Writing
I graduated from Appalachian State Fall of 2019 with a BA in Creative Writing. With art serving as a more recent passion in my life, writing and storytelling have always been my greatest joys in life. I like writing mostly about your average person, omitting magical powers or werewolf tendencies, being the main character of their own "story." Life is a story in itself. Weird, terrible things happen in it, and sometimes, the best way to display this reality is through fiction.
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This is a collection of some of my favorite projects, all of them short stories---with some of them hopefully, one day, being something much greater!
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I am also currently the copywriter and written content creator for the ravewear website, ch13.co. It's the perfect place to buy a bucket hat and learn all about the history of club music!
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Are you looking for a copywriter for your website or an editor for your upcoming project? Click here. Let's get in touch!
Amarillo
I used to work at a Christian summer camp, and it made up an integral part of my childhood. When I became a counselor at this camp, I got immediately disenchanted from everything that made my childhood so fun and magical. I always thought it was interesting to not only write from the perspective of the bumbling camper, but of the counselor trying to keep the illusion alive while the worst summer is happening behind the scenes.
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Amarillo is currently my ongoing project. This short story is the jumping point of what I hope to be my first publishable manuscript.
"Nothing about the public view of this summer camp is good at all, and it’s been that way long before I was hired. It’s not like Chief doesn’t tend to the place; these Oklahoma grounds hold the only noticeable passion that Chief has in anything aside from making money and getting custom leather embossments. No, it’s because our campers like to shoot each other in the eyes with bows and arrows for ten dollars. There’s some big scandal every year that puts Amarillo in the local spotlight for all the wrong reasons..."
Click here for the full story!
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Moriarty
Completed for my Senior Capstone at App State, Fall of 2019. I wanted to write from the perspective of something that couldn't move, talk, or even really think about what was going on around it, only being a mindless observer---much like the reader themselves.
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When we read a story, we still like to think we have some say in what happens by the end of the narrative, even when this narrative has already happened. When you're not a reader, you're not an "adventurer" living the same life as the protagonist, but rather a voyeur looking into the most intimate moments of your hero's life, like an inanimate object sitting in their house.
"Moriarty is always there for her, and he always has been. His face is the first to greet her in the morning and the last to solemnly bid her pleasant dreams. If she is to have a rough day, or if she just needs to escape the rest of the universe, she knows deep down that Moriarty will still be at home waiting for her, ready to hear her vent about her day, or type away on her keyboard down the hall, or cry over nothing. Even if she never immediately notices him, Moriarty lays in wait for Clementine under sunbeams that make her curtains glitter with hope. Perhaps the most convenient thing about Moriarty, however, is the fact that he only has to be watered once a month..."
Click here for the full story!
King of the Deep Web
My most recent completed project. Intended to be a Halloween story for 2019, this story was continually put in the back of my files due to my inability to write an entire second half of a story. Calling back to horror tropes of the early 2000's and going in with a more unbridled attitude than anything else I've written before, I cracked open a Yerba Mate and finished this three-year-long battle in a night.
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Thanks, Yerba Mate!
"Wyatt never saw the spiders take his gifts, but he definitely knew they were always scuttling about in this house. It was half the reason why his parents could never keep down a good babysitter. They’d always get scared off by a sudden surge of spiders they found either behind one of the boxes of cereal, or under the sink while grabbing a fresh roll of toilet paper, or even from under the parents’ bed.
But these spiders, however, had no malicious intent..."
Click here for the full story!
Hell In A Cell
A Halloween story released in 2020, during the pandemic. One of the most terrifying things about the pandemic was the isolation everyone felt, all at once, and how many who already felt ostracized were pushed even further away from civilization.
"Poor Jonny ain’t even get a chance to turn around before he got got. His head’s now in the werewolf’s mouth. He flings the head round back and forth and back forth like a chew toy in his muzzle. Blood spills from Jonny’s neck over Cely, who’s screamin her goddamn head off. Good actress, whoever she is. Reckon I saw her in a toothpaste commercial once. Glad to see someone’s movin on up in the world..."
Click here for the full story!
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Watermelon Terracotta Cantaloupe Fireworks
The second-to-last story completed for my Senior Capstone for App State, Fall of 2019. Inspired by the boldness of drag and the relentless of the working American, I wanted to write something that showed how the heroes in our life sometimes don't wear capes, but Perler beads and sequins.
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A variation of this story was published in App State's creative literary collective, The Peel, in their Fall of 2019 issue.
"It was twenty minutes before Sara N. Dippity’s appearance on the main stage of Fuzzy Navel Drag Bar. The bar was known for some of the nastiest Jell-O shots in all of D.C. and one of the lowest health inspection scores east of the Mississippi, but every individual who walked through those cheetah-printed doors were promised to leave with a belly full of liquor and an empty wallet. The queens at Fuzzy Navel gave epics using only their muted lips, all while dancing across empty chairs, kicking out the pink spotlights for kicks, and dropping into splits from the ceiling..."
Click here for the full story!
Daffodils and Chamomile
The sequel, "sister" story to WTCF, written exactly a year later. I wanted to address the criticisms around its predecessor, notably what happens to Blakeley and Roy's daughter, Wendy. The best way to do that, I figured, was showing more expressions of grief instead of boldness and fierceness all the time.
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Grief is complicated. Grief is something expressed differently by everyone, in ways that are difficult for anyone looking in to understand. These different perspectives of the same situation from these characters tackles every view not present but still coinciding with WTCF---and yes, I was going through a Chance the Rapper phase while writing this.
"Blakeley could now see his angled face and crooked jaw in the polished tile. Too pressed to not be late for Bea’s first gig, Blakeley had begun untying his apron and unbuttoning his work shirt to reveal the roll of duct tape he had already wrapped around his waist hours before so he wouldn’t have to bother with that and be even later for his number.
After locking up behind him, Blakeley transformed as he made his way to Bea Calypso’s infinite field of success..."
Click here for the full story!