I am a mish-mash of two people whose deaths started with losing their minds. And while I have no idea how I’ll go, I’ve always suspected it’s too much to ask for some clean, sane break. What I’ve learned is that there is maybe… Read more: One Thing I Hope You Say About Me

I’ve literally never met someone so funny. Year one of life just passed, I was changing her diaper. She pointed down after I cleaned her off and said, “Vadino?” “Vagina,” I corrected. We were learning body parts. “No,” she responded immediately. “No?” A grin… Read more: 12/10/2025 – teach your kids the names of their body parts, for many reasons

I went to That Certain Bridal Store, you know, the doomed one, pretty much the minute I got engaged. Say Yes to the Dress was on our living room TV constantly at that time, and I was an ADHD addled, freshly sober motherfucker with… Read more: 12/8/2025 “What Could You Do Less Of?”

There’s been so much fucking grief, this year. All I have to do to remember that is come here and scroll. I see the past year in aborted, half-finished openings, cut off unless I click, and so many are frustrated at best. At best,… Read more: 12/7/2025

“Change? Something about ME? I would change nothing!” I shout, and then I do a six foot vertical leap, ending on a triple flip. No, but really. Like all AFAB people, I look in the mirror and the physical dislikes jump out like tasks… Read more: 12/3/2025

I have this dream that I’d be myself again, more fully than possible. I’d write, and I’d keep writing. I’d have the night again, the way I do when I’m manic, that delicious slice of silence I can do what I want with. I… Read more: 11/26/2025

The genres have lately divided like they think they’re continents rather than dialects, and the ground is shifting. I’m not in any way, shape, or form claiming to have invented the wheel. If anything, I’m just trying to figure out how to point at… Read more: 11/25/2025

For a while, I wanted to be an archeologist. It wasn’t because of Indiana Jones. I actually hadn’t heard of Indiana Jones until I participated in a summer shadow study: something my middle school was all about, where we went out into the workforce… Read more: 10/31/2025

Almost six years ago now, I spent my first night in rehab. Two days after they seized our daughter, one day after I had to put my dog to sleep. The staff took the little framed picture I’d brought of my baby girl when… Read more: 10/29/2025

My dad’s memorial was this past weekend. I’ve never handled funerals well. This one was particularly threatening to my sanity, and not just because it was my dad. I’ve never quite meshed with my stepfamily. Not quite because of the common child-of-divorce delusion that… Read more: 10/21/2025

My life comes segmented in many ways, despite being as linear as anyone else’s. One of the main ways is this: segments in which I smoke/vape, and segments in which I run. Those who have done both know they don’t overlap well. The first… Read more: 9/28/2025

SEEN FIRST on my Patreon – no paywalls, always free to join & read. Check it out! It seemed Pip’s pulse was powerful enough to threaten his starched collar, but Ma still tightened the clasp at his throat. “You ready?” she asked. Her voice… Read more: Beatlebug & The Prophet-PIP book 1, ch1

The whole world seems so eager to be over. Every time a scientist suggests a .001 chance of an asteroid hitting Earth, clickbait articles spell out our doom as an afterthought. As a species, we seem to be scrambling for the end, a finite… Read more: 9/18/2025

You have no idea the chaos you have unleashed by asking. So the simple answer is that I bought my ideal home with my husband around two and a half years ago. It just has yet to look like my ideal home. It has… Read more: 9/2/2025

Sometimes I forget y’all are here, reading. I guess that’s good. Recommended, even, if Bird by Bird is to be believed. (Bird by Bird is always to be believed, is what I’ve learned) I go days, weeks, one time a full month without posting… Read more: 8/31/2025

Swamp synonyms include: Marsh/marshland – ideal Bog – fabulous but not quite right Quagmire – negative context Mire – too victorian Morass – what Fen – Fenris? DA2 fanfiction, anyone? Quag – See three Sump – Sounds like what a swamp does?? Maybe?? Swamp,… Read more: 8/27/2025

My therapist started it off with a doozy last week. “Sounds like disorganized attachment style.” Not a fan. There are times when I like people a lot, and it’s a relief every time I can spend time with them. It’s a relief to speak… Read more: 8/20/2025

I’ve been querying for about a month now and it sucks ass. They say ‘start your new book immediately when you start querying’ and while the old one is done as I think I can make it, while all I do when I go… Read more: 8/19/2025

I answered this question a year ago with this poignant-ass shit about Pizza Hut employees. I stand by that answer. Right now my head is full of this idea of writing, though. Writing to be read, to keep writing. Writing to keep writing! Because… Read more: 8/11/2025

Ask me at literally any previous point in my life and hands down, I say books. I’m unsure how much of it is codependency and how much of it is being too old that makes me now immediately think, “Oh, definitely Warhammer bits. my… Read more: 8/10/2025

Was that supposed to be like, a meaningful answer? Sorry lol

For a moment I thought the question was “what change do I want to have happen in the world” like, as a whole, gimme god-like power, holy fuckshit My blog, though? Sure. Eh, love the queers, be kind first, don’t take any shit, and… Read more: 8/8/2025

“I’ve been thinking a lot about, like. The multiverse.” I shoved another bite of cheesesteak in my mouth quickly, trying to make the sound that came out my mouth part of that. I shouldn’t have worried, though. B was looking pensively out across the… Read more: 8/7/2025

Every year, we hit a lake in upstate New York. We stay at a huge log cabin with all my husband’s friends. One of his friends has a kid our daughter’s age, and the lake is beautiful and cool in the heat of summer.… Read more: 7/30/2025

I finished drafting three days ago now, I suppose. “Celebrate! Pat yourself on the back!” Friends come in and say that when I let them. When I say, awkward as if I’ve admitting to shitting on the subway, “I finished drafting that book I’ve… Read more: 7/25/2025

I’m almost done, y’all. Also, what a stupid question. Modern society? What does that even mean. Please. I’m serious, someone answer me.

Pre-kids I needed a lot to get started. I had to access it first, after all–the spark, I called it. I didn’t call it my muse. That was too mainstream. I also didn’t quite like the idea of my creativity coming from another sentient,… Read more: 7/21/2025

I am fifteen chapters in. I have five more to go before I’m finished. I am averaging 3k words per day. Chapters average 3k words. My goal is to be finished and ready for beta readers (alpha readers, I suppose) by July 24th. It’s… Read more: 7/20/2025

She made banana bread when we were little. I think for her it was the same as it was for me, in that way. Hell, in a lot of ways. She made banana bread often and it was a treat; we rarely had as… Read more: 7/18/2025

Hey y’all! Enjoying my freewriting dump space? Imagine what my stuff looks like edited! No, really. I do edit elsewhere. This blog is a social experiment, maybe about consumerism or some shit. No, it’s freewriting, but yeah. I have my services listed in the… Read more: Freelance Editing + I get to eat~ bonus!!

I have eight cats. Only ever had one dog, and she was a star. I wouldn’t have made it this far without her. She died at age five from lymphoma, and I went to rehab the next day. To answer your question, I’m inclined… Read more: 7/17/2025

There’s a place I reach outside of it all. It’s shitty and it’s distraction and it’s like forcing it, which sucks, I’ve never liked forcing a single goddamn thing. Even in childbirth I wanted to get those fuckers out quick and cut off this… Read more: 7/16/2025

My dad grew up in the South with a preacher for a father, and the way he used to say it, he shot upwards soon as he hit adulthood. His goal? Make it over the Mason Dixon line. He made it to Philadelphia. That… Read more: 7/14/2025

I thought I was fucking grand, and then I thought I was garbage. Then, I worked without thinking. I plowed through, and found that the elusive spark I’d been chasing was accessible, lightable from within. It just took work, and fuck that it did,… Read more: 7/11/2025

“Dr Princess” is her nickname. She’s smart, smarter than me and him stacked, two quote-unquote Gifted Kids with so much potential, two drug addicts who are no longer trying to dumb ourselves down to survive. She’s smarter than we were or are or will… Read more: 7/8/2025

I came in here with an ego. I still have one, but it’s different, now. The thing I’m talking about coming in with was kinda like a semi-aborted duck fetus I was trying to wear as a mask, or some metaphorical shit like that.… Read more: 7/5/2025

Our car cost us just under 2k and it worked, so we won. It needed a new battery within a month, but also the new battery cost significantly less than we’d have ever assumed it would, and then the car drove slightly faster and… Read more: 7/4/2025

“Yeah, he’s like, you know. One of those dudes.” “One of those dudes?” “Yeah. One of those wife dudes. All about his wife, that’s his life, his wife, yadda.” “Hm,” I bit my cheek, and tried to keep the next bit haughty instead of… Read more: 7/3/2025

“Yeah, well, at least they’ll have this base for the Water Wars,” Husband said, and I snorted, but I didn’t laugh. Neither of us did. “We don’t have a well, though,” I pointed out. “They’re close enough to a creek. I think by the… Read more: 7/1/2025

“Squire of Sol II is written with a rare kind of humanity. There is messiness here-heartbraking, enraging, honest messiness. These characters will never leave you, and you won’t ever want them to.” -Willow Heath, author of Managing and Other Lies In a matter of… Read more: Squire of Sol II

The first time she came back from surgery she was embarrassed by the shaved area above her ear. Not too long after she died, the same haircut would become popular. Then, and especially there, in blue-collar non-Philly Pennsylvania, an undercut didn’t exactly fly. Her… Read more: 6/29/2025

He wakes up early, like me. Baby Girl used to wake up early too. Even in the midst of PPD I liked that. It meant I could exist outside of judgment, because she loved me, she looked up at me and she loved me,… Read more: 6/28/2025

The strangest place it wore through was the tits. That’s where it ended up wearing through the most, though, and I suppose it is (was?) a sundress, so maybe that’s just the easiest place to go. As if it wants it, as if all… Read more: 6/25/2025

It was fantasy and science fiction at first. And second. Third, fourth. Still. One series with Faeries not Faries and I’ve spelled it with the a and e curving into each other ever since. I don’t remember which series said the good folk preferred… Read more: 6/24/2025

“Nobody objects to a woman being a good writer or sculptor or geneticist if at the same she manages to be a good wife, good mother, good-looking, good-tempered, well-groomed, and unaggressive,” Leslie M McIntyre said, clear as day in the margins of The Artist’s… Read more: 6/17/2025

In the real world I’m proud, I think. I get through the day and it’s a lot, and it’s hard, and there are these shining bright moments of functionality that surprise me. I have let myself become convinced that I am incapable. I walk… Read more: 6/10/2025

I chose the room with the fireplace because when I arrived, it was already cold, and it was mid-day. The sun was high, but the mountain felt higher, larger, the cold of it powerful enough to make that light irrelevant. “The fireplace is non-functional,… Read more: 5/20/2025

Sometimes these prompts call me out. That’s rude af frankly, and I’m mad. Anyway. I was a confused and angry porcupine of a kid. Spikes everywhere, ready to strike at all times, at any provocation. The confused part, however, was that I was convinced… Read more: 4/24/2025

Our daughter’s birthday is tomorrow. You have two options at this point. They are both hard as fuck, but one is slightly easier, and much more devastating. That’s terrifying to me. You’re not known for choosing the harder path for yourself. Path one is… Read more: 3/24/2025

I used to have this fantasy about summer nights, slightly windy, a little chilly, high above the sea on a ferris wheel. In the fantasy I had a boyfriend with a grey sweatshirt, and his arm was around me. I was full house date… Read more: 3/23/2025

“I do things all the time. From six to ten, there I am, doing things,” you said, and it was with this gotcha look, like that’d show me, like this deserved a reaction. I said nothing. I said nothing because saying something these days… Read more: 3/7/2025

I really do hate Republicans, don’t get me wrong, right, but the older I get, the more I hate Democrats just a little bit more. “How?” the upper middle class white women of the last generation all cry out in agony. They pull at… Read more: 1/13/25

keep the tiny humans alive and ideally well

I want to say it’s you, don’t I. I want to actually sit down at my keyboard, first time I’ve done writing other than a blast of zero draft blasphemy, and say instead, in a blast of stream of consciousness end of the year… Read more: 12/31/2024

Twelve twenty-four twenty-four. What a sharp, square date. We should have gotten married on this date. What a lovely, square anniversary that would’ve been. Of course it would be better if it was 4/24/24, now I’m thinking about it, Better yet, 4/24/20. None of… Read more: 12/24/24

I had the baby October 5th, 2024, and it’s been a woozy wash of lovestuck glee punctuated by battery acidic bursts of crazy grief since then. I didn’t get this the first time. In the hospital, waiting to be induced, Husband kept wanting to… Read more: 10/18/2024

My husband is of the firm opinion that there is a huge difference between “cleaning” and “tidying.” We’ve had a lot of very verbose conversations about this. I’ve tried time and time again to figure out what the fuck he thinks the fucking difference… Read more: 9/18/2024

My debut novel came out today. There will be a military fly-over later and a parade and also my husband will get me flowers. Life will make sense and I will become rich. (Click here to learn more and maybe even purchase dat shit)… Read more: 9/11/2024

“Squire of Sol II is written with a rare kind of humanity. There is messiness here—heartbraking, enraging, honest messiness. These characters will never leave you, and you won’t ever want them to.”—Willow Heath, author of Managing and Other Lies In a matter of months, 20-year-old Drew… Read more: I wrote a book, btw. Go check it out~

“Next! On… I SHOULDN’T… be alive…” Mom kept the AC running, but it was only in her room. A series of fans supplied the assumption that it would spread throughout the house, but today was hot, and Sis and I were both half naked,… Read more: 8/26/2024

I wrote a thing and am now publishing said thing as part of a contest over on Kindle Vella! First ten chapters are totally free to read. 🙂 Check it out!

So like, happiness is a “positive emotion,” right? Wrong. Happiness can sometimes be pretty good, for a while. Like anything in a bipolar mind it can go septic pretty quickly though, and before you know it you have what I like to call “the… Read more: 8/16/2024

My mom used to grab my face and squish it between her hands, roll me like dough and say, “You are the most special, amazing, perfect child. You can do ANYTHING!” And I’d think: shucks, really? Wow. Makes sense, I guess. This got me… Read more: 8/15/2024

I’m supposed to say monk or doctor or nurse or fireman, or worse, writer or artist or something like that. I’m supposed to say all these things that I think would be bullshit because anyone can corrupt anything, and anyone can make anything kind… Read more: 8/11/2024

Sometimes it happens all at once. But first, there’s the pre-creative-spark, the droning buzz of creativity that isn’t being released. It’s constipation of the soul and it’s like having a cigarette, that weird satisfaction that’s also hunger. Why don’t people understand addiction? It’s fucking… Read more: 6/1/2024

Her cast was a vibrant pink, and we all signed it, and I was so, so jealous. I tried each time I leapt from the tree to land wrong on my leg. She’d just broken her arm; a leg must be more impressive. My… Read more: 5/19/2024

Hey, we cleaned out our clothes. Kind of, they’re still on the floor. But we got rid of the old ones. So, the answer is skin.

He looked at my book, some John Green novel, and sneered a bit. Less sneer, actually, more just a moment of bored judgment. Sneer implies too much action. “You like to read.” “Yes,” I said saucily, “and this is good.” He rolled his eyes.… Read more: 4/11/2024

Babies. Human babies. For both.

As a child my favorite movie was Polyanna. For those who were spared, it’s the story of a bright chipper young orphan who is adopted by her rich aunt. She is given the bare minimum in terms of anything that is not for show.… Read more: 3/25/2024

I should really say it’s the spawning of new life, but frankly that feels far too distant and impossible. I didn’t believe my first child was real, was going to survive, until a few months after her birth. This one seems to be following… Read more: 3/19/2024

“We’ve answered this one already,” they whisper, grabbing my hand as I go to type. Their knuckles are whited out they’re gripping me so hard, and I pry that hand away, trying not to flinch. “Yah, I mean, yeah.” “How long have we been… Read more: 3/3/24

Which one? The one where I edit? The one where I write? Or the one where I make money, ahaha.

Thank everyone who touches your life, whether they do so gently or with a hard punch. Everything you are is because of them. Keep reading. When you find it hard to keep reading, go back to something you used to read all the time.… Read more: 2/23/24

I’m definitely not supposed to say ‘myself.’ Especially not as your partner, and your mother, and your friend. Especially not as all the things I am that other people own. The carrier even, of you too, this little bundle of cells that will someday… Read more: 2/20/24

Same, that’s why I wrote one https://www.patreon.com/posts/pips-ophidian-1-98787035?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

My gramma has always spoiled me. Even now, with her savings dwindling thanks to me in my addiction (and sometimes out of it), she tries her hardest to spoil me, give me everything I want, everything she can. It hurts and is lovely all… Read more: 2/18/24

PINK MILK is my debut, a short story I wrote when I was like fifteen that I took by the horns and remade into a strange length (novella? short? chapbook???) story at 30. I have it available for pre-order right now, and many more… Read more: Do YOU wanna read a gay ghost story about lonely people???? ofc get over here

I haven’t written here for a long time. Mostly because I’ve been writing elsehwere, really just FINISHING my second novel, deciding whether I’m going to go to a second round of querying this thing, the best thing I’ve ever written, or just kdp it.… Read more: 2/16/24

“I was lying in bed last night listening to your loud ass snoring, and I just thought it.” “Thought what?” “This is great.”

Before This Heart Shit, I would’ve insisted I didn’t want one. A long life, that is. Not a short one either, by any means, but a long one sounds like a pain. Sounds like pain, full stop. My gramma, outliving everyone, even watching her… Read more: 1/8/24

jfc get outta here with that write more fanfiction?

“Future tripping,” my sponsor calls it. “You really avoid thinking about your past, don’t you?” my therapist says. I shrug. It’s not the true Olly experience until I’ve shrugged, hit my vape, and looked away.

Marlboro College was my first choice. We came there when it was still a sharp green summer and wildflowers were living hazy in the delusion that this would go on forever. I was, too. I was a Creative Writing major. I was 18. I… Read more: 1/3/24

“Do you like playing with your toddler?” the podcast lady asked, and I cringed. I so, so didn’t. Don’t get me wrong! She’s a good time. She’s brilliant and fabulous and the light of my life. She has brought me all the best parts… Read more: 1/2/24

You get to build your perfect space for reading and writing. What’s it like? When I wrote this- https://www.patreon.com/posts/jitterbuggin-1-95364598?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link I was just after therapy raw. I was uncomfortable. So I made something that made that lovely. It depends, is my point, on what you… Read more: 12/27/23

Every day you have to walk past the car at least once. It sits in the cold, layers of trash decaying inside it, maggots long since starved. It’s white on the outside, and dented from when someone else was texting and driving and hit… Read more: 12/26/23

I have this thing with numbers where I don’t understand them, and am in poetic awe of all who do.

I feel fresh these days. I feel exhausted too, but I also feel FRESH, bright, hopeful. My car is being repossessed. Agents everywhere have said no to representing my novel. My dad is slipping gently into the still waters of a premature dementia. Recently… Read more: New Year, New Look

“Johnny Carson! Man, when did he go off the air?” “His last show was May 22nd, 1992, at 11:30pm,” Mom spoke immediately. Tried to keep a straight face but ended up snorting, eyes gleaming. “Oh,” he said. “A fan, I suppose?” “Not at all.… Read more: 12/23/23

I tried to self-publish by making a tumblr for the story agents keep turning down, and immediately, IMMEDIATELY, the site for my wholesome gay love story was marked as explicit. Fuck. You.

It’s 4pm in there and the panic sets in. I’ve watered my crops. I’ve greeted some townspeople, and presented a gift to my future husband. I cut down some trees, smashed some rocks. It’s been a productive day. In there. Out here, though… It’s… Read more: 12/20/23

It’s terrifying to me that we’re almost done.

I’m not sure what’s happening when the heart monitor glows red, but it shines brighter through my shirt when that happens than it does when it’s just doing the gentle blip blips. I am Iron Man.

What’s your favorite cartoon? We started watching Steven Universe as a way to avoid doing homework. Jene and Aarin roomed together, and I roomed alone, but we were all in the same apartment that had been converted into a dorm, the one with the… Read more: 12/9/23

When you get a fresh pack of cigs, you smoke them casually. Flippantly. Throw out half a smoked one, no biggie. Reach the halfway point of the pack, however, and you get gollumn-esque, grippy, no I’ll save this butt, there’s still more. There’s still… Read more: 12/1/23