Author James C Struck
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curioussnowflake.bsky.social
Author James C Struck
@curioussnowflake.bsky.social
He/They/Him/Them
Author of The Curious Snowflake: A Parable, available now! https://bit.ly/3PMYmkR
Preorder Children of Dusk here: https://a.co/d/brmahZN
Musician, parent, #poly, #leftist, #queer, overall big geek.
JamesCStruck.com
My author copies of Children of Dusk arrived today! Join me for my #unboxing

#IndieAuthor #urbanfantasy #YAFantasy #BookSky
November 27, 2025 at 3:42 AM
#WIPSnips for 11/25: system

How this for the vibe; here’s how the magic system works in Children of Dusk. Enjoy! 🤪

#WriteSky #UrbanFantasy #IndieAuthor
November 26, 2025 at 12:57 AM
Since some of my ARC readers asked, here’s a quick pronunciation guide for Housetongue, the completely made up language in Children of Dusk.

#BookSky #WriteSky #UrbanFantasy #WritersofBluesky
November 22, 2025 at 10:29 PM
#WIPSnips for 11/21: Crystal

Even in this era of dying belief in magic, our world is crisscrossed with Leylines, conduits of elemental energy. The places where they cross are called leypoints and they are places of great power.

#IndieAuthor #Writesky
November 22, 2025 at 3:21 PM
#WIPSnips for 11/21: direction

Weaving, the magic system in Children of Dusk, consists of drawing in elemental energies from the world and combining them together in different ways. Here, my MC Tim gets his first tutorial on it.

#WriteSky #IndieAuthor #UrbanFantasy
November 21, 2025 at 2:36 PM
#WIPSnips for 11/20: special

Seekers like Vee and Gideon search the world for potential Weavers, and new potentials usually can only handle Weaving one or two elements at a time.

Tim is not the usual new potential.

Children of Dusk, coming 12/15!

#IndieAuthors #WriteSky #UrbanFantasy
November 20, 2025 at 7:34 PM
#WIPSnips for 11/16: spend

The Duskrealms are dying. As belief in magic and the supernatural fades from our world, so do the ‘Realms, literally. As a side effect, time does some really strange things there, as Tim discovers in this excerpt.

#WriteSky #IndieAuthor #UrbanFantasy
November 17, 2025 at 11:43 PM
More reviews dropping for Children of Dusk!!!! I cannot describe how this makes me feel! 🫶🥰😁

#WriteSky #IndieAuthor #ARCReviews #QueerWriters #AuthorsOfBluesky
November 17, 2025 at 9:37 PM
#WIPSnips for 11-16: run

Weavers can sense when someone near them uses magic, though what they sense is unique to each person. For some it’s warmth or heat, for others it’s sound or vibration. For Tim, it seems, he gets goosebumps.

Children of Dusk launches 12/15!

#WriteSky #IndieAuthor
November 16, 2025 at 3:54 PM
FIRST REVIEW OF CHILDREN OF DUSK!!!

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

These are the moments authors daydream about. You wake up in the morning, get a cup of coffee, open social media, and there is, a reader absolutely GUSHING over what you’ve written.

Children of Dusk comes out 12/15!

#WriteSky #5StarReview #AuthorLife
November 16, 2025 at 11:28 AM
One of my #ARCReaders just reached out to me on Tiktok, and… just WOW! These are the sorts of comments that make an #indieauthor absolutely float off the ground!

#WriteSky
November 16, 2025 at 3:44 AM
#WIPSnips for 11/15: progress

I had to be very careful about posting this, one paragraph higher would have been a MAJOR spoiler. 😱

Have I mentioned that Naldumiel and his snark is my favorite character in the book? Cuz he’s my favorite character in the book.

#Writesky #UrbanFantasy
November 15, 2025 at 3:11 PM
#WIPSnips for 11/14: week

Tim…has some baggage.

#WriteSky
November 14, 2025 at 1:20 PM
#WIPSnips for 11/13: build

Traveling from our world to the Duskrealms can only occur at certain places and times, and even then it’s not easy, as Tim discovers here.

#WriteSky #UrbanFantasy #QueerWriters
November 13, 2025 at 3:34 PM
#WIPSnips for 11/12: shirt

High school gym class sucks under the best of circumstances. When you’ve got burn scars like Tim, however, it’s a very special kind of hell.

#WriteSky #UrbanFantasy #QueerWriters
November 12, 2025 at 1:30 PM
#WIPSnips for 11/11: burger

Here, our MC Tim has to contend with explaining to his nosy, suburban realtor mom about Vee and Gideon, without, ya know, letting her know they’re magic wielders from another dimension who’ve recruited him to save the world. No biggie. 🤣

#WriteSky #UrbanFantasy
November 11, 2025 at 4:43 PM
#WIPSnips for 11/10: local

Weaving works much MUCH better in the Duskrealms than it does in our world because not enough people here believe in magic. Here, Kieran uses science to explain how belief and consciousness directly affect reality.

#WriteSky #UrbanFantasy #QueerWriters
November 10, 2025 at 12:15 PM
#WIPSnips for 11/8: picture

One of the signs a person is a potential Weaver is the ability to understand the language the Opacaroi call Housetongue. Here, Tim gets to hear it for the first time.

Side note, I think “Taruch vo ma ne’anta ye” would be great on a merch shirt.

#WriteSky
November 10, 2025 at 2:45 AM
#WIPSnips for 11/8: little

Tim’s father Victor is an institutionalized paranoid schizophrenic. Most of the time his medications keep the illness in check, but here, unfortunately, Tim gets to see his dad at his worst.

#WriteSky #UrbanFantasy #QueerWriters
November 8, 2025 at 12:07 PM
#WIPSnips for 11/7: movement

When he was 7, Tim almost died in a fire, and he has never talked to anyone about it, until now.

This scene was the culmination of the most difficult and most rewarding writing I have ever done. It took me a month to get through it.

#WriteSky #UrbanFantasy
November 7, 2025 at 12:57 PM
I am trying to use the Clock App as a self promotion and sales app for Children of Dusk, but I need to get to 1k followers before I am allowed to post shop links.

Well I must be doing something right, because I went from 500 followers on 11/1 to almost 850 today! 🥳

#WriteSky #IndieAuthor
November 5, 2025 at 6:04 PM
#WIPSnips for 11/5: trail

Vee and Gideon Melan are fraternal twins, and facially they look a great deal alike: long oval faces with dark eyes and hair and prominent noses. Physically, however, they couldn’t be more different.

#WriteSky #UrbanFantasy #QueerWriters
November 5, 2025 at 6:01 PM
#WIPSnips for 11/4: steel

In ancient days, the founders of the Opacaroi created seven magical spears, the Aigloi, and gifted them to the leaders of the seven Great Houses. Among other things, an Aiglos amplifies a Weaver’s magical abilities.

#WriteSky #YAFantasy #queerwriters
November 4, 2025 at 7:43 PM
ARC READER TIME!!!!

Children of Dusk launches 6 weeks from today! 😱 I am now taking applications for ARC readers! The plan is to send out copies around the 15th of this month to give plenty of time. If you’re interested, comment below.

#WriteSky #UrbanFantasy #ARCReaders
November 4, 2025 at 4:22 AM
#WIPSnips for 11/1: ancestor

Tim knows his new friends as Vee and Gideon Melan, just a couple of punk rock ne’er do well teenagers. The truth is quite a bit more dramatic.

#WriteSky #UrbanFantasy #QueerWriters
November 1, 2025 at 6:20 PM