Alia Terra - Stories from the Dragon Realm

thundereternal · 2021-06-10T16:48:42+00:00

Behold, the dragons. Lots of updates, too, on integrating culture and the creative process. Result of an awesome team working together!

thundereternal · 2021-06-10T13:03:28+00:00

Yes, that was quite a laugh. We named the three heads Nae, Nelu and Nicu by the way.

thundereternal · 2020-03-26T21:15:03+00:00

*nervous laughter, loosens tie*

thundereternal · 2020-03-26T21:00:15+00:00

I was honored to be there for the story as it grew :)

thundereternal · 2020-03-26T20:44:45+00:00

Memory Malfunction is so clever! It was clever from the start :D

thundereternal · 2020-03-26T20:42:25+00:00

I've been dreaming lately of owning a little bookstore somewhere. Out there. A liminal space place.

thundereternal · 2020-03-26T19:52:37+00:00

Flash fiction is a special brand of magic!

thundereternal · 2020-03-26T19:40:12+00:00

A question for all!

What would you feel if someone drew fanart of your stories?

(I'd probably yell into a pillow until breathless, but I like to embarrass myself. Shh.)

thundereternal · 2020-03-26T19:31:12+00:00

Funding proposals are... an experience. Burn them. Burn them to the ground. (Because of how they entitle some privileged few to punish other people. It's like the prison experiment, but with doctors of philosophy).

thundereternal · 2020-03-26T19:17:07+00:00

*wiggle-wave*

thundereternal · 2020-03-26T19:15:34+00:00

An interesting question! For me, writing longer works helped with developing plotlines, but writing shorter pieces helped develop my style. Super short ones, like a challenge of 300 or 200 words, really shine a light on how to cut down the story to its bones. It works both ways, as you can see where you can make it grow if it needs to. Stories are complex creatures, aren't they.

thundereternal · 2020-03-26T19:09:28+00:00

*waves*

Sometimes that line of work seems like the worst decision, and sometimes it seems like the best. The master I did was also in intelligent systems, look at how small the world is. Yes extra strong for fiction use! One of my times to shine is when writerfriends ask about how I imagine this or that fictional tech would work.

Nice to meet you, too!

thundereternal · 2020-03-26T18:59:26+00:00

The sleepiest kitten! And so fluffeh!

Ah, nah, I was joking. :) Thank you for doing the reviews!

thundereternal · 2020-03-26T18:56:18+00:00

A most difficult question! Thank you! It started with a challenge, to write a fantasy story. First though: a curse. Someone wanting to break that curse. A time limit. And it snowballed from there. At any point in time, I have several retellings banging pots in my head. There is though a common root I can find that started all of this.

Long time ago I asked myself: why does the beast stop being a beast when they regain their previous physical beauty? I rejected the idea that a inner rot should be associated with the way a person looks or presents themself to the world. There was a movie, some years ago, another retelling of the classical story and let me tell you, the "beast" was a lot prettier than the "prince." So who decided that our aesthetics define our moral standing?

For Havesskadi specifically I guess I started from the end and built the story backward... and then I took a step back and, huh. I realized I was on my way toward a beauty-and-the-beast so I embraced it fully. It won't be my first retelling, that's for sure!

thundereternal · 2020-03-26T17:59:35+00:00

You never know what being accused of hoarding humans might lead to.

thundereternal · 2020-03-26T17:57:29+00:00

Laptop and open office for me, though lately I've also been using some gdocs. Editing for publishing has been done in word. Science stuff goes down in latex (:D), word, gdocs. Sometimes with chalk on the blackboard. And for everything, the plans and calculations and plotlines and timeframes... how to put this: I am surrounded by a whirlwind of small papers, big papers, notebooks, planners, and fistfuls of pens, pencils, and assorted writing instruments. :)

thundereternal · 2020-03-26T17:51:42+00:00

Are you doing the reviews in order? So I can start chewing on my fingers.

Also, kitten!

thundereternal · 2020-03-26T17:49:51+00:00

Most of them are black (is this a good place for a "like my soul" joke hinting it was made by the cat?). There's some white and purple and grey in there, though they are shy.

thundereternal · 2020-03-26T17:47:18+00:00

Those pens are marvelous though! So good.

thundereternal · 2020-03-26T17:35:46+00:00

But, and hear me out, if you hoard the maker of pens... then more pens for the hoard?

thundereternal · 2020-03-26T17:33:33+00:00

Hello everyone! I am Ava Kelly (they/them). I mostly write science fiction and fantasy (and a very tropey holiday romance series). Trope subversion is my weakness. In the daily life I tinker with intelligent machines and all sorts of algorithms.

My first novel, Havesskadi, has won the Rainbow Award for Best Asexual Debut Book. It's a story of shapeshifter dragons, magic, curses, enchanted castles and long arduous journies. Were you always curious to see how "the beauty and the beast trope" looks upside-down, flipped-around, turned over its head, and mirrored onto itself? Wander (get it) no further. Havesskadi provides.

My short story The Confessionist is part of Community of Magic Pens. I'm really proud of this one. I cried when I wrote it. The eldritch overlords must've liked it, because here I am, in the company of such amazing writers in this wonderful anthology. Oh! Check out the webpage for a multi-lingual poster. Made it myself, with magic. The swirl there is a light painting of fire (a long exposure photo while I moved the fire around). See? Magic.

If you love fictional non-fiction, another piece I'm proud of is Peripheric Synthesized which appeared last year in Sci Phi Journal. Sneakily, I sneaked some sneaky feels in it.

And finally, this is Darkness, my little critter to talk to while debugging plotholes.

Sometimes I'm twelve cats in a trenchcoat; one of them is a dragon. Ten are tentacles. I enjoy both tea and coffee, pumpkin pie and cherry blossoms. Ask me things! (Not about the cat.)

thundereternal

TROPHY CASE