Introducing unRL, my new Substack

Dear ScifIRL fam, this is your sneak peek at my debut fantasy, Crush’d

First off, I’m not abandoning Eras of Cain or my Scifi Soothsayers!

I will continue to publish ScifIRL here, and I won’t mix you up in fantasy worlds again, promise.

Now that your heart rate has stabilized, I want to introduce you to my new gig.

I needed a place to write fantastic, weird, wild and wooly fiction with more heart than head.

Join me at unRL— a place where I practice weaving truth in fiction, without foundations in science or journalistic integrity.

To kick things off, I wanted to give you, my ScifiRL fam a sneak peek of my first fantasy short story about a newbie witch’s dating woes. (I did say truth in fiction, right? I solemnly swear this has no basis in reality whatsoever… *fingers crossed*)

One caveat I’ll explain in Author’s Notes: this story is the first I’ve ever written that fails the Bechdel test, and I’m not sorry about it. Stay tuned if you’re in for a heartfelt overshare about where my head is at these days :D

Fair warning to my usual crowd: not only is this fantasy, not science IRL, this story is lavishly tawdry, if not a smidge smutty. You’ve been advised.

Now, without any further ado, I give you—

Crush’d

I summoned my first demon to help me bone my lava-hot crush.

Total disaster. 

I was the problem, not that glittering jewel of a devil on my shoulder. Nhict is his name, and I give him five pentacles or however you rate a demon for other witch folk.

“That’n’s wingman to a witch in heat,” Allison had said of him. She’d crossed her bare legs, swiping a froth of red hair from her forehead. I’d gone to Allison’s shop early for a reading. Dozens of cards dotted the molting shag carpet like dead leaves on a beaten path. 

I’d laughed at the mere idea of a demon at first. Never in a million years would I—a little ol’ n00b hedge witch, who barely believed in the tinctures I simmered on weekends—ever be able to summon someone from another realm.

An hour later, I’d bought Nhict’s summoning kit. 

The Nine of Swords, the Hanged Man, and the Tower all screamed at me from the floor to evolve from my divorce already.

And of course there was Crush.

That witch-in-heat thing.

The guy was nothing, really.

He was gorgeous. 

Hawk-dark eyes. A gruesome smile with secrets tucked in a single dimple on his left cheek. 

Buff as fuck.

I couldn’t spell his degree.

He was probably not someone I could even grow to love, so totally safe, right?

But I’d been stuck in warm, wet want of him—a pit of hot honey. 

A spiny black tattoo peeked out from his collar when we danced that first night. He said his grandad inked it himself—a god’s honest tribal ceremony piece. 

And he made me laugh—like, surprised, unladylike guffaws.

He was really actually no one to me. If it sounds like I protest too much, please observe the thin, pale band of suddenly vulnerable flesh around my ring finger. Crush was no one compared to Someone. But he didn’t feel like nothing.

Crush and I danced together Saturday nights for weeks. And texted stupid, hot, innocuous things on Sundays. 

And there was the Tower in my tarot—that crumbling castle with knights and royalty falling to their deaths. The self-loathing etched on the Queen’s face—as if she’d see this coming and she should have done more. I saw that same look in the mirror for months. Years. 

Now, I was the Queen of my own rock bottom, and I longed to turn my luck around.

To be continued…