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Sticky Post: Where Do I Start Reading?
I’ve just found your work and there’s a lot of it, where do I start? Welcome to my website! First off, my name is Johannes (Yo-Han-Ehz) T. Evans. I’m a gay, disabled, transgender man originally from Chepstow in the South of Wales, and I now live in Bradford in West Yorkshire, though for several years before now I lived in Galway, in the west of the Irish Republic. I’ve been writing for years, and you might actually already be familiar with my work – I’ve been on Tumblr under various URLs (before using my own name, JohannesTEvans, I was at…
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The Boatswain’s Hook
Serial. Captain Hook and Smee are forced to retire after Hook becomes ill. Photo by Zoltan Tasi via Unsplash. In bringing new Lost Boys back to Neverland, Peter Pan brings something else, too, and Spanish Flu wreaks a deathly effect on Hook’s crew. In the aftermath, the Jolly Roger comes for the last time to England, and Hook faces the most frightening adventure of his life: retirement. The Boatswain’s Hook is a loose sequel following the events of the classic book by JM Barrie, Peter Pan, but it can of course be read standalone with little to no knowledge of the…
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Knotting
Erotic short. A werewolf ties with his lover. Photo by Engin Akyurt via Unsplash. I did a random Twitter poll thread asking people to choose between two kinks. Knotting won over tentacles. Will be doing a short for each of the winners! Explicit M/NB short between a cis werewolf and a nonbinary person who uses they/them pronouns. 1400 words. Kinks included are knotting, size kink and size difference, some emphasis on monstrous transformation in regards to lycanthropy (teeth, claws, hair, muscle changes), rough sex, sex face to face. Terms used for Fran’s genitalia are cunt and clit. “On your back?” asked…
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Comes In Threes
Fantasy short. Prince Arthur comes upon a boy in the woods. The meeting of my King Arthur and Myrddin Wyllt. It was a sunny morning, and Arthur sat alone in the palace gardens where the meadow stretched out ahead of him, the carpet of wildflowers and free-growing herbs disappearing underneath the shadow of the tree canopy. The forests about Camelot’s edges were dense and thick, and they made it almost impossible to invade from any direction, unless every member of one’s army already knew them, had grown up in them. Like any dense woodland, of course, they had their boundaries, there…
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Who said that?: A Dialogue Guide
Crafting unique, distinctive voices for each and every character. Writing individual character voices is one of those skills where the best way to learn is by listening, but the problem with advice that amounts to “Just listen!” is knowing precisely what you’re listening for. Dialogue in fiction, regardless of the medium, can be difficult in itself to craft — in writing a dialogue between characters, you want to write speech that reads as natural to how real people talk to one another, but also does what you need it to within the text, whether that’s to drive the plot forward, to show…
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Why is Aziraphale so gay?
Analysis of Aziraphale’s characterisation in Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman. This meta essay was originally written and published on Tumblr and Ao3 in 2019 — it’s silly and written as much for humour as it is for textual analysis, with curse words and sarcastic comments, and I’m afraid it’s not terribly academic, but I came across it as I was digging through other stuff and thought it’d be fun to repost. I tried in vain to hyperlink my footnotes, but unfortunately Medium refused me at every turn, and it would be too dense to embed all my citations in the…
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Letters to the Dead
A tale from a gravedigger. This is a work of horror fiction in four parts, written to resemble diarised blog posts. Originally published on /r/NoSleep. CW for homophobia, grief, potential mental illness. Part 1 This story has been a long time in the making. I’ve been meaning to write it down for years now, because it still… Well, I suppose to say that it haunts me is the wrong word, or maybe precisely the right one, but I’ve been meaning to write it down, and it’s just never been the right time, or I’ve never been able to sit down…
POV: First Person, Publication: /r/NoSleep, Theme: Cats, Theme: Christians & Christianity, Theme: Diaries & Epistolary, Theme: Disability, Theme: Family Dynamics, Theme: Getting Old, Theme: Ghosts & Necromancy, Theme: Gravediggers & Executioners, Theme: Homophobia, Theme: Men Who Love Men | Homosexuality, Theme: Mental Illness, Theme: Messengers & Postmen, Theme: Obsession, Theme: Priests & Clerics & Devotees, Theme: Scars & Permanent Injuries, Theme: Temples & Places of Worship -
Letters from Ganymede: Friday 28th July, 1876
Gothic horror. Serial. Ganymede Cavendish, a recent graduate from the Royal Academy of Arts, catches the eye of an anonymous benefactor. Previous Chapter Directory of Chapters Next Chapter Friday 28th July, 1876 Dear Mr Smith, I wish, you know, that I could save the sound of the rain on the glass roof of the studio here, and send it onto you, that you could play it from a music box or suchlike, Mr Smith. It is better to be out in it than to have the glass between its sweet kiss and one’s skin, but the sound it makes really is…
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It’s Your Responsibility to Kill Yourself
and other interesting viewpoints in The Haunting of Bly Manor. A still from the opening credits. From Wikipedia. Before I get on with this review, I would just like to note that this will, of course, be incredibly spoiler-heavy for The Haunting of Bly Manor, Mike Flanagan’s spiritual sequel to the The Haunting of Hill House, and you should not read on if you want to go into it without any prior knowledge. I would also note trigger warnings for themes of suicide and murder, particularly murder of sick loved ones, violence, mentions of CSA and societal attitudes toward it, and…
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Writing Dialogue
A technical primer denoting some rules and conventions. For many of us, we internalise the rules of writing by reading — by sheer osmosis, we take them in, and we replicate them in our own work, often without even realising. When it comes to technical rules, though, it can be difficult to grasp them intuitively because they’re tethered to other rules of grammar we might not entirely understand, and dialogue is one of those difficult things to get. For years, I struggled to understand a lot of dialogue rules, and subsequently stuff I’ve written as recently as two or three years ago…
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Letters from Ganymede: Monday 24th July, 1876
Gothic horror. Serial. Ganymede Cavendish, a recent graduate from the Royal Academy of Arts, catches the eye of an anonymous benefactor. Previous Chapter Directory of Chapters Next Chapter Monday 24th July, 1876 Dear Mr Smith, I fear you will think me a terrible slut, sir, but I have spent the whole of the day in bed. Since my marble arrived Tuesday morning, I have spent every day in a sort of desperate fervour — I have filled at least fifty or sixty pages with sketches of my marble, imagining what I can bring from beneath its surface. You have sent but a block…
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Letters from Ganymede: Tuesday 18th July, 1876
Gothic horror. Serial. Ganymede Cavendish, a recent graduate from the Royal Academy of Arts, catches the eye of an anonymous benefactor. Previous Chapter Directory of Chapters Next Chapter Tuesday 18th July, 1876 Dear Mr Smith, I do not recall asking for a bath to be run for me, you know. I think I must have murmured my intentions aloud at some stage, or perhaps somehow made known my desires without meaning to, observed and not realising the fact, and at no point did I leave a note or some such for the servants. I had intended to run the bath myself.…
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Close Your Mouth & To The Blind Man
Two poems. Close Your Mouth (for G.) Close your mouth.Your teeth are showing, sharp as moonlight,And you will cut yourself on them. Close your mouth.Once again, the bar is closing,The lights turning off one by one,The coins rattling in their tray as Holly tocks them up.Your lips are parted as you finish up your drink and droplets,clinging to our lip like so much nectar catch the light beforeyour tongue draws them in. Close your mouth. Do you ever stop talking?Word after word drips from your mouth:You talk of mead halls and old songs,Traffics and tax fraud,Polished swords and nursery rhymes.Are you so…
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The Collection
100-word fiction prompt: a collection. Photo by Kyle William on Pexel. Edmund Horvasse’s office was beautifully appointed, and ordinarily, under the fine evening sun streaming through the window, Velma might have appreciated the antiques that furnished his office, but not today. She stared instead at the glass case mounted on the wall over his desk. The demons were mounted like insects, golden pins through the centres of their chests, through the corners of their wings to keep them spread. Not one of them was larger than her palm, and their eyes, black and chitinous, stared lifelessly outward. They looked surprised, it…
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Letters From Ganymede: Friday 14th July, 1876
Gothic horror. Serial. Ganymede Cavendish, a recent graduate from the Royal Academy of Arts, catches the eye of an anonymous benefactor. Previous Chapter Directory of Chapters Next Chapter Friday 14th July, 1876 Dear Mr Smith, What a house this is. I feel you shall become swiftly bored of me indeed if every letter I send you is one replete with my thanks, but I must, alas, thank you once more: I have spent this week exploring Mnemosyne’s Rest over and over, and still I feel I scarcely know her, for she seems to go on very nearly forever. You know, today,…
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Letters from Ganymede: Tuesday 11th July, 1876
Gothic horror. Serial. Ganymede Cavendish, a recent graduate from the Royal Academy of Arts, catches the eye of an anonymous benefactor. Mr Smith will offer Mr Cavendish food and board, all the artistic supplies he might require, and space with which to work: they shall never meet, and Mr Cavendish will never know Mr Smith’s true name. The only recompense he desires is that Mr Cavendish create beautiful art, and that he write his sponsor a letter each week, keeping his benefactor apprised of his progress. Having always been lonely, but now feeling alone, Ganymede begins a slow descent into…
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The Ballad of Lacie O’Malley
On the subject of spiders and sexual pleasure. © Johannes Evans 2019 This poem is very silly, but just a warning for sexual content and arachnophobia. Originally written 2017. Here I’ll tell you the tale of a woman named Lacie, Though now I shall warn you: the tale will be racy, Abandon hope, all ye who enter here, And who enter young Lacie With nothing to fear. In her youth she was healthy, broad-shouldered and tall, She played chess in the evenings, and the mornings, football, And then in her teens she added some more, Did her hobbies and homework, and even some chores. As a woman, my God,…
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The Door
They forgot about the door, somehow. Photo by Enzo B, taken 2019. Source. Originally posted in a Tweet thread. They forgot about the door, somehow. When they moved into the house, it had been fascinating: a full-sized door between Dad’s room and Kelly’s, a door that would not open. For weeks, the girls rifled in the backs of drawers, peered under loose floorboards, dug in the yard. They searched high and low for wherever one might find a key in an old house, and they even found one, but it was for the old iron padlock in the shed, that wasn’t even…
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The Coffin At Sea
A vessel picks up a coffin afloat at sea. Image credit to Jim Beaudoin 2008. Source. Originally posted in a Tweet thread. A vessel picks up a coffin afloat at sea. It’s heavy, and the captain orders that they open it to see if there are any identifying features, so they know to whom they should return it — no nails hold it shut, and it opens easily. The bed is dry, but empty. Unnerved but in many ways relieved, the sailors toss it back. That night, the alarm is raised when it appears on deck again, silently, with no trace of who had…
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Short Story: Winter’s Secret
© Johannes Evans 2019 The tree boughs were covered over with snow, the blanket of it thick and heavy on the ground. Frost had made all the statues even prettier, and the frozen pond left the house’s children laughing as they slid across it. She was dusting in one of the attic rooms, doing her duty, but for a few moments she allowed herself to stand at the window and look. The snow was thick indeed — the poor children had to stagger in it to get to the door, but they didn’t mind. How they laughed, falling over one another! The rabbits…
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Walking Home
© Johannes Evans 2019 She’d never thought anything could be more romantic than their dates together. On Valentine’s, they tended to go all out, tended to buy champagne and chocolate and flowers and such for each other. They were a sentimental couple: each of them bought gifts and flowers for the other regularly. It made for a cluttered household, but certainly a happy one. As the years had gone by, she found that it wasn’t the date that took precedence. Nor the getting ready. or the going to bed afterwards. No, the most romantic thing was after the date, when they…
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The Clockmaker
© Johannes Evans 2019 The grind and creak of mismatched gears was palpable on the air. It wasn’t loud, not by any stretch of the word, and yet he heard it very clearly, felt it even. He could almost feel that unpleasant sound, as though it were such an awful utterance that it should reverberate through him, chilling his bones. He checked, first, his own pocketwatch. She was silver — he’d made her himself some night long ago. If there was some error in her clockwork, he’d quickly be able to replace any errant or loose pieces before the mechanisms were irreparably damaged.…
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The Clearing
© Johannes Evans 2019 The brook babbled quietly, the water flowing with an almost musical tinkle of sound. It complimented the gentle rustle of leaves above, as well as the pretty song of the closest birds. It fed into a large pond, clear and clean. At its side there was little plant life, though on the small island in the centre — barely two metres in diameter — flowers bloomed in the ground and berry bushes were thick and leafy. The fruit there grew ripe, rich in colour, glossy where the light shone through: no bird dared touch them. There was colour on that island,…
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Stormy Seas
Only when it was stormy would she appear. On bright days with clear skies, she was nowhere to be found nor seen, even when wind whipped over the ocean surface, ’til it was a roiling mess of white. But when the clouds grew dark and the sky went grey, she appeared as if she’d risen from the water. No man alive or dead had ever seen crew upon her decks, or at least, no crew of human breeding. Any ghosts had been grey and ghostly, with no appearance of living flesh. They were never seen in real action: they disappeared…