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Here’s one of the last parts of Stars Fall Out that I wrote in November. I didn’t finish my ending, as I had hoped, but I did complete 25 scenes, which was my other goal. This deals with the mechanics of a magic vial that’s one of the most important magical advances in hundreds of years and that the main character steals and essentially uses as an addictive escape from her own life.

This time, as it fizzed and hissed and transformed the water, I focused. Just as I brought my mind back under this bridge when I needed to come home, so did I send it out. I flung my thoughts out to the farthest reaches of the empire, to farther places than that, even. I thought of mountains too tall to exist here, plants too exotic, bridges too magnificent. I thought of maps unrolled before me, not Pinuar’s maps of the city, but maps that stopped for no road and went on and on.

I took my sip of water, and I imagined it pulling me to all those places.

Then I waded in, and wished one last time for the water to whisk me out of my trap.

When I came up again, a miniature wooden statue of She-the-Sailor stared me down from on top of a nearby dock piled with weathered rope. Once, I had come across a She-the-Sailor statue in a far-off place. Nothing about this tightly-packed clutter of ramshackle seaside cottages hinted at far-off places. Nothing about the chill or the salt tang in the air hinted of far-off places either.

I’d been breathing them in all day. All week. All month.

My entire life.

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I stood writing at Dunkin Donuts, and in the corner they had one of those morning shows with bubbly hosts and banter and talk about celebrities.

Then the male host announced, “I took my cat’s litter to work instead of my lunch.”

I don’t know if it was a joke or if they were talking about embarrassing moments.

But a guy sitting at a nearby table was nodding along like, “Yeah, I do that all the time. PREACH.”

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For more of my Stars Fall Out research, I started looking up historical forms of birth control for something I can bend to fit my story. This is not that thing:

During the 16th century, Canadians began using the combination of beaver testicles with moonshine. They ground the beaver balls to fine powder and then added very strong alcohol to the mixture. People would then drink this, with the alcohol helping to forget that they were drinking beaver testicles.

15 of the Craziest Birth Control Methods from Ancient Times

I’m the lightest lightweight ever, and it would take an entire jug of wine for me to forget I was drinking beaver testicles. This is because no amount of alcohol would make me forget drinking beaver testicles; you’d need to straight up smack me over the head with the wine jug and concuss me for me to forget that.

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While editing an upcoming post, I learned “curriculum” can be pluralized as either “curriculums” or “curricula.”

I chose to use “curricula” because
A. It makes me sound smarter.
B. It brings to mind an eight-legged monster with a pile of textbooks for a thorax.

Yeah. Mostly the last one.

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8 Ways to Destroy Someone with OCD this Holiday Season

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Holiday collage of Christmas lights, mixed nuts, and rolls with colored sprinkles.

By taking the words of Sun Tzu to heart and learning these actionable techniques, you can utterly destroy a holiday guest with OCD this year! Continue reading

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There’s plenty of positive messaging out there about facing your fears, getting out of your comfort zone, and not letting your anxiety rule your life.

What no one talks about is how long things take when you have anxiety, or how, when you realize how long they take, you end up cutting other things out of your life to accommodate them.