Jacob O'Brien
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jacobobrien.bsky.social
Jacob O'Brien
@jacobobrien.bsky.social
98 followers 160 following 160 posts
I write children's stories for adults.

www.jacobobrien.ca
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jacobobrien.bsky.social
Yeah, a perfect last-minute gift for someone you don't want in your life anymore...
A puppet that looks like it was made by a five-year-old whose parents forgot to give her her meds that day.
September 15, 2025 at 1:25 PM
jacobobrien.bsky.social
I have seen the devil with my own eyes, and he is far more terrifying than we could have ever imagined...
A furry, blue monster who may or may not represent the beginning of the end of the cinematic arts. We will have to wait and see.
September 9, 2025 at 1:16 PM
jacobobrien.bsky.social
Just finished reading @richycraven.bsky.social's "Spirit Level." Perfect balance between light humor and some deep/emotional parts. The scene where Danny visits Ian had me laughing and, well, not crying exactly, but it had me thinking, "Ah, fuck, this is sad."

Grab a copy: tinyurl.com/2pdhkwnv
August 31, 2025 at 9:30 PM
jacobobrien.bsky.social
August 29, 2025 at 12:50 PM
jacobobrien.bsky.social
#5amwritersclub – August 3

Wrote a few thousand words yesterday, and finished my first draft today. 🙂

I will give myself five seconds to enjoy this feeling of accomplishment before I remember I still need to address 268 notes I left myself to add foreshadowing and stuff.

#writinglife #amwriting
This yacht is the greatest temptation that has ever been placed in front of me. Oscar Wilde once said that he could resist anything except temptation. But, here and now, I will resist temptation because I must. I guess I’m just better than Oscar Wilde. He would be a bad gambler.
August 3, 2025 at 1:45 PM
jacobobrien.bsky.social
In this snippet, Ace reveals his real name to Samantha (and the reader).
#WIPSnips #writesky #writingprompts
“My name’s not actually Ace,” I admit. “It’s Jack.” This is the truth, and I’m afraid I’ve been keeping it from you, too, whoever’s reading this. And I’m sorry about that. I really don’t want to get lumped in with that gang of unreliable narrators. All of those guys are pieces of shit. They walk around like they’re better than all the other narrators, just because they’re “nuanced” or something. I don’t know, I don’t get it. But I don’t want to be lumped in with them. “Jack,” Samantha says thoughtfully. She props her elbow up on the table and rests her chin on her hand. She smiles at me with, like, almost admiration. “I like it. It suits you. Why don’t you go by your real name?” “I used to, but some stuff happened with the last girl I was with. We were engaged, and I thought we were going to last forever, you know, like in the movies? But she cheated on me with this guy who’s more of a man than me in, like, basically every way. He’s taller, more muscular, much handsomer, richer, has a nicer house and car, and has been to, like, eighty different countries or something.” I go on for ten minutes listing all the ways Fabio is ahead of me in terms of manhood before concluding with, “And after that, it felt like Jack Dubble wasn’t good enough for anybody. But nothing beats an Ace.”
August 2, 2025 at 1:58 PM
jacobobrien.bsky.social
#5amwritersclub – August 2

If I put my mind to it, I might be able to finish the first draft of "Dubble or Nothing" this weekend. In other words, I will not be finishing the first draft this weekend.

For now, I've written some of Ace's awkward apology/speech.

#amwriting #writingcommunity
When I wrote the next part of my speech, I had imagined looking out at the guests and locking eyes with Samantha, so that she’d know these words are for her, to show her that I’ve learned my lesson about love. But she didn’t show, and so I lock eyes with some random old man who I have no idea who he is. “Love can be a raging bull sometimes. You can either run from it, or you can let it hit you and hope you can get back up and keep fighting. I’ve never seen anyone get hit so hard and keep getting back up like Gus has. He’s fought against an addiction for love. He’s fought suicidal thoughts for love. He’s literally had his physical head bashed into a dumpster in the alleyway behind a scuzzy bar for love.” This gets a small laugh from the audience, even though I’m not joking. This is clearly the serious part of the speech. I ignore the laughter and keep my eyes locked on the same guy. He looks very uncomfortable, but I practiced the speech imagining that my eyes were locked on someone else’s, and so that’s how I must give it. “Gus taught me that getting hit by the bull can’t kill you. And I’ve also learned that running from it can. Running can turn you into the Sbull. It can turn you into the very thing you’re scared of, and it can make you hurt other people who don’t deserve it.”
August 2, 2025 at 1:46 PM
jacobobrien.bsky.social
#WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts #AmWriting

When I tell people I write because it gives me somewhere to put my anger, this is sort of what I'm talking about:
When I check my phone, I see seven missed calls from Gus, plus a voicemail of him just crying for three minutes straight. That can’t be good, is my initial thought. I call him, and he picks up, sniveling and driveling like a baby. “Gus, what’s going on?” “Oh, Stuntman! It’s all over!” he wails. “I couldn’t go through with it! I couldn’t sleep with Monique. It would feel like I was cheating on my Daisy.” Storm clouds take shape in my head. Thunder and lightning rattle all of my internal organs at once. I am a tempest of fury. “Gus! You fucking idiot!” I shout. “You fucking stupid moron! Daisy doesn’t love you anymore! You’re done! You guys are done! Do you understand that, you fat sack of fuck? You’re done!” I yell some other things at him, but I’m too mad to remember what they are. But there’s plenty more F-bombs, and I’m pretty sure I say “you’re done,” like, fifteen more times.
August 1, 2025 at 1:13 PM
jacobobrien.bsky.social
#5amwritersclub – August 1

Could someone please remind me why I planned to write a wedding scene when I know nothing about weddings? Why did I do that to myself?

Maybe I should just change the story and make it all about astronauts.

#amwriting #writingcommunity #writesky
I wonder if that’s the main appeal of having a wedding. It’s not about proclaiming your love. It’s not even the thrill of signing a legal document that binds you to the same person every day for the rest of your life. It’s knowing that for a day—for one full day—it’s perfectly acceptable for you to act like you’re God and treat your friends and family like they’re the shit under your feet.
August 1, 2025 at 1:03 PM
jacobobrien.bsky.social
#WIPSnips #writesky #writingprompts

I'm not even really sure what's happening here, and I am the author.
“Hi, Jolinda,” Samantha says to the receptionist. “How’s your day going?” Jolinda takes a sip of some liquid from a tumbler that says ‘Girl Boss’ on it. “Rose forgot she had false teeth again and had a pretty serious meltdown when they fell out of her mouth. She dropped to her knees, raised her arms in the air, and kept screaming, ‘My teeth, my teeth. My beautiful teeth.’ But other than that, it’s been smooth sailing.”
July 31, 2025 at 1:28 PM
jacobobrien.bsky.social
#5amwritersclub – July 31

Hey, I wrote every morning this month! 🙂 909 words today.

#amwriting #writesky #writingcommunity
To be honest, I don’t think Samantha’s going to show up at the wedding, and I’m not going to get to take my last shot at love. Gus has told me otherwise. He believes the universe has powers and that it will bring Samantha to the wedding if it’s meant to be. That’s not good news. You know what my relationship with the universe is like. It hates me. But Gus is damn sure the universe wants me and Samantha to be together. He’s so sure that he offers to bet me ten thousand dollars that she’ll show at the wedding, but then I remind him that he’s a recovering gambling addict and shouldn’t be making wagers. “Like, seriously,” I tell him. “You can’t let Daisy see you doing that shit. Pull yourself together.” And he says, “Oh, yeah, I forgot.” You can take the man out of the casino, but you can’t take the casino out of the man, I guess.
July 31, 2025 at 1:23 PM
jacobobrien.bsky.social
Today's #WIPSnips word of the day is "street." :)

Ace Dubble may be a complete jerk to most people, but his redeeming quality is that he's good with kids, for "they’re the only people who aren’t always trying to screw you over."
When I get home, I’m still so annoyed by Gus that I almost run over my neighbour, who is on her hands and knees on my driveway, drawing something with chalks. But once I see her there, I decide not to kill her, and I park on the street like a loser, because I told Nash she could draw on my driveway anytime she likes. She likes drawing on people’s driveways, but some of the “cranky old neighbours,” as she calls them, don’t like it when she does that. And when I told her she could draw on my driveway anytime she likes, she was apprehensive at first because apparently Mrs. Swill, the old woman with only one eye who lives three doors down, said it was “trep-passing” to draw on other people’s driveways. She said Nash would “go to jail” if she did it again. So, I made her up a licence that says she’s allowed to draw on any asphalt or pavement surface on Ace Dubble’s premises anytime from 6:00 a.m. til 6:00 p.m., Monday to Sunday. It wasn’t official or anything; it was just something I made with construction paper and some felt pens. But it satisfied her. And since it’s 4:30 p.m., I must allow her to draw on my driveway. That’s why I’m not upset about having to park on the street, even though, like I said a moment ago, only huge losers ever park on the street.
July 30, 2025 at 1:31 PM
jacobobrien.bsky.social
#5amwritersclub – July 30

With today's 926 words, the first draft of "Dubble or Nothing" is now over 50k words. 😄

Will be starting Act 3 tomorrow. A lot of the notes in my outline say "will figure out while writing Acts 1 and 2?"

I have not figured anything out.

#writingcommunity #amwriting
Gus’s phone beeps. “I’m supposed to go to the florist now,” he says. “I guess to pick up the dance floor.” “What?” I say. “I don’t know. Daisy just tells me where I need to go and when. Bridezilla and all that. Actually, I’m realizing the term Bridezilla makes Godzilla out to be a lot worse than he was. Sometimes, I swear to God I would prefer her to eat an entire building full of people than have her yell in my face again about the difference between terra cotta and coral pink.” “Yeah, I get that. But the question remains: why would you go to a florist for a dance floor?” “What other kind of floor would we need for a wedding?” I shake my head. “No, what I mean is, a florist deals in flowers, not floors.” “That makes no sense,” Gus says, tears forming in his eyes. “This world makes no sense.” The pressures of the wedding are clearly getting to him. He rises from his chair in a silent stupor and walks to the door like a zombie, much in the way I’ve been walking around my house lately. It’s funny how men who are about to get married walk the same as men who have just lost everything.
July 30, 2025 at 1:17 PM
jacobobrien.bsky.social
#5amwritersclub – July 29

The hard work is paying off—Act 2 of "Dubble or Nothing" is almost done. :)

#amwriting #writesky #writingcommunity
“Did you take your last shot?” Gus asks. “My what?” I say. “Your last shot. Everyone gets one last shot at love before it becomes inappropriate to keep trying—before the restraining orders come into play. Love always has a chance until she slaps a restraining order on you.” “I camped out in a tent in her yard for three days, starving myself and sleeping in my own piss,” I say. “Does that count?” Gus flicks his wrist. “Nah. That was just your practice last shot. Everyone also gets a practice last shot before the real one. The practice one is usually really stupid and desperate, made too soon after things ended. The real one is usually more romantic than what you’ve described.”
July 29, 2025 at 1:48 PM
jacobobrien.bsky.social
The word of the day is "trash," which sounds about right for where my life is at right now. I wish I was joking.

#WritingComminity #WriteSky #MyLifeIsGarbage
Samantha, I realize, is a good woman. A hard-working single mom. And not one of these trashy moms—you know, the kind who puts the baby in the grocery bag and cradles the bag of chips in her arm. From what I’ve seen, this woman is all class, no ass. The kind of woman who eats pomegranates and hemp seeds and isn’t lying when she tells you she enjoys hiking, even though it’s the most boring thing a person could possibly do. To put it in a sentence, she’s the kind of woman you settle down with.
July 28, 2025 at 1:12 PM
jacobobrien.bsky.social
#5amwritersclub – July 28

884 words this morning. :)

Today, Gus showed up at Ace's house to lift him out of his despair. It starts out gross.

#amwriting #writesky #writingcommunity
“Oh, Stuntman,” Gus says aghast. “What’s happened to you?” “What do you mean?” I say, because I’m so out of it that I forget it’s not normal to live the way I’ve been living. “You’re all out of sorts,” he says, which is about the politest way anyone could have described my current state. The piss is literally dribbling from my shorts, not because I’m going right now but because my shorts are that saturated with piss.
July 28, 2025 at 1:03 PM
jacobobrien.bsky.social
In this snippet from "Dubble or Nothing," Ace pays Gus a visit only to find that his friend is dead.

...Or is he?

#WIPSnips #writingcommunity #writingprompts
Everything I know about human biology says he must be dead by now. But here’s one thing about Gus Wagner: the guy just has a way of defying science. He’s still breathing, and when I poke him with my foot, he rolls over and opens those baby blues. I forgot how beautiful they were. As he sits up, stretches, and yawns, it doesn’t seem like he’s been passed out for weeks but has rather just had a nice little snooze on the floor of his shed. “Stuntman,” he says. Then he cups his hand over his mouth and looks horrified. “Sorry. You said to never talk to you again. Sorry.” Surprisingly, his voice isn’t hoarse and dry, like you’d expect from a guy who’s been passed out in his shed for weeks. Either he’s not human, or he’s been fine this whole time and really was just taking a nap in his shed for the hell of it. “It’s ok,” I say. “I’m not mad at you anymore, and I never should have been in the first place.” I reach out a hand and help him to his feet, and now that we’re eye-to-eye, I feel a compulsion to apologize. I search my soul for the right thing to say to let him know how much I regret the way I’ve treated him. And, like magic, the perfect words come to me: “I’m sorry.”
July 27, 2025 at 2:00 PM
jacobobrien.bsky.social
#5amwritersclub – July 27

This morning felt like a better writing session than the last few. 🙂 Although Ace is not doing very well at all in today's snippet. Today is an emotional low point for him.

#writingcommunity #amwriting #writesky
Over the next week, I try everything I can think of to get Samantha to talk to me. I text her and leave her so many voicemails apologizing for what I did. When she doesn’t respond to those, I go to her house wearing various disguises, pretending to be different kinds of salesmen, just so I can talk to her, even if it’s just about vacuums. But somehow, she always knows it’s me and slams the door in my face. I buy a guitar and learn how to play it so I can sing her a song outside her bedroom window. As a last-ditch attempt to win her forgiveness, I camp out in a tent in her front yard for three days, starving myself—like, I literally don’t eat a single thing for three days—to prove that I love her. I don’t leave the tent even to use the bathroom. It smells so bad in there, but I stay because I need her to know I love her, and I don’t know how else to show it. I stay there until Samantha calls the police to extract me from her yard.
July 27, 2025 at 1:38 PM
jacobobrien.bsky.social
#5amwritersclub – July 26

Ugh. I really didn't want to write this morning, but I'm getting close to finishing the first draft and don't want to lose momentum. So, here I am, up early and writing again. 🙂

#writingcommunity #amwriting #writesky
The Lambo tears down the street, the motor as loud as a hundred lawn mowers all going off at once. It almost hits little Nash, who is drawing a giraffe with chalks on the street, before speeding right through a stop sign and almost hitting an elderly woman who was crossing just then. Fabio almost ended two lives on opposite ends of the age spectrum in a five-second span. Apparently, this is how “real” men drive.
July 26, 2025 at 1:24 PM
jacobobrien.bsky.social
#5amwritersclub – July 25

Another 863 words today. 😁

I'm not really sure why I wrote the paragraph in today's snippet. It's just what came out. Writing while tired is fun!

#amwriting #writingcommunity
Daisy wraps her arms around Gus’s neck and kisses him hard. He kisses her back, and they’re quickly in full make-out mode again. Soon, Daisy’s legs are wrapped around Gus’s torso, and they make out even harder. At one point, I think they might be having sex right there in front of me, right here in this alleyway. I’m not joking. Because she’s wearing a dress, which means her parts could have been exposed with a slight shift of the panties, and Gus’s trousers have so many holes in them from our tussle that it’s not impossible to imagine that his parts have slipped out. And the sounds they’re making—if you could hear those from the next alley over, you’d think, ‘Yeah, someone’s definitely getting laid.’ I’m, like, ninety percent sure they’re having literal sex right there in front of me.
July 25, 2025 at 1:21 PM
jacobobrien.bsky.social
Here's a little taste of what will probably be my debut novel but may still end up in the trash with the rest of my life, depending on how it goes.

#WIPSnips #writesky
I have to accept the hard truth that my pick-up tactics won’t be enough to win my bet with Fabio. If I’m to have any chance of getting back at that hunky, well-dressed, well-groomed weasel, I’m going to have to do something no man has ever done before. I’m going to have to get inside the head of a woman—like, a real woman who one might consider “wife material”—and understand how she thinks. And if that sounds like an impossible task to you, that’s probably because it is. But I’m going to try anyway. I have no other choice.
July 24, 2025 at 1:23 PM
jacobobrien.bsky.social
#5amwritersclub – July 24

I'm feeling a little more like I'm back to my old self today after a few days of total anxiety about what turned out to be nothing. 😅

837 more words down this morning. Maybe, like 15,000 more to go?

#amwriting #writingcommunity #friendship
When Gus and Daisy’s make-out session is over, I rise to my feet and look at the reformed couple. Daisy screams, but Gus calms her down. “It’s ok, Muffin. He’s my friend.” The look of shock on Daisy’s face is too strange to describe. She just stands there, in shock, for like, thirty seconds before a small “What?” passes through her lips. “But I thought… Didn’t he just try to kill you?” Gus chuckles and directs his warm gaze at me. His eyes sparkle in the moonlight. “Yeah, he sure did.” “But that’s not what friends do,” Daisy says, regaining her wits. “Try to kill each other, I mean. In fact, it goes against practically everything friendship stands for.”
July 24, 2025 at 1:09 PM
jacobobrien.bsky.social
#5amwritersclub – July 23

My first 1000+ word morning in a while (1031).

In today's snippet, Ace tries to have a socially acceptable thought but ends up being offensive. He does that a lot. 😄

#amwriting #writingcommunity #genderequality
July 23, 2025 at 1:18 PM
jacobobrien.bsky.social
#5amwritersclub – July 22

I wrote 832 more words today. I don't know why my confidence is so low lately, but I don't want to break my daily writing/snippet-sharing streak just because I feel bad about myself. So, I'm keeping at it. :)

#amwriting #writingcommunity
Samantha eats a lot of sandwiches while we talk, and it makes me happy. Every little thing she does makes me fall for her a little more. The way her hair bounces in the breeze, the way her cheeks get little dimples in them when she really smiles. Even the sound she makes when she chokes on a bite of sandwich is like music.
July 22, 2025 at 1:09 PM
jacobobrien.bsky.social
#5amwritersclub – July 21

900 words this morning. This is the day when I finally had that moment. That moment where you realize everything you write is terrible. Writing the snippet below was a real emotional low point for me. I don't know what I'm doing.

#amwriting #writingcommunity
July 21, 2025 at 1:20 PM