by Katherine Villyard | Jun 27, 2024 | vampires
OH MY $DEITY I AM OBSESSED. So, I’m a book fan–not a “True Fan,” as I read the first three and stopped–but I read and loved the first three books very much. (I recently read Tale of the Body Thief as well and enjoyed it!) But it’s...
by Katherine Villyard | Jun 15, 2024 | free fiction, short fiction
This story originally appeared in ChiZine, October 2011, and was reprinted in Broad Spectrum: The 2012 Broad Universe Fiction Sampler (October 30, 2012, and in Love Stories. INFERNO Last time this happened, I was Orpheus. Ethan was lost, pale, gone in a haze of...
by Katherine Villyard | May 28, 2024 | geekiness, writing
For my eBooks (I have one for sale and a slew of mailing list extras), I use Draft2Digital’s converter… but might end up using Sigil. I used to do webdev, a million years ago, and am comfortable in HTML and CSS. But I have yet to play with that. I mean, D2D produces...
by Katherine Villyard | May 21, 2024 | writing
Oh hey! It’s a magical creature post where I’m not going to ask you to think about religion! I mean, you can if you want to, as the medieval European werewolf typically put on a wolf-skin belt, or applied a special salve to their body, or went through a Satanic rite,...
by Katherine Villyard | May 15, 2024 | free fiction, short fiction
This story was originally published in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination and reprinted in Love Stories. (Also this graphic is adapted from the original publisher’s art.) Tucking his computer science textbook and his Book of Shadows into his backpack,...
by Katherine Villyard | May 7, 2024 | writing
I’m sorry, but you probably know the drill by now. Like the vampire post and the witch post, I’m going to ask you to consider religion… or at the very least, the afterlife. A ghost—at least, the kind I’m talking about—is the spirit of someone who’s died. This implies...
by Katherine Villyard | May 1, 2024 | writing
Like the vampire post, I’m going to open by asking you to consider the relationship between magic and religion. Are your witches and wizards members of a pagan (or neopagan) religion? Are they Satanists straight out of the Malleus Maleficarum? (Er, maybe they...
by Katherine Villyard | Apr 23, 2024 | vampires, writing
Probably the first thing that one should consider in writing vampires is what rule system you intend to follow. This is not a universal, as the Sims 4 Vampires pack knows. (Yes, I’m a Simmer!) Some considerations: What will be their relationship with religion?...
by Katherine Villyard | Apr 18, 2024 | free fiction, short fiction
This story was originally published in Escape Pod on July 5, 2013, and reprinted in Love Stories. There’s also a really good audio version by Kyle Akers! In the beginning, there was darkness. And in the darkness were the words. And the words were, AI...
by Katherine Villyard | Apr 9, 2024 | reading
My favorite author, Lyda Morehouse, has a new book coming out and OMG I AM SO EXCITED SQUEEEEEEE!!!!!! Preorders are available here: https://wizardstowerpress.com/books-2/books-by-lyda-morehouse/welcome-to-boy-net/ or on Amazon. Lyda’s AngeLINK series is...