Stories, both long and short.

One 1/11/2026

January 11th, 2026
Eleonore Duplay met Maximilien Robespierre when she was twenty-two years old. It had been a hot day and later there were gunshots and shouting in the street. She’d stayed up with her mother, waiting for her father to come home. If he hadn’t come home, she’d been preparing to go out to find him, no matter the condition. However he’d hurried into the yard, a stranger trailing behind him. Maurice Duplay shut the gate behind him and then towards the house.

“Mama, the kettle,” Eleonore said just as father reached the door. Her mother moved the kettle off the fire to start on making coffee.

“I own several apartments, monsieur. You can stay here for tonight, the top room is vacant.”

“Ah, merci.”

The door opened. Her father framed is wood, the stranger behind him, bedraggled by a long day. Eleonore lit another candle to see more clearly. The light caught pale green eyes and a pale freckled face. Maurice led him further into the house, closer to his wife and daughter.

“My eldest daughter Eleonore, and my wife Francoise. Dearest, please meet Monsieur Robespierre.”

Both women dropped a shallow curtsy and Francoise tutted. “Oh you poor man. I have coffee. Come sit,” she ordered. Robespierre muttered a thank you. Eleonore studied him with an artists eye. His profile flattened, make his face look shallow and his cheekbones look high. Maurice met her gaze and they stepped aside.

“He was trapped at the club, during the shooting. I helped him out. He can stay for the night,” he told her. “Can you go see to the room?”

“Yes papa,” she said and left, glancing over her shoulder to the slumped form in front of the fire.
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The Last Vow 1/6/2026

January 6th, 2026
- The last vow
Salai and Eleonore laying on the ground. Salai had a bottle of mead next to his elbow, Eleonore had a bottle of strong red wine. They were both staring up at the ceiling, a projection of stars above them. Rather than being static it moved in a gentle spiral, stars appearing and disappearing. Eleonore took a sip of her wine, a red drop spilling over her cheek and into her dark brown hair.

“I’ve been thinking, about what we should do.”

Salai grunted, eyes hazy.

“I’ve been thinking about what to do for Maxime,” she whispered. It was first time she’d used his private name since she’d been in this place. The first time she’d used it with Salai.

“I think I want to bring him back. In this one,” she muttered and waved a hand at the stars over head. It collapsed limply back to her chest.

Salai rolled his eyes over to her, where she was still staring up at the sky. The not-real sky. Tears followed the same path the wine had, dripping back into her hair.

“What do you mean, bring back?”
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Kiss Under Red Moons

January 5th, 2026
Finn leaned forward, hands interlaced. He tilted his head to study the painting in front of him. It was competently done, no, expertly done. It featured two figures on a hazy bridge, the lighting done in the silver light of the moon. The bridge over the river was the only solid looking object, everything else hazy as though it was wrapped in a funeral shroud of the thinnest cloth. The men were out of focus, the metaphorical lens of the viewing camera was smeared in petroleum oil. They were pressed close and while Finn couldn’t make out the details, he knew one of them must have been Eleonore’s lost love. She stood beside the painting, one hand clasped over the other.

“Well?” She prompted him after a bit.

Finn looked up at her. “And this is the start, isn’t it?”

https://bsky.app/profile/jcrycolr3wradc.bsky.social
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Letters Never Sent 1/3/2026

January 3rd, 2026
Maestro

This is something Ene suggested, speaking my thoughts out loud and the device she gave me writes it for me. I can only imagine how useful something like this would have been for you. She does say that at some point she will show me how to write. Something you never got around to, maestro…

I am stuck here with an annoying french wench named Eleonore. She was on about helping to kill a king and the man she failed to marry was beheaded with his lover? She isn’t without talent. She paints well, but all the same subject. If that was her man, then I truly do not know what she pines for. As for me, I cannot paint at all.

It would please you, I suppose, to know you are well thought of. People know your name, your works. Not your inventions but your paintings. The ones that were finished anyway. I’m sorry, that sounded bitter. I am trying to speak nicely to you, maestro. Hardly matters however, with your death. Still.

(A long silence ensues.)

I was given a choice when I died. Ene came to me and told me I could still make a difference. She told me I could live forever, here in this strange place with these strange people. I knew it was what you would have done. But now that i am here I find myself resenting it. Why do I continue to try to honor you? You never even taught me to write! Perhaps that is my issue with Eleonore. She reminds me of our agreement, Leonardo. What is the purpose of holding true to a dead man?
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After the Resurrection

January 2nd, 2026
In the end, the choice was never a choice. Eleonore had so much left to, so much she had failed to accomplish. The power to change that was something she could not pass up.

The place that Finn guided her to was unlike any space she’d been to before. There’s nothing natural about it. The lighting is flat and omnipresent, the walls soaring up towards a ceiling she could not even see. The atmosphere was comfortable, neither hot nor cold. Regardless she felt unnerved by the location. Eleonore sometimes expected to get lost in the flat whiteness, as though it was a blizzard and never find her way back out.

“It’s to give you some drive,” Finn said, when Eleonore remarked on her uneasiness. “You wanna get out of here, right? Then come up with something and we can all get out into the great out there.” He waved his hand, burdened with silver rings and dotted with faded black ink, at some unseen beyond.

Eleonore raised her eyebrow. “That seems exploitative.”

Finn barked a laugh. “You’d be entirely correct lass.” He brought her a cup of tea and Eleonore was left to think about making things.
- Bluesky
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Lines 1/1/2026

January 1st, 2026
A/N: This is Eleonore Duplay – lived during the French Revolution of 1789 and Gian Giacomo known as Salai – who lived and worked with Leonardo da Vinci. After being offered a choice at the moment of their respective deaths, they have come to a strange in between realm under the guardianship of a Irishman name Finn O’Reilly and Ene. Tasked with creating “things” in the words of Ene, they now try to spend their time trying not to kill one another.

“This is stupid,” Salai hissed. He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t like you.”

Eleonore ignored him. She’d had younger siblings all her life, including one little brother who was very much like Salai. She instead focused on her painting, the scene coming to her in a vivid wash of color. Two figures in a cave. Or not them, but their shadows, the light streaming in from the mouth of the cave.

“That’s not what the shadows would look like,” Salai interrupted her concentration again. “You’re making it too intense for the strength of the light. There aren’t any lines like that in life, you know.” He sniffed in superiority.

Eleonore’s brush stopped for a moment as she gritted her teeth together.

“I know. But art isn’t real life, is it?” she asked, her tone as mild as milk.

Salai, this loathsome brat she’d been saddled with, scoffed. “It isn’t. But it should be an accurate reflection, shouldn’t it?”

Eleonore looked at him, an eyebrow raising in surprise. That was the first hint he’d shown of something other than shallow enjoyment of anything. His relaxed posture on the chaise lounge, flipping through a magazine and eating the new dessert that Finn had brought back for them to try—layers of thin pastry and honey, topped with nuts. She watched as a sticky string of honey dripped off the fork.

Salai’s cultivated nonchalance regarding their new position made her want to hit him. She’d never struck her siblings in life, even when they deliberately tried to bother her. Her even temper had been one of the things she and her father had shared. One of the things that made Maximilien value her company.

She took a slow breath and set down her brush.

“Do you mean that art should reflect the life an artist perceives? Or do you mean that art should be real life?”

Salai took another bite of his dessert, sucking the fork free of honey. His eyes rolled as he thought. “I think that art should be a reflection of what the artist sees. Or maybe what they also want to see.” He frowned. “But it should look like real life. And there are no lines in real life.”

“But then how do we show more than just that one moment? How do we show who a person is, what they want? Art can’t just look like real life,” Eleonore said, thinking about David’s La Mort de Marat. “And lines are a part of life too.” She pointed at the door. “What do you call the boundary between a wall and the edge of a door?”

“The subject should tell the story,” Salai snapped at her. “What does a woman know of art anyway?”

Eleonore snorted. “You clearly weren’t paying attention to when El introduced us. I was trained as an artist in life.”

Salai stared at her. Ate another bite of the dessert. “Were you any good? Have any patrons?”

“No,” she returned with a distasteful curl of her lip. “But I would imagine that you wouldn’t understand the concept of working for oneself.”

Salai sat up. “And what do you mean by that?”

Eleonore raised an eyebrow. “Nothing. Only that you are remembered for being an eternal apprentice.” She turned from him.

“Well, at least I’m not remembered for being unsuccessful in marrying a man,” Salai snapped before storming out the door, which slammed behind him.
- Bluesky
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New feature and a quick update!

July 27th, 2024
Hello everyone! Elaine here with a quick update – first I am introducing some new contributors here on the site. The first one is Ms. Lola Nixx. She writes primarily in erotica and likes long walks on the beach. She has her own site at lolanixx.wordpress.com. Pleas go check her out, she is very cool!

Second – I know I promised more updates to the site and haven’t followed through. And I promise I want to try and get back to weekly features like “Read Write Wrestle”, I just haven’t had the time. But I promise there are projects in the fire right now – including the possible revamp of “A Fiction Agreed Upon.” Hence the new contributors So I might have more time to get stuff done.

Thank you all for being patient and sticking with me!
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READ WRITE WRESTLE!

May 29th, 2024
READ WRITE WRESTLE! #1

Dynamite 5.29.2024 (At the Kia Forum (Like MCR))

Mercedes Moné celebrates getting her hands on the TNT Championship at Double or Nothing. Skye Blue attacks her.

First Match: Swerve Strickland vs. Killswitch

Will Jack Perry ever return for his poor ol’ dinosaur man? Swerve is sooo good; he really was wasted in WWE. I loved his “The Warriors” inspired gear from Double or Nothing. Insert “The Warriors” gif. Killswitch does a standing moonsault on Swerve, which is just amazing. Swerve wins it with a second House Call. Oh wait, are those scissors?? HE TAKES A BRAID FROM KILLSWITCH???

And immediately it’s announced that Mercedes Moné is gonna wrestle Skye Blue tonight.

Promo from Jon Moxley on Rocky Romero tonight

Moxley talks about the grind.

OH GOD NO. Chris Jericho “TV Time” thing

Please, please, go away, Jericho. Please go away, far away. I hate him utterly. Thank you, “Please Retire” chants. Even commentary sounds sick of this. Bryan Keith comes out, and I can only pity him. Sorry, dude. Taz sounds like he could kill Jericho. ‘Longest FTW champion’ indeed. YES YES YES THANK YOU HOOK!! KILL HIM!! KILL HIM NOW!! OH HEY JOE!!! Joe, teach this kid how to kill Jericho!! If we can never get Hookhausen back, then JoeHook is good too, tbh.

(Me when Learning Tree. Kill it with axes, please.)

Promo on Stephanie Vaucur, who is coming to join AEW during Forbidden Door.

Moxley vs. Rocky Romero

Mox’s arm is all messed up after DoN. And Rocky comes out gunning for Mox, targeting his injured arm. Commentary is bickering like a bunch of hens in a henhouse. Taz sounds like he’s gonna drop Tony or Excalibur on their heads. The last time Mox had a match after a PPV against a smaller wrestler with Rick Knox as the ref, he got a concussion. I hope he’s not thinking about that, but I am! Moxley wins with the Death Rider.

RENEE GOES TO TALK TO JOE AND HOOK

Hook and Joe are gonna be a team!!! I’m so happy!!! (I miss Hookhausen, but you know what? I’ll take this.)

Black screen? HOB? Nope, a fake out.

Don Callis is gonna present a contract to someone… If it’s Orange Cassidy, I’m gonna throw up. NOOOOO!! Here’s Orange, who we all love. Please don’t do it, Orange. I don’t wanna have to boo you. ORANGE SAYS NO!!!! OH DAMN HERE’S STOKELY AND KRIS!! And Trent Beretta from behind! Orange is having a terrible time. And bleeding! I suppose Trent is joining Don Callis now. : (

Backstage with Danny Garcia

He is so boring to me. Every time I see him, I just wish Danhausen was here instead.

TNT Championship match: Mercedes Moné vs. Skye Blue

Love how the whole women’s roster has just been a toxic yuri plot the last few months. Moné with a sick ass Meteora off the ropes to the outside. Moné wins with a Money Maker. OH BUT Stephanie Vacquer. Dang, Stephanie is pretty.

Stokely and Stat here to drop the diss track of the year on the women’s locker room.

PROMO ON MJF. Welcome back, king!! ❤

EVPs arrive!! With Okada and Jack Perry

Here to discuss the TNT Championship since, for some mysterious reason, Adam Copeland broke his ankle. (It’s because he jumped 20 feet off the top of a steel cage.) The new elite are here to be petty and bitchy, and I am Here For It!! Giving gifts to Okada and Jack Perry. Okada gets a Lambo. Jack Perry almost gets the TNT Championship before Christopher Daniels interrupts and lets them know they will have to go through him as interim VP. He tells Perry he will have to earn it through an elimination tournament, and the championship will be decided by a ladder match.

Promo backstage with Swerve

“You try to take my championship, I take your hair.” I love him.

MAIN EVENT

Casino Forbidden Door gauntlet. It’s sudden death, so whoever gets pinfall or submission wins it all. Starts with Switchblade Jay White. Then Pac. Mistico from CMLL. Fourth man is Will Osprey! We love Osprey!! SHOOTER??!! Awww, I hope Mox called him “Kid” and sent him out there with a slap on the shoulder. Claudio!!!! Jay White runs from Claudio, which is hysterical. Jay White gets the giant swing. THEN MISTICO. THEN WILL OSPREY!!1? Shooter gets up in Claudio’s face. Claudio then swings Shooter too!!! Good lord. NOT ALSO PAC!!! Bryce Remsburg almost gets swung too while I lose my shit.

Leo Rush??? Comes from NJPW. I do not know him, sorry buddy. HOLY FUCKS HE’S FAST AS FUCK.

ORANGE CASSIDY COMES OUT!!! (For the match, not as Pan like I know he is, I mean what, who said that?). Orange and Ospreay face each other down but get interrupted by Jay White. Hechichro comes in next, goes right for Jay White. Match is fire. Ospreay wins by pinning Orange to challenge for the AEW World Championship. Swerve comes out to stare down Ospreay.

Soooo What???

Why is Ospreay getting this?? When it should go to a CMLL or NJPW wrestler??? Because that’s the point of the Forbidden Door?? TK booker of the year. Also, considering what Orange Cassidy went through for the championship, I don’t know why we are having it held by Ospreay, who doesn’t seem to care about it at all, except as a stepping stone to the World Championship.

So this is a new feature I am adding to help with weekly updates. I didn’t know what to feature in order to provide more pound-sign content about so wrestling, reading, and writing it is! Please be sure to follow me here on wordpress or on tumblr or mastadon. Or if you want to help with funding the site or any other projects please see my kofi page under the “contact me” tab. Thanks!
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Numerology and Other Announcements – A 2023 Retrospective.

January 2nd, 2024
Numerology and other announcements – A 2023 Retrospective.

I should update so I can at least show I used the website.

2024 is twelve years after everyone thought the world was going to end. It’s four years after what felt like the end of the world. It’s been a decade since Dash-con. (That last one is just for me.)

I will also be turning thirty in 2024! I’ve been looking forward to thirty. In addition to being the doubling of my ‘magic year” it’s also means there’s been one year to a month, which I think is cool. As a child I was described as someone with an “old soul’. If you just rolled your eyes are winced you probably understand that it was probably some mixture of trauma and whatever that drove me away from my peers and toward “adult” interests like reading and sitting quietly. So I suppose I’m also happy to be an age that I felt I was always meant to be anyway.

But that’s not important.

2024 is gonna be a big year. Thirty is just the start of it.

I’m publishing at least two books in 2024. In the first six months I want to kick off with my series that’s about Tom – a cat who works for the Crown Princess as a spy on the rebel group led by the snake Xyacotal. Or at least he thinks he does. “To Steal From Lions” will be available on Amazon and for direct download.

The release in the second half of 2024 is more complicated because I will likely be moving to another continent.

Why?

First let me back up and talk about the back half of 2023. The first half of 2023 I did not enjoy. My enjoyment of things seemed muted. I wasn’t writing. I went to see my best friend in February and confirmed for myself he really is just my best friend. I wasn’t upset by this. I’ve been calling myself asexual and aromatic since 2019. I’m happy with my own company. I’ve never needed another person to make me happy.

Then in July I got into wrestling. Specifically All Elite Wrestling and came to several realizations.

First – Wrestling fucks. It’s so good. I love wrestling.

Second – Love that Danhausen.

Third – Romantic soulmates are real and mine lives in Devon.

So in 2024 I will be moving to England to be with them. I’m in love with Rowan. I never knew what “in love” would mean before. But I do now.

So I don’t know what I will publish in the back half of 2024. But I will.

There are a lot of numbers in the post. While I can never be described as a math person, I do like numbers. They help me think and organize my brain. And I like the number Two-thousand twenty-four.

Yours ever, Elaine.
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A Fiction Agreed Upon Hiatus!

July 8th, 2020
July 8, 2020

This is going to be a weird post for me.

First, I don’t like posting about myself. It makes me uncomfortable. I like to just exist as a conduit: my creativity flowing through me to the page for your eyes. But I felt, very strongly, that I needed to explain why I am I putting A Fiction Agreed Upon on hiatus.

And because I am me and I will never make a story short if I can make into a epic (sorry, Hemmingway) here is a little bit of backstory.

I came up with the concept for AFAU in 2016, during the summer. It quickly spiraled into the version you see now, with a cast of millions, world building, themes, ect. Then the American election happened, and I ended up changing some things. You see, in the original draft of AFAU, I was going to include far more “problematic” historical figures than the cast I have planned today. For example, I was not just going to have one Adolf Hitler, I was going to have TWO, a young artist and the Furher.

This is because the driving thrust of AFAU has always been about how we (society) evaluate history and the people who make it. Would the Year Three Thousand look on a young Adolf, whose ambition is to paint, with pity? Hate? Fear? And how would it change their interactions with a Hitler who is at the end of his life, the murder of twenty million? How would that in turn affect his relationship with Napoleon and Napoleon with Robespierre and Robespierre with Machiavelli, so on and so forth.

After November 2016, this changed. I knew I could not, would not, ever be comfortable with using Hitler. How could I be when global politics was taking such a turn to the conservative right? How could I interrogate people like Hitler (never mind the actual man), investigate and question without people mistaking my intentions, thinking that I was endorsing that kind of monstrous brutality?

To be absolutely clear: I don’t and never will. Academic curiosity could never justify it in my mind. Hitler should go down as a monster in history.

So I dialed it back. I re-evaluated my ‘cast list’. I made changes in response to real life. I know there are other creative minds out there who will insisted that you should never compromise your art to modern stresses. I don’t always agree with that.

But I didn’t want to lose that angle. So, I didn’t cut all of them, but I tried to strive for balance. If I had Napoleon I needed to have Toussaint L’Ouverture. I wanted to question history and for history to examine itself.

But now…

2020 is a bizarre time to live in as a historian. I guess this is how Horace Walpole felt in 1793. You have beliefs about the world around you and then everything gets turned on it’s head and you just aren’t sure about anything anymore.

Season Three of A Fiction Agreed Upon is/was going to dramatically increase the number of Historical Figure running around. Elizabeth the First, Catharine the Great, Lewis, Clark and Sacajawea. I had/have a long subplot about the Founders and Framers of the American Constitution that was going to loop Jerimiah (the alien who met Rain in the Louvre in season one) back into the plot.

But now I don’t think I should. At least not right now.

How can I justify talking about Thomas Jefferson, who knowingly, through his whole life, was willing and eager to prop up racism and slavery?

How can I justify talking about Andrew Jackson whose legislature continued and massively increased the slow rolling genocide of Indigenous Americans?

How can I justify talking about Magpie Jones, a non-binary person, who is going to have to keep explaining their gender identity to nearly everyone they’re risking everything to help?

And the list goes on!

The White Plague, the Second American Civil War, World War Three. Debates on what goes into recorded history and who gets left out and why. The scenes of militaristic oppression and violence on a resisting population who is trying to demand answers from their leadership.

How can I justify writing any of this in 2020, when it is so fucking close to the reality we are living in?

The answer: I can’t.

I just

Can’t.

I won’t. It’s not the right thing to do right now.

The same reason why I would not use Hitler in 2016 is the reason I will not write this in 2020. It’s just not appropriate.

I don’t know when AFAU is going to come back.

I do think it will eventually come back, mostly because it’s a keystone project to the rest of the Extended Universe, but it won’t be the same. I must do a lot of rigorous thinking about my approach.

It is heartbreaking to post this. I’ve put a lot into A Fiction Agreed Upon. It’s important to me. But it’s still not as heartbreaking as what a lot of black, queer, immigrant or indigenous people are suffering today, right now, in 2020.

And this is why AFAU is going on hiatus.

Thank you for understanding.
- Elaine.
P.S. This is not to say that I won’t be posting. I’ll post essays, reviews, short stories or flash fiction. Maybe previews of one of the other million projects I’m working on. Just not AFAU. Not for a while.
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7/2/2020: Loot

July 3rd, 2020
Cori held up the Passus to Cornelia.

“We found it among the flotsam in the Lion’s Head Galaxy.”

Cornelia took the device, pressing her finger into it’s needle point.

“Such a troublesome thing,” she sighed. “If only they knew, it would do them no good to posses anyway.” Regardless she closed her hand around it and with a passing thought, it vanished again.

Cori gasped. “Wait!”

The hunt would go on.
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Season Two. Episode Twenty-Four: Cue the Applause.

July 2nd, 2020
It was without a doubt the best rooms William had ever been given by a patron before. Everything was in plush velvet, rich furs of bears, tigers and lions and silk table runners.

“The boss wants you two to be as comfortable as possible,” said the chippy little man who had taken Will and his companion to the rooms. They had walked barefooted through empty marble halls, though Will was sure he could hear distant laughing and speaking.

“How very considerate!” Said his companion, a tall man with long and dark hair. His accent was not purely English however. “Perhaps we will now be allowed to find out why we are here?”

The little man laughed. “To write for the Boss! He’ll come by soon enough when he comes up with what he wants, but until then,” he bowed, “he’d like you to sit back and relax.” The man winked. “There are menus on those shelves should you want anything. An-ee-thing.” He winked again and Will almost rolled his eyes.
(more…)
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