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ebmoon.bsky.social
E. B. Moon (they/them) 🏴 🌱 🚀 🏳️‍⚧️
@ebmoon.bsky.social
1.2K followers 680 following 1.2K posts
Queer SFF author. Grad school dropout. Now independent scholar of eugenics and religion in pop culture. Writing a book on William Blake and Thomas Merton.

MILLIONS OF SUNS LEFT shorturl.at/PBLyN
https://ko-fi.com/ebmoon
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ebmoon.bsky.social
Kel stops by the karlek Baltigai's farm after disposing of the sacred bug he accidentally killed.

#WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts #amwriting #fantasy #darkfantasy #weirdfiction
I had nearly made my way past the mushroom fields and food clutches that ring the settlement’s southern void by the time I realized she had not followed—and that I had left my canteen behind. Near the edge of a potato field I found a squat trough of water leaned against a row of stunted grapevines, one of Baltigai’s failed experiments. I paused to drink and stripped to wipe the dust and guilt from my body under the glow of a flickering lifelamp. At the time I could not recognize it for what it was: a simulacrum of the twilit glow that late autumn rainclouds give to Raylian pastures.
September 6, 2025 at 5:21 PM
ebmoon.bsky.social
Another snip from Riyana's short story (going out on sub today or tomorrow).

#WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts #amwriting #fantasy #darkfantasy #weirdfiction
We talked for long hours about the war, and the rumors that emeralds had been found to the west, some larger than a newborn aurochs. I was tired by the time the subject turned to you, and I was subjected to that grasping curiosity that those pregnant must endure. The “How far along are you?” and the impertinent questioning of gender. I stretched myself out on the couch while your father threw open the back door to the brisk twilight air. He told us a story then, or rather, several stories, of his last assignment. I have certainly forgotten or distorted many of their details over time, though it was not even a decade ago. Many more, to be sure, were lost and changed in the same way in your father's memory. In the north they have a saying about death, and about remembrance: In time we each become the lies of others.
September 2, 2025 at 12:28 PM
ebmoon.bsky.social
Rama was originally the far-off imperial center of the short-lived TTRPG campaign I ran in 2019-2021. Now it's the far-off imperial center of the novel series I'm currently writing (starting with DELVER, which long-time readers have seen some excerpts from).

#Septopolis #Writesky #WritingCommunity
A medieval-style fortress city/castle at the base of a glacier, forming a dam from which emerge vast torrents of water. It looks a bit like a colder version of a cross between Gondor and Rivendell. PC: "Glacier Castle" by DrawingNightmare on Deviantart
September 2, 2025 at 11:46 AM
ebmoon.bsky.social
Ix'sha schemes. #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts #amwriting #fantasy #darkfantasy #weirdfiction
“You didn’t tell me about a human,” Os’kae said. Despite herself, the tone of his voice struck discordantly in her conscience. Maldi excused himself to prepare Os’kae’s sled for the journey home. “It’s nothing for you to worry about,” said Ix’sha. She looked past the old alf’s shoulder at D’ax as he reached the cave’s egress. “It will be no trouble, for the klon or for us.” Os’kae coughed. “I’m glad I came. At least this time they insulted me to my face,” he said. “I hate it when they act like I’m not here.” Ix’sha and Maldi took their time helping Os’kae back into the sled, giving D’ax room to begin his own trek back to Esker’s Flat. She had already decided to break his neck, but that must come later.
September 1, 2025 at 5:14 PM
ebmoon.bsky.social
It's the imperial capital but hasn't featured in anything I've actually written so far. This should be a fun way of fleshing out the city itself.

Some photo refs for what I imagine it looking like (but bigger): Skardu, Pakistan; Chamonix, France; Zermatt, Switzerland.

#WritingCommunity #Septopolis
A large valley between two huge mountains in the distance. Fields of green and clusters of trees are visible, along with a town and smaller human-built structures farther off. A mountain glacier that looks like a cross between a ski slope and a storm-tossed ocean. A brightly lit alpine town nestled tight in a valley between two mountains. In the distance is the Matterhorn, a huge snow-capped mountain.
September 1, 2025 at 5:02 PM
ebmoon.bsky.social
Kel encounters a strange house (built in a human style) found among the wealthier strata of the architects.

#WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts #amwriting #fantasy #darkfantasy #weirdfiction
From far off the house looked profoundly out of place. The brick was of a texture and color foreign to the earth of the region of Esker, yet it looked, I thought, like it might have been moved here, piece by piece, from another plane of reality. A ramp painted to look like wood led up to the front door from the footpath adjoining the valley. From here it would be an easy climb to the klon, if a long one. My nose indexed a myriad of compounds I had never before encountered: paints, glues, perfumes, and soaps. The blue-white glow of fluorescent lamps illuminated the open windows from within, and an artificial pond pooled with condensation, nearly overflowing to the rear of the house.
August 30, 2025 at 11:33 AM
ebmoon.bsky.social
Angel number.
1138 followers
August 29, 2025 at 3:18 PM
ebmoon.bsky.social
Ooh fun. Don't think I've ever publicly posted a map of Osian before. Big honkin' JPEG incoming...
Map of Osian.
August 29, 2025 at 3:10 PM
ebmoon.bsky.social
#WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts #amwriting #fantasy #darkfantasy #weirdfiction
The current was gentle, as it usually was in winter, and the walls of the channel rose a full meter above the water’s surface. Directly above us, the main conduit of the sombraduct pulsed and thrummed like the artery of a gigantic animal. I sank down into the water, letting my own magyyk leak out into the water around me, forming cephalopoid tentacles in the eddies. Floating prone in the water, I willed the pebbles of the channelbed to abrade my skin, scrubbing away the filth of the preceding hours. I had forgotten the cordyceps oil I’d meant to apply afterward, but I couldn’t let this delay me. Already the hour of Riyana’s meeting with Ix’sha was approaching, and I hoped to head them off before they left home. The doors of human houses held a special fascination for me.
August 29, 2025 at 11:51 AM
ebmoon.bsky.social
Anyway, much as I love Blade Runner, I think it's pretty clearly worse on gender and labor than the novel. It's aesthetically monumental but politically very shallow.

Like c'mon, it's the height of the Reagan era and Scott can't translate the tiniest bit of the novel's racial politics to film?
“The TV set shouted, “—duplicates the halcyon days of the pre-Civil War Southern states! Either as body servants or tireless field hands, the custom-tailored humanoid robot—designed specifically for YOUR UNIQUE NEEDS, FOR YOU AND YOU ALONE—given to you on your arrival absolutely free, equipped fully, as specified by you before your departure from Earth; this loyal, trouble-free companion in the greatest, boldest adventure contrived by man in modern history will provide—” It continued on and on.”
August 28, 2025 at 9:39 PM
ebmoon.bsky.social
Riyana, the Deepdark's human visitor, meets Kel for the first time, seeing him through the eyes of her anthropological training.

#WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts #amwriting #fantasy #darkfantasy #weirdfiction
The dokalf who stood before her was small for a male, no more than two meters in height, androgynous in the soft features of the face. The forehead was tall and flat, the teeth broad and gapped in the way typical of the western Arctic populations. The marks of male gender at his face overlay an older feminine sigil, now scarred over. He gave a boyish smile. No facial hair. Voice high and piping. Ears rose to a point just above the hairline, which formed a crown of two inches at its widest. The pale, paper-white skin was a stark contrast with that of herself and Shrai. She took off the unwieldy gauntlets and set them back into the trunk. She had nearly reacted with violence to an unexpected knock at the door—and with tools unsuitable for combat, which she was barely able to use without hurting herself. She was more on edge than she’d thought.
August 28, 2025 at 11:59 AM
ebmoon.bsky.social
An intimate moment between Kel and her closest friend, just before they each renounce their vows as nuns and go their separate ways forever.

#WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts #amwriting #fantasy #darkfantasy #weirdfiction
“You’re not to ask where I got it,” she whispered through a grin. The consumption of an insect, or any other animal, was a strict violation of our vows as sestren. But we were no longer sestren. Anyway I wasn’t, and she soon wouldn’t be. She pushed gently forward on my teeth, a motion that shifted my head upward, gently levered my jaw open, and maneuvered me slowly backward onto my hands as she stretched out her body lengthwise atop me. She moved her fingers to stroke the base of my neck, and with the other hand placed the cricket onto my accepting tongue. I crunched it, savored the sweetness, swallowed. “I’m going to miss you, Sister Kel,” she said before unrolling her body backward from atop me and rising to her feet. I looked into her eyes for a long moment, but I couldn’t speak for fear of crying. She offered me her hand to stand, and we went back to my cell to gather my few belongings. Within the hour, Ag’tzua had walked the librarian and me out of the kalst for the last time. Soon she would be gone from the sisters too.
August 27, 2025 at 1:29 PM
ebmoon.bsky.social
Back to DELVER today. Having been led near the surface by the old prophetess T'az'ul, Kel bids her farewell. adventure = journey

#WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts #amwriting #fantasy #darkfantasy #weirdfiction
When T'a'zul and I were confident of her strength to make the journey, I slid the board of shadow under her feet and kissed the back of her hand in obeisance before she skated into the darkness. I listened intently for a long time, but I think within half an hour they had slid far enough that they were only a faint whisper in the earth, and I felt the tether from the platform to my h’jar snap. She was on her own, and I doubted I would ever see her again. Yet the vow I’d made to M’ag’na hung heavy in my mind.
August 26, 2025 at 2:30 PM
ebmoon.bsky.social
Not from DELVER, but from a short story in the same setting. (And Riyana, who also appears in DELVER, is the narrator.) Reptile = dinosaur.

#WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts #amwriting #fantasy #darkfantasy #weirdfiction
We lived in a small village outside Esker then, in a little house among the woods not far from the edge of town, and two women from your father’s regiment came to visit near the beginning of springrise. They were from Nulruh, and brought with them a selection of their native foods, along with baskets of baby clothes and little toys. We ate fried cicadas with truffles, and drank a foul-smelling mushroom liqueur (mine diluted with water, of course). Your father sang us a song he had learned on his deployment, about bandits on the Red Road and the smell of dinosaur blood. At that time of year the sun hangs for weeks in its low circle over the thawing mountains, so that time passes without a thought. I am still not used to it.
August 25, 2025 at 11:53 AM
ebmoon.bsky.social
A bit more of Baltigai, while Kel tries unsuccessfully to impress with his (*cough*) mastery of the karlek's native language.

#WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts #amwriting #fantasy #darkfantasy #weirdfiction
To my great relief, the visual obstruction began to fade. I saw Baltigai half-standing, half-crouching on the apron outside of his root cellar. On his haunches he rose barely to a meter tall. Further up the hill, up a rocky climb of about twenty meters, was his home. Inside, I knew, a staircase connected the root cellar to the farmhouse through the sheer rock. He lit the bowl of a copper pipe and inhaled the smoke of something blue. “You’re welcome to it,” he spoke as he inhaled. He held the smoke for a beat, then breathed out. We began to speak at the same time, but he didn’t seem to hear me. “Thank you again,” I was going to say, and excuse myself. “How goes the dig in the north, Kel?” he asked through the cloud instead. He began to walk toward me between the potato rows, his ornate hammered silver cane leaving a deep impress in the field’s soft soil alongside his hooves. I had long since removed the chestplate again, and I carried it in my right hand. I recalled one of the few Karlish phrases I knew. “H’grwd b’jul.” It meant, roughly, “The birth is done, and I am the afterbirth.” I added, “W’w’wrgd.” “It’s finished,” though what I had meant was “W’w’wrgpas.” “It has stopped.” His eyebrows rose and his long nose curled in surprise. He coughed through another puff, then leaned over the fence downwind of me. “All of it, then? Antimony, phosphorous, even iron?”
August 24, 2025 at 11:37 AM
ebmoon.bsky.social
This is a poll on Truth Social.

The Right's pedo implosion continues. Don't let up.
Truth Social poll asking "Should Trump pardon Ghislaine Maxwell for giving up 100 names?" Yes: 11.8% No: 88.2%
August 23, 2025 at 8:56 PM
ebmoon.bsky.social
Some exposition on religion among the karleks (think dwarves with antlers and hooves), and how uncomfortable being underground makes Baltigai, our primary karlek character.

#WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts #amwriting #fantasy #darkfantasy #weirdfiction
His beliefs about the origin and nature of the universe were those of the most orthodox karleks: that the great world, called Onni, was neither flat nor a sphere, but the elongated horn of a dead giant, and that when the giant’s body had rotted away, we would plummet endlessly in a black void. Until his arrival, and perhaps to some degree even afterward, he had imagined the darkness of the earth as a malevolent spirit intent on his destruction. The high altitudes and higher latitudes of Raylia are more susceptible to the extremes of winterset and springrise than most countries on the surface. Yet Baltigai, unlike many other upsiders, knew that the deep earth was not cold but hot, and though he sweated uncomfortably here, he had made it a serviceable home.
August 23, 2025 at 12:25 PM
ebmoon.bsky.social
Me in my echo chamber.
Patrick Stewart as Professor X wearing his Cerebro headset.
August 22, 2025 at 3:09 PM
ebmoon.bsky.social
MANIFEST DESTINY is about love and resistance in an authoritarian post-apocalyptic United States.

It will be the last fiction I publish under my old pen name, and it's coming out SEPTEMBER 12. Mark your calendars (or hit me up for an ARC if you're so inclined).
A book cover: A man and woman, seen from behind, hold hands while facing a squad of armed soldiers wearing gas masks. All is in greytones, except for wispy flames that swirl up from the road in front of them. Title: MANIFEST DESTINY
August 22, 2025 at 1:56 PM
ebmoon.bsky.social
Arguably the inciting incident of the whole novel, here Kel realizes he has accidentally killed a sacred insect.

#WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts #amwriting #fantasy #darkfantasy #weirdfiction
My eyes found it an instant later. Amid the coagulating grey veins I had extracted from the porous limestone lay the delicate yellow-brown body of a long-cycle cicada. Two of its legs had sunk and fused into the recently molten rock. I skittered haphazardly over to it on all fours, hoping in vain that it might still cling to life. But I saw immediately that a whole third of its body had been practically reduced to ash. Its compound eyes gazed around, lifeless, and in a gruesome corner of my mind it reminded me of Ag’tzua’s cricket morsel.
August 22, 2025 at 1:17 PM
ebmoon.bsky.social
8. Moonlight (2016). Not much to say about this one beyond the obvious. The first, most honest depiction of minority queerness in a mainstream film in a long time. It's a technical triumph, and (one hopes) has helped finally sweep away the post-code moralities of anti-sex anti-queer American cinema.
Moonlight theatrical poster The handjob scene from Moonlight.
August 21, 2025 at 3:16 PM
ebmoon.bsky.social
An earlier passage than most of my snips to date. B'ab'she and Kel try to gauge how much each other knows about the human/diamond situation, without revealing too much.

#WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts #amwriting #fantasy #darkfantasy #weirdfiction
I looked down into the recessed pit of the barracks as I approached. By now I had caught up enough with the figure walking ahead of me to recognize B’ab’she himself, still wearing his broad steel dig helmet. Seeming to sense my presence, he stopped in the doorway to his cell. Blowing from one end of the long, serpentine central thoroughfare to the other, the wind made a high-pitched whistle that forced us to shout in order to be heard. “Kel’xx,” he said with a smile. “What will you do without a dig to tickle your h’jar?” “I’ll keep myself busy,” I replied, trying to rub the clouds of sleepiness and coal grit from my eyes. “Maldi says it’s diamonds. The deposits Ix’sha mentioned.” Only his two front teeth showed in a devious grin beneath his wispy beard. “If they’re sold, then we’ll all—” “So says S’anthe,” I lied, interrupting his mercantile fantasies. I was not about to tell him I’d spoken to an upsider about such things. Why, indeed, was a subcaptain speaking to an apprentice delver about such things?
August 21, 2025 at 2:38 PM
ebmoon.bsky.social
Scarlet Witch from House of M #8 whispering "No more Marvel movies"
August 21, 2025 at 6:09 AM
ebmoon.bsky.social
Tree of Life (2011). Apart from being visually gorgeous, I think this is a solid contender for the best film of the century at the time it was made (I wouldn't put it at the top now, for reasons I'll post about next). It's the best part of a mushroom trip distilled in a way only film can do.
Brad Pitt in The Tree of Life. A dinosaur in The Tree of Life. A man seen from behind walks toward a sunrise across a plain of water in The Tree of Life.
August 20, 2025 at 3:11 PM
ebmoon.bsky.social
Surprised to see I had this word. A key part of the dokalfar is that their "career" is typically determined by individual polymorphism (a bit like worker ants), but among the Sestren of Alhal things are a bit different.

#WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts #fantasy #darkfantasy
When, at the age of 19, I left the monastery of the Sestren and the klon at Deep Ren’no to be a delver among the mines and narrow, closed-doored dormitories of Esker’s Flat, it was not my teacher but Sister L’ix’ba the librarian who elected to come with me. We told her there would be no books there, and a lot of hard work. But she had apprenticed with Sister B’ex’er as a breaker when she had first come to the kalst. A mining klon would always need demolition work, she said, and she never minded a change in career. She was nearing middle-age then, no older than seventy.
August 20, 2025 at 11:35 AM