Hello, hello!
Had a lovely few weeks.
As a birthday treat, we went along to Tropical World in Leeds and it was so much fun – I wore a suit with a pirate hat, and when we went by the enclosure for the cotton-tail tamarins, one of them was so baffled by how wide my head was and rushed over to peer at me through the glass, and then was delighted when I took my hat off to show it my head was, in fact, regular-sized. It’s only £9 for a ticket, and honestly, apart from being such a nice and well-kept zoo that allows animals to either come closer or keep their distance, it was one of the more accessible places we’ve gone to visit for a cane user – everything is nice and flat or has gentle, easy slopes and inclines, there are lots of bannisters and additional handholds everywhere, and there is a bench midway through.
We also went along to HAMA, which is a Korean restaurant in the same part of Oakwood, and the food was excellent!
I went along to Simply the Zest’s Open Mic, which is on the first Wednesday of every month at the Adelphi in Leeds – I unfortunately drank TWO (2) ciders and then was so sleepy I had to come home midway through – but it’s such a great night with a lovely atmosphere, and I absolutely recommend heading along to it. Simply the Zest is a mic for women, intersex, nonbinary, and trans performers, and centres anybody who is marginalised.
In terms of work on the website, I have now set up serial landing pages for most of my serial works, which are the ones published chapter-by-chapter, and there’s also new pagination in place, so you can hop between each chapter right here on the website with ease!
An Uncommon Betrothal
Erotic romance between a gentleman and his butler in the early 20th century.
Rescue Dogs
Contemporary fantasy fiction exploring the relationship between once-child hero, Valorous King, and his ex-PE teacher, now lover, Cecil Hobbes.
Lashton Town
Short stories set around the five crime families of Lashton Town – the Kings; the Pikes; the Laithes; the Renns; and the Sorrels. Fantasy/Crime.
The Prince’s Crown
Fantasy/Romance. A young man discovers strange secrets whilst attempting to escape his father’s control.
Little Devils
Contemporary fantasy. Velma Kuroda, a young specialist in magical and enchanted antiques, is taken under the wing of Hamish MacKinnon, a master enchanter and centuries-old immortal - a crotchety old man possessed by a horde of little demons.
Prophet’s Cry
Contemporary fucked-up M/M/M romance. Prophet Shulman, Administrative Secretary at the Middlesbrough branch of Friar Holdings, has been on the verge of divorce for the past twenty years, almost ever since he got fucking married.
Fucking his boss might make him as bad as his husband, but what the fuck’s the point in trying to be good anymore?
Letters from Ganymede
Victorian epistolary horror. Ganymede Cavendish, a recent graduate from the Royal Academy of Arts, catches the eye of an anonymous benefactor.
Media Recommendations
I continue to work through my current play through of Kingdom Come: Deliverance. You will be delighted to find out that 93 hours into this play, I finally realised that the reason my Defence level wasn’t going up and why I wasn’t gaining any Defence XP despite carrying a shield everywhere was because the entire time I have been pressing the wrong button. I have been trying to kick people (L2) instead of raising my shield (R1).
Other than that, we have been heartily enjoying Man Like Mobeen, which is so excellent, so fun, and so homoridiculous, as well as Mid-Century Modern, which despite being a sitcom literally about queer men, often ends up being less gay than MLM.
In terms of the trash TV I am watching whilst working, I have been swapping between Veronica Mars and Desperate Housewives. I am firmly in the grip of 00s cisgender women with every mental illness known to man or God, and I am having the best time of it.
Film-wise, I have thoroughly enjoyed:
Sinners (2025, dir. Ryan Coogler)
Everyone is so right when they say how much this movie fu-uuuuucks, it is by no means over-hyped. Such a great, original period piece with some tremendous fantastical elements – I had my gripes with the vampire designs as I think a lot of vampires the past few years have been a little bit samey, but as a piece of period work it was just sublime.
There’s a particular throughline in the film about music that makes a lot of commentary on the meaning of the blues as ancestral music and the connection between African Americans and Africa through blues music, connecting to ancient rhythms that they were forcibly separated from through trafficking and slavery, but that they are not truly severed from, and there’s this beautiful scene where
(spoilers)
… as the main character is playing his song in the club, you see not only African musicians wearing dashiki and other traditional garments, playing drums and traditional instruments, but also newer Black musicians playing electric guitars. It’s an incredible and surreal scene that beautifully connects ancestry to both the past and the future, there’s a dancer in a hanfu that appears around some of the Chinese-American characters; there are 70s dancers, 90s and 00s DJs with decks, et cetera. There’s just this sense of incredible elevation and significance to it, and it’s truly beautiful.
Even if Sinners is not likely to be your thing – because of the horror or the fantasy elements – I can’t recommend watching that scene in particular as a clip, as it’s probably one of my favourite individual scenes I’ve ever seen in a piece of film, and hands-down some of my favourite use of music, costume, and choreography.
Something the Lord Made (2004, dir. Joseph Sargent)
I honestly didn’t know that much about it except that Alan Rickman does a US Southern accent in it, and I was taken aback by what a good piece of film-making it is. Mos Def is across from Alan Rickman, and it’s broadly a biopic about Vivien Thomas’ contributions to the field of medicine and heart surgery whilst ultimately marginalised, abused, and made invisible because he is Black. Apart from the depiction of the racism and segregation at the time – it primarily has scenes in the 1940s through to the 1960s – Mos Def performs incredibly as someone who at the same time feels very connected to and has friendship and affection for his mentor, Doctor Blalock, but at the same time is obviously repeatedly betrayed and let down by him, because of his selfishness and his racism. There’s an incredible emotional complexity there and Mos Def depicts it so incredibly well, it adds so much to what is already a film with a lot of depth to it, and it’s such a great piece of character study and the emotive impact of this sort of habitual lifetime abuse.
I sometimes struggle with biopics because they either get a bit too nostalgic about the past and/or attempt to rehabilitate bad actors or make them out to be very uniquely evil when they were mostly just stupid, selfish, short-sighted, et cetera. Because this one doesn’t focus over much on the events, and instead on the people, it creates a lot more emotional crosswork and a real sense of all the individuals involved, and I really appreciated that – it in my opinion makes the impact of Blalock’s more banal and everyday evil in his complicity within the racist framework much more impactful. It’s focusing on Thomas’ feelings, and the feelings of his family, rather than on trying to assure the viewer that times are different now and weren’t people so awful back then?
The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006, dir. Ken Loach)
Aaaah I don’t have as much complex stuff to say about this one, only, good God, would you not think James Connolly is rolling in his grave? Such a good but agonising watch – the fury at the British occupation in Ireland, but also at the stepping back from communist ideals and just recreating the same shit the Brits do. When they’re talking about what a modern Ireland will look like, just with Irish landlords taking money instead of Brits, I thought about the state of renting in Ireland today and was just like. Waugh. Great performance from Cillian Murphy, of course, as is to be expected.
New Works Published
ThreadFic: Each Man an Island
Godfrey Digbett III, bard, musicologist, and priest of the minor god Halloran, meets a priest of the funerary goddess Dea Tacita, and the two of them seek out an ancient temple together.
Serial Update: Rescue Dogs
Chapter Twenty-Three. Cecil has a very long and difficult session with Doctor Majok.
Cecil Hobbes, an ex-PE teacher disgraced and looked down on in his hometown, has a new partner: Sir Valorous King, a knight of the realm, once a child of prophecy, and Cecil’s stalker.
A few months into their relationship, Cecil finally convinces Valorous to see a therapist, on the condition that Cecil attend one himself.
Also available on Ao3 / / Medium / / WorldAnvil
New £1.99 eBook: Bird Song
7k, rated M. A man walking in the park notices a regular stranger on a bench, watching the ducks and swans, and one day strikes up a conversation with him.
Sexy disabled man who uses a cane and supportive aids, chronically in pain, flirting with and then dating a Deaf bloke. Lots of birds, some ships and shanties, lots of flirtation and banter.
On GoodReads / / From Amazon / / From Books2Read
New 99p eBook: Chosen
7.2k, rated M, Gen. After nursing the dying Hildebrand Grouse on his deathbed, Harry Kahner, an ex-whore, is given a position as footman by Hildebrand’s brother, Dietrich Grouse – known to the world primarily by his title, Lord Altham. Harry is less suited to life in the big house than he might have hoped, and Lady Altham intervenes on his behalf.
Quiet and pensive fiction with some slice-of-life, a standalone short set in 1830s England.
On GoodReads / / From Amazon / / From Books2Read
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