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Apr 21, 2023 13:32
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| # ¿ Sep 10, 2024 12:43 |
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Slither On the Cross 1,500 Words My pet was my penis. My parents gave it to me when I was young. I think it was a part of me, I guess it still is. I remember it. It used to go slithering around the yard. My parents would yell, “Chase after your penis, it’s getting away!” And I’d go running into the bushes. The doctors tell me this is a fantasy. My father was a flame-keeper. He’d light a flame for the Flame Emporor, Emperer, Empe..king. He was his smoking buddy. He brought me round to meet the Empere-king a few times. I’d do tricks for him. “Flap your hands, Charlie,” he’d say. Both hands. Softly. Just pull. It’s important to spell my name with an E on the end. Something to do with French but I think it’s down to the worm. The slitether. Slitheher. Snake... My penis. CharliEEEEE with an EEEEEE because I’m a boy. And girls don’t have the e on the end like the penis on the end. That’s what separates us. This makes us men. I didn’t know or care. I just liked chasing it. Chasing it wherever it may go with it sticking out in front of me. I’d run and run. I saw pictures from then. Why did they take pictures? Did they like to laugh? Did they laugh at me? I never laughed at my girls. No, I didn’t. I love them. I love my girls but the doctors say I should stay away from them now. It’s so funny. The times we had. As a teenager. Hitting it so hard, but in fun ways. Never really fun but useful, you know? Like homework but with a story. Like when they rolled the TVs into class. It was still school, it counted, but you were cheating in a way everyone was OK with you cheating. You’d be delighted but the other kids would shout for a good film. They’d shout for the teacher to show her thong. Of course I know what a thong is. I don’t care, Christopher. You just really wished they’d be quiet, even talking about the teacher, because anything was better than listening to them scream at you, or the teacher. Or anyone. Any film. Give me any film. Just make them stop screaming. But that’s another delusion. Be aside, I say. That’s what Doctor Sami said. Don’t listen to them. Girls! Inviting young boys. Be aside! I was older then. The ripe old age of 13, I think. Not old enough, I think... they’d say. They were quiet asking if they should say it, but I heard. I wasn’t asked if I had a girlfriend any more. I was told to stay away from girls, unless I was willing to commit. To own a home, and some land. And to work it. And work her, and Dad’d wink. Then he’d grab my Mam’s arse and she’d go bright red and run away. They’d all look. Not at me. That didn’t entertain me, but the things that don’t entertain you aren’t delusions. According to Pastor Sami. If something is happiness ask questions, if something is sadness, find Jesus. BIG JAY JESUS! Doctor Sami would tell me to shout, but only in my mind. So don’t write that down. I imagined I was Jesus, on the cross. You’d think it would be the spear in my side going in, and out, through my wound. Poking organs. Internal organs. But I always ask what then are external organs? Your kidneys aren’t getting dialysis from the outside, are they? Don’t be crazy! Tubes going in and out of you. In and out. In and out... Like my snake. I was the snake. My pet. They call me... I was Jesus. On the cross. I was stabbed like that, just like Judas. I have snakes in and out of me but that’s OK. My girls. Snakes rubbing against them. Cutting everything inside you. Piercing them, straight through. But you don’t die. You bleed all over your Satin RobeEEEs. Your loincloth. No bedsheets. No shroud for me. It was freedom. It was freedom knowing you were dying to save your people. And Jesus in his underwear on the cross like he was a disgusting child chasing it for too long. Slither. Slither... in the grass in the desert. Slither. Slither. Jesus and the Devil. But sshsh. We don’t speak of him. We SPEAK TO Jesus instead. My girls are OK. I shouldn’t ask about them. I know they’re OK now. But don’t ask about them. I know they’re safe now. With my boy, my beautiful new baby boy. How I love him. I call him Charli with no E now. He was so quiet. No EEEEEEE! Can you believe that? No E. She didn’t like it but my wife agreed, then she called me a snake. But that’s a delusion, they tell me. The doctors tell me, but I see others sometimes. The other kind of fellas are nice. Slips of meat. They slip me meat in my soft tower, they say. They say, “Remember. Eat your meat. God forgives. Pray.” I pray every night, if only they knew, but it’s daylight all the time. All the time. So I don’t pray. Jesus isn’t here with me now. The doctors say that. So I tell myself stories. I’m really hungry and hurt. Oh, I told myself all grand kinds of stories. How I was the queen of the castle. Sometimes I’d even be kind, and get to bed the maiden. Both our snakes would slither off and hiss at each other. I’d gently caress her up, proper gently caress her snake up. The little bitch, the little oval office bitch. That’s what doctors do. Inspect snakes, but I’d hiss at them. But that’s a modern day story for my doctor, Pastor Sami. He agrees with me. Pastor Sami said I was the man and always was. You’ve not asked about Pastor Sami. Let me tell you... I’m so hungry. I shouldn’t tell you that. The nice boys told me not to tell you that. You haven’t asked about Pastor Sami. Or is he a doctor? He’s both. They’re nice boys. The ones who slip you meat. They’re nice boys, especially when I’m hungry. I shouldn’t say that. But they’re different. Simple as. No-one is attractive with them. They’re foreign. They don’t care they’re foreign. But they feed me, and tell me to pray. Their men are beastly, and handsome. Some of the boys are nice. The boys shouldn’t be here. Too nice. And the girls are too sweet, but they’re loving hard. Not like my own kind. Not like mine, the slithering snakes. Slithering, leading you out in front of you. Coming before. They feed me. They feed you hope. They bring me food and sneak it in at night. I don’t know if I should tell you. I don’t know if I should tell Pastor Sami. Pastor Sami is South African, he’s one of those people, but different. He’s white you know. You can’t call them anything these days. Pastor Sami is a snake. Pastor Sami is my penis. And the doctors. Another snake. My penis. Be gone. I cut it off. When I... I... The doctors give me pills. And replace the tubes. When I... And I’m hungry... Food is a penis but you need to eat. Eat your Penis, Little Charli WITH NO E. They’d say. Where has my boy gone? I want him here. He was so quiet. He was quiet... And Dr. Sami said I was the man of the house and I should eat. The man of the house eats first. He needs his strength. Live for your girls. I like a good meal. I do... I don’t know why this is. I don’t know why. I’m just hungry. I’m just... I want to eat. Those children put poo in the food. Where are the good boys? Those good foreign boys? I know this, they tell me to remember this. They told me not to tell you this. They said they piss in the food and poo poo in the food and the doctors they cum in me, my tubes, they cum in the food, and they’re not snakes, they’re dragons. They breathe fire right down on top of you. My skin is burnt. I miss I my snake. I remember him fondly. Where has he gone? I’m gone. Why did I kill them? I... I... We’re all gone. I’m so hungry. I have to live on. Say my prayers, if only it was night. I’m hungry. The man of the house eats first. If I don’t eat... I can’t eat. The good boys told me not to eat. They give me food. I’m hungry. These bandages? These snakes? YOU’RE ALL SNAKES! My boy. Where is my boy? My skin... And these bandages. And my child... My girls... My... My... I... ... Charlie... Mr. O’Shaughnessy..? Can you tell me if you had a pet as a child?
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Apr 22, 2023 12:48
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Jun 9, 2023 14:35
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The Eye of the Aftermath Words: 500 Every tooth is losing its root in my head. My skull. My... I can’t come up with more words. I want to come up with more synonyms. That’s a difficult word; synonum, ee-num, y-num, my gums... but it comes quickly. My second eye-tooth will come soon. There’s plaque built up on them. I don’t know why, I haven’t eaten in nearly two weeks. Molars grinding. There’s no bacteria left there. The water kills it, yet I drink. I poo poo where I lay. Sometimes I move. I moved until two months ago. I think. I think I moved to poo poo, and piss. I don’t piss any more. Everything comes out my arse. I poo poo where I lay. I poo poo wherever. This rotten bed. Rotten with blood-clear water passing through me. When did I last have food that wasn’t grass. Even that’s yellowing. I refuse to look in the caustic mirrors. The final time I laughed; leaning against a sink looking at my gapped smile. That was most terrifying. I laughed. And my nose bled. And I tasted blood. Fine, red, pestilent blood. I laughed at myself. No teeth, or fewer. A woman destroyed. A woman without beauty, bleeding. A world without vitality. Or hope. So I lay in my rotten bed. Eventually I slept forgetting the roar in my belly soothed with copper. And the pain in my abdomen from, what? What the world has become? The world is me tearing strips of yellow field from the ground and crunching on the earth intertwined because I’m so hungry. I have to save my energy. I sleep and dream. In my dreams my hands shake. I can barely move them my wrists are so weak. Imagine your dreams betraying you like that. Up until my fifties I still dreamt of school; dreams don’t move so fast. Now I’m dreaming of how I’ve felt for just six months. I wake after hours. It’s no relief. I have to save my energy. I sleep again. I wake and poo poo. The poo poo is warm. My blood is cold. I’m cold. I pull blankets around me. Would it be better to swallow it whole or grind it into a paste. Mix it with grass; nutrients. Or bleach; death. Bleach would be the end, but the end I’ve faced is already so intolerable bleach is too much. I’ll do it tomorrow. Whatever tomorrow may be. The sky is orange and ashen. Purple and grey. The grass yellow and dead. I’m so far from anywhere. Peace in my pain but I wonder how others survive. I bet the supermarkets have been ransacked but some food must be there. I can’t make it there. Tomorrow I’ll do it. I wake and it’s already too late. My second eye-tooth is glued to my dry lips. Lost. Gone. I’ve saved my strength. Now is the time. I grind my tooth up and mix it, and its plaque, with death-bringing water. I consume myself as the world consumed itself. I live on.
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Jun 11, 2023 03:51
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Jun 30, 2023 19:46
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The Day He Arrived 1,500 words Days start the worst, usually by going to bed the night before. There’s no end. There must have been a beginning? Somewhere? Mustn’t there? I went to bed one night, years ago, in childhood, or just last night... Ready to bounce out of bed and start my day with jubilation and my day started off balls. Or else the day started with what we refer to in this business as, ‘magic,’ and then became balls. Balls to the point where I was looking forward to going to bed and starting anew; refreshed and re-ready. I don’t know where it is. The point where the day turns to shitestain. The problem is it’s not every day. You don’t remember every day being vomit but when a day has become a ball-oval office-fanny-tit-poo poo-boob-ache it doesn’t leave. Until you forget. Maybe the best thing is to forget. Existence through memory, right? But there’s enough minutes in an hour, enough hours in a day, days in a month, well... It’ll all turn to gently caress. And there’s no escaping the trickster living your head. Today I was well. I was well enough to venture outside. What brings me outside you may ask? I’m well enough to manage it. If you’re not well enough to go outside you’ll stay inside until you’re no longer welcome inside; you’re forced exterior. Then you’ll be outside where it all happens. The twits. Toe-rags. Wee hairy bastards. Tall sinewy fuckers. Lads and ladies with big ears, warts growing out of them, and filthy fingernails, and they smell, the whole place smells, and my feet are high, or ache, and the atmosphere is very in-my-way but I don’t notice until I have time to reflect. But that’s not just outside. That’s everywhere. “Agent Smith,” Matrix vibes. My life is internal. I sit inside and do my thing. Until sitting inside becomes too much. Or, as is sometimes the case, sitting inside happens to coincide with the near-perfect time to go outside. I went outside today. Sometimes getting dressed is a hassle but I bought a new pair of jeans that fit me better than my old pair (despite that pair not being worn out), and I could cover my smell with deodorant. Pressing the button and waiting for the lift outside my apartment wasn’t too much hassle. There was no-one nearby, my flatmate was far away—for the day—and I didn’t have to take to the glances of anyone using the stairs to go down. Walking down the street I don’t remember waking up or trying to sleep, or discarding any thoughts to forget. I don’t remember being alerted to something incendiary. No demons were passing by and there was nothing telling me of violence. Or scalding. Evil, from my past, brought up again. Terrifying in the moment, or potentially chaotic in the future. I simply walked down the street, on the way to beer, and crisps, and maybe soup? My shopping list was filling out as I walked. What wonders would the supermarket hold? And more! If I was ready... I don’t know why—and maybe this is my downfall—but I was feeling super-confident walking through that supermarket. I’d already bought my cigarettes in the petrol station after waiting for the man working there to finish his smoke outside and serve me my tobacco. I’d waited with no worries. Then I bought enough fags to last a week. I hope. When I walked outside the petrol station, to my recall, the air was clammy but not in my way. Not between me and my goal, and certainly not making me sweat beneath my hoody as I entered an air-conditioned supermarket I knew at an instinctive but not conscious level would be a shock to me. It wasn’t a shock. It was cooler than clammy, it was calmer, but not frigid, and there was no chill. It was stiller than I expected. I was stiller than I expected, at least in recollection. I skipped past the soup fridge, knowing this shop didn’t have the soup I liked. I wouldn’t buy soup today. I was being very decisive. I walked. Looking back this was all going so well. That’s where I went wrong. I wasn’t guarded. I was fallen to a sense of security. Although it’s possible I had threatening thoughts while I browsed the bookshop where I didn’t buy anything—no fantasy leaped from page to mind. No past gremlin attacked when I smelled the food court food smells that reminded me of the spicy, curdled feet, crotches and stinky-hair-beauty-pits like the smells I’ve smelt of feet, crotches and hairy-pits of the past when I was most hungry. Or thirsty—as the kids would say. I was hungry. It was all going really well. Until... I saw him. Or her... No judgment. She had a moustache, and male name-tag. He had drooping, faux-diamond earrings and long, greasy hair. He had painted nails and she had stupid tattoos. It was the painted nails that did it for me. Colour! This one person, both he and her, she and him, all in one package. And I didn’t know. I didn’t care. Except he looked kind of tired. Not tired from working. Not tired from existence. Tired as an existence. Not of this world. Not of this world of normal people doing their shopping, smelling of balls and feet and oval office-dicks and pits and deodorant bad breath bad opinions bad thoughts. So many bad thoughts. My own. My own thoughts haunt me. An invasion. He was not of this world, of people thinking of life, of when the pain started, and when it would end, and, “Why is this the way it is?” He looked other worldly, and beneath me. She looked magnificent. They looked like a fool, slack jawed and moronic as they just shovelled groceries. He/She/They was beyond time. I didn’t care what they looked like. I feared for the reaction. There’s always a reaction Maybe it’s the point when you bounce out of bed but you’re bouncing in a sewer. Or when you start the day with simple peace and then turn in at night with seeping fear over whether you’ll ever escape what the day had become or what tomorrow would be. There’s always a point when it happens. Collection. Invasion. Them... My point hadn’t arrived and I didn’t expect it. She hated him. The goblin in front of me in the queue hated him/her/they/SHE?/IT?/WHOCARES? She was polite, in a way. She didn’t say a word, but she hated. Sickness on her face. He/She/They/Her/It was pushing her groceries past the till haphazardly. Even I could see that. He/She/They/Her/It/Them/they/the-trans-person was impatient, probably meeting quotas, definitely rushed. The woman left with her shopping, gnarled, raw face, lips curled, shoulders thrown back. Hating. Illness. Anger? Anger is hatred. She hated. Or maybe I hate. Maybe it’s me and I’m imagining the woman who was shopping. Her virus. Perhaps mine? The checkout He/Him/She/Her/They/us I encountered was lovely. Maybe they recognised something in me and acknowledged me? I felt relaxed by them. They pushed my groceries a bit too quickly for my liking but everyone does. Someone pushed past me at the checkout. Pushed me like there was an alarm, or a theft from the store. He didn’t wear a uniform. He looked, ‘common.’ A store detective trying to blend in? Looking in my bag. He ran, after pushing me. PUSHING ME!! I think. I arrived home, with my beer, and no smells in my nose. I was OK, I think. I saw a phishing email in my email account with my old name on it. I am/was OK, but not... Then they infested me. I saw them all around. My day is a pit, and the beer isn’t working fast enough. NOT FAST ENOUGH! I don’t know who the goblin-trickster is. Is it me? Is it my mental state? Is it seeing someone gender-wrecking and expecting the worst? Is it seeing someone gender nonconforming and being fine with it but seeing someone else hating? Is it having a store detective run by me like they were trying to catch someone? Was the detective trying to look in my bag I had open in my trolley? To see what I had stolen? Is it just that I was addressed by my old name in a phishing email? That I’m, “out there..?” Name aside.. That I’m being targeted? Or I’m targeting myself? Am I just tired? Do I need sleep? I want to know where it went wrong? At what point the day turned? Which day was it it turned? Or? Maybe? It was always this way? This is what’s wrong with me. I want to know... I want to know the cause and origin of where it all screwed up. And if it really was just the goblin bitch old hag oval office gently caress looking at the trans ugly-beautiful checkout worker with hate? Or would I have found my evil, somewhere, somehow, no matter what?
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Jul 2, 2023 05:56
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Jul 7, 2023 06:13
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Waking Up 1,000 Words I woke in a land of hobbits one day. They’d met taller people before. They invited me to tea and a smoke and I sat down at a table. They were perfectly sized tables, for a hobbit. Whether the hobbit was tall or small—and there is a height difference even among hobbits—the tables were mostly suited to them. I had to splay my legs to fit in with these very generous fantasy people so I could drink their carefully set out tea and smoke golden tobacco with them. They began with stories. They talked about good humans, and bad humans, along with all the other species, at least once they got going. I didn’t like the bad humans. They were particularly vicious even if the hobbits all treated them like a game and a laugh. Telling stories is their way. They’d pour me another cup of tea—fine bone china—and have a new pipe ready to go once I was finished with my first, honestly, very small bowl of tobacco. There was one hobbit who kept looking at me, Gertrude. Now, I’m attracted to women, and Gertrude was obviously a female hobbit, but I’m not attracted to hobbits. Never was. Although if the right hobbit comes along... Maybe..? I guess that won’t be happening. Gertrude said she admired my dress, my tall legs. She tugged on the hem of it from her low-down position. “It stretches for so long!” she said, wide eyed. Then... “I wish I was tall,” she whispered. I knew. She said she liked my shoes. Which I appreciated. I’d gone to bed with my slippers on and was suddenly wearing a pair of sporty trainers from some 90s line from my youth. I knew. “Text me when you get a chance,” I said. And we exchanged numbers, quietly. Gertrude, keeping it up, said, “Oh! Your feet must be so large to fill out shoes like that. And your toes so long and delicate. And your toenails. Oh what colours! Blue, and pink. Red! Orange!” “Rainbow...” she whispered, conspiratorially. “Not like my drab brown tobacco, or drab brown tea, or drab ochre tobacco-flake. Sometimes we get green tea, from travellers beyond. The tall folk who bring us things, but the green tea fades, and rots, and ends up with no colour.” I nodded, and smiled. And understood. And I knew her. I woke the next morning so refreshed. I was ready for anything and I didn’t know why. I walked into the office, delighted, and checked my emails fearing it would all come to an end. It didn’t. There was an email congratulating me on my presentation last Tuesday, and another from the boss saying, “Keep pulling it out like on Friday and you’ll be going places.” I was in a high mood. It was all going well until I settled in for the mid-morning break. A cup of brown tea, although I didn’t know why I thought of it as, ‘brown tea.’ I got a text, “Thinking of your shoes, love. Work shoes must be so different. Different feet almost. A different world, haha. lyl <3” I got another text a few seconds later, while I was reading the first. “This is gertrude by the way. The tiny hobbit.” And she said ‘tiny’ in italics. The entry it came under didn’t make sense to me. It didn’t appear like any name, or number, or symbol I’d seen before. I texted back, “Who is this? What number is this?” “Oh, this is Gertrude. We met in your dreams last night. I thought I said I was the tiny hobbit. Remember... Your Reeboks. Or were they Pumas? Sporty... haha... don’t worry.” I put my phone down on the work kitchen table. Then picked it up. Then walked back to my desk. I had another email. It was my manager calling me in for a chat. He offered nothing more. “Come in for a chat. 2pm. We need to talk.” It sounded ominous. So, instead, I texted back this Gertrude person. “You’re a dream.” I tried to get down to work, to type up the report on the Sinkin’s account but you better believe 30 minutes later I nearly jumped on my phone when it bleeped. “I know, girl. haha. I’d never met a tall person before, but you’re everything I dreamed of. Your shoes, and feet, and toes. I bet they’re not even hairy.” Some absolute weirdo, I thought. Some fucken weirdo texting me. The clock ticked down until lunch. I was getting more and more worried about my meeting with my manager. My phone bleeped again. “I’m sorry. That’s weird. I know we’re not supposed to talk about tall people not having hairy feet. I just... I just wish I was tall. And I think we got along... There’s no need to respond until tonight. If you don’t want.” “Until tonight!?” What the gently caress did this weirdo have planned? Who the gently caress was this? Could I really go to the police about some nutbag in my texts? In my dreams? Did I write about this in my journal? Did someone read my dream journal? “gently caress off and stop texting me,” I messaged them back. “I bet you’re some weird 5 foot 2 loser who thinks if they had more testosterone they’d be able to move out of their mother’s basement. My toenails have a fungal infection. Suck on that. #blocked” Then I went to lunch. Then I met with my boss, who told me I was doing well and getting noticed by the higher ups. They’d tentatively scheduled a meeting to talk about promotion, in three months, if I kept going as I was. Then I went home. Then I ate. With a few drinks. Then I had a few more. Then I went to bed. And fell asleep. Then I woke up. With no dreams. And no little hobbit asking me about my shoes, or telling me she wanted to be like me.
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Jul 8, 2023 16:00
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Crit for Ouzo Maki's story Gravity It’s a nice story, if slightly removed from what’s happening. Not really in the moment. I feel like this, partly, is something that comes up in my story similarly written for a younger than adult age (I’d say mine is middle grade, or around there, and yours is full on “children’s.”) Part of this is to do with the voice of the narrator. At some points the language doesn’t quite fit into the junior age it’s being of, it’s not the voice of youth, but equally, at other times, everything is presented quite youthfully. I’m not sure if that childlike resonance is equal through the piece. I think this is a big difficulty with writing for younger people, potentially the most difficult point once the basic aspects of storytelling are down. How do you capture the joy, and energy, and fear of someone with a young mind, for someone with a young mind, while you are an adult, removed and only with memory to go on for how it felt (albeit with the writing chops you develop as you mature) while also not being insulting and writing below the level of potential junior readers. So, basically, my main issue is that I don’t know if I feel it captures a distinct level of reader’s ability. Part of that might be a lack of immediacy in the emotional impact, which may be due to me being an adult reader (and not involved in kid’s books.) This came up very early for me. Take the first three paragraphs. “Nicola’s stomach was trying to eat itself. “We’re not supposed to be here, Gee!” Gaius waved him off like only a big brother could: dismissive, confident, with a mild eye roll that highlighted Nicola’s inherent wrongness. “ The name “Gee” is a youthful nickname, and along with “we’re not supposed to be here” immediately tells of the youth. But then we quickly swap to the narrator’s role describing “like only a big brother could: dismissive, confident...” which speaks of a kind of matured outlook on family. I think, in some ways, this could be gotten around by writing it in first person. Children, and children’s mindsets, to me, feel immediate. They feel in the moment. This is all told from a position of having taken a step back. Part of that, then, is how the emotion of what we know could very well be childhood adventure dooming the ship (read from the story before the doom is made explicit) is apparent to us, but it’s not within the story. The childhood panic of going from, “We’re being naughty” to “OMG, we’re in trouble” to “OMG we really, really hosed up” isn’t as strong as it could be. I felt the emotive aspects of the childhood misadventure were stronger at the beginning, but the emotion fell off as the story went on and the actual plot had to be advanced. Especially with the disconnect of the computer’s cold messages. A little more focus on the emotion (and I know it’s hard with wordcounts) would be nice. Overall, I think it works well. It sets out what it’s supposed to be, it’s clearly written, there’s a nice “moral” of the story, both for children and adults. I could imagine, were this actually real and we live in the future, it being used as an emotive teaching case in both a teacher’s course, and childhood development courses, for how children are smarter than you give them credit for and will find ever inventive new ways to gently caress things up. Equally, it could almost be used in spaceship academy for much the same reason, “Kids will get where they shouldn’t be, no matter how well locked down you think you have things, or no matter how often you’ve told them, ‘Don’t do that,’ and ‘No.’” It’s a very simple story, told directly. It deals with the actual ending very well, with the adults simply staring and awaiting their fate. Whether it has the immediacy and relevancy and drive for the age level it’s pitched at, I don’t know. I felt it was hindered a little by the pace needed to get the plot across, the lowering of words spent elucidating emotions, and the computer messages seeming cold compared to a youthfulness in the story. Not for logical reasons, rather because they dominated and had little affect towards the story, while not being stern, or threatening enough to carry off a huge sense of danger. Yes, from a plot point of view, but not from an emotional aspect. I’m not a teacher or anything like that, or children’s book agent/editor, but from my memory I could 100% see this being used in schools and in children’s magazines with short fiction and children’s literature. Especially if you can pad it out with more immediacy on the emotional front. I’d work on it up a little more and submit it to those places. I know there’s a lit mag here in Ireland that publishes for kids, and has open submission periods. Whether, “Kid’s get into a scrape that dooms them on a spaceship,” is well treaded ground in kid’s literature already, I don’t know. It could, also, equally, be an evergreen subject.
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Jul 12, 2023 12:54
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