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Adregem ཐིཋྀ

@adregem.bsky.social

Not many of these ... here's one from my #DarkFantasy Death & the Dreamer. #WIPSnips #WIP #AmWriting #WritingPrompts #Writers #Writing #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #Fantasy

At first, the necropolis looked like another village, rising from the flat plane of boundless meadow in disordered gray and brown shapes. As we got closer, the shapes grew taller, and faces appeared in them, most of them effigies of the god of death, but I also recognized the goddess of children, the god of journey, and the god of storm and sea. Traditional graves were scattered over the foreground, people whose families could afford to leave them in the shadows of the gods but not in the consecrated abyss of the underground system.

November 25, 2025 at 2:26 PM

Adregem ཐིཋྀ

@adregem.bsky.social

I have no "debut" anywhere, but here is an "introduction" from a middle-grade novel I was working on in grad school called "Lydia and the Boy-Eating Spider." #WIPSnips #WIP #AmWriting #WritingPrompts #Writers #Writing #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #middlegradefiction #middlegrade #mystery

Lydia stood on the sidewalk and listened while Mom’s car rumbled away and her fellow students went about the noisy business of having friends and not wishing they were back in Oregon. She sighed. Today, the kids weren’t just strangers, they were My Little Pony characters. Sparkly, brightly colored, and way, way too cheerful.
She looked down at her dragonfly shirt. Maybe no one would remember yesterday’s disastrous introductions.
But of course someone did. It was Pink Girl, looking almost exactly as pink as she had the day before.
“Hello Spider Girl,” Pink Girl said.
“Hello, Pink Girl.”

November 24, 2025 at 3:22 PM

Adregem ཐིཋྀ

@adregem.bsky.social

No "global" so I'm going with "universal." #WIPSnips #WIP #AmWriting #WritingPrompts #Writers #Writing #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #Fantasy #FairyTale #Romantasy #AmQuerying

The words stick in my throat. I cough into my right elbow to buy myself some time, which just makes me look like I do need medical attention.
The Dawn Lord takes a step towards me, and I raise my hand in what I hope is the universally understood symbol for give me a sec and summon one more cough.

November 23, 2025 at 3:47 PM

Adregem ཐིཋྀ

@adregem.bsky.social

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the opening lines of the Moth King. #WIPSnips #WIP #AmWriting #WritingPrompts #Writers #Writing #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #Fantasy #FairyTale #Romantasy #AmQuerying

My nemesis stares at me, big-eyed, the tip of my blade shining in his pupils like arsenic crystals.
He is slain.
Actually, “nemesis” is a bit of a stretch. Scott is barely a mild irritant. And he’s wearing a fencing mask so it’s not like I can literally see my blade reflected in his eyes.

November 22, 2025 at 3:03 PM

Adregem ཐིཋྀ

@adregem.bsky.social

The best thing about where I buy groceries is the feral #chickens

Three chickens roosting on a “pick up cart here” sign

November 21, 2025 at 4:15 PM

Adregem ཐིཋྀ

@adregem.bsky.social

Tova might not really be traveling alone #WIPSnips #WIP #AmWriting #WritingPrompts #Writers #Writing #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #Fantasy #DarkFantasy

Behind us, the branches we’d tied our horses to groaned as the panicked animals tried to free themselves.
The thing had eyes now. They flicked between Win, me, and the horses.
“Don’t,” Tova groaned.
It paused, then it cast a look backwards, in Tova’s direction—the gesture a perfect, absurd parody of a man—and dissolved like smoke in a sharp gust of wind.

November 21, 2025 at 3:12 PM

Adregem ཐིཋྀ

@adregem.bsky.social

Here's Sunday ruminating on her special talents. #WIPSnips #WIP #AmWriting #WritingPrompts #Writers #Writing #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #Fantasy #FairyTale #Romantasy #AmQuerying

“Can shadow people shoot?” I ask Aurea, who’s looking disconcertingly frazzled considering she’s an air spirit who possesses flawless, eternal beauty. Apparently, I have a special talent for exhausting supernatural creatures.

November 20, 2025 at 3:28 PM

Adregem ཐིཋྀ

@adregem.bsky.social

Weird how people keep dying around Tova 🤔 #WIPSnips #WIP #AmWriting #WritingPrompts #Writers #Writing #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #Fantasy #DarkFantasy

“You killed him,” someone said.
The blond’s eyes flicked around the room, from one silent spectator to the next. “I didn’t hit him that hard,” he protested. “He’s only stunned.” He nudged the dead man with the toe of his boot. “Dorne. This ain’t funny.”
Dorne’s head lolled on his neck like a broken doll.
“He’s fucking dead,” someone else exclaimed.
“He’s not,” the victor insisted. “He’s just drunk. Dorne.” He nudged him again, harder. The third nudge was more of a solid kick. “Dorne!” he raged, as if it was Dorne’s fault he was dead.

November 19, 2025 at 3:32 PM

Adregem ཐིཋྀ

@adregem.bsky.social

I'm pretty sure I've only ever used this word in non-fiction so for the sake of today's #WIPSnips I'm calling this excerpt "The Moth King in Retrograde." #WIP #AmWriting #WritingPrompts #Writers #Writing #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #Fantasy #Romantasy #AmQuerying

And then, because this is not already horrifying enough to haunt my nightmares every day for the rest of my life, the fragments of glass rise from the ground and loosen themselves from the bodies of dead soldiers, fly in reverse to the place where the Moth King stood moments ago, and somehow put themselves back together.
The Moth King gazes down at me and wipes some stray blood off his shoulder with the back of his creepy, shadowy hand.

November 18, 2025 at 2:20 PM

Adregem ཐིཋྀ

@adregem.bsky.social

Here's one from my unnamed #NovemberNovel. Here's Fion lamenting the fact that she's expected to go to a boring ball. #WIPSnips #WIP #AmWriting #WritingPrompts #Writers #Writing #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #Fantasy #TimeTravelRomance

Fion had spent most of her life thinking balls must have been named for cricket balls, since they were lobbed at you rather violently and if you weren’t ready for them they could embarrass you in unpleasant ways. She preferred not to attend balls at all, not ever, but they were notoriously difficult to dodge. Also much like cricket balls, when one was approaching, everyone expected you to do something about it.
“Oh but you must,” Eliza complained when Fion informed her that she planned to spend her evening not going to the End of Midsummer’s Ball.

November 17, 2025 at 2:08 PM

Adregem ཐིཋྀ

@adregem.bsky.social

When you have to teach supernatural creatures about shit like parking tickets #WIPSnips #WIP #AmWriting #WritingPrompts #Writers #Writing #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #Fantasy #FairyTale #Romantasy #AmQuerying

I practically sob with relief to find that my car hasn’t been towed, but my joy sours when I see the patchwork of parking tickets on the windshield. He studies me curiously as I snatch the papers from under my wipers and stuff them into my glove box.
“Why do you keep them if they anger you?” he wants to know.
“Because you can’t run from the parking authority.”

November 16, 2025 at 2:43 PM

Adregem ཐིཋྀ

@adregem.bsky.social

Love when I can use one from my #NovemberNovel! #WIPSnips #WIP #AmWriting #WritingPrompts #Writers #Writing #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #TimeTravelRomance #TimeTravel

There was a time when he thought he might get used to it. The sinking sensation in the bottom of his guts, like falling with no hope of ever hitting the ground. The strange press of air around him, as if it had gone gelatinous. The gray fog encroaching on his vision from the periphery in. The smothering sense of doom. He’d come to think of it as a death in miniature.
The final one, when it happened, would probably progress in exactly the same way, only it would not be in miniature.

November 15, 2025 at 2:32 PM

Adregem ཐིཋྀ

@adregem.bsky.social

I'm so happy to have a chance to use this snip ... It's one of my favorite early moments between Sunday and the king. #WIPSnips #WIP #AmWriting #WritingPrompts #Writers #Writing #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #Fantasy #FairyTale #Romantasy #AmQuerying

The Moth King is still looking at me. “What is your name?”
“Sunday Hale.”
He’s silent for a beat, then he says, “Like the day of the week?”
This is how literally everyone responds when I say my name. Apparently, it is also how terrifying moth monsters respond when I say my name. Somehow, I manage to feel irritated even as my adrenal gland screams at me to get out of this place right now.

November 14, 2025 at 2:58 PM

Adregem ཐིཋྀ

@adregem.bsky.social

Here's Sunday having about as much success lighting a fire as I usually do #WIPSnips #WIP #AmWriting #WritingPrompts #Writers #Writing #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #Fantasy #FairyTale #Romantasy #AmQuerying

Eventually, the desire for warmth and light gets the better of me, and I build a fire. I’m terrible at it, which seems to greatly amuse the king.
“Call a servant,” he suggests.
“No,” I garble. My flashlight is sticking out of my mouth, its harsh beam of white light bobbing around on the kindling as I wrestle with it. I’m absolutely determined to humiliate myself with this stupid fireplace.

November 13, 2025 at 2:48 PM

Adregem ཐིཋྀ

@adregem.bsky.social

"Shirt" is one of those words that appears a lot in romantasy 🥰 so here's a more unconventional use of the word from my #DarkFantasy Death & the Dreamer #WIPSnips #WIP #AmWriting #WritingPrompts #Writers #Writing #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #Fantasy

“Here.” Tova handed him a waterskin. He dumped it over his hands and rubbed them vigorously together, then he tore one of the sleeves from his shirt, rolled it into a ball, and stuffed it into his shoulder wound.
I flinched. My vision went a little gray around the edges, but Macsen’s expression never changed, as if the gaping hole in his flesh was merely a nuisance.

November 12, 2025 at 3:40 PM

Adregem ཐིཋྀ

@adregem.bsky.social

I was like, there's no way I have this word anywhere in any of my WIPs but what do you know ... #WIPSnips #WIP #AmWriting #WritingPrompts #Writers #Writing #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #Fantasy #FairyTale #Romantasy #AmQuerying

“Jahnari makes good soup,” Ryan puts in. “And when I first met her, she gave me a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. It tasted like straw, though.”
That’s slightly off-topic and maybe a little fiendish, but mediocre cheeseburgers are hardly evil.

November 11, 2025 at 2:34 PM

Adregem ཐིཋྀ

@adregem.bsky.social

Apparently I only use this word in the most boring, expository parts of my stories 🙄 #WIPSnips #WIP #AmWriting #WritingPrompts #Writers #Writing #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #Fantasy #DarkFantasy

We passed the night dry, in a room overlooking a cow pasture. By morning, the pasture had become a marsh and the cows were clustered together on the higher plateaus, lowing miserably, their ankles caked with mud.
The rain kept falling into the afternoon and through the second night. We killed the sluggish hours playing dice in the tavern and spinning fictions about the locals.

November 10, 2025 at 2:21 PM

Adregem ཐིཋྀ

@adregem.bsky.social

From Opus Eternal: Tess confronting the grim reality that Lorcan Harte is hot. #WIPSnips #WIP #AmWriting #WritingPrompts #Writers #Writing #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #Fantasy #FairyTale #Romantasy

“Why are you called that?” I picture him as he was in my dream—with a crown of antlers and a raven on his shoulder—holding a blood-coated sword. It’s … really hot, actually. I’m not even going to deny it.

November 9, 2025 at 3:11 PM

Adregem ཐིཋྀ

@adregem.bsky.social

Too many choices for this word. Here's one from Death & the Dreamer, where Tova is about to show the brigands how tough she actually is #WIPSnips #WIP #AmWriting #WritingPrompts #Writers #Writing #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #Fantasy #DarkFantasy

Tova sat calmly in the saddle, her crooked smile a blade of ice in the gloom. She was using her menacing, accented voice, but it was going to take a lot more than accented menace to keep these men from murdering us.
The friendly voice laughed. “Is that so, little lady?”
“Indeed,” she said. “Line up along the road now, and keep your weapons to yourselves. Once we have passed, you may resume your criminal activities with the next group of travelers you encounter.”
Now they were all laughing. “The little lady is tough!” the friendly one crowed. “Why would we do that, sweetheart?”

November 8, 2025 at 2:09 PM

Adregem ཐིཋྀ

@adregem.bsky.social

The Moth King intimidating Sunday with his repulsive horribleness #WIPSnips #WIP #AmWriting #WritingPrompts #Writers #Writing #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #Fantasy #FairyTale #Romantasy #AmQuerying

“My enemy?” the king says. His boots shift, and the movement orphans a few tendrils of whatever is crawling all over him. I watch in horror while they tremble at his feet and then right themselves and schloop back into the crowd.
“I … I …” I stammer, dragging my eyes away. “I’ve had a few years of swordplay and fencing lessons and that’s everything I know about fighting.”
The king is silent. I kind of wish I could see the look on his face, except I definitely do not want to look at his face.
“Everyone else leave,” he says.

November 7, 2025 at 2:52 PM

Adregem ཐིཋྀ

@adregem.bsky.social

I will be super impressed with anyone who actually has this word in their WIP 😆. Here's my first snip from my #Novelvember story. This is Joric's penultimate encounter with Fion. #WIPSnips #WIP #AmWriting #WritingPrompts #Writers #Writing #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #TimeTravelRomance #TimeTravel

“You’re asking me to accept things without providing the reasons why I should.” She let go of his hand. “This has been fun, and you have been honorable, just as you promised. But perhaps—”
“If you’re about to say, ‘perhaps this should end here,’ I’m not sure I believe that is possible. I suppose you will find out.”
She frowned. “And you will not?”
“I already know everything.”

November 6, 2025 at 2:35 PM

Adregem ཐིཋྀ

@adregem.bsky.social

I had a lot of options—most weren't super compelling out of context—but here's one from Death & the Dreamer where they're about to find out who the vultures are eating #WIPSnips #WIP #AmWriting #WritingPrompts #Writers #Writing #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #Fantasy #DarkFantasy #AmQuerying