Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd
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mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd
@mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
2.7K followers 1K following 5.2K posts
Writer of epic fantasies. Lover of cities and odd words. Just here to tell stories.
NO AI
🏳️‍⚧️they/ him
https://mcburnell.itch.io/
https://books2read.com/mcburnell
https://payhip.com/AuthorMCBurnell
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mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
Our new babies, Fiona and Random. In the final pic, for context, I had just said 'Fiona why are you biting your brother, he was sleeping?' Hence her 'he was like that when I got here!' act
A little dilute tortie fast asleep on her kitty bed. A ginger baby with white feet sleeping up against the pillows. The tortie sitting next to the ginger, who is clearly agitated, on his back, both paws raised defensively. She is looking away as if she had nothing to do with this and doesn't know what his problem is.
November 12, 2025 at 12:55 AM
mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
#WIPSnips 'burger'

Lol I tried sandwich and came up with 1 hit, where it's used metaphorically. Oh, well.
Delightful scene, anyway. Been hinting about some connection btwn Mairid and Ramsu since bk 3 and finally get to get them face to face
“We walked past one another, you mean. Out on the grounds.” “Yes. I went past Sherun’s Abode as you were coming out the door. When I went home, I learned the secter had made up its mind to do something wrongheaded that I hated. I convinced my friends to go through the room of a mage in our secter who was notoriously knowing, a man with secrets…” He trailed off as he remembered their latest interaction, sandwiched between so many more pressing emergencies that he had forgotten the spooky tower and Soll’s attempt to murder him for witnessing its existence. “Wait.” This from Mage Warend. “His timeline is totally different from yours or Vashine’s, he’s had this power almost as long as Mage Chastuveran.” “So it would seem.” “Are we saying this is the second time he healed you?” “I don’t know. Mage Taile, is that what we’re saying?”
November 11, 2025 at 10:08 PM
mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
#WIPSnips 'local'
I could explain but I'd rather just serve you a side of wtf and let you wonder what's wrong with me
The door opened with a measure of force, and the man who bulled across the threshold fit neatly into this exchange. He was short, but some men were; young, which everyone went through. Sherunese, and that stood to reason in Sherun’s capital. He wasn’t dressed like a local, though. His garments were too simple and too plain. A long, thin, curved sword hung at his belt, and he had both hands on its hilt, in a way that made her think this was a habit. Something he constantly did whether or not he was contemplating violence. His eyes traced a circuit of the room like enemies in their dozens might pop from behind their few pieces of furniture. There was a black mark on his face, but just the one and he was very young. She couldn’t tell if he was a mage or just a boy with ink on him. “Look, I don’t have time to explain. I—” He frowned, gaze flicking another loop around the room. When he turned toward the kitchen, Dyafer realized he had heard the muddhri’s voice, still calling out to them in entreaty from its hiding place. While they watched, appalled, he took the top off the crock and pulled the paper out. He unfolded the crinkled page carefully. “Haimar Atsises!” A fleeting hiccup that didn’t deserve to be called a pause, then the spirit’s odd, flat voice said, “Greetings, mage. You know who I am?”
November 10, 2025 at 11:30 PM
mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
#WIPSnips 'picture'
The mage frowned at him, seeming puzzled, but after only a fleeting pause, a picture formed upon the air in the open space between them in the center of the room, bleeding at its edges into what was really present. It was flat like a painting but had a clarity that spoke to reality rather than verisimilitude. When Dyafer saw what was revealed, she wished it were less real. They looked upon an interior space, wide its windows, gleaming walls of white marble and not a scrap of carpet on the floor. There wasn’t a lot of furniture, but what furniture there was displayed gilt, inlaid hardwoods, touches of mother-of-pearl. A room in a palace, which was in keeping with the silken garments of the three people lying in pools of blood upon its floor.
November 9, 2025 at 2:52 PM
mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
#Caturday
Only the freshest of pics! I posted these backward, they're facing each other
A little tortie conked out on a hoodie that I'd like to be wearing on a bed. A ginger fellow fast asleep up against the pillows of a bed, feet tucked under the covers.
November 8, 2025 at 9:10 PM
mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
Alternate-Reality Boden justifiably confused that his pig appears to be a class curio.
(yes obviously it's weird that Rosco is like floating, that didn't register until I was done)
#authorart
A man with messy blond curls and a mug in hand reaches out to a weird, glossy, cartoonish pig with a little smile on its face. A chunk of text reads: "His dad had given him a front row seat to the kind of man he didn’t want to be back when he was way too young to regard the brute who terrorized his mom as a monster he might become. It was a low bar, though. One he had managed to surmount, but the distance between who he was and who he felt like he ought to be was a gulf so vast you could toss in a rock and never hear it hit the bottom."
November 8, 2025 at 7:32 PM
mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
Mar is from a Medici-level infamous family and enrolls at the Complex under a pseudonym (that doesn't fool anyone but his friends).
#authorart
A black and white drawing of a young black man in a nightshirt sitting propped up in bed with a book open on his lap. There is a significant bandage over the right side of his face, covering his right eye. The one eyebrow you can see is raised, his attention on his reading. A chunk of text reads: "He had begun his new life under an assumed name in an effort to find himself, but there were times when he questioned the experiment. Burat was an ordinary fellow, and he had never been sure what ‘ordinary’ meant. Sometimes it felt like he was playing a part. Not being the person he wasn’t sure he wished to be, fine, but he had traded it for pretending to be someone he knew he wasn’t."
November 8, 2025 at 3:06 PM
mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
#WIPSnips 'little'

The first 2 paragraphs of the final book...
The Complex had become a haunted place, and every time she went outdoors, Dyafer was overwhelmed by melancholy. The three demolished Abodes were the most visible scars left by the infighting, but those massive heaps of rubble were little more than the tip of the iceberg, hinting at more grievous damage lurking out of sight. They had lost three buildings, but more mages, and the dead or disaffected could not simply be replaced like shattered masonry. Dyafer peered into shadows when she walked across the wintry grounds, searching after all the faces she would never see again. Her people or her friends. Even the familiar visages of enemies, who had belonged to this place and helped to define what it was at its height.
November 8, 2025 at 2:11 PM
mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
In the dream of a desert, a witch brings them together…

✨BIG magic
🍃an empire in a jungle
😡surly gay hero (with swords)
🦑battle a kraken!
🗡️beat the hell out of oligarchs
🔺pyramids!
🪐📚💙 🌈📚 #Booksky
Start the epic at books2read.com/WeGather
Picture of a book cover, titled We Gather that is a stone sculpture of a jaguar with a mane of feathers sticking outs its tongue, author M.C. Burnell. Arrows point from the book to the words: Hot, sullen, angsty, uncommunicative MC; Complete 5-book epic; epic lady general; an empire in a jungle; everyone's gods are real; so much sword fights; the hero's horse lives; twins dueling for one throne; battle a kraken!; colossal magic.
November 8, 2025 at 2:52 AM
mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
#WIPSnips 'movement'
After they’d been stood on the slope of the hill for half an hour without another stir of movement in the forest, Horus decided to let himself feel a tot of hope. The folks at the bottom were taking advantage of the break to tend to their injured and have a drink. He couldn’t hang around not knowing and nodded his people toward the top of the hill. When they got onto the scene, they could see at once that everything was over here. The king of Famrisha’s bodyguards were all standing around looking shook up, but no one was bleeding or even sweating: hadn’t nothing got through the Mage Corps to trouble them. The king himself sat on a block of stone, like the throne to some primal barebones deity, The Lady at his feet, holding one of his hands. That Atsises guy was a couple feet away, legs crossed under him, elbow propped on his knee, chin on his fist, watching the two of them. Even so dog-tired it was an effort to be, his aura shimmered like light on moving water, and Horus found himself approaching him. It was pretty, and he wanted to get close to it. “Hi…”
November 7, 2025 at 6:03 PM
mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
In the dream of a desert, a witch brings them together…

✨BIG magic
🍃an empire in a jungle
😡surly gay hero (with swords)
🦑battle a kraken!
🗡️beat the hell out of oligarchs
🔺pyramids!
🪐📚💙 🌈📚 #Booksky
books2read.com/WeGather
Picture of a book cover, titled We Gather that is a stone sculpture of a jaguar with a mane of feathers sticking outs its tongue, author M.C. Burnell. Arrows point from the book to the words: Hot, sullen, angsty, uncommunicative MC; Complete 5-book epic; epic lady general; an empire in a jungle; everyone's gods are real; so much sword fights; the hero's horse lives; twins dueling for one throne; battle a kraken!; colossal magic. A collage of images: A massive tree growing from the roof of a moss-covered ruin/ a bead of water/ an eye, the skin around it dusted in gold/ a collection of knives/ an overgrown woodland path/ a starry night sky/ a stone gateway/ a bas relief of human images. In one corner, text says: When the world looks like coming to an end, your enemies may be your only friends.
November 7, 2025 at 4:25 AM
mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
a schoolboy, a scholar
a shop clerk, a peddler
a goddess
a spy
a disobedient acolyte

What do they have in common? The Foreign Sorcerer
Magic, intrigue, and dark comedy in the 4-part urban fantasy.
🪐📚💙🌈📚 #Booksky

buy.bookfunnel.com/udtol5v0ok
Against a background of pale bricks, a bookcover showing a cobbled city street. Title: The Three Faces of Dissatisfaction. Arrows point to text over images reading: ‘Laugh-out-loud dark comedy/ complete tetralogy/ a city so real it must be/ (heartwarming) found family/ unconventional heroes/ boss magic, asshole gods/ scheming, intrigue, ancient secrets/ more twists than this arrow.’ A collage of images, from top left: the elaborate front of a towering cathedral; a lonely figure in a shadowy hall, impossible to see because they're brightly backlit by the window they're looking out of; a basket filled with scrummy rolls; a plate of toast and roast tomatoes, a delicious fried egg; vividly-colored crystals; books spread out and badly lit by candles; the frontage of a tall gray stone building in a city; a library shelf packed with books; a misty, creepy, ambiguous figure; a boy walking alone through a gloomy space that draws attention to how small and alone he is.
November 7, 2025 at 4:22 AM
mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
#WIPSnips 'penultimate'

Don't have the word so I went with the runup to the penultimate climax.
The hallways they trod were deserted, but they came across the occasional corpse, courtiers in bright silks and servants in bland-hued linens, cut down to no purpose. What decency his father ever had had evaporated. It wasn’t even clear he had a goal anymore, other than to go on plaguing the world for as long as he could, as if this were a matter of principle. As if their failure to prevent it justified his right to go on hurting them. Their only choices now were to be his victims or his vanquishers.
November 6, 2025 at 2:25 PM
mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
#WIPSnips 'trail'
They traveled north, but only a block, where they touched down in the intersection to question pedestrians. Horus seemed to be flying just above the level of the city’s roofs, low enough that he had been, not only visible, but obvious, to everyone he passed; people had seen him, and because he was famous, because he was flying, everyone had paused at their own affairs to watch him go. After the first couple of blocks, they didn’t bother landing anymore, just dropped down a bit and slowed long enough to call, ‘Which way?’ No one asked what they were talking about, and they followed the trail of pointing fingers, always trending north.
November 5, 2025 at 5:59 PM
mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
Ready for the next installment?
Check out the second-in-series bundle, 20 awesome sci-fi and fantasy for $19!
itch.io/b/3359/conti...

📚🪐
Books in the bundle: (From L to R, T to B) White Out by Suzanne Schmidt Death of Summer by Ninanjan Soul of Ash by H.L. Moore Riyati Rivals by Kai Zeal Prajwalita by Geetha Kreshnan Moonshadow's Champion by Dianna Gunn The Wish of a Dragon by JD Rivers Land by Bjorn Larssen Cosmonaut: The Lunar Wars by Laika L Gagarin Kranlian Rendevous by Simon Wolfe Haunted by the Undead by C.L. Carhart The Elefae Champion by Chris Mitchell The Haunted Angel by Jenn A. Morales Exolegacy by Conrad Altmann Child of the Forest by Audrey Simmons The Bull at the Start by M.C. Burnell To Spy a Star by Jonathan Nevair Face of the Nether by William C. Tracy
November 5, 2025 at 5:50 PM
mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
Post your space art!! 🪐
A man made out of darkness on a blank dark background. His black hair flows around him; there are stars in his deep blue flesh and hair. He rests his chin on one hand, eyes closed pensively. He is nude, the forward knee drawn demurely upward, concealing his groin.
November 4, 2025 at 11:30 PM
mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
#WIPSnips 'steel'
The air itself caught fire, but Mairid had time only to take note of this and be afraid before they were elsewhere. A still, indoor space, where he lay on the floor and not the cold dirt surface of a torn-up street. There were people here, and he could hear them arguing. He saw the flash of light as it caught on folded steel. He was clinging to consciousness by his fingertips and knew that was bad, knew he needed to wake up and take charge. But he could not act on it. Coolness spread across him like a soothing balm, chilling his damaged skin so the sensation of scalding dimmed. The foreign mage still knelt over him. “Haimar Atsises, please. I need you to take command. No one else knows what’s happening, and these people won’t listen to me.”
November 4, 2025 at 1:52 PM
mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
Realized today it had been a while since I made one of these, so here's Dyafer in a real dark night moment. I like the vibe but could have put more work into it so, idk, may go back later.

#authorart #booksky 🌈📚🪐
In a dark place, a beautiful woman in a long robe sits with her knees to her chest, arms wrapped around them. Her dark hair is coming down. A block of text beside her reads: "She had been told these cells were impervious to a mage’s powers, but she had taken too many things on faith lately. That people could be trusted to obey the rules, that treating people in a certain way would cause them to reciprocate. That she knew how to differentiate friends from enemies. Taking things on faith was a habit she meant to break."
November 4, 2025 at 2:03 AM
mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
🔥warrior-mages
🔥feel lies and hear feelings!
🔥queer heroes
🔥schemes and intrigue
🔥emotion is forbidden
💙📚🪐📚🌈 #Booksky

books2read.com/Under-a-Sign... mcburnell.itch.io/under-a-sign...
Under a cloudy sky, a great expanse of grass. The cover of a book called Under a Sign of Butterflies by MC Burnell, a man with a sword trudging through a deluge. Text reads: SHIT GETS WEIRD: The Tipping World, Vol 7. The more powerful mages grow, the more they lose control. There is a big block quote: “Dyafer had seen something flowing up the hill but not Seen it, and the explanation for this disconnect was obvious: she had imagined it, as one often did with monsters in the dark when one was scared. Because she was a mage, what she imagined became real.”
November 3, 2025 at 5:55 PM
mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
#WIPSnips 'nice'

Oh hey! I have this in one of my quote-pics. Al, being a badass
the moment she quit the private residence, she was passing people. People who stopped to stare, amazed. They were used to seeing her immaculate in a fabulous dress, but she wasn’t the Sea Queen, she was an Arbiter. She was just as glad to let them get a look at what that meant, hair tied back out of her face, coated in masonry dust and other people’s blood. She didn’t mind putting on a nice dress and playing civilized, but at the end of the day, it was a lie. One she would tell but wasn’t willing to live.
November 3, 2025 at 4:44 PM
mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
#WIPSnips 'cobweb'

I've got a web! This moment is funny bc the reason Mairid is so interested in the ground under his feet is that he has his people digging a tunnel under the Complex in secret 🤣
She thought to glance after the Atsises, wondering how the man had struck upon the Mage-Killer. It was hard to credit that he would have warned her so bluntly if he was the one pursuing it. When her eyes found him, he had stopped and was rooting in the frozen soil with the end of his staff. Probably looking for more seeds or something. No, whatever else he might be, Miran wasn’t a schemer, a poisonous spider in the center of a web. Shaking her head, she dismissed him from her mind.
November 2, 2025 at 3:01 PM
mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
✨ quote with your cover + first page + link ✨

books2read.com/PathofEndles...
mcburnell.itch.io/a-path-of-en...
Image of a shadowy figure with a sword walking into a desolate desert landscape. The book is called A Path of Endless Crossroads, Volume 1 of The Tipping World, by MC Burnell. Chapter One a peculiar old man loses a wager no one knew he had made Vilimantha, the tail-end of nowhere From a window in an upper story, curious eyes followed the progress of a stranger as he walked along a weed-stippled country road. He could only have one destination: the deserted route dead-ended in this lonely manor slouched beneath the weight of its owner’s apathy. Several windows had been broken at some point in the past, carelessly boarded and left in testament to the homeowner’s indifference. Where there was paint, it was peeling, and flakes of aging mortar covered the overgrown shrubs like dandruff. Things about the stranger that made him worth staring at: He was a stranger. He was here. He wore a robe, faded black hemmed in rusty dust. He had a backpack, but it wasn’t big enough to contain anything other than a few necessities, so cross Peddler with a Crummy Sense of Direction off the list. Oh, and The center of his wrinkled brow was covered by the inky pattern of an elaborate tattoo. Strangers never ventured here: to say that his presence was intriguing was an understatement. He hadn’t needed a tattoo on his face to seem fantastical, but he had one anyway. He also had a bone-deep sense of certainty you could spot in his stride; the set of his shoulders conveyed more than confidence. He walked like this road belonged to him, although honestly, he was welcome to it.
November 1, 2025 at 5:34 PM
mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
#Caturday These guys have mostly been eager to keep me and my shitty cold company hanging out in bed at all hours, altho ofc there need to be recesses for wrastling and tear-assing around the place
A little ginger fellow sleeping on his side on a bed, back against the throw pillows, paws and tail tucked under the covers. A tiny tortie completely assed out on a bed on top of a human's foot. Her coat is mostly grey and beige but she has striking umber stripes.
November 1, 2025 at 2:43 PM
mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
#WIPSnips 'ancestor'

Pretty sure I've shared the moment in question, where Mairid splits into two Mairids briefly
“I don’t understand.” She didn’t care that her voice sounded small. If her fellow Arbiters were right that that had been their first taste of what their ancestors did to the Paradise Before – and she wasn’t inclined to doubt, having just watched a human being bifurcate because he was of two minds on how to respond to an insult – then every danger she had ever faced piled in a heap and set aflame couldn’t hope to compete with how bad things just became. “We didn’t do anything but observe someone breaking our rules. Which shouldn’t be possible. Those people were our kind of mages, not our opposites.” The Vriomeh turned away, taking a seat right on the floor, and it was as if she had issued an order: everyone sat, too bewildered and fatigued to care that there were bodies in the room with them, the floor unpleasantly chilly and spotted by puddles of congealing blood in grisly archipelagos. Alia didn’t think she was the only one who felt a need to be still and quiet, lest an incautious noise tear away the last thread tethering them.
November 1, 2025 at 2:26 PM
mcburnellauthor.bsky.social
#OctoberWorldbuilders 31
Japhet from Foreign Sorcerer. Absolute clothes-horse. The uniform is a waistcoat, cravat with stick pin, trousers, knee-high boots, coat, linen shirt. Black, dark reds and blues, metallic hues. His irises are black holes and he has 17 orange sapphire studs in his left ear.
31. Which of your characters would you like to see someone cosplay? Or who you would cosplay yourself?
October 31, 2025 at 6:53 PM