BITCH FREESTYLE BY PYTCH PYTHONESS

 

MANAGING

Making it work when all odds are against you

No matter what I do, I have a voice in my head always telling me that my statistical chances of getting the upper hand in most situations or events; is not that good.

This type of self-deprecation / thinking maybe an unintended manifestation of the results that I'm seeing in my real life.

Being homeless/couchsurfing and having little to no support other than an extremely good friend of mine, being without a safe place has not been as bad as I thought it would be. I would like to also mention that, even though it has not been as bad as I had expected it to be, it has been extremely stressful, I felt defeated nearly every day, and I have done some things to ensure My success, as any intelligent human would.

Me thinking about
this blog post😆

Me Again, foo

Well, just about anything.

I was so afraid to suffer or have any more traumatic events 

happened to me, that I was scared to move. What reminded me that I needed to continue to move no matter how afraid I was, was the domestic abuse of my birth mother. I have to say the situation was so bizarre it forced me to open my eyes and think about people's motivations rather than how I would like to perceive them: as good honest people.

Now that I have learned from my experience, have been thrown away several times by different groups of people, ignored, undermined, humiliated, and exploited, I'm starting to realize the power of manifestation. It's not mental positivity.

I would like to repeat manifestation is not the same thing as mental positivity. Or toxic positivity. I mean obviously, you have to say grounded in reality.

Manifestation is saying that you're going to do something (to yourself) all the while refusing to entertain any doubt on the subject.

Self-doubt is almost like a poison that stops us before we even have the chance to run from the danger. Fear can do the same thing and does, just look at me. I was scared to death to re-enter the real world because I had failed at it so many times before. What it took for me to realize that whether I must cheat, steal, sell things that God gave me, lie to protect my own interests or occasionally forged some documentation, was complete abandonment by everyone in my family and as well as my distant family.

To be honest, it's been a relief. And I don't think about them that much. But I do think about what I learned. I learned how to make it run nothing is going my way. I learned how to lie better, I learned how to cheat at life better, and I learned to manipulate the system to get things that I need / want just like my mother. And intelligent person would use her trashy genetic strength to bring themselves up. So really, all I'm trying to do is be smart.

Throwback From The Past: "TWINE" BY Avrin Kelly

Sneak Peak: TWINE from (13 Wicked Tales Of Witches Book)

TWINE

My sister always had an obsession with string. She liked to play with it. Run around with it. Roll it between her fingers, tie bows around arbitrary things.

Braid it into her hair.

I never really thought it was abnormal.

Until some of the things she started tying up and wrapping bows around began to do strange things.

Like her dead gerbil, Penny.

There are some that say we are bound to this world by some unseen thing, like our mortal coils.

coil.

Sounds a lot like string, huh?

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just think about how the three Fates from the Hercules movie could cut your string and it would kill you. All they did was break the twine binding you to the earth.

To the living.

Penny came back to life.

We were sad when she died. We loved her, she was part of the family, but she was old and her time with us had come and gone. The only person her passing surprised was Lara, my baby sister. When Penny was gone and it was time to bury her, Lara had marks all over her arms and legs from tying that damned string all over her body.

She said she was trying to keep the memories in; so she wouldn’t forget about Penny.

I knelt down and told her, “Penny will always be with us,” I put my hand on her tiny little chest and patted her unicorn shirt right over her heart. “Right here.” I said.

I made sure to look her in the eye. So she knew.

She needed to know that her big brother would never ever lie to her.

Only the truth for my baby sister.

She counted on me to tell her things ‘adults’ wouldn’t. She depended on me to separate the chaff from the wheat when it came to bullshit.

After the divorce, everybody lied to us.

“Everything is going to be okay.” They all said, but it wasn’t. We had to stay in a shelter for a long time because my mom was pretty sure he was going to try and kill her for leaving.

He never did.

We hid at a shelter and lost our house for nothing.

Nobody’s seen that ass hat for months.

I went out of my way to find the truth and let Lara know what was really happening to our family. And she’s stronger for it now. So am I. It’s easier to deal with what might be coming if you know enough to prepare.

I digress.

Penny came back to life because Lara wrapped her up in twine before we put her in the shoe box.

It was just me and my sister. Mom was at work. I should have told the kid not to be petting and playing with that dead gerbil, but I figured she could wash her hands when she got done; but dealing with her pet’s death, saying goodbye the way she wanted to, was priceless. I let Lara do what she needed to do to be alright with the death of her friend.

We laid some tissue paper down in the shoe box and put the gerbil in, twine and all. Three days later, that thing was back in its cage, rotting. It chewed through the box, dug its way backup out of the ground and hobbled back up to our apartment. Back to the feet of its creator.

My sister.

The resurrector.

The thing wouldn’t touch its food or water and got very excited whenever anybody walked into Lara’s room.

A real live zombie gerbil.

I told my buddy Mark about Penny. He said maybe she was just sick, but I know better. That rodent had been cold and stiff when I went to feed her that morning nearly two weeks ago. Penny had died. Penny was dead now, but somehow, she was still moving around. She stunk and she was rotting. A walking, squeaking corpse.

Lara brought her back with that string of hers.

I don’t know how it works.

I found a dead bird this morning. Brought it to Lara. I asked her to do it again.

She gave me a sly little smile that unnerved me. (I’ve never been unnerved by my sister. She may be eleven years younger than me, but she’s like my best friend. We understand each other. Maybe that just means I’m simple, but I don’t think it does.) She took the bird from the paper bag I’d dropped it in on the way home from school and peered inside.

“What happened to it?” she asked me.

I just shrugged. “Found it walking home from school. Can you bring it back? Like Penny?”

She nodded. “Maybe.” Lara was silent for a long time, but she didn’t move. Just stood there thinking, looking into the bag. “Whatcha gonna give me for it?”

“Give?”

“Yeah silly, you gotta trade somthin’."

Her sweet little voice was angelic, but the things she was saying made my spine want to shrivel up into a knot. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, even through a fresh coat of sweat after the two mile walk from my high school to our apartment on the west side of town.

I knelt down so that we were on the same level.

“What did you trade for Penny?” I prayed to God she was going to say her favorite doll, or a few cookies. Mr. Morcott’s dog died not to long ago. I didn’t want to believe that my sister was behind it.

Could she take a life for her own ends?

Did she not know better or did she just not care?

Was I jumping to conclusions?

“I’m not supposed to say. You have to keep it a secret or he’ll take it back. But I didn’t have to trade for Penny, I already traded. He owes me.”

“Who will take it back? Who owes you, Lara?”

“The Man.”

“What kind of man? Where do you see him?”

“The Dark Man.” She answered suddenly turning shy. Coy. As if I were asking her about the boy down the street. I thought six was a little young to be looking at boys, but what do I know?

“Where do you see him?” I repeated the question when Lara tried to evade it.

“Everywhere.” She whispered. “He follows me to school sometimes. Sits behind me on the bus.”

“Then he’s a kid, like you?”

“No, he’s a man.” She held a hand up high above her head to show me he was tall.

“But he rides the school bus?"

“I see him lots of places.” She told me. “At school. In the park. Here.”

I looked around the room behind me and I didn’t see anything.

Yeeting Your Narcissistic Mother To Save Your Own Sanity....1

My Mother is a Grandiose/Malignant Narcissist. Here's Why:

                

She feeds on pain and suffering like some type of vampiric demon. If she is not in control, then there will be hell to pay. 

A 52 year old "child" trapped in a geriatric but still semi-passable as "hawt" my mother walks around bragging about her venue, her kids, her house, her car her clothes, how great she is at business, design and decoration. She spends so much time building this fake world that she is living in, she doesn't have time for much else. Not for her granddaughter or her once adopted, twice abandoned 36 year old bipolar firstborn and her newest chew toy/ save-a-hoe/scapegoat.

She brags about how many people she's mentored, how much she can/could teach me, but to get that far, she first had to "gently remind me" that I "am an adult with a childlike mind"... hmmm.... That doesn't sound like me. Not many children write books, are expressly self aware I would say hyper-aware; to the point it borders on a maladaptive scale of emotional monitoring.

Back in August of 2022, I'd been in a fight with my body for two years and finally, all my resources had been exhausted, and let me assure you, I used every single resource I had. 401k, savings, disability leave, long term leave, vacation, unpaid time off, voluntary time off, I sold things, I cut the fat out of my life as far as physical energy was concerned, and began to (often from my bed) ruminate on what else I could liquidate and how much food would that buy and how long would that last? 

My long time boyfriend (at the time) was kind and supportive. He watched me literally poop out. I went from being a normal, functioning human being to a bedridden, anxiety -inducing, crying, heap of vantablack sadness that no light could pierce. 

I stayed this way, in a state of shock, feeling as though I was living in a fever dream until around May 2023. In that short time from August 2022 (I moved cross-country from Texas at the behest of my birth heathen) to May 2023, I was in what I am slowly coming to believe was a state of psychosis. Basically you disassociate so hard core, you don't come all the way back; at least that's how it felt to me.

I was vaguely aware that time was passing, but I never could grasp how fast or slow it passed me by until it was too late.

While I lived with that female snake for almost a year, or maybe over a year(?) I still don't know. Around Feb or April I finally started to feel a little better after being forced inpatient on a 1013 for threatening my psychiatrist's snooty office lead/ RN. She really was an asshole in my defense, and I didn't actually threaten, I just told them I hoped they would find themselves in the throws of a month and a half long mixed state, beg for help, find people available to help you and watch them stare at you blankly because they didn't feel like doing any work that day. Went inpatient against my will right before Christmas. Did a week or to of severe physical sickness then finally, a manic episode that lasted a long ass time. I'm thinking it pushed two months for sure.

Around this time, they changed my meds, and I'll be damned,,,, it fucking worked.

Not quickly, but slowly--- very slowly, it began to pull me back into the reality that I hadn't really been a part of my entire time in Georgia. All my estranged family knew about me was my name and that I was bipolar 1 with mixed episodes. I was no longer human to them. I was different, the odd man out, the scapegoat, the faker, the lazy, ungrateful little bitch who was offered the world by my beautiful perfect mommy who threw me away not once, but twice.

As time passed I'd been shocked by a few things that suck in my head from the day I got there.

1. She talked to anyone however she wanted with no consequences.

That was my first red flag. Even though I was in a very thick haze at the time, I remember definitively that she was a real ball busting bitch. You do something small, a mistake etc., she airs out your dirtiest laundry on your first offense. Not a person you really want to get closer to, but she'd whined about how much she missed me for 34 years, so I thought I might be an exception. I wasn't. Well, I was but not in a good way.

I've seen her dig into her husband so hard it made my penis shrivel up and want to die and I don't even have one. There's no telling how that man felt.

It never occurred to me that she "loved him" until he kept (stupidly) getting caught cheating on her. One of the best things he ever said that was true was "no matter what I do or say, it's wrong. There's no pleasing you." Boy was he right as fuck! 

One day while she was bashing him about his stupidity, his body and his age, I asked her outright: 

"Is that true what he said?"

"What do you mean?"

"When he said he can't win. What would please you? like, what do you want him to do? Because it seems kind of true what he said, so now what, if y'all don't want to break up? There's no give and take."

She thought about it for a moment and I watched it sink in: the first real thought she had given to what WOULDN'T piss her off more. That's her perpetual state by the way: mad cunny.

Anyway, I was proud of her when she exhibited self awareness or the fact that she even attempted a glimpse into another person's point of view or how they feel. 

I remember sitting there thinking to myself then that she was a narcissist, a self-centered lil mongrel that had crawled her stank ass all the way from the gutter to upper middle class, and honey, there wasn't/isn't anything in this world she wants more than an elevated social status. She acts, in every facet of her life, as if she is better than anyone else. Grandiosity is something I have to watch for in myself. Usually it means I'm going to get manic, talk fast, think fast, go fast and embarrass the fuck out of myself, by taking on too much or overdoing to the point that I would be adding PEM (post exertional malaise ) on top of the impending depressive episode that usually directly follows mania. What goes up must come down.

Mental Fucking health. Dude.

I've always wanted to write, but writing about my experiences was nothing I was really into. But lately I've been thinking more like my normal self: assertive, high functioning even though I'm still cycling pretty rapidly tbh.

So. Are the medications we are given as bipolar one patients supposed to transfer emotional pain to physical pain?

Because that's what I've noticed. Physically, I fall behind when I shouldn't, but I don't get sad. I don't get that horrible sad worse than death feeling of truly being alone in the world my biggest nightmare, until it finally came true.

If you want to read some wicked fucked up short stories about my life, the shit I have witnessed that has changed me, keep reading. I have nothing else to lose, but one thing I won't do is shut the fuck up.

Respectfully,

AK

Get A Load Of This.....

 So, I've been bipolar/ trying to get my shit together for some time now. That "time" wasn't fast enough for my "caregiver" aka birthmother. Aside from being a grumpy, moody lil thang, she is also a vindictive bully.

This is what I learned this week:

1. Just because they are family, doesn't mean they HAVE to or even DO CARE. It might just mean they give you a roof over your head, trash your important belongings (in my case, my whole household) to be left to the weather. I would've taken care of it myself if I hadn't been so sick.

up to 70% of elder and disabled/ vulnerable people abuse is doled out by a caregiver. When judging as to whether or not there has been abuse, I've read that caseworkers look for things like

            exploitation

            disability shaming

            willfully denying the client or patient things that they need or just generally making these items hard to get to. 

            Gaslighting, guilt tripping and

            mean joking and other means of controlling the victim like full out ignoring them for days at a time even when important information should have been conveyed: ex) the electric went off and you would need to enter the residence in a different way, the caregiver might refuse to communicate this "small detail" leaving the victim to wonder what else they might have done to bring on more punishment than they were already struggling with.

            Being punished in general for things you can't help. Being constantly told you're not trying or that your faking illness for attention. being told you can't do something even though you feel well enough and hopeful enough to try.

            Constantly aggravated with the patient no matter what or bouncing back and forth between the sick vs well narrative.

            willfully isolating you from care teams connections and support if you don't do what they want.

            inferring that you are willfully taking advantage of the caregiver when its the other way around. 

            telling the patient as well as other people that they are lazy or "feeling to comfortable to try" when in reality they have no idea wat the client has been doing because they go out of their way to avoid the patient at all costs.

            nepotism. playing favorites to make the victim feel shame or inadequate.

            Going out of their way to be distant, oppositional or cruel. Bullying due to disability and sensory issues and purposefully antagonizing those sensitivities. Music too loud, thinking it's funny when people scare me or (when I've been legitimately triggered, in my case)

Dude, the truth is fucking Wicked.

Stay tuned for more drama.

            

While You Were Gone | a.k.a. (Lingchi)

I'd been gone for nearly six months. It was a long six months, mind you, and my girl, Jenny, had been home waiting for me the entire time. 

Well, I suppose that's what she wanted me to believe. Maybe she decided halfway through my time away that she was tired of being alone and wanted companionship from someone else. Maybe she just grew tired of waiting around for me to call. Or of talking on the phone and never seeing me in person.

Whatever it was that made her distant, I never really knew. I just kept trying to keep our relationship going, hoping I could fix it when I got back.

My return was a surprise. 

It happened to come a month earlier than we'd expected it to. The second I got out of the cab, I saw our house, and it made butterflies well up in my stomach. 

I was so happy to be home, the feeling overwhelmed me, brought tears to my eyes and made me shake a bit. But another feeling --mostly fear-- made me hesitate. I worried that I'd been away too long. Maybe I would find another man in my bed. Maybe I would find that my lover no longer loved me. 

I made my way up the steps anyway, all the while realizing that Jenny's rose bush hadn't been trimmed in a few days. I wondered what she'd been up to. She normally tended to her flowers religiously. 

I'd spoken to her only the day before, and she'd seemed fine. Everything seemed normal, (more or less) until I made my way up the steps and found a handwritten letter addressed to me wedged in our locked door. The note had a red smudge on the side of it. At first glance it looked like blood.

Dear Charlie, 

While you were gone, a lot of things happened. Most of which, I really don't look forward to telling you now. I've kept my mouth shut about it when you call because what's happened isn't the kind of thing you tell someone over the phone. But it's not something I want to tell you in person either. 

It all started about three months ago when Toby started scratching at something under our bed. He would meow, claw and make a huge ruckus at night when I was trying to sleep. Every time I'd try to catch him underneath the bedframe, he'd run. 

Finally, I looked under the bed. I brought a flashlight and shone it at the bottom of the mattress. It just looked like a black smudge. 

I couldn't understand why it bothered the cat so much. It looked like someone had dumped Vantablack ashes on the bottom of the bed. Even though my curiosity was quelled by investigating the bottom of the matress, it still irked me that Tobs wouldn't leave it alone, so neither could I.

One night, I decided to slide under the bed without the flashlight just to see whatever it was that he saw. Looking back now, I really wish I hadn't done that. That small decision changed my life. 

I laid on the hardwood floor under the bed and looked up at the black smudge. It was like looking through a black hole. The spot was so dark, it stood out in the rest of the darkness. I waited patiently and my eyes finally adjusted. 

I started to see shadows moving. It was as if the "black hole" at the bottom of the mattress was a window to somewhere else. I watched, my breath held, my heart beating like a ritual drum, beads of sweat starting to form on my forehead and under my nose. 

I saw the ceiling of our bedroom through the hole at the bottom of the mattress. It was quite possibly the most odd, bizarre thing to ever have happened in this world. I was about to scramble out from under our bed and make a frantic call to my mother, or a priest maybe, when I saw your face on the other side of the hole. 

I froze. 

Then I just watched in awe. From what I could see at this angle, you sat down on the bed and put your head in your hands. Maybe you were crying. 

I shot out from my spot and immediatley inspected our bedroom, but there was no sign of you. I called your name, but there was no answer. 

I cried for a while, because seeing you, after so long made me remember what it was like when you were here. I don't mind telling you now that our relationship was a vapid thing; full of unspoken words and half-hearted promises made over a pillow. Most of the time, I was just left wondering why you were still around, your underwhelmed look of confusion constantly reminding me what I really was to you, but you never actually said it. The truth, I mean. 

For some reason, before you were gone, I'd been under the impression that without you, I might fade into nothing. But obviously, I'd been wrong because even though we were together, I still was alone. But, I still was alive. 

Anyway, seeing a copy of a person who's away through a mattress really has the ability to fuck a person up. 

I went to a psychiatrist. I told her nothing, but also everything, in a way. She said it was a stress hallucination. She said it was anxiety from your absence. She told me I needed a hobby. I told her she was full of shit, but politely. 

I found myself under our bed most nights just looking for a glimpse of Other You. He seemed better, for some reason. More compassionate, less self-centered than the real you, I'm sorry to say. I was drawn to him. At first, I was horrified, but slowly, as time passed, I saw that he was just a human being. From where, I'm not sure, but he existed just like you and I. 

One morning, I realized that Toby had gone missing. I looked for him everywhere. Under the bed was the first place I looked. Nothing at first, but I had a hunch, so I waited. Sure enough, Toby came crawling out of the mattress. He had been to the Other Side.

This entire time I'd been watching the black hole thinking it was a window, but it was more than that. It was a door. The hole had grown the more I looked through it, and I thought for a long time on whether or not I wanted to crawl through.

The whole situation was stupid on my part.

All of this happened because (even though you didn't deserve it), I missed you, and I wanted more than anything to see you face to face. Even if it was a version of you from another reality. I weighed my options; hemmed and hawed until I was blue in the face. Finally, I just decided to crawl through.

It worked. I pulled myself through a hole and came out into a world I didn't know, hoping to speak to a man I also didn't know but somehow loved.

He was taking off his watch at the dresser when I popped into the reality adjacent to ours.

At first he screamed. Then he cried. He asked if he could touch me. He cried some more and told me his Jenny was gone. He didn't say where she was, he just said gone. 

I'll spare you the longwinded back and forth that went on, but he and I actually talked, which was bizarre in and of itself. He asked me about my life, about Other Him. He was so happy to see me, I think the feeling made me high a little. That was something I never got to feel with you: the sensation of being wanted. It was intoxicating.

There was one catch to Other Charlie. For all his kindness and genuinely loving nature, I soon found out the hard way that nothing is perfect and the universe will inflict its pain on you, no matter what.

Other Charlie was more devoted, kinder, grateful and a skilled lover, but every time I touched him, I'd find a tiny cut somewhere on my body. At first, they were so small, I thought they were just from where Toby and I had been playing and your cat had inadvertently scratched me, but as the days went on, I realized that was not the truth.

In the beginning, I was so in love with his new, better Charlie, I just ignored it. But before long, my forearms, back and sides were full of welts. They were angry and red. It became uncomfortable to wear clothes. 

One morning, after a particulary passionate night, I found a tiny slice on the inside of my eyelid. How many more cuts did I have inside me that I couldn't see? How much danger was I truly in? The questions bothered me and I needed them answered, but I was too scared to ask out loud.

I couldn't do the dishes without bleeding. I couldn't take a shower without bleeding. My rose bushes went untended. And through all of it, Other Charlie just begged me to stay here on this side of the mattress with him. 

But these tiny cuts just reminded me of the old you. The you on our side. I remember thinking 'there is no version of this man who won't hurt me'. And I was right, but my heart didn't want to listen to my head. As usual.

Days passed while I was in denial about the real you and Other Charlie, and still, I tried to ignore it. Until finally, it became too much to ignore. Too much pain and misery to endure. I woke up one day with blood trickling from the corner of my mouth and it was agony to move. 

The Other You tried to kiss me and tell me that he loved me, that things would get better, but I knew the truth. Even though I didn't want it, the reality of this twisted affair was that I wasn't supposed to be with you. Either of you. I told him not to touch me anymore. 

He listened, but clearly was hurt by it. Right in front of my eyes, I watched as a cut sliced across his face-- as if drawn by the hand of an invisble artist. He yelped and touched his wound with his finger tips. 

So many things were unsaid in a single moment of silence between Other Charlie and I. The fact that when he was the one to hurt, he was no longer willing to vehemently stress that I should stay. When he got his first cut, of course, the tables had turned. 

My brain wanted answers about the mechanics of it all. Where were these wounds coming from? Was it just the karmatic nature of the universe trying to pull us apart or something less meaningful? Was his love hurting me? Was my honesty hurting him?

In the end, it didn't matter.

I said nothing and made my way back home. The black hole under the bed seemed to shrink in the time I'd been on the other side with Other Charlie. It pulled at my cuts and made them bleed. When I got home, to my world, I lay there under our bed, naked and bleeding and scared for myself. 

I'd lost track of time. Of who I was, as well. And all I had left of it was pain.

It took a few days for my skin to heal enough for me to take a real shower again instead of just a sponge bath. And several more days before I could sit down and write you this letter.

Now, I'm sure you won't believe any of this. You'll probably think I'm crazy. That I'm trying to find an elaborate way of breaking up with you, but sadly that is not the case. 

The hole in the mattress taught me more than any book or other life lesson ever has before: that no love should hurt, physically or emotionally. And most importantly, that being alone isn't worse than a slow death by a million tiny cuts. 

≡

Flickers

It first happened on my way home from work. The time had just changed, and I was pleasantly surprised to find myself driving home in daylight for once.

I live near the airport, so it isn't uncommon to see airplanes flying low, readying themselves to land. I admit, I have a tendency to fiddle with my phone while waiting at red lights. I changed the song I was listening to and looked up to check the car in front of me. Still seeing brake lights, I looked up farther to see if the light had changed, and that's when I noticed a large white flicker “blink” just over the horizon.

I thought it was a plane. But if it had been a plane, I would still have seen it making its way to the airport. Instead the ‘flicker’, or the thing I saw, disappeared behind trees and buildings.

I pondered on what I could have seen on the way home. At the time, I wasn't very bothered by it. It could have been a bright flash of light that played a trick on my eyes. It could have in fact been a plane, and I had only been paying half attention. But my gut told me what I’d seen was something else entirely. 

A few days passed and the same thing happened again. I never could get a good look at the enormous thing that seemed the populate the area just outside of my line of sight. But the idea that it was NOT a plane ate at me. The fact that I kept seeing it gnawed at my subconscious, and from just my being aware, I seemed to see it more.

Staying Organized While Hopping Dimensions

Recently, I've been working on the origin story for my favorite character, Thierry Adler. Thierry is a Warlock who has the ability to 'pulse' to different dimensions. Thierry also has a myriad of different characteristics (that I’ve found difficult to keep track of overtime).

Stories happen, and through the course of several short stories about Thierry, his personality has changed. He's grown, become more snarky, learned new things and experienced losses.

So, writing his origin story is/was particularly difficult for me. I'd been working with, and focusing on a man who’d learned a lot about the shadowy, magic filled world he lives in. What kind of monsters exist, what kind of spells he can use to combat his enemies, what monsters hate other monsters, etc. His world is full of dangers and mystery, (and that's just his home dimension). He was beginning to find out what was really going on. Discovering the true scheme of things, if you will-- and something horrible happened--

Interview with Manuel Arbanassi

Today’s post is an interview with one of my favorite authors on Twitter. Not only is he a really nice guy, Manuel Arbanassi is one hell of a writer.

His debut novel Elemental: The Calling, garnered some very passionate attention from fans, and I see that he is already being asked by many about a sequel.

So today, he’s agreed to sit down and let me pick his brain.

Blood Bird ★ Benjamin Shelor (Part Two)

Something screeched in the distance.
It was a hollow wail, like a bird’s call, but not a nice melodic bird.
The sickly screechy kind.
It was the only sound that traveled.

I swallowed thickly.

“What was that?” Bob aimed his flashlight sky bound. “It came from above us, to the west.”

Ernie’s face went pale. He didn’t answer.

“It’s that bird ol’ Bill used to talk about before he died,” someone said.