gladys, you’ve read that right. I’m TURNING IN MY PLEDGE SHEET AFTER THE EVENT HAS ENDED!!!!!

I just need you to loan me your dishwasher. It has nothing to do with the Procrastinate-a-thon. It’s just that there’s been a pile of dishes in our kitchen sink that has been there so long, no one can remember who’s turn it was to do the dishes and I’m pretty sure it was Tryxy’s so I need to give him YOUR dishwasher so he can stop putting it off. I DON’t NEED ANY MORE COMPETITION IN THE PROCRASTINATE-A-THON.

As I think of it Gladys, WHAT IF EVERYONE IN MY HOUSE IS COMPETING AGAINST ME??? WHAT IF META-ENGAGEMENT IS Just a way to procrastinate about marriage????

We could be engaged for years!!!! Possibly Even FOREVER!!!!1 This man is truly a genius. And what about Tryxy and #bestkitten putting off making website plans?????

Gladys, do you think they’re participating in the fundraiser too???? I don’t know who to trust!!!! Don’t tell anybody my secret!!!!! And also please don’t put off bringing me your dishwasher, I don’t need YET ANOTHER COMPETITOR!!!!

Pages next week, Gladys!

xox,

X

P.S. Please sign up and pledge to support me as I procrastinate. I’m accepting contributions of $20 an hour or more. THANDK YOU!!!!!

TURNS OUT

I DON’T

HAVE THE

NO

UPCOMING

GIG

BLUES.

THIS IS

MY FOURTH

GALLON OF

COFFEEMATE.

MY DOCTOR

SAYS

I HAVE

TOO MUCH

SUGAR

BLUES.