happiest love and friendship day from me and my fictional besties 🦭💕

the Big Blue Beautiful Book Bairn turns 3 years old today! happy birthday, my darling selkie lass. if you've enjoyed reading her, she'd love to receive reviews from you anywhere you like to post 'em! links to purchase, review, adjacent short stories, & all related things at linktr.ee/ashleyb.anglin

yesterday, as a doomscrolling antidote, i started rereading this for about the 10th time in 25 years. incredible how it only gets richer & lovelier each time. amused to note--ordinarily, i'd say i'm drawn neither to omniscient narrators nor many POVs. yet this, my favorite book of all time, has both

introduce yourself as what almost killed you: hello, i'm ashley's firstborn. don't let my 5-lb size and adorable huge blue eyes fool you... i've teamed up with her naturally trash blood pressure, and we're gonna try to burn this whole mutha down [we're both good haha. but in another era... yike]

aCtUaLLy, the V is for v. north, who'll be giving me endless side-eye because i never seem to write a real villain, whilst she contributes a villain-ish themed collection of poetry. here's her bio (and if you haven't met her yet, you can for free in the zon sample here: tinyurl.com/mr32s5x4)

omg, 10/10 no notes

i'm a 2 or 3 to most people. but to those who can see my true form, 8 or 9.

new LFL in my neighborhood + few copies left over from a book fair yesterday = don't mind if i do! and no offense, but aren't my shiny lovelies *far* more intriguing than "belly fat diet for dummies"?

a spot of trouble in Amsterdam with the gross political movement known as Humanism... they don't want to share their bar with selkie folk. (and tangentially, now i'm going to have "black water lilies" by aurora stuck in my head all morning) #wipsnips

post a you from a different era. here's me in the 1920s, when i was 40. haha/sighhh

only a bunch of words that rhyme with "ink" so far in Undreamt, so here's one from Undiscovered. just yesterday, though, i was thinking about how this character's future partner (he's like two pages from meeting her here) might end up with a little ink of her own. stay tuned... #wipsnips

always, always, plans to improve it, right up until the second before it leaves my hands for good. have i mentioned i do edits for SSP sometimes? hahaha, and please enjoy this favorite related quote

wellp, jo has really been through it at this point #wipsnips and i would be remiss not to point out that the future cover of Undreamt will also have a lot of leaves on it

hot off the presses... i just wrote this scene yesterday (and no one aurora's ever met has more *skills* than mr. O D, believe you her) #wipsnips

i think i posted the #wipsnips directly before this bit not too long ago. (one of many things B and i have in common is disliking our given first names, both starting with B. she happens to be working on a "what the B stands for" poem right now & yes, bitch makes the list. but it's really Berenys)

nobody wants to rule the world anymore and that's sad

this #wipsnip is from Undreamt. but i would be remiss not to mention that for more about the North family's unusual dynamic, you can read my short story "Undine Summer" for free---it's in the book sample www.amazon.com/Cozyish-Sale...

happy feast day, hildegard von bingen! one of my favorite badass medieval ladies. i studied her as an undergrad for history (her relative political power) & in grad school (her mystical writings & music, unusual for their time--as if truly insired by divine visions) www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GFs...

i didn't set out to make Undreamt eVen WoKeR gArBaGe than Undiscovered, but... here's one visible bit of that iceberg #wipsnips

ok, (much-needed) timeline cleanse. 💙 everyone who sees this post, quote 5 things that make you happy: - golden-hour light - cooking/fine dining out w my adult kid - orcas/whales - highly verbal small children - live theatre (american shakespeare center forever) & concerts (hozier this wednesday!)

another #wipsnips, another moment of sibling banter & another description of jo's work wardrobe lol. (vibing "prize" for "award.") and this dress is probably the #1 thing of hers that i'd love to find in my size (alas, like this mental version, i'd just have to create it myself)

where my people who make themselves bawl when they write certain scenes at? because yeahhhh, the one this is snipped from messed me UP #wipsnips

two "outside"s for the price of one! (will both survive future editing rounds? stay tuned...) #wipsnips

It's my birthday!! I'm 49 - how did that happen? I would LOVE it if you could share or follow my art for my birthday, that would be a brilliant gift! Thank you everyone who follows and comments, it is such a great place here! 49 feels ace btw. #artshare #birthday #watercolour www.emilyhare.co.uk

Nobody hates LitFic more than people who don't read it.

right around here is when the plot of Undreamt starts going real slipstream heheh #wipsnips

another day, another instance of selkie skin telepathy. and what can i say, this girl loves her rich sensory imagery (and also her coffee, and also her jane austen-esque punctuation of long but grammatically correct sentences lol) #wipsnips

my WIP has no instances of "sane," which... yeah, that tracks. please enjoy two antonyms, including my favorite british one, plus a little more selkie skin telepathy #wipsnips

he may have been dumbing it down a bit in the last decade or two, but in point of fact, Ysabeau, he's always been an utter smokeshow #wipsnips

Anyway, if you want to see science fiction thriving and doing all kinds of cool, weird shit, I invite you ti read more short fiction and delve into to small presses. Incredible stories, talented authors. Lots of great work happening in those spaces.

just a lil glimpse of the a w k w a r d n e s s that is this scene. #wipsnips

the only "scrub" in my WIP is a passage i've shared here fairly recently. so please have this cheerful happy feel-good moment* from the end of chapter 1 of Undiscovered #wipsnips *and a wee foreshadowing kinda pun, for those who know what to look for

Hey you, there were a lot of cool indie book sales and bundles these past few days and I'm sure you bought a few (or a lot!)... Don't forget after reading to leave the books you bought a review somewhere!! Help the books get more eyes on them! 🌻

short fiction, you say? 👀 find 7 of my short works here! you can read 6 for free (the ones in Dreamcaught & Cozyish anthologies are in the book sample on the zon); #7, according to a kind Panthology reviewer, "was stellar, & it's worth buying this book just for that story." linktr.ee/ashleyb.anglin

kinda can't resist using this note that will appear at the start of Undreamt for today's #wipsnips

or, as she's fondly known in the @shadowsparkpub.bsky.social discord, Intimidating Lesbian Choreographer In The Three-Piece Suit (The ILC for short) #WIPSnips

the world's such a shitshow. have more of Jo's fun work wardrobe, and some banter with her brainy younger siblings #wipsnips

oh, she's trapped, all right #wipsnips

the only "crawl" in my WIP is in a note, not completed text, so today you're getting this one from my novelette "Undine Summer" in the Cozyish anthology. these characters will be back in Undreamt, though--12 or so years after this story takes place #wipsnips

what gif pops up when you type in your name?

menolly the celtic harp has just travelled from shetland to helsinki, and despite being hand delivered, she's Having a Diva Moment about it (some strings don't want to stay in tune, and this is the second one that's broken in one afternoon) #wipsnips

as a kid, i was ALLLL about secondary world fantasy, but almost everything i've written as an adult/published is set on present-day or near-future Earth (with one partial exception for Neverland). for the selkieverse tales, it's mainly focused in/around the North Sea and adjacent waters.

my WIP has no "razor," but here's a short & sweet lack thereof: "Half the allure, I decided, was that rakish little sketch of a beard he’d kept all this time because she liked it." #WIPSnips

my WIP has no instances of "enemy" so please have this snip from Bay of Rainbows (Panthology). the enemy is a creepy amorphous Neverland kraken. Grayling (mermaid) & Gellie (kid from bristol) evade it on their quest to the Never-moon... where the Sea of Rains is a real sea with real rain #wipsnips

i guess my MS is also fancy/highfalutin (my work has def been called highbrow more than once before haha). no "cheap" or obvious synonyms. inspired by the below choice, i searched "cheep," then "chirp" and found this one hit. (also, yay shakespeare! he's in Undreamt too, tho not this bit) #wipsnips

slightly diminish a band: florence and the inclined plane

this giant shakespeare dork is OVER most aspects of R&J... but i am playing with this trope in Undreamt. let's just say there's faaaaar too much "right person, wrong time" going around for either narrator's comfort or satisfaction

my WIP has no "split"s as yet, so please enjoy (?) this scary AF (imho) moment from Undiscovered in which selkie skin-based touch telepathy, while super efficient, Is A Lot. cw: earthquake while stuck in a cave #wipsnips

challenge: post your last photo taken in DC to show what a hellhole it is (surrounded by immigrants! From Shithole Countries! SPEAKING SPANISH!! no one grinned blissfully through the entire show, or danced, or felt healed by li's beautiful energy/sweet fraternal vibe between beto & her. esp not me)

well, well, well. if it isn't me using "really" FAR too much in this draft. hahaha thanks for the heads-up, #wipsnips 🙄 and here's a longish snippet complete with just the one proper "real"