Small fractures Fissuring my muscles and veins Each comment degrading Pushing me deep Further away from what I can know Each comment living Upon my flesh Taking shape Gaining a personality of its own Volition My muscles depreciating under the pressure My veins collapsing Time to veer Reconstruction I live not knowing about The shape these lichen create Affecting me Growing me to an unknown Until I am no longer mine own entity A duplicate thriving inside me A counter character existing Alive as my skin Not me but we Is who you meet Can you see the lichen The debris with a foundation upon me Do I protest Or can I get away with this disguise I keep on living The heavy lichen burdening Until I lay in the sun Revealing And one by one the scales fall away original poem by Lisa Karasek

I've got this sci-fi novella that I'm told doesn't know what it wants to be. A couple of scenes are too much for YA, apparently. I could soften or remove them and I might have a marketable YA thing. Anyway, its set on a generational star ship, crawling towards Proxima Centauri. The characters in the story will never make it there, because its going to take another hundred years at least. I thought that might be interesting to explore. Just imagine your whole life and existence played out on board a ship going somewhere you'll never see. That would be enough of a story in itself. (kinda like that movie "Passengers" but my story is quite different). But apparently good stories need conflict and tension, and yadda yadda... so... There's been a reactor meltdown, way back in the past that's isolated the people living in the rear of the ship from the those in the front. And those in the front have succumbed to a pair of vampires, whose predecessors sneaked on board back when the ship left Earth generations ago. Because... who doesn't like vampires in space, right? lol We have a heroine by the name of Thief, who earned the nickname by being small and savvy enough to sneak into the front of the ship and steal stuff that her community at the back needs to survive. And we have our villains, the vampire siblings. Sebastian and Bianca. The other main character is the ship's AI, Mary. She is just a floating voice coming from speakers in every part of the ship. Here's a little scene with Sebastian and Bianca, both somewhat unhinged. ---- Deck 11. Front section C. Bianca’s boudoir Sebastian stood in front of the full-length mirror, inside Bianca’s cavernous walk-in wardrobe. He performed a twirl in the pretty pink frock and blew himself a kiss. “Delightful! Now, which shoes, do you think, Mary?” Mary, constrained by her programming, had no choice but to cooperate. “White pumps, of course. But I don’t see the point of this Sebastian.” “You don’t see the point of looking nice?” Sebastian asked as he scanned his sister’s shoe racks, “that’s because you have no physical form.”

Tell us who you are, and what you write. You don't need to share your name. You don't need a publishing credit or a finished manuscript. All you need is a love for dark, fearless storytelling. Tell us: What kind of dark fiction do you write or read? Which author or book pulled you into this world? What are you working on right now? We'll start, this is a place where your darkest ideas finally have a room to breathe.

Most people think their mind exists to make them happy. I don’t think that’s true. I think the mind was built to keep us alive. Those are two very different jobs. A survival system doesn’t care if you’re fulfilled. It doesn’t care if you become who God intended you to become. It doesn’t care whether your relationships are healthy, whether your dreams are possible, or whether the life you’re building is worth living. It has one assignment… Keep breathing. That’s why fear often feels more convincing than hope. Fear has been rehearsed for millions of years. It became the operating system long before consciousness gave us the ability to question it. Then something extraordinary happened. Human beings became aware that we were aware. For the first time, survival wasn’t the only voice in the room. Consciousness created something evolution alone never could… the ability to investigate the very system that created us. That’s where I think maturity actually begins. Not when fear disappears. Not when life finally becomes easy. But when you begin asking a dangerous question… “Is this fear responding to reality… or is it responding to an outdated survival strategy that no longer fits the world I’m standing in?”. Because most people don’t realize their nervous system is still defending them from places they’ve already escaped. It keeps fighting wars that ended years ago. It predicts betrayal before trust has a chance. It expects rejection before anyone has spoken. It mistakes familiarity for truth simply because familiarity once increased the odds of survival. Maybe that’s why so many people confuse surviving with living. Survival asks, “What could hurt me?” Living asks, “What is actually true right now?” The distance between those two questions may be the distance between existing and becoming. I don’t believe wisdom comes from accumulating more answers. I think wisdom begins when consciousness develops enough courage to cross-examine its own conclusions. Every belief deserves interrogation. Every fear deserves evidence. Every certainty deserves a trial.

I appreciate the invite. I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Ray Blanco. I’m a soon to be self published author and hip hop producer. I write in philosophy and pain. I guess there’s no point in hiding the fact that I suffer from schizophrenia and severe fragmentation… but it doesn’t define me… it just tunes me into a higher frequency so I can achieve the proper depth of my writing to translate the darkness in my mind into words. I look forward to meeting everybody.