This, too, is magic

Out today!

A unicorn reflected in a crying eye. Art commissioned from www.kristy-serpa.com

I remember so vividly when unicorns were ruined for me. After a childhood of loving unicorn stories (it’s been 20 years, and I’m still upset that there weren’t more Unicorns of Balinor books), I remember the first time I learned that in originating stories about unicorns, there’s an underlying mythos where only virgin girls can touch a unicorn.

It broke my heart—it felt unfair, and that made me sad. (Little Celia was a precocious feminist.) I didn’t read more unicorn stories, stopped seeking them out, turned my attention to different corners of fantasy.

Over a year ago, an idea for a short story entered my head. “I wanna write a short story about a unicorn fighting magic and staying friends with a girl even though she loses her virginity,” I texted some friends. “Because friendship is magic motherfucker.”

Writing this story felt like some psychic healing for me, reclaiming something that I loved but felt driven from.

Anyway, my flash piece “This, too, is magic,” is available today in the first issue of Plott Hound Magazine. I’m so excited for it to have found such a wonderful home and to be appearing alongside such lovely stories and poems.

Image description: the cover of the first issue of Plott Hound, which depicts wolf eating a phoenix

Thanks for reading this “the life story before the recipe in the blog post—short story edition.” I hope you’ll check it out!

What I’ve Been Up To

Writing! A lot! Something happened in mid-January that made me need to aggressively escape from the world! Like all the time! I’ll let you guess what that was! Haven’t felt this way since 2020!

I’m throwing myself into a very fun first novel draft, working on a novella, a novelette, some short stories, periodically dabbling in new flash pieces.

I’ve been knitting a fair amount, been working on baby quilts for friends, been putting together my Beekeeper Quilt six years and 2.8k puffs later.

I’ve been snuggling my cats a fair amount too. Dragana napped on me for a whole thirty minutes one evening. That’s never happened before and I may never recover from it. She’s not the snuggliest girl.