Flaiđ and Merry-wings ...

Flaiđ sat very still on the log as the sylphids fluttered around ou.  Ou ignored the swoops that drew them closer and closer to ou's ears, ignored their chirps and titters, ignored their mocking attempts to mimic speech.  Flaiđ even ignored the little mouse roars they made imitating Aarthurum's growling, no doubt wondering why the old bear hadn't accompanied him this time.  Ou sat and waited until they grew confused that their usual annoying behaviour just wasn't going to get a rise out of him.

Out of the corner of ou's eye Flaiđ saw the blurred mass of them as they gathered to discuss what might be the matter with ou, ou's keen hearing picking up their whispered voices but not the words they spoke.

At last one sylphid broke away from the group and flew toward ou, hovering in the air in front of ou's face.

"Hello." ou said softly, seeing a sylphid up close for the first time.  She was small, yet tall for her frame.  Her skin was radiant, reflecting light in many colours.  Her wings, though blurred in movement, appeared translucent and there were four of them, two on each side of her body.  Her face was pixieish, thin, yet heart-shaped, her chin pointed, her nose upturned, and her sapphire eyes wide set.  Her hair was light and tinged the colour of moss and as fine as a spider's web.

She hovered in the air not two hands-breadths away from ou's face, her eyes studying ou's intensely.

"My name is Flaiđ." ou said and she tittered.  Then she raised her chin and howled the way a mouse might howl trying to imitate a wolf.  So she knew what ou's name meant in the old tongue.

"Yes, you're very clever and very funny." ou said and smiled, "But what is your name?"

The sylphid watched Flaiđ's eyes for half a moment, then flew high around ou in an arc and hovered next to ou's right ear.  Her wings beating the air and fluttering ou's fur.

"Nýddllawœn." she whispered in ou's ear, then fluttered away to hover in front of ou's face once more.

"Nýddllawœn." Flaiđ repeated her name softly, then smiled - it too was from the old tongue of this land.

"Merry-wings." Flaiđ said, translating it.

Nýddllawœn fluttered and performed a loop in front of Flaiđ, letting loose her high-pitched wolf howl in three ululations of "Wooo-wooo-wooo!" and when she resumed her station in front of Flaiđ, the rest of the sylphid took up the howl as well.

Flaiđ waited until they settled, then slowly raised ou's hand as not to frighten her and braced it against ou's knee, palm downward,

"I have a task for you and your sisters, Nýddllawœn." ou said, "How would you like to torment some very bad men who are destroying your forest?"

Nýddllawœn slowed her fluttering and sat down on the back of Flaiđ's hand, tucking her wings behind her, gazing at him and listening.

"I'd like it if they never slept through the night." Flaiđ began to tell her ou's plan, and as ou did, dozens of other sylphids drew close around them, filling the air with their soft fluttering wings.

"Wolf & Moon'

Aaron D McClelland
Penticton, BC

Author's Website

Wolf & Moon ...

My first attempt at a YA fantasy novel ...

 "Open the door." Laird Owyn ordered his soldiers as Deien Rowles the Learned, lifted one of the brands from the fire, the tip glowing almost white in the dark night.

"And we shall see what this creature has to say." Rowles smiled as he stared at the bright brand.

As the door swung open and the torchlight lit the inside of the gaol, ou saw the Faie.  It was a girl, ou guessed by the length of her hair and her filthy woolen robe.  She was a tiny thing, kneeling, hunched over, wrists manacled and held by heavy chains fixed to the floor.  Her feet and hands were filthy, her hair a tangled cobweb laced with dead leaves and twigs.

As Flaiđ stepped around a soldier to get a better look at her, ou saw her face in profile, her features delicate, her nose slightly upturned at its tip, freckles across her cheeks and forehead.

In all, the sight of her made Flaiđ want to cry.  She was defenceless and alone, surrounded by men who were about to torture her for what she knew.

"She's beautiful." Flaiđ whispered, feeling an ache in ou's chest that this child of the forest was about to suffer before ou's eyes.  She turned her head at his voice and looked up at ou and Flaiđ felt a chill when ou saw the flames reflected from within her emerald eyes.

Flaiđ knew something was wrong and was already stepping back when the manacles dropped from her wrists and ou was already turning to run when she sprang and the screams began.

Not her screams; these were the screams of the soldiers and ultimately Laird Owyn and Rowels himself that chased Flaiđ across the bailey toward their waggon.  But Merryman Andrú had heard the screams as well and was whipping their horses toward the open gate, scattering the soldiers that had just arrived and those about to depart.

"Merryman Andrú!"  Merryman!" Flaiđ called to him, "Don't leave me!  Don't leave your faithful Flaiđ!"

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

In 1789, William H. Marshall recorded the existence of a dialectal English epicene pronoun, singular ou : "'Ou will' expresses either he will, she will, or it will". Marshall traced ou to 14th century Middle English epicene a; having characteristics typical of the other sex.

Beta readers ...

 

I'm looking for a couple beta readers for Leaving Wonderland (50,000 words).  What you're in for;

• Espionage thriller with fast paced action
• Well researched spy techniques and lexicon
• A love story that is awkward and mysterious
• Frequent forays into the LGBTQ+ community
• Cis/trans love scenes

What I would like from you;

• Feedback on the novel; the good, the bad, the ugly
• Opinions from the LGBTQ+ community to see if I 'got it right'
• Review comments I can use on the back cover and inside jacket

I can send the finished novel as a .epub, .mobi, pdf.  If you're interested, hit me up at aaron@gangsterstory.ca (copy/paste) or through my website.

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

Fugue ...

His home fluctuated in size at times.

Tonight it was so expansive that he'd gotten lost in it.  He walked long corridors that led to empty rooms, studs and beams exposed, plaster and lath of the ceilings below requiring him to walk as a tightrope walker walks, balanced on the narrow edges of the floor joists below.  He knew if he brought his weight down on the lath he would plunge through it and fall for eternity.

He picked his careful way through the windowless maze, passing through doorways that led ever deeper into this foreign house, now his prison.

Where is Lauren?

At other times, the house shrunk around him until all that remained was his kitchen and his bedroom, both rooms becoming so small that it felt like the walls were closing in, the doors and windows shrinking to a size impossible to pass through.

Both iterations held him prisoner.

Where am I?

"Nest of the Coquatrix"

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

New Covers ...

I've redesigned the covers of the Gangster series.

Author's Website

https://www.amazon.com/Aaron-D-McClelland/e/B07HLLSJXD

Transgender Realities ...

 

In my most recently completed novel, Leaving Wonderland, one of my main characters is a male-to-female transgendered Mossad Officer - (it's an espionage thriller with an unconventional love story).  I'd always wanted to include a trans character in a piece, and did so in my short story Royal & Rene, and I enjoyed the love story between the pair so much I used them for Leaving Wonderland.  I even included a couple steamy love scenes that needed to be there to drive the story forward.

There still exists so much ignorance about the T in LGBTQ, that I want to do my part to support them.  As a mental health therapist I have worked with transgendered adolescents and found them to be no different than others in their particular gender basket.  But don't take my word for it ...

Research

Since the advent of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine, neuroscience has expanded its scope of understanding.  By stimulating the brain with sights, sounds, and tactical experiences during a fMRI scan, researches can watch in realtime how the brain functions.  What they discovered was there are subtle differences between male and female brains, not just in their function, but in their structure as well.  Researchers at facilities around the world got so good at this they can look at an fMRI scan and tell you if the patient is male or female.

A few years ago, some of these research facilities started to look at the brains of transgendered people and what they discovered was what trans people have been trying to tell us for years; it is the brain that determines gender, NOT the genitals.

My own observations about transgendered children and youth is that the emergence of their gender identity begins shortly after they achieve theory of mind.  Typically at five years old, trans children will begin to tell their parents and others they are a girl or a boy, NOT the gender assigned to them at birth.  At that age thoughts of sexuality can be excluded, so we are left with a child speaking of their identity.

Be Accepting and Kind

Imagine living in a world that rejects and vilifies you simply for being who you are.  Being surrounded by people who mock the core of your identity, and label your very existence as 'wrong'.

The suicide statistics amongst unsupported transgendered adolescents are shocking; 19% of trans teens had seriously considered suicide, 15% had made a plan to commit suicide, 8% had attempted suicide and 2.5% had been injured by a suicide attempt.  Amongst transgendered adolescents these rates drop by 40% if they are accepted and supported by a single adult and drop exponentially the more they are surrounded by caring adults.

We have never lived in a totally binary world and it's time to accept and embrace that.  I urge my fellow authors to include transgendered characters in their stories.  Its pretty simple; just write them the way you'd write any other male or female character.

If we make this our normal, the world will follow.

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

First time for everything ...

 Nest of the Coquatrix contains many firsts for me.

• It's my first psychological horror as we follow psychologist Doctor Nigel Blason feel his mind slowly come apart
• It's the first book I've ever written a complete outline for; the setting, the build, the evolving relationships between colleagues and patients
• It's the first book that 3/4 of the way to completion I completely changed the ending and had to return to page one
• It's the first book I've written without a love story in it.  There was no room for that in this
• It's the first book which doesn't have a 'good-guy'.  There are no heroes in this story nor really are there any villains
• Lastly; it's the first story I've written that will come with a strong warning.  This isn't a novel for the faint of heart.  It deals with a dark fetish subculture that most people are not familiar with and I'm thankful for that.  Even I have cringed as I write some of the scenes and if you are easily triggered I promise it will give you nightmares

Coquatrix: (kä-kɘ-trɘs) - a mythical serpent with lethal breath and gaze, whose nest can be located by the scorched earth surrounding it; a cockatrice, it was said, could only be slain by seeing its reflection in a mirror

Think; American Psycho meets The Sixth Sense.

You get the picture.

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website