Dezmond's October Bookshelf

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Active Stories

The Raven and the Wolf

A farmer's son and a duke's heir fell in love as children. Now, king and family demand they marry someone else.

Chapters 5 and 6 are ready to read now!

Read the first eight chapters on my subscriber website!

First two introduction chapters

Chapters 1 and 2

Chapters 3 and 4

Chapters 5 and 6

Shape of Us

Sometimes known as Kimberly, sometimes known as Nate, they've fallen for three completely different people and have no idea how to make it work. But they're trying.

The most rewarding news I have for this story is when I mentioned I was writing a trans poly story in a writing discord server, and someone asked to read it. I gave them a copy of my first draft, unedited WIP. 101k words. They read it in one week, said "10/10, would recommend" and asked for the next chapters when they're written. So, at least one person couldn't put the story down.

The Chaos Covenant: Solen's Beginning

He never wanted to be a hero. He never asked to save the world. But some mysteries are impossible to ignore, and sometimes power is the only way to get revenge.

I have officially finished the first draft of this novel!

After about three months of staring at a brick wall, I finally got the drive to write out the next scene in the book I've been procrastinating on. And then the one after that. And all the rest of them. I wrote over 10,200 words in seven days in a mad dash to the finish line. The final word count is 57,860.

The biggest editing change I made was to rename most characters. I was looking at all the fantasy names and going, why the hell do fantasy settings always have fantasy names? Why can't people just have people names? So, to keep it still vaguely-foreign but less 'I threw a bunch of letters and apostrophes together and made up some names', I chose names from babynames.com, determined by nationality, to give each race a specific, cohesive naming convention. V'rastellan got a name change to Solen, which still lives in the stellar neighborhood of names, but feels more grounded.

I'm not planning to put this in the publishing line, yet. Because of the way the first two books end on heavy relationship cliffhangers, I'm going to wait until I have the first three books all ready to go, and then publish them three to six months apart.

The Black Unicorn (placeholder title)

Remember that short story I mentioned getting an idea for a couple months ago, about a black unicorn story based on Swan Lake and the Swan Maiden? Well, I started writing it, looked at two of my new ideas on my "vibes" list, went "what if I smash it with those and make this a full novel?" and spent half a day trying to convince myself I actually wanted it to just be a short story and magnet.

I failed to convince myself.

It only has a couple pages written so far, but if it goes where I think it will, it's going to be an epic fantasy with a subverted bonded mates trope. It's also written like Unfaking It, with an "I" POV and a "you" unicorn-person.

Side Projects

Reedsy Flash Fiction Contest

The Reedsy discord server had a little flash fiction contest this week, with the prompt "write a story in under 100 words that ends with a secret being revealed." It only had a handful of entries, but mine was chosen to be featured as their story for the day on September 30.

This is actually the introductory idea to a mystery story I'm cooking up.

No-T Lipogram Rhyming Sestina

Because one isn't enough, I made a companion piece to my writer's rant about compulsory conformity in writing, but this time it was about how I often feel like I don't have anyone to talk to about writing craft. I've learned so much this last year, and I've become a Top 1% contributor on r/writing (somehow), but I still feel like people would rather listen to the easy advice. So, I wrote out those frustrations in the same structural format as the last one, but omitting the letter T this time.

I submitted both sestinas together to two literary magazines, but I probably won't hear anything back until some time between December 2026 and July 2027.

No-O Raven and Wolf

I got Chapter 2 of The Raven and the Wolf rewritten without the letter O. Somehow, I magically managed to write 1620 words without the letter O in four days, three of which I spent 90% of my free time with my family, helping my parents move.

I have both introduction chapters and Chapter 1 on my Substack, now, if you're interested in reading it.

(Yes, it's renamed The Raven and the Bear, because Wolf isn't allowed with the O. No, I don't know if I'm going to be writing the chapters where those terms are relevant. We'll see how deep I want to get into the story without an O because...)

The Lipogram Septych

A diptych is when you have two pieces of work that are connected in meaning or are complementary parts to each other.

I've decided I'm either bored enough, egotistical enough, curious enough, or some combination of the above, that I want to rewrite the first ten chapters of my novel six times, each without a different letter of the alphabet: A E O R S and T. (Sep- is a prefix for "seven", with the seventh being the original story.) I also have the complementary No-E/R first chapter, that is absolutely not getting the full treatment.

So this O-lipogram is just the first of six I'm planning to write, somewhere in between writing all my other fiction stories.

Monthly Blog Post

I didn't get any short stories written this month, so I'll share a blog post about something that's become increasingly frustrating to me: finding authors with a voice. "Voice" is thrown around as a term people are encouraged to use/find, but actually writing it and recognizing it is something people don't often see examples of. So I wrote up something to help you become a more critical reader, which can also help you decide within two to ten pages if a book is going to hold your attention.

How To Identify Author Voice As A Reader

"Voice" is a term that's thrown around a lot in writing advice, but it's not something that's easily intuited. You can give theory, like it's the words an author uses, or the sentence structure, or how much description is used. And, yes, it's all of that. But just *saying* that doesn't actually tell you what you're looking for.

When I read stories written by novices, and intermediate writers, and professionals, I can point out what level of writer they are just by the way they craft sentences.

Attempted books of the month

I'm trying to find something to recommend, I really am. But I've been coming up short over and over on my reading picks.

I found one that has a really interesting premise, a man dies and is reincarnated into a new reality every 18 minutes. But after a questionable time skip, my internal flags went off and I skipped to the end to find out he was created by an alien running an experiment, not an actual person.

I found a trans story about a trans woman who was discovering who she was. Except it was written by a cis person and read as a How To Transition manual, not a story with interiority an actual trans person would feel.

I found a spicy romance by a trans author and was wondering how they'd deal with dysphoria and/or if the character had bottom surgery. Neither. It was just a bunch of cocks with no hint of "I'm not comfortable with my natal anatomy." Which is fair, not every trans person has dysphoria about it, but it wasn't even mentioned that "I don't have any negative feelings about my genitals."

And there were others, but I won't go into all of them. You don't need an essay on every bad book I've come across.

I'd love to say, ok, maybe the indie books just aren't hitting, I'll pick up a trad published book. Except the last highly-rated trad published book I picked up was flat, slow, uninspired trope-filled, with unnecessary backstories and scenes that probably only made it in because the author is popular enough that they're allowed to get away with whatever they want.

I did pick up the audiobook of The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin. I've had it recommended over and over lately, as a trailblazer in the fantasy genre. I'll start listening to it on a four-hour drive I have to go on tomorrow. Crossing my fingers for something that keeps me past chapter three.

In Conclusion

I'd really be interested in hearing from anyone about what kinds of books you'd like me to try to find for you in my promos and newsletters. Right now, I'm aiming for LGBTQ+ romance, and I started a fairy tale promo since I have so many books inspired by those. I'm hesitant to throw a pile of erotica on everything, since I don't write that, but I do know it's the go-to romance for a lot of people.

But if you all are interested in more broad topics (or smut), I have a whole website full of authors I can search through. I obviously don't have time to read all their stories personally, but I can at least point you in a direction you might find interesting. So, send a message and let me know what kinds of stories you're interested in! My October mid-month drop already has some swaps lined up, but going into November and forward, I can curate my recommendation list to your preferences.