Introduction

Hi. My name is Jack, and I am a writer. I mostly write queer fantasy and fantasy romance with elements of horror and an aesthetic best described as “dark whimsy.” I’ve written a serial, and I think it’s pretty good, and I’d like to share it with you, but first I’d like to give my ADHD a moment to supply a scrap of context for how we got here, if you’re willing to spare your precious attention span (I promise I’ll never squander it).

Stories are my special interest. Always have been, and I think that’s the case for a lot of us. I went straight from undergrad into an MA program in Creative Writing, and from there leapt face-first into an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction. This means I have a few very expensive pieces of paper stating that, technically, I should be pretty good at this.

I graduated in 2019, so I fear the next bit is hopelessly predictable. I hit burnout, and burnout hit back. Hard. I’ve spent years living with a brain that is literally not the same as the one I was working with before, and I still can’t quite verbalize the fear and hopelessness that comes with that. Add in the collective trauma of a pandemic, depression and anxiety I wasn’t managing, and raging undiagnosed/untreated ADHD, and I stopped writing like I used to.

I didn’t stop completely. I think that would be kind of impossible.

I hope it’s impossible.

Even without physically writing, the threads of stories, scraps of names and places, lines from characters I don’t know yet, none of that ever fully stops. Getting it to knit together? Separate task.

When Covid hit, I threw myself into developing my homebrew world and running my first ever Dungeons and Dragons campaign. It was a huge undertaking, and the only creative project I could keep up with for a while. Up until I was unable to do even that.

I never used to be afraid of finishing any sort of project, but suddenly taking a story out of the liminal space of creation and flipping the switch to done was unbearable. What if I’d lost the skills I’d worked so hard and spent so much time (and spent so, so much money) developing? No piece is perfect, and I know the only way to improve those skills is to…work on them.

But the harmful thought patterns are wired REAL good into the ole electric meatball. I’m a perfectionist, which is difficult when you’re dealing with rusty skills at best, and skill regression at worst.

Anyway, that campaign is still on hiatus, right on the edge of the final confrontation with the BBEG, and that kills me just as much as my fear of writing. Add “fear of letting down my friends with my crap narrative framework,” to the list, somewhere beneath “AI making it near-impossible for me to make a living at what I love while simultaneously destroying our entertainment landscape.”

On the bright side, I’m now in therapy, I’m diagnosed, I’m medicated. I’ve got a day job I enjoy, even if it doesn’t quite pay the bills. I’ve got friends I love a whole bunch, and that homebrew world became the setting for a staggering number of stories I can’t wait to share.

Aaaand the whole world is still falling apart. There are people who don’t think I should exist. There are marginalized identities in greater danger than myself, and our earth is dying, and I want to ease suffering yet I too often lean into hopelessness and feel that all I can do is watch. Which is why now more than ever I need to return to the root of who I am. I need to keep healing so that I can react accordingly, with acts of joy and otherwise. Writing is just where it makes sense to start.

This might be a very public way of coping, but I kind of like the idea of journaling my way back to my writer’s heart. The world is on fire and art is part of my resistance.

To summarize, This Blighted Metamorphosis is launching this month, and it’s part of my journey back to storytelling as fun, back to finding the song of words and stringing them along like beads in a pretty pattern that sounds nice when they clink together. It’s my journey back to writing for me and not external validation.

It’s my vow to nourish love instead of my fear.

So I hope you enjoy this story back to myself, just like these characters find themselves and each other in a world that’s happiest to set them apart.

Yikes.

So. Yeah. If you read all of that, holy shit?? Hi?? I’m so glad you’re here??? I hope you find this place as cozy and comfortable and entertaining as I plan for it to be.

Kisses!

P.S. While we’re all here, I’d like to make my feelings on this crystal clear from the very beginning: Fuck AI. I am a human writer. I hire human editors and artists. Anything I make from this Substack is first and foremost going back into paying them. AI has no place in my creative process, it never will, and this isn’t something I’m willing to debate. K thanks love u bye!!