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Al Writes

@alwri-tes

This is the new blog (old blog writtenbyal) for me, the authorof the self-published book Shadow's Hidden Blade! This blog is where I put writing related stuff. My pronouns are she/her. Members of the LGBTQ+ community and people of all ethnicities are welcome here.

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Hello! I wrote the novel Shadow's Hidden Blade and Splintertown!

Shadow's Hidden Blade

The summary: "The gods Light and Shadow, created the world, and the millions of creatures that call it home. While they were equal in power, they were different in ability: Shadow was the creator of  changelings, Light ruled over humankind. One day, the two gods fought. Their fighting caused destruction unlike anything the world had ever seen, especially because of the armies of magical super soldiers, called puppets, that each god created to fight for them. After horrific battling, Light defeated Shadow and banished Her. Over a hundred years later, a young changeling named Isabella lives surrounded by reminders of the war’s devastation, but she has simply accepted it as a part of her life. She is easily distracted by things like everyday delights, like the strange circus that comes to town one day… and shatters everything. Isabella’s mother is murdered the night of the circus’s arrival, and she’s willing to do anything to find out who is responsible. Ursa has known no other life but the circus. It’s a life of constant moving and chaos, carefully controlled by Ursa’s best friend, the hyperactive ringmaster. Ursa knows the circus isn’t perfect, but when a changeling named Isabella arrives and asks to be made a performer, it exposes a web of mysteries and lies bigger and deeper than anything Ursa ever could have imagined. Now she and Isabella must work together to uncover the secrets kept from them for years, but there are people willing to kill to keep them hidden."

Update: the name of a group of characters in the book has been changed in newer versions, from 'The Eternals' to 'The Ceaseless.' A more explanatory post can be found here.

Read a free excerpt here. , here , here , here , here and here.

Read Tumblr exclusive short stories here. and here.

Read descriptions of the main cast here.

Read descriptions of important supporting characters here.

Check out songs I associate with the book here.

Buy an ebook here or here, and audiobook here, or buy physical copies books here. They’ll come gift wrapped!

Check out my instagram here.

Splintertown

When a living creature falls asleep, small seeds fall from their nose and mouth and grow into dream-plants that sprout delicious dream-fruit. 

Human dreams are the juiciest and most nutritious of all, and few people know this better than Kainma. An orphan who spent the first twelve years of her life subsiding mainly off of animal dream-plants while living in a complex cave network, Kainma decides to go to the Surface to seek a better life after a terrible tragedy. She finds a happier life after being taken in by a thief named Su and his family, but when Su’s mysterious past comes back to haunt him, Kainma and her new friends and family find themselves embroiled in a terrifying mystery that takes them to some of the darkest places in the Caves…and the mind. 

Excerpt here, here, and here! And here!

Buy an ebook here or from here, or a physical copy from my website.

Description of the main cast here!

Sisters of Vipers

On the island of Alapora, only the elite and wealthy priests and priestesses, known as the Holy Ones, are permitted to safely use the magic of demons, but that doesn’t stop the common people, or the demons. For years, demons and humans have been mingling in the mysterious Masked Market, where demon magic is traded in secret. 

One day, Zomoc, the overeager apprentice of a powerful priestess, seeks out the Masked Market to investigate, and meets a girl named Mola. The two become involved in a shocking chain of events that unravels everything Zomoc thought she knew about herself and her home. 

Over the next three years, Zomoc and Mola give everything they have to spearhead a movement to use magic to take down the Holy Ones…or die trying. 

Read an excerpt here, or here,

Buy it from one of these stores or from my website!

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fuckyeahwierd

JESUS?? 

JESUS????

i had no idea they were so frickin huge

I love them so much because they’re about as sharp as a baseball and their anatomy is ridiculous to the point of them literally being classified as plankton for years because they just sort of get blown around by the ocean and look confused, but because they lay more eggs than ANY OTHER VERTEBRATE IN EXISTENCE, evolution can’t stop them

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onewingandabrokenhalo

Why is no big predator coming and gnawing on them?

Their biggest defense is that they’re massive and have super tough skin, but they do get hunted by sharks or sea lions sometimes and they just sort of float there like ‘oh bother’ as it happens

Even funnier, because they eat nothing but jellyfish they’re really low in nutritional value anyway, so they basically survive by being not worth eating because they’re like a big floating rice cracker wrapped in leather.

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doom-exe

So basically the only reason natural selection hasn’t taken care if them is because they are the most useless fish

yes, they’ve perfected uselessness to the point of being unstoppable

a true inspiration

Evolution didn’t care about fittest or best, it cares about the CARE MINIMUM.

Which is a being a giant leather rice cake.

AUTO REBLOG OF PACIFIC SUNFISH. MOTHER NATURE AT HER MOST WHIMSICAL. THE FARTHEST YOU GET FROM FISH DESIGN AND STILL CALL IT A FISH. AKA FLOATING CARDBOARD IN FISH FORM.

They aren’t useless, you monsters! The fact that they eat so many jellyfish is their exact ecological purpose. They are a key part of controlling jellyfish blooms. Sunfish keep jellyfish from taking up all the available space

All hail these jellyfish vacuums who make sure the other delicate creatures of the deep are not accidentally murdered by the jellyfish

Sea Roomba, you say?

After being in Japan for one of the Jellyfish blooms these giant floating rice cakes might be in my top three favorite fish now since they eat the damn things.

just so you understand how important it is for things to eat jellyfish, this is what jellyfish “blooms” look like

if anything we wish sunfish were twice as big. We used to think almost nothing eats jellyfish, but thank goodness we’re finding several other creatures snack on them, but very few specialize in them as much as sunfish do

Sweet tapdancing baby Jesus in drag it’s an Arms Race To The Bottom, along the r/K-selector axis, leaning hard into r.

It’s the perfect mass-spawn food-chain.

The Mola is leathery to protect from Jellyfish; they can bloom with them as needed; they drift in the same sort of currents; and who needs a brain when your prey runs on an 8b neural net?

Fucking. Genius. Well. Actually the opposite of “Genius”

Fuck I love evolution sometimes

JELLY REAPER GOD

And this here is what we in the writing industry call "a display of hubris that may or may not have karmic consequences but is very, very fun".

[ID: a screenshot of white text on a black background reading "All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The sole exception for the ocean, the ocean is The Pacific Ocean from real life. If it is unhappy with its portrayal it can settle the matter personally." /end ID]

The Pacific is the most fuckable ocean (tumblr et al, 2024). Let the author shoot their shot.

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