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To celebrate the launch of Children of Dusk, my first book, The Curious Snowflake is #FREE on KDP from 12/14-12/16!!! Go get yourself a copy, and if you do, please leave an honest review, it’s the biggest help you can give an #IndieAuthor

a.co/d/gOUsVID

#FreeBook #WriteSky

December 14, 2025 at 2:02 PM

Author James C Struck

@curioussnowflake.bsky.social

Three days until my #urbanfantasy novel Children of Dusk launches!!!! So as part of my #ChapterCountdown here’s an excerpt from chapter 3.

#YAFantasy #WriteSky #IndieAuthor

December 13, 2025 at 4:06 AM

Author James C Struck

@curioussnowflake.bsky.social

#ChapterCountdown time! 5 days until Children of Dusk launches, so here’s an excerpt from chapter 5.

#writesky #IndieAuthor #YAFantasy

December 11, 2025 at 4:04 PM

Author James C Struck

@curioussnowflake.bsky.social

Day 10 of my Chaptet Countdown!

#indieauthor #WriteSky #YAFantasy

December 6, 2025 at 5:07 AM

Author James C Struck

@curioussnowflake.bsky.social

Join me for my Chapter Countdown! My #YAFantasy novel Children of Dusk launches in 11 days, so here is an excerpt of me reading from Chapter 11.

#WriteSky #IndieAuthor #UrbanFantasy #QueerWriters

December 5, 2025 at 2:16 AM

Author James C Struck

@curioussnowflake.bsky.social

To ramp up for the launch of Children of Dusk, I’m posting a Launch Countdown video each day until the 15th! Each day I will post an excerpt from the chapter based on how many days are left, here’s one from Chapter 13.

#IndieAuthor #WriteSky #YAFantasy

December 3, 2025 at 4:50 PM

Reposted by Author James C Struck

Bradley Ramsey

@imagine2create.bsky.social

Some people have turkey on Thanksgiving. Others have ham, but us writers?

We're feasting on stories. 😂

#writingcommunity #writesky #meme #thanksgiving

November 27, 2025 at 7:50 PM

Author James C Struck

@curioussnowflake.bsky.social

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

Author James C Struck

@curioussnowflake.bsky.social

#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

Author James C Struck

@curioussnowflake.bsky.social

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

Author James C Struck

@curioussnowflake.bsky.social

#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

The staircase went down perhaps thirty steps, curving back on itself, then opened onto a chamber that looked to run the entire length of the house. It appeared to be a natural cave, but the ceiling had been buttressed here and there with stout wooden pillars. The moment Tim set foot into it, he was almost overwhelmed by the sense of power in the room. This place had seen weaving the likes of which he could barely contemplate.
In the center of the room jutted a massive, slightly asymmetrical crystal of smoky quartz, perhaps four feet tall and as thick around as a tree trunk. Every facet and surface of the crystal was etched with fine, spidery symbols, and looking at them gave Tim a strange, reverberating sensation in his mind, like when he’d first heard the twins speaking Housetongue. Vee took one look at the crystal and stopped dead in her tracks.
“You built your house on a leypoint?”
“Young lady,” said Annika archly, “how old do you think I am?”

November 22, 2025 at 3:21 PM

Author James C Struck

@curioussnowflake.bsky.social

#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

No, and don’t try to get me off subject." She shifted again. “It’s easiest to draw the energies if you have an obvious source: a campfire, a stream, a forest, an open field, but that’s not always convenient. So the more usual way is from the four cardinal directions.”
“From the what?”
“Like a compass. Look." She reached inside her shirt, pulled out a pendant on a long silver chain, and held it so he could see it. About the size of an old silver dollar, it did look a bit like a map compass. A central square of black surrounded by four triangles pointing up, down, left and right in green, red, blue and yellow, respectively, bound in a circle of silver. “This is the symbol of the Children of Dusk. It’s tradition that we each get a piece of jewelry with this on it for our thirteenth birthdays, a pendant for girls and a ring for boys." She indicated each of the triangles with her thumb as she talked. “North is Earth, East is Air, South is Fire, West is Water.” She then pulled the chain up over her head and pressed the pendant into his left hand. “Hold that and close your eyes.”

November 21, 2025 at 2:36 PM

Author James C Struck

@curioussnowflake.bsky.social

#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

Seekers usually,” he cast another glare at the twins,” introduce potentials to this world slowly, let them get used to the idea and learn their strengths. But while what these two did with you was unorthodox to say the least, I cannot fault them for their excitement.”
“Why? What’s so special about me?”
“Dude,” Gideon sat up and leaned in towards Tim, elbows on knees, “you do things instinctually that normally take people months to learn, stuff that even Vee and I couldn’t get that fast, and we were born Duskers. That’s why I was kinda hesitant about you at first.”
“What, did you think I was a Midnighter in disguise or something?”
“Yeah, he did,” said Vee, and her brother shot her a dirty look. “What, you did!”
“So did you, Vee,” Tim cut into the middle of their budding argument. “That’s why you got all weird after you healed me.”
“Healed you?" Kieran looked concerned. “From what?”
“He got jumped by some jocks, beat him up pretty bad. Luckily we were there to bail him out." Vee sat up and leaned in towards Kieran. “K, he can draw all five already.”
Kieran gave her an incredulous look, then got up out of his chair and crouched down in front of Tim, holding out his hands.
“Show me.”

$Tim shrugged and took the older man’s hands. He closed his eyes, breathed out, and reached. Immediately, all the elements were there, shimmering at the edge of his consciousness, ready to be used. He drew hard on all five, feeling a puckish urge to show off a little, and started weaving, making it up as he went, layering the elements together almost by whim. He felt a little how he imagined Jackson Pollack must’ve felt, splattering and scribbling away on his massive canvases. Layer upon layer, finer and finer detail, he pushed his concentration to the limit, his eyes rolling back in his head. “Tim, what are you….oh my god." Vee’s voice was a hushed whisper, almost awed. “Whoa,” muttered Gideon. Tim slowly opened his eyes, still concentrating with all his might on holding the dozens of elemental threads in place. Hanging in the gloom above them was a massive spiral of light, a fractal pattern twenty feet across, shining with all the colors of the rainbow and then some. The twins gazed raptly up at it, the colors playing across their faces like Christmas lights, and even Kieran seemed impressed. He looked at Tim with a mixture of pride, amusement, and consternation. “Very pretty, but I’d rather you not make something like that inside my house. Release the layers slowly, otherwise that thing is going to go off like a skyrocket.”$

November 20, 2025 at 7:34 PM

Author James C Struck

@curioussnowflake.bsky.social

I am taking part in the #HumanVoicesOnly event tomorrow and I have a live TT author interview Sunday! Watch the video for all the details!

#writesky #indieauthors

www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8UdvPoD/

Tomorrow, 11/21, as part of the #humanvoicesonly event, @Nicole Fikes | Narrator 🎙️ will be posting an excerpt from Children of Dusk! Also, on Sunday, 11/23 at 8pm EST I will be appearing on a live in...

TikTok video by Author James C Struck

www.tiktok.com

November 20, 2025 at 5:34 PM

Author James C Struck

@curioussnowflake.bsky.social

#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

But yeah, K’s right,” said Gideon, standing and stretching, “we need to boogie before the Turning.”
“The what?”
“Time’s different here,” Vee explained. “How long do you think we’ve been here, Tim?”
“Umm,” Tim thought about it and was completely flummoxed. It felt like almost no time had passed, like they’d just arrived, yet he knew he’d talked for a long time.
“Think that’s a trip?” Gideon grinned at Tim. “Go feel your mug of tea.”
Tim walked over and picked up his drink. Two-thirds of it was gone, but the remainder was just as piping-hot as it had been when Kieran gave it to him.
“That’s impossible,” he muttered.
“No,” said Kieran, “that’s time in the Duskrealms. It moves in fits and starts, moments staying suspended then hours popping by in a blink. It’s always twilight here, always the between-time, but it occurs at dawn as well, not just dusk, and sometimes the shift from one to the other is rather jarring. We call those abrupt leaps forward a Turning, and once you spend some time here you will learn to feel when one’s coming. There’s one about to occur, and I think it would be best to get you back before it happens.”

November 17, 2025 at 11:43 PM

Author James C Struck

@curioussnowflake.bsky.social

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

Author James C Struck

@curioussnowflake.bsky.social

#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

“I saw you at that dopey rally yesterday, right?”
“Yeah,” said Tim, and he could feel his cheeks getting hot again. “Sorry about that.”
“No, no biggie, the timing was just…” she considered for a beat, “interesting.”
“Aah, there’s that stupid thing,” said Dan at last, “now, let me see…” he started tapping and scrolling away at his phone. Suddenly Tim felt a massive wave of goosebumps run up his arms. He shuddered involuntarily, rubbing his arms with his hands, and noticed Vee watching him very closely, a hint of a smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
“Alright,” said Dan, unaware of the exchange, “how is Thursday, same time sound?”
“Perfect,” Vee replied.
“Am I rescheduling Gideon as well?”
“No, just me.”
“Gideon?” Tim asked.
“My brother. Big guy I was talking with at the rally? Looks like me but reimagined as a Neanderthal?”
“Alright, done and done,” said Dan, placing his phone back in his desk drawer and wiping his hands. “Anything else, my dear?”
“Nope, thanks Dan." She turned to the door with the same decisive, bouncing step Tim noticed the day before. She pulled it open then glanced back at Tim with a smile.
“See ya soon, Tim,” and she left

November 16, 2025 at 3:54 PM

Author James C Struck

@curioussnowflake.bsky.social

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

A long and enthusiastic 5 star review of Children of Dusk

An image describing Children of Dusk: great for all ages, page turner, great world building, unique magic system, fast read, comes out 12/15

November 16, 2025 at 11:28 AM

Author James C Struck

@curioussnowflake.bsky.social

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

Author James C Struck

@curioussnowflake.bsky.social

#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