Magnolia Fay Writes

But when life keeps throwing lemons in your face, you need to take a break and reassess

This post was halfway ready by mid May, just before my husband and I left for a short weekend escape.

I was excited to be back in this space, to feel like a writer with an audience again after months spent first in life burnout, then in shaky recovery, then back again on a life rollercoaster of news that I had planned to include, and you’ll find later.

We were due back on Sunday evening, and I figured I’d finish and send off this letter by Monday. Well, once again, life had other plans.

The weekend did not start out as the relaxing escape we hoped. Because of flight cancellations, we left one day later than planned, which meant our car rental was also cancelled and had to be rebooked. Instead of the small, agile car we’d booked, all that was available was a flashy BMW SUV. Put a pin on it, it will be relevant later.

We got to our accommodation, a place where my husband’s family has spent their holidays since he was a child, in a community that saw him and his brothers grow up. It was by now Friday night and we were longing for a quick bite to eat and a good night’s sleep. I get especially tired these days for… reasons that are specified later in this story.

Naturally, the key didn’t work. We took refuge at a kind neighbour’s place who was having dinner with her husband and friends. They fed us, consoled us, and waited the couple hours until the locksmith arrived. To the tune of way too much money, we were finally let in.

The Saturday and Sunday passed relaxing and uneventful, mostly catching up with the rest of the community and enjoying time off from all the obligations that have been making our life extremely intense in the past few months. We left expecting a pleasant lunch in a local restaurant we always go to when we’re there, then a leisurely drive to the airport. Only the first part of that prediction came true.

In a lapse of judgment that nobody needs to point out because we’ve been kicking ourselves about it since, we left all luggage in our flashy SUV, hidden—or so we thought—in the boot. We were away 40 minutes if that, but you can probably guess what we found when we got back to the car. From afar, it looked just as we left it. On the inside, our two wheelies and two backpacks were gone. Along with them, many things of value, financial and sentimental.

I’ll spare you the details of what followed, the anger, the stress, the unfruitful rush to the police station where they took our report without giving us any hope. When I showed them the location my iPad kept pinging, they told us it was a block of flats occupied by squatters, and nobody was going to open the door to the police there.

After these procedures, we rushed to the airport, where we just about made our flight, with nothing but our coats and two plastic bags with snacks, a couple jumpers and a scarf that the thieves completely ignored, as well as my favourite hat, one of the few silver linings of this infuriating ordeal.

So, here I am, at home, with a lot of bureaucracy to handle, a few belongings to replace, and a sense of safety to rebuild. It’s unpleasant, and it adds to an already considerable amount of stress we’ve been under for the past few months.

And here is where I introduce the rest of the story. What came before our troubled weekend. Funnily enough, I had started that version of the post with the foreshadowing line:

Life happens. And in the past months, a lot of it happened.

At this point, I am sitting in a different house, with a belly bump hosting a creature who loves to bounce around and should be out in person in the summer. It is a lot, and yet it is not even half of all that filled these past six-to-ten months.

This whole time, I missed writing. I missed my characters, the feeling of a story taking shape under my hands. I have achieved and overcome a lot in the real world during the past few months; yet, the sense of accomplishment of seeing that word count go up is still something different entirely. The act feels good, it feels appropriate, it feels mine. Yes, I intend and hope for readers for the final product, but the time I spend writing serves only myself. To get corny, bringing my characters and plots to life brings me to life (cue Evanescence).

Still, things are messy at the moment, with a house and new human both in progress, so my writing is also pure chaos. The key is small goals.

WHAT I’M WRITING

Two probably-short-stories-but-we’ll-see:

• Giving in to the Ghost (working title): Goth girl gets stood up on a date, becomes mesmerised by the vintage print of a dashing character in an antique shop, and subsequently meets them in real life. Ira is charming, mysterious, and a ghost, which doesn’t stop them from flirting shamelessly with Gardenia. Is the night turning into the meet-creepy/cute (with a heap of spice) of her dreams?
  
• Medusa in Love (very working title): what if Medusa grew up in a contemporary society where (rich and weird) people manipulate bodies to create symbiotic relationships with animals and obtain special abilities? What if she had a completely ungifted troublemaker as a girlfriend? Lastly, what if she disappeared and her girlfriend were having none of it?

Fun and weird, what’s not to love? But wait, there’s more!

BUNDLES AND COLLABS

I may have held off on writing new stories, but things are still brewing behind the scenes.

BUNDLES

My novella The Sylvester was included in my first ever bundle sale on itch.io. The bundle was called English isn’t even my 1st language, and Louis and Henry couldn’t be in better company!
If you don’t know how itch bundles work, here’s the gist: authors come together under a theme or umbrella, you buy their books in a bundle for a discounted price. Formats for ebooks on itch.io are usually epub and/or pdf.
This bundle included vampires, selkies, grieving biologists, elves, submarines, and more, and even though it ended on the 24th of May, I still encourage you to check out these authors. If you’re in this space, I’m sure you’ll find something to enjoy amidst their creations!

ANTHOLOGIES

My spicy alter ego Jana Sol is debuting on the 1st of September in the H.O.T. anthology, organised by fellow indie author Merlina Garance!

7 authors have gathered to bring you erotic short stories exploring the place that sex takes in totalitarian societies. Whether it’s digital surveillance, classism, queerphobia, how do we resist with our bodies?

For a long time, I hesitated to make the jump into erotica. I asked myself whether it would be better to completely separate my two writerly identities, keep Jana Sol a secret. Ultimately, though, Magnolia and Jana are deeply similar and intertwined, and whilst they will stick to some measure of genre separation, I will acknowledge my Jana Sol projects just as much.

So, meet my alter ego:

Jana Sol (she/her) approaches writing like a kaleidoscope showing strange and wonderful worlds. As the spice-focused alter ego of fellow kaleidoscope writer Magnolia Fay, she takes the same vibes of magic, fantasy, sci-fi and whimsy and blends the exploration of new realities with the exploration of bodies, and all the ways they pulse, connect, seek pleasure. She aims to thrill, sometimes raise eyebrows, nearly always coax a chuckle or a smile. The short story No Cam marks her debut as an author of erotica.

Ooof, that was a lot, I know. If you made it this far, you’re an absolute star.

I have one last thing to share with you. A little gift, if you will.

WRITING SNIPPETS: A POEM

I wrote the first version of this on my Notes app as we rushed to the airport after the theft. It’s visceral and slightly cringe, but conveys the myriads of contrasting emotions I was going through at the time. And I hadn’t written poems in a long time.

I don’t forgive you

You couldn’t take my baby
You couldn’t take my love
You even left the passport
In the pocket of my coat
As well as my AirPods
I’m sure that would annoy you
You took our suitcases
And our backpacks
And left alone our bag of food
I cried when I found
My favourite hat safe inside
Bet you wouldn’t really care
You scored a laptop
And two Switches
And one iPad, good fare
My diary
And my pregnancy journal
Will be in a bin somewhere
My villagers in Animal Crossing
Will wait for me in vain
And my driving license and id
I’ll have to cancel soon
My cute cat pouch from high school
With all my meds inside
Hope the sertraline and benzos
Help you sleep tonight
And if you ever
Turn your life around
I let it out into the ether
That I don’t forgive you
You fuckin coward

Yeah, not very Live, Laugh, Love of me, I know. I guess the sense of violation and the loss of things that despite having no resale value were important to us overrides in this instance any empathy I might feel for the life circumstances of these people. We all have our limits, and I’ve apparently found mine.

This is really it, and if you welcomed me back in this space after such a long time, I am really grateful. I hope the next updates will be less chaotic and more consistent, but then again, as we’ve experienced, life happens. So, we’ll see.

Happy reading!

Magnolia Fay