✨Meagan Thompson-Mann is back in the querying trenches🫠
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thecrumpet.bsky.social
✨Meagan Thompson-Mann is back in the querying trenches🫠
@thecrumpet.bsky.social
1.4K followers 1.5K following 900 posts
Legally non-blonde / writer of minor repute (I'm in the Congressional record!) / querying 1st novel THIS ENDS NOW / noodlings at meagantheauthor.com / co-host of podcast BAD LIT FRIENDS (@badlitfriends.bsky.social‬) / recovering English major
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thecrumpet.bsky.social
November 30 #WIPsnips – “number”

Just for fun. Only dress up. Nothing serious about a trip to Bergdorf Goodman for Jenny. Nothing ominous at all about price tags with all those zeroes and a man with a platinum Amex. Just for laughs. Just a “what if?” Right? A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.”
Bergdorf’s, as Jenny understood it, was where Charlotte York picked out a thirteen-hundred-dollar china pattern she barely got to use, just before Trey stuck a prenup in her hand and expected her to lump it. The store was a temple to rich person problems, and though she knew Gregory had money enough for as many farm-to-table dinners and silk scarves and off-Broadway shows as he thought she might fancy, she didn’t think of him as being rich. After all, he’d had to move from the Bowery Hotel after only four nights. Something about his mother having access to the credit card he’d used, and she wanted to know precisely why her son’s research trips to Manhattan necessitated a five hundred-dollar a night hotel room. And yet he’d brought her here, to the fourth floor of Bergdorf Goodman, “just for fun,” like this wasn’t terrifying. She’d had plenty of fun in her life, and none of it cost as much as six months of rent or a used F-150. She dropped the tag of a hot pink dress in hammered silk. The number on it was obscene, dirtier than any novel she’d ever read. “This is ridiculous.” Though her voice was soft, the silence on the floor of this shrine to fashion was even softer. Diffused gallery lighting spilled over racks of gown upon gown, chiffon upon tulle upon organza, peach upon lime upon lilac. Beaded trims winked at hems and collars; feathers fluttered in the artificial breeze of air conditioning. Gregory moved across the plush-carpeted space as if his presence, their presence, here was as ordinary as it was in Spitzer Auditorium back on campus. His fingers trailed over the racks, flicking through brilliant silks and muted satins. “What’s ridiculous about it?”
November 30, 2025 at 5:15 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
NO FUCKING WAY!
Yale 43 - Youngstown State 42 with 2:47 left in Q4. The poster is unable to focus on writing.
November 29, 2025 at 8:06 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
Taking comfort that while we're going down immediately in our first crack at the postseason, we're not getting as humiliated as The Other Place.
Q4 scores for Yale v. Youngstown (29-45) State and Harvard v. Villanova (7-44). The poster takes comfort in knowing her alma mater is less shit than Harvard when it comes to football.
November 29, 2025 at 7:38 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
November 29 #WIPsnips – “dedicate”

Without so much as a by-your-leave, Gregory’s called Jenny his girlfriend to a bookstore clerk with ridiculous facial hair. She’s got… thoughts. So does he, but they’re more about beer than Richard II. A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.”
Girlfriend. The word had tripped down his tongue as if he’d said it ten times before. A hundred times before. As if that was what she was to him now, nothing strange about it. Though she parted her lips, she didn’t correct him. She was her mother’s child, and she wasn’t about to embarrass him in front of a stranger like Muttonchops. A girl with a white cotton bed skirt wouldn’t do that, even if its eyelet trim was hiding a sordid secret like an Alexander McQueen dress that was closer to couture than she liked to think about. Because what was she supposed to say? “No, Gregory. I’m not your girlfriend. I’m just the person you’ve been fucking in a variety of hotel rooms for the past six weeks and buying ten grand of gifts for and parading about at museums”? No, that sounded insane. He’d think she was insane. Girlfriend made more sense, so she said nothing, and let him anoint her with the title like he’d dabbed his thumb in sacred oil and smeared it across her brow. The word lingered, curling around her like incense, sanctifying something that wasn’t holy. Thing is, she thought as he explained how he was more of a Sapporo man than a Kirin one, once you’ve been consecrated—dedicated to some force greater than yourself—there’s no turning back. The divine mystery would always cling to you. Shakespeare had gotten it right: Not all the water in the rough rude sea / Can wash the balm off an anointed king.
November 29, 2025 at 3:29 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
In the immortal words of Orson Welles, we will sell no w(h)ine before its time. Get well soon, @kirkrafferty.com !
Orson Welles, holding a glass of white wine, in an ad for Paul Masson Wines.
November 28, 2025 at 6:47 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
November 28 #WIPsnips – “zigzag”

Holy hell, I had this! After a far-too-intimate dinner on the 4th of July, Jenny and her former seminar leader—“not my professor!”—walk back to her East Village sublet. Should she invite him up? Probably not. Definitely not. A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.”
Neither spoke as they neared Ludlow Street. Familiar landmarks came into view—the shawarma joint on the corner; the yellow awning of Lili’s Wink, the boutique where she could afford nothing but coveted everything; the fire escape zigzagging up the front of her building like a patinated exoskeleton. “This is fantastic,” Gregory said at last. “Very authentic New York. You’re lucky to have landed here.” “Above a used clothing store and between a couple of construction sites?” He paused outside number 151 and turned to face her. Dim light spilled from inside the shop front, burnishing his murky blond hair to a bronze sheen in its glow. “Just like most things in life, it’s what you make of it. Sometimes you just need to change your perspective.” She swallowed, but her mouth was dry. Why not? Jenny reached for his hand. “Here,” she said, tugging him one door down, the word barely more than a whisper. “This is me.” His fingers flexed, then tightened around hers. “This is you.” Yes, why not?
November 28, 2025 at 5:08 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
November 27 #WIPsnips – “disorganize”

Vibes! As a self-absorbed man of immense privilege, Gregory is blind to his blessings. Wealth? Check. Brains? Check. Looks? Hella check. But for all Jenny’s youth, she sees every facet of his unchecked entitlement. A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.”
If he tells me to leave, I’ll know I’m wrong about everything, she’d thought in the moment before his door swung open, her gloved finger outstretched for the doorbell. I don’t need this seminar. I can always take Gilbert’s class on Pope and Swift instead. But he’d let her in, ushering her across the black-and-white tiled floor of the vestibule, past the wilting poinsettia and the chinoiserie chest, and into a living room made delicious by the heat of a fire in full crackle. Gregory eased her damp coat from her arms and draped it over the arms of a high-backed chair pushed against one of the room’s carnation pink walls. Jenny tried not to drip too much melting snow on his well-worn Persian rug as she crouched to tug at the zippers on her boots. “I can do this part myself,” she insisted, as if he’d offered. “I’m so sorry I didn’t take them off earlier. I’m making such a mess of things.” “You’re not making a mess of anything.” He snatched away her soggy boots before she could protest and headed back to the hallway. “Trust me, this isn’t a museum,” he yelled, his voice echoing off the tiling there. Glancing up from her stocking feet, Jenny took in the honey-colored hardwood floors, ceiling-high stone-clad fireplace, and built-in bookcases chasing each other along three of the walls, and decided Gregory was a liar. A liar, or blinded by class and familiarity to how remarkable the space was.
November 27, 2025 at 5:33 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
November 25 #WIPsnips – “system”

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." Sure, okay Keats, whatever you say. But why have truth when its simulacrum is so shiny and fun? A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.”
The well-lit, clean brick of the hotel’s façade was a rebuke to the sleaze and grime of the streets they’d just navigated, sticking out like a single, healthy tooth in a row of rotters. Red-waistcoated doormen ushered them through the entrance to a plush lobby, all thick Persian rugs and many-antlered deer trophies suspended from oak-paneled walls. Guests lounged in low-slung leather and velvet club chairs in front of a marble fireplace in full flicker, even in the heat of July. It was ridiculous and de trop and Jenny loved it, in spite of its brazen artifice. Perhaps because of it. With the particular confidence that comes from being born filthy rich and growing up “oh, you know, everywhere”—everywhere being Hong Kong, London, Kuala Lumpur, and (tragically, according to her) Dayton, Ohio—Tessa led the others deeper into the lobby. The tightly chignoned hostess standing sentinel at the velvet curtain took Tessa at her word that they were meeting a hotel guest. And without any fanfare besides the low growl of Eartha Kitt on the sound system, Jenny’s summer worlds slapped into one another.
November 25, 2025 at 5:46 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
Yes, I am capable of caring about dumbass shit like this. #TheGame
Screen cap showing the current score of the Game, with Yale on 45 points and Harvard 28. The poster is delighted but total annihilation would be better.
November 22, 2025 at 8:15 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
November 20 #WIPsnips – “special”

Ah, mud season. A glorious time of the year in northern New England. Lainey’s stuck in more than just physical gloop, though, and there’s no better place for her to seek clarity than Carter’s Woods. A snip from “This Ends Now” which is with my betas right now!
Mud season around these parts is no joke. This winter brought more rain than flakes, John Babbitt told me, so the ground soaked up water like a thirsty sponge. And with the trees being slow to bud and drink all that rain back up, some of the roads through the Falls were worse than ever. Even the old timers spooning Carla’s special spicy tomato soup into their beards down at the Lazy Daisy swore they’d not seen the back roads so bad in fifty years. Biblical, they called it, and these are not men prone to overstatement. You don’t mess with the thick stuff. It oozes up through the gravel, hungry for ankles and tires alike. It’ll strand you inside as easy as a blizzard, but at least you can plow snow once you’ve dug a hole out of your house. Mud just sticks around for a couple of months while the earth decides to wake up. And this year, Mother Nature was pretty comfy in bed. With all this in mind, I struck out toward the Sugden Trail anyway, bound for Carter’s Woods at the raw edge of April, right in the thick of mud season. I’d been untangling my existential crises and general fuckups along this stretch of paradise since I was old enough to ride my Huffy up and over the sharp incline of Hymnal Hill, puffing all the way. Where else would I bring my latest debacle? Not the Lazy Daisy, where Cheyenne Morgan would pat my cheek and tell me I was looking a little peaked after she cleared away what was left of my slice of apple pie.
November 20, 2025 at 5:26 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
November 19 #WIPsnips – “third”

Waiting for a breakfast sandwich, Jenny wonders: is she more than just a convenient body for Gregory this summer? She must be, if his texts are to be believed. By summer’s end, she’s going to wish she’d just been convenient. A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.”
By Thursday, she’d heard from him twice, very briefly. Once was to say how he couldn’t stop seeing her everywhere on campus, in the corridors of Lang Hall, on the library steps, on a bench in the Shakespeare Garden. “Stop haunting me,” he’d joked. “I’ve got enough unruly spirits in my life.” The next was a series of texts, received as she sprinted from Margaret’s office to collect a replacement BEC (no B, and Margaret Dees wasn’t satisfied with an EC): » Free tonight? I’m back at 5. Got Thorne to find me somewhere closer to you. » Bowery Hotel. Do you know the bar? You probably do, you seem to go everywhere. Say you’ll come. » I can’t wait to touch you again. But then again, if you knew the things I’ve been thinking about you since Tuesday night, you’d never let me touch you again. » Say yes. Please say yes. She scrolled through the chain twice, then a third time, as she waited for Julio at the bodega to assemble a replacement sandwich. Her skin prickled like she’d stepped into sub-arctic air conditioning after a long walk across Central Park. It was barely nine o’clock in the morning and Gregory was already consumed by thoughts of her. That had to count for something more than convenience.
November 19, 2025 at 5:40 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
November 16 #WIPsnips – “run”

“Just for fun,” Gregory says when he takes Jenny to Bergdorf Goodman. “Only dress-up,” she insists. But when a sales assistant spins a fairytale about a dress, Jenny’s tempted to accept his offer of making fantasy a reality. A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.”
But as in any storybook, it was the third dress that was just right. Right, and deceptively simple, with a low scoop neck and an Empire waist, cut higher in the front than in the back. Featherlight black chiffon fluttered on the hanger as Violet held it still for their approval. A length of silk climbed from the skirt’s front hem to the shoulder in a liquid line, making Jenny want to trace it and figure out why it reminded her of a Moebius strip. Violet twirled it on the hanger so they could get a better view of the back, where a chapel-length train drooped onto the floor. “Alexander McQueen. From his ‘Girl Who Lived in a Tree’ collection, which—sorry if I gush a little here. I just love the story behind it.” Jenny slid her palm along the fabric, its faint waffle weave a surprise. “What’s the story?” “It’s a fairy tale.” Violet turned the dress around again, running a finger along the squared-off scoop of the neckline. “Once upon a time, there was a feral girl who lived in a tree. It was very, very dark up there in the tree, but it was the girl’s home. It was all she knew.” There was that buzz again, the honeybee’s beating wings from the Strand, from Ludlow Street, from the bar of the Bowery Hotel, a hypnotizing drone. “And one day,” Violet continued, pointing to the fine line of stitches forming the Empire cut to the bodice, “the girl spotted a handsome prince through the branches. She wanted to meet him, even though she had never climbed down before. Even though she had never felt the sun on her skin. But her curiosity was greater than her fears, so down she came. And when her feet met the earth for the very first time, she transformed into a beautiful princess in a sumptuous gown.” “Just like this one,” Jenny said softly. “What happened to the princess?” “She married her handsome prince, of course.” Violet folded the dress over her arm. “And one day she became a queen.”
November 16, 2025 at 5:57 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
November 14 #WIPsnips – “week”

It’s not that she’d rather hang with Gregory than her roommate Hallie—because Jenny definitely doesn’t. But she’s in NYC to burst from her chrysalis, and figures the soundtrack to metamorphosis is more likely Haydn than hipster. A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.”
If Jenny was honest, and she did try to be honest in most things, a midnight show in a marginally cooled Brooklyn basement on a Thursday night sounded like two hours of getting mashed into other people’s sweat-soaked bodies while music she could listen to just fine on her iPod mini blew out her eardrums. But Hallie was insistent. “This is the cultural zeitgeist we’re talking about,” she said, flopping onto her stomach next to where Jenny sat on the living room floor. She propped her head of sproingy curls in her hands and affected the expression of a beatific Pre-Raphaelite muse. “Pitchfork basically anointed them folk rock gods last month.” Jenny continued flipping through that week’s New Yorker, looking for the short piece in “Goings on About Town” about the Brentano String Quartet concert Gregory was taking her to the following evening. “So you said.” “I mean, this is the kind of thing you can do when you’re in New York, know what I mean?” Hallie blew at an errant ringlet determined to obscure her eye. “This is part of why we’re here.” “What, to get bankers to buy us overpriced drinks at some hipster bar in Park Slope?” “They’re not all bankers, J. Some of them are lawyers.”
November 14, 2025 at 5:22 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
November 11 #WIPsnips – “burger”

In this snip from “This Ends Now,” Lainey reflects on the hellscape that was dating in her late 30s in Los Angeles, before future husband Scott barged into her life. NOT THAT THE AUTHOR KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT THIS HELLSCAPE AND IS THANKFUL FOR ESCAPING IT. (Ahem.)
What was more shocking was how they all talked about their feelings all the time, including the men. Especially the men. And not only Scott. Half the guys in L.A. I went out with before him confused “date” with “psychoanalysis with bottle service.” Over expensive burgers and strip mall sushi, I learned all about their grasping ex-wives, their well-paid but soul-sucking jobs, the kids (often very young) being kept from their doting daddies by she-devil moms. Look, I tried to give each putz—Kevin or Stu or Trevor—a chance. Maybe he’s nervous, I’d say to myself. Maybe he wants me to understand he’s in touch with his feelings. But if we got halfway through our oysters and he hadn’t asked me a thing about my life, I’d flag the waiter—hey, can I have another sauvignon blanc? The gloomier my date—Gianluca or Brad or whoever—got, the more glasses followed. I don’t feel too bad about it, even now. I got fed and watered; they got some therapy. Sometimes I let them go down on me back at their shitty divorce apartments, if I wanted to. I didn’t usually. I rarely saw any of them again.
November 11, 2025 at 5:31 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
November 9 #WIPsnips – “picture”

On one of those blistering summer Sundays in NYC when you feel like your toenails are sweating, cooling off at the Met is good idea. It would be a better idea if Gregory could stop being a condescending prick for an hour. A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.”
The museum quietened as they moved from gallery to gallery, their footsteps soft upon the polished floors as they entered the American Wing. The rooms narrowed here, the lighting dimmed, the air chilly enough that Jenny rubbed her arms as they paused in front of painting upon painting. Gregory kept rattling on about how Homer and Bierstadt and Remington captured the essential loneliness of America as its people pushed ever further west. “Your people,” he said at one point with another pulse to her hand, but she didn’t squeeze back. He was so curious about Iowa, at times peppering her with strange questions that made her wonder if he’d ever stepped foot in a state that didn’t border one ocean or another. Was there really a gigantic butter cow at the county fair? (Yes.) Was high school football a religion? (Blasphemous, but not untrue.) Was sex ed limited to abstinence and shame? Jenny had given him a long look for that one. “Gregory. I was raised by two progressives who caucused for Howard Dean in a church basement. They made sure I knew how to put a condom on a banana by sophomore year of high school.” He’d called that hot, which seemed to miss the point. She’d let him kiss her anyway.
November 9, 2025 at 6:06 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
I only succeeded by keeping this in mind
A thoughtful raccoon looks out of a car window with the text in white bold superimposed over the image: Just because you're trash doesn't mean you can't do great things. It's called garbage can, not garbage cannot
November 8, 2025 at 9:14 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
UMM THIS JUST HAPPENED
The poster has just completed a full developmental re-edit of her manuscript and this image--allegedly proof--consisting only of black text on a white background states: THE END Eighth draft/developmental re-edit complete: November 8, 2025 10:15 AM
November 8, 2025 at 6:32 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
November 8 #WIPsnips – “little”

Sometimes it’s size, and sometimes it’s perspective. Jenny and Gregory are discussing Shelley’s “Mont Blanc,” but is that really all they’re talking about? As he likes to tell his students, “There’s no text without subtext.” A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.”
“Gregory,” she said, and the shape of it was wobbly in her mouth. She decided she liked it. “I guess… I get what it means to be in awe of vastness. Like, back in Mansfield—that’s where I’m from in Iowa, it’s up by the Minnesota border—sometimes, I’d be outside at night, just to look at the stars, and I felt so small. Like the night sky stretched on forever, and here I was, one miniscule person, but that was okay. That my smallness was my place in the world.” Gregory leaned closer again, even though Malcolm had turned the music down a few songs ago. “Go on.” “But Shelley isn’t just talking about Mont Blanc, about the mountain, is he? He’s talking about that moment when you’re facing down something enormous, something completely unconscious of you, little you, and…” She trailed off, embarrassed. She’d never exposed herself like this to anyone, let alone to a teacher, and she ducked her head. “And?” The room’s warmth squeezed the breath from her lungs, like she was drowning without a drop of water nearby. She looked up, and Gregory’s brown eyes were kind, so kind, had she ever known someone so kind? “And beautiful. Beautiful, and terrifying. Beneath the sky, I was nothing to the stars, no matter how beautiful I thought they were. The vastness scares me, but I have to look.” Gregory—for he was Gregory now, as he ever would be from now on—exhaled. “‘Power dwells apart in its tranquility,’” he recited. “‘Remote, serene, and inaccessible…’ Inaccessible, but we can’t keep ourselves from trying to touch it, can we?” Jenny nodded and finished her glass. “You’re right, Gregory.” Yes, she liked the shape of his name in her mouth just fine.
November 8, 2025 at 3:43 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
How did I not know you are a fellow Nutmegger???
An anime-style character wearing a UConn hat and a Whalers jersey holds a slice of New Haven-style pizza in one hand and a bottle of Two Roads beer in the other, standing in front of the Hartford skyline. Text at the bottom reads "CONNECTICUT MENTIONED" in white capital letters.
November 8, 2025 at 5:19 AM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
November 6 #WIPsnips – “penultimate”

Hoo boy, reaching into the vaults for this synonym. Somewhere out there on the interwebs lurks the 500k fake blog of a character I created with my writing buddy @kirkrafferty.com for the purposes of forum mischief-making. This was part of her entry for 1/10/20.
The days in this new year are passing too quickly, filled up by all of the very last tasks required to pack up our lives in Berkeley and transplant ourselves to the sunny kingdom by the sea — truly by the sea this time, as our new apartment is a scant five blocks from the beach. On a slightly dismal Friday morning — my second-to-last in the once-tidy A-frame studio — I ticked off my duties, one by one. ☒ Clean bathtub ☒ Beat rag rug ☒ Countertops cleaned with vinegar and lemon spray ☒ Sweep deck ☒ Books back to library (check in loft to make sure Alex not hiding any) By lunchtime the day’s list of chores had shrunk to the one that made my head hurt even more than the fumes from the Ka-Boom bathroom cleaner. ☐ Call Julian
November 6, 2025 at 5:28 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
GREEN DOT x CLEOPATRA AND FRANKENSTEIN

SURFACE TENSION: The problem with studying women who make bad choices? You start to see yourself all over the syllabus. Jenny’s entanglement with her English professor isn’t fiction, but she’s starting to wish it was. #A #UP #W #QuestPit
A collage of photos: a young woman in repose with her eyes closed, in half-profile, sun reflecting on her face; a man’s hand pushing an elevator button; John Singer Sargent’s “Portrait of Madame X,” a painting of a young woman in a sleeveless black dress; a black and white photo of a man embracing a woman from behind, in front of what looks like hotel room window sheers; red and white dahlia flowers on a black background; looking over the shoulder of a person reading a manuscript; a black and white photo taken from the vantage of a woman looking down at her black high heels; a view down a hallway where doorways are visible on the walls; a collection of botanical books open to pages with flowers; a black and white photo of a hotel bed, with an open book, a room service plate, and what looks like recent signs of intimacy; a colorful row of books on a shelf; the title of the WIP “Surface Tension” is superimposed in a central rectangle.
November 5, 2025 at 9:09 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
PINEAPPLE STREET x SANDWICH

THIS ENDS NOW: A serial marriage-jilter hits a swanky wellness retreat to learn why she keeps fleeing perfect husbands. But healing means facing her nastiest ghost: the manipulative, brilliant first love whose poison still runs in her veins. #A #UP #Q #QuestPit
A collage: Row 1: Snowy red covered bridge surrounded by bare winter trees and icy branches; close-up of a person removing a gold wedding ring from their finger; vintage map of Northern Vermont showing towns like St. Johnsbury and Walden in pastel tones; text in white serif font on a dark green background: “This Ends Now,” accented with a red and orange autumn leaf graphic. Row 2: a woman kneeling on a windowsill, peering out a rain-flecked window next to 2 lit candles, with city lights glowing outside and icicles hanging from the window frame; a vase of pink carnations on a desk beside a stack of hardcover journals and scattered trinkets including a journal with pressed flowers. Row 3: A man and a woman embracing on a couch in low lighting, with the woman kissing his forehead while she sits on his lap; a dimly lit, narrow library aisle lined with tall shelves, stretching into a warmly lit vanishing point, an image from Yale’s Sterling Library stacks; a woman reading a typed document marked with red handwritten editorial notes; a hand holding a lit match in darkness with the flame casting a warm glow.
November 5, 2025 at 6:14 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
THE RACHEL INCIDENT × THE GUEST

SURFACE TENSION: As Jenny analyzes literary heroines who trade freedom for security, her professor's seductive brilliance lures her into the same trap. Academic theory turns to nightmarish praxis as her thesis begins reading like her diary. #A #UP #W #QuestPit
A collage of photos: John Singer Sargent’s “Portrait of Madame X,” a painting of a young woman in a sleeveless black dress; a classroom with a dark green chalkboard illuminated by the sun, with several wooden desks; library books on a shelf held behind iron bars; a man and woman embracing, both in rather woolly sweaters; a picture taken over the shoulder of a woman who is holding a polaroid picture of another woman; several drooping, dying flowers against a dark background; 7 or 8 old books, lying on floorboards, and with their pages opened as if the books had been dropped; a pink and white flip phone with a heart charm on its closed cover, next to a bottle of pink nail polish and a pink lipgloss; a black and white photo of a young woman in ¾ profile with her eyes mostly closed—over this the title of the WIP “Surface Tension” is superimposed.
November 5, 2025 at 2:41 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
ALL FOURS x THE WEDDING PEOPLE

THIS ENDS NOW: 2 husbands, 3 hometowns, 1 wedding planner ready to stop staging messy exits from her own marriages. But there's no breaking the cycle until Lainey confronts her clever, cunning first love, who's still dying to put her in her place. #A #UP #Q #QuestPit
A collage of photos: row 1 (l-r): the interior of Yale University’s Sterling Memorial Library, showing a Gothic cathedral-like entrance; a classic red Vermont farmhouse in winter, covered in snow, nestled among bare trees; a woman silhouetted against a frosted window, while sunlight spills through the window; row 2 (l-r): two hands reaching for each other in low lighting against a black background; a dark-haired woman floating face upwards in water, surrounded by white flowers, her eyes open; Spilled glass candle with wax still aflame, flickering against a black backdrop; row 3 (l-r): Sunlight streaming through a quiet pine forest, illuminating a narrow dirt path; black and white photo of a person gripping the back of another person’s head from behind ; a man’s hand clasping a woman’s hand showing her wedding ring, with a snow-covered fir tree in the background; row 4 (l-r): three antique keys on twine; dark green leaves, covered in dew; the title of the novel, “This Ends Now” written on a scrap of spiral bound, lined notepaper.
November 5, 2025 at 11:18 AM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
November 4 #WIPsnips – “steel”

Jenny’s desperately trying not to think about the various uses of neckties and what Gregory might do with them on this shopping trip. While her tie-picker is perfectly calibrated, her man-picker's thoroughly busted. A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.”
Jenny clutched the tie while he flicked through a nearby rack for a solid color shirt in his size. He yanked a crisp, off-white button-down from the rack and ducked into one of the fitting rooms. Through a gap in the cubicle’s dark curtains, she caught a flash of his undershirt as he changed and did not look away as he slipped each button on the shirt through its matching hole. When his eye met hers in the fitting room mirror, the necktie she was still holding fluttered through her grip, landing on the tips of her ballet flats. Gregory smiled and slid open the curtain along its stainless-steel rod. “I think you have something of mine,” he said, extending his arm. “I’d ask you to tie me up, but that’s probably not the right wording.” Don’t think of it. Don’t think of it. “Very funny,” she said instead, scooping it up from the floor to drape it over his arm. “Plus, I’m better at it than you.” When her eyes widened, he cleared his throat in his fist and added: “At tying a four-in-hand, that is.” She studied how he knotted the silk around his neck, how he wrapped one length around the other, how something so uncomplicated as a strip of cloth might metamorphose into a blossom of gray. The transformation was complete: serious, approachable; scholar, aesthete. “Perfect,” she said as he turned to face her, and she meant it.
November 4, 2025 at 5:52 PM