Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd

@mcburnellauthor

Writer of epic fantasies. Lover of cities and odd words. Just here to tell stories. No AI 🏳️‍⚧️they/ him Behold, my stuff:

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Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jul 13

#WIPSnips 'almost' Pulling from E2 when I can, so everything is going to be mildly, low-key spoilery

He passed over the phone, and Pherul took it thoughtlessly. He felt as if his heart had stopped when he saw a picture of his friends standing on a street that couldn’t be in their own city: there were cars around them. The lighting was incandescent or neon, casting unfamiliar hues across their visages. His eyes flicked off the picture, identifying the app by font and iconography. It had hundreds of millions of users; this repost alone had almost five thousand likes, and it was two days old.
The five of them stood in a chain, holding hands, lined up along a block Pherul feared he recognized despite how little background had been captured. Letherdon stood with chin tipped up, expressionless, gazing at whatever lay in front of him. Mochacha looked alarmed; the other two women were annoyed, lips curled in disgusted grimaces. And Rithucaride… they looked exactly like the terrible dark queen Pherul had hinted in his interviews they might be. It had been meant to be fiction, but they stood with their head thrown back, eyes wide and blazing. The text of the quote repost read: ThIs HaS nOtHiNg To dO wItH HilLaM BiLtNoVeR eAtINg It.

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jul 13

Another snip, for fun. The Anander is the river that runs through the center of the Cities. Yes, it's a sapient being

He flew upward, propelled on a wave. Be well, and thank you, the Anander told him. It laid him gently on the quay and retreated into its bed. Japhet staggered to his feet, sodden and dizzy, still struggling for breath. Hundreds of people now clustered around him. “Go away, you idiots! You’ll all be killed!” He was too frazzled to perceive what language he had spoken in.
The devil’s iron hammer smacked into his chest, tossing him into the nearest bystanders. They went down in a great heap of humanity, limbs tangling. Japhet fought loose from their confused embrace, shoving roughly away from the Liathm. There was no way he wasn’t hurting people, but better kicked in the head than any of the alternatives.
The devil screamed in fury: it had never before been opposed. Its howls were tornados, shredding trees before the big buildings stalled their energy. A fearsome tingling sparked at every nerve and he felt like he had fur, every hair on his body standing rigidly to attention.
He saw the devil’s face glittering like ice beneath a cruel winter sun as it hefted its spear. The first bolt struck the steeple of a nearby cathedral, one of the ones out on that island in the river. The crash of thunder couldn’t disguise the sound of an explosion, and the steeple was missing.
The second bolt was better aimed.

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jul 13

#SummerOfStories In TW, Mar. I kill a lot of people close to him in a short period and take one of his eyes. He also does something revolutionary that he considers a betrayal (big guilt), and the ppl he did it for admire him so much they turn him into a visionary accidentally <whomp whomp>

Marseviks knew what was about to happen. He had known for a long time that mages could do this but never witnessed it. He was completely unprepared for the suddenness of it. Now he found his voice, but it was as impotent as the rest of him: “Don’t—” was all he had time to say before the mage went limp, eyes rolling up in his head. His aura disappeared, and he was gone before his body settled on the icon’s cooling form.
“Noooo,” Marseviks cried.
He started violently, peering around the tiny, darkened space that was the privy closet in his chambers. He looked down at his own penis, held loosely in one hand, and he couldn’t even think what it was, let alone why he was standing here in the dark, holding onto it. With a muttered oath, he fumbled it away.
The instant he was decent, not troubling with the rest of his clothes, he tore out of his room. It had happened in the throne room. The Hazetherine was deserted at this hour, well after midnight but still too early in the morning for even the earliest-rising of the servants to be up and at their work. He was able to race full-tilt along the carpeted corridors and need not stop to explain himself. Few lamps were burning, but the windows of the palace were many, and the moon was full, illuminating all the recent snow.
When he arrived at the doors to the throne room, he was briefly gripped by the lassitude that plagued him while he watched the duel. This time, though, he was able to throw it off and step forward after only a short pause. He wondered, as he grasped the handles to the doors, why it had been so difficult before.
He pulled the doors wide but hesitated on the threshold. Not, this time, because fear held him still: the room beyond was dark and appeared to be completely depopulated. It had been overflowing with throngs only minutes earlier, and he couldn’t think where had they had gone with such speed that they had left this perfect silence in their wake.

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jul 12

#WIPSnips 'extra' more from E2, which is a whopping 10k now

The healer had been distressed, and that level of pain would be difficult to fake. They did not know, though, why he had felt the way he did; Lagbethu was taruli himself and would be aware of the limitations of their extra sense. He had been horrified and grief-stricken, but he could have felt that way because he found his friend dead or because he had done something irretrievable not intending to. He could have done something he found hateful because he didn’t see another choice, and that genre of cold calculation didn’t seem to fit with the screaming meltdown he had an hour later in their living room, but people were complicated. Sometimes they felt compelled to do strange things that didn’t make sense outside the confines of their heads.
“I like the idea of pinning it on him because it would pay him back for being such a bitch,” they observed. “But I’ll admit, I don’t find him convincing as a murderer.”

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jul 11

Everything that was once mine is now theirs. #Caturday

A tiny torbie lies on one side between the curled-up ends of a mauve yoga mat. The view is from above and she has her chin down so you can only see the top of her face; her fur is gray and beige with stripes of black and umber. One of her enormous mitts rests atop the folded matt by her face, putting on display all the extra toes.

An orange tabby lies across a sketch tablet some fool left open on a bed. He has a white chest and neck; he lies on his belly, face toward the camera, one foreleg extended. He has extra toes on his white feet, which a speckled with orange spots.

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jul 11

My dudes! We're gonna be talking MAPS next month. Here's an outline of the prompts for anyone who wants a sneak-peak (or for anyone who wants to make a map but isn't sure what to put on it!) Looking forward to this... #Cartaugust #WritingPrompt

Background is a photo of a rack draped in lovely maps, heavily tinted sepia.
#CARTAUGUST, a prompt game for maps nerds! by @mcburnellauthor.bsky.com
INTRO:
1. Introduce yourself and your world
2. Terra Incognita: are prats of your world unexplored?
3. Does the map change over the course of your story?
NATURAL FEATURES
4. Mountains, canyons, elevation or barriers
5. Rivers, lakes, or oceans. Or navigable ways!
6. Challenging environments: deserts or swamps
7. Lushness/ biodiversity
8. Regions of Flux: predictable change
9. Regions of Catastrophe: disaster strikes... often
10. Regions of Peril: something hunts you back
11. Cataclysm: somewhere scarred
12. Where would you put a National Park?
RESOURCES
13. Minerals
14. Good soil
15. Hunting or fishing
16. SPICES
17. Contested resources
18. Anything we don't have on Earth?
CIVILIZATION
19. Borders
20. Holy places
21. Center of Power
22. Center of Trade
23. Center of Learning
24. The absolute boonies
25. Ruins
26. Highways: travel on easy mode
27. Byways: the hard-mode option
28. Battlefields
OUTRO
29. What has the process of map-making taught you?
30. Shout out! Whose map would you especially like to visit, and why?
31. What's YOUR favorite place in your world?

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jul 11

#BacklistSaturday hungry for weird science-fantasy! check out the complete trilogy books2read.com/SpidersFriend

Against the background of a starry sky, three books titled The Spider's Friend, The Serpent's Son, and The Scarab's Siblings.
Text reads: This ain't your grandma's palace intrigue.
The Spider's Friend.
pirates, zealous bison, eldritch crustaceans, narrative plants, and walking memories

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jul 11

#WIPSnips 'attack' This is out of the sequel, which is only a few k long so far and hasn't been edited at all

The two of them pawed through the stranger’s things for another while. It was both boring and frustrating, like trying to have a conversation in a language they didn’t speak. Rithucaride wasn’t sure how long they had been at it when footsteps in the hallway woke them to the difficulty of their situation; there was a dead person out in the kitchen and the two of them were the only people present to answer questions. Anyone who chanced upon them could hardly help but assume they were the culprits, not least because it would have been easier to kill the deceased if her attackers had been plural, able to gang up on her. When they entered the apartment, they hadn’t shut the door.
They had opened their mouth to share the thought of multiple assailants with their best friend, but the person coming up the hall had stopped. “Who the hell are you and what are you doing in here?”

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jul 11

#SummerOfStories I was kind of surprised to have a scene, but this certainly counts

“I thought the city at the bottom of the ocean was the coolest thing I was ever going to experience, but this is an actual dream. I have dreamed all my life of being able to look at a planet like this with my own eyes.” He fell silent, mouth slightly open and eyes shining. There was a brightness to his features Ṛith̥ucaṛide had not seen, underlined by the twinkly shivering of his mood: for once, there was no undercurrent, no bitter ramifications to his joy. “What say we stop caring about my probable death sentence and the person who was murdered and just spend the rest of our lives up here, staring at the sky?”
Since they weren’t exactly on a timetable here and their guest had made it clear he was enjoying this, the three of them went and took a seat themselves, all oriented the same way so they could admire the slow seething of the impossibly vast object hanging over them. The other human hadn’t seemed to be nearly as surprised, but he sat as well, placing himself protectively at Pherul’s left hand. While they looked, everyone took off their hat and gloves and unbuttoned their coats.
Several minutes into this awe-struck vigil, Pherul said, “May I know its name?”
“Ooth.”
He nodded gratefully and went back to staring.

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jul 10

#WIPSnips 'substitute' Had to go with replacement. It'll be right back to secondary worlds when this story is complete, but while it lasts, man, am I having fun writing a character who makes overt LoTRs references

The Brightrock building lay on the corner of Steadmore and 2nd, a block off Founderburg’s financial strip. It was only a few years old, a replacement when the old headquarters got too antiquated. He had no idea who they’d had to kill to get their hands on a piece of real estate this select, but the opportunity had been wasted on them. There were engineers around the world creating startling sky-scraping art, but the Biltnover’s hadn’t wanted one of those and opted for the most generic blue-plate-glass tower they could get their hands on.
It was still impressive in the way very large, very shiny things always were. His shoulders tensed as he stepped into a wedge of revolving-door and gripped the handle, but the anxiety wasn’t appreciably worse than it had been on any other day; he had always entertained a sneaking dread that he would be detained one morning as he stepped into the foyer with a paper cup of coffee. Because someone had read and taken issue with something he liked on his socials or developed a means to use mana to read minds. Even being part of the cult didn’t seem to protect people from getting strung up if they stepped out of line, and since he thought of the doomsday moral-panic-crusaders as a cult, well. No one was going to raise a hand to save him when the fiery eye of suspicion fell on him.

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jul 9

#SummerOfStories I've got a clothes-horse in every story, seems like. Here's Sathriel from We.

Clean and dry, he donned the clothing that had been laid out for him, a skirt of midnight blue with bright cerulean details startling against it, a sleeveless shirt with bronze rivets that leant it a military appearance. Had he done the packing, he would have left these glad rags behind, but here they were just as he had need of them, weighty silks in lustrous colors. Now that he was emperor, he traveled with an entourage of servants, and they traveled with a great collection of lovely things he had almost forgotten how to take pleasure in.
Once he was dressed, the fellow responsible for taking care of his toilette passed him a gold clip to stick in his hair. He fitted it into the curls over his left ear, admiring the effect in the mirror presented to him. He had yet to decide what to make of the claim that their peoples shared a history, but if these new folks believed themselves Ophanite, they must tell the same tales of the paradise beyond the western sky. No harm reminding them his was a land of legendary prosperity. Feeling the buoyant sensation that always came with knowing he looked nice, he bade the man farewell and quit the bedchamber that was being loaned to him.

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jul 8

#WIPSnips 'humid' from Symbols' End (Tipping World, bk 9)

light
color
a sense of pressure
the wet kiss of humidity, replaced by dust-dryness sucking at the skin
sounds warbled, glassy and hard to hear, growing louder and then quieter
She sat on the ground in the dirt, ears filled with the buzzing of bees. The light was dappled, and her chin jerked up when the sweet musk of roses hit her. This was the rose bower beneath the apple tree back home, where she had used to go to brood, and she thought: no.
She stood at the end of a pier, waves slapping quietly against the uprights. A scent of saltwater crisped her sinuses. The day was heavily overcast, and she was drenched by a soaking rain. Despite the curtain of gray that hung between her and the setting, she could pick out blotches of bright color in the near distance, all the edges square: the color was manmade. She could not have mistaken Lansanyas for a field of wildflowers anyway, she had seen it just the other day. Had events turned out differently, she might have been born here, but that wasn’t the world she belonged to, and she thought: no.
The sea’s voice grew further away, but it was louder now. Smashing angrily against the coast. She stood at the top of a great cliff stretching out to either side, and there was no rain here, but instead a bitter wind that whipped her hair around and cut into her skin. She looked at the man beside her, who had been gazing at the horizon contemplatively. He wore the most fabulous garment she had ever seen, layers upon layers of silk and brocade, pearls and iridescent ribbon in a dark cream color and several shades of green.

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jul 7

Hey friend, you got a Smashwords account? Because *I've* got epics and cozies, standalones and series, all fantasy, and my entire catalogue is 25% off during the Summer Sale! Now through July 31st www.smashwords.com/profile/view...

On a background of the sun setting behind mountains.
The Foreign Sorcerer: An antihero saves the day in spite of himself while preoccupied with adopting needy teenagers. The books pictured are The Three Faces of Dissatisfaction, The Shuttle that Weaves the Shroud, The Tale of a Vacant House, and The King of Halural.
We: Enemies are forced to band together to save their peoples from the crisis they unleased. The books are We Gather, We Battle, We Shatter, We Alter, We Rise.
The Tipping World: my new epic. The books are A Path of Endless Crossroads, The Bull at the Start, The King of Ill-Omens, A Mirror with an Edge, The Hour of the Day, Tally the Betrayers, Under a Sign of Butterflies, Bells Begin to Ring, Symbols' End.
The Spider's Friend: a palace intrigue with less palace and more battling a giant jellyfish. The books are The Spider's Friend, The Serpent's Son, The Scarab's Siblings.
Zimanges: a crew of roommates has to save their city from a demon while doing chores and looking for work.

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jul 7

#WIPSnips 'quarter' A clue!

Uttering a glad cry, they stepped across the threshold. Leth̥eṛdon was right behind them and announced to the rest the exciting development while Ṛith̥ucaṛide snatched up the jar. Like the ones out in the kitchen, there was no label. It was only maybe a quarter full but hadn’t ever been filled to the neck: they could tell because the insides of the jar weren’t stained by muck more than an inch above the contents. It was an appalling-looking mix of bruised leaves and lavender-hued powder mashed into something slimy and clear to form a revolting paste. Fearing to do so, they twisted off the lid and took a sniff.
Their eyebrows shot up, and they held it out to Leth̥eṛdon. He shot them a doubting look under his brows, as reluctant as they had been themself, but took a sniff of what had to be medicine. His face cleared as his sinuses filled with the bracing, wholesome scents of herbs and warmth. Ṛith̥ucaṛide didn’t know the first thing about healing and couldn’t begin to guess what malady this had been meant to treat, but they felt buoyed just from smelling it.

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jul 4

Want to binge on chaos? Watch a society fall in on itself and take the world down with it? Intrigue-heavy epic filled with memorable characters. Each book 50% off, the entire (9 book) series for just $25! itch.io/s/193124/sum...

Against a dark background, the cover of a book called A Path of Endless Crossroads by MC Burnell, a man with a sword walking into a desolate landscape. Text reads: SET FORTH: The Tipping World, Vol 1. No one but a mage can kill a mage and now they're vanishing.

A huge full moon in a dark blue sky. There is a big block quote: “The mage had a response to her skepticism, a pretty compelling one: she need not take him at his word, he was offering her the chance to learn the truth. Provided the process of learning what was true and what was not, what was real and what was myth, wasn’t a trap. One that would ensnare her and remake her into precisely what the mage said mages weren’t. All she had to do was take him at his word.”

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jul 4

Heatwave boooooo #Caturday

A ginger tabby lies on his side near the edge of a bed. His face is toward the camera, eyes open but not looking at you. His neck and chest and tummy are white; his white feet have ginger spots on them and extra toes. He has a little lopsided white mustache.

A little torbie stretched out on an intermediate tier of a cat tree with gray upholstery and sisal rope uprights. Her face is occluded by a pillar. Her fur is gray and beige with black and brown stripes; her tummy is spotted instead of striped. Her forepaws are cast in shadow and hard to see but also gigantic.

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jul 4

#WIPSnips 'round'

It had been way too long since they looked in on their tables, and it wasn’t fair to ask Opaka to do it all for them. They did the rounds, checked in on everyone. Greeted a couple new parties and got their orders from them. By the time they made it back, the healer had polished off his meal and was finishing his drink. “The human world,” he said when Ṛith̥ucaṛide arrived behind the bar. “Does that mean it was humans who were injuring him?”
“That’s my theory,” they admitted, although they would rather have kept it to themself. They weren’t sure why; this didn’t need to be a secret, not from their people. Pherul had instilled in them, though, a sense of anxious watchfulness that inclined them to be paranoid. They had no reason to think this man was anything other than what he claimed, but they had learned a number of things in the last few days that proved they had pockets of ignorance. Some of them large and potentially dangerous.

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jul 4

#SummerofStories My all-time *most epic* I've ever written is the explosion of the pyramid at Rai Selu from We, which I shared for wipsnips last week 😅 Still, Tipping World has lost of epic moments too. Here is reality starting to unravel! (from Symbols' End)

Alia rounded on the mage behind her. “What just happened.”
“Your friend sacrificed himself. Went along with his father to the afterlife, because what more powerful story is there, what surer way to keep the villain in his grave forevermore, than a child dying unjustly to atone for a parent’s crime?” Miran sounded sad, and she was quite sure he didn’t have a right to be.
Her fists clenched; the words came out trembling. “This was your idea. I know it. Somehow, at some remove. Everything bad that happens within a thousand miles of you was your idea if I look at it long enough.”
Miran thrust himself out of his chair, the fur draped across his lap cascading to the handsome granite tiles, but his face flickered. He assumed a haughty air, dealing her a look that made it clear her accusation didn’t merit a response. Then he took a step toward her
except
he was still standing right there by his chair where he ought to have been
and was.
Like a bead of water attenuating as it dripped from a tap, he stepped out of himself, leaving a copy behind. This man bared his teeth, vine-wrapped visage livid. “I am so sick of your attitude. Yes, it was my idea! Every idea is my idea because I’m the only one who ever thinks, it’s the only reason anything ever gets done around here! Why should I apologize for fixing everything on behalf of everyone? I don’t know what high horse you think you’re riding on, what have you done at any time when I wasn’t there to hold your hand quite literally?”
At this point, something seemed to occur to him, and he stopped speaking. He turned to face the other version of himself, who was watching him with the precise same expression of astonishment. They both raised their hands decisively, grasped each other by the shirt, and yanked. They fell into each other, and instead of smacking heads and saying ‘ouch,’ they met and merged and were just one man staggering.
A man who fell into his chair, both hands going to his head. “Oh, shit.”

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jul 3

#WIPSnips 'out' Okay this is just an *unreasonable* word. 😅 I pulled from the sequel, since it's not even 10k at this point, but that means the prose hasn't been buffed to a sheen.

His eyes flicked open as context registered. He wasn’t sure where he was but knew why he was here, back in Midland instead of at the dig. He had been ordered to come back long before the Upwelling began to peter out, and no one had said the new boss wanted him close in order to take advantage of his relationship with Rithucaride. She had told him she would take his calls if she was on the operating table, though, and it clearly hadn’t felt close enough in the event new communications came in. Especially after the faeries raided HQ and killed her dad in front of a couple dozen witnesses.
His head turned toward the windows where cheap plastic venetians stood open, letting in nothing but artificial light. He had no idea how long he had slept. He didn’t know what time it was other than: not an hour of the day when he was supposed to be up. It could have been an hour after dusk or an hour before dawn; he decided not to check, since knowing wasn’t going to move the meter on his jetlag. He made to throw the covers off and hesitated when it struck him that he was home and was allowed to have a phone. He rubbed wearily at his face as it struck him how much trivial day-to-day shit like paying bills he hadn’t had to deal with for months. Hopefully he remembered how before he got himself evicted.

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jul 2

Decided I wanted to share a few openers! We isn't mostly in 2nd person present but 3rd past limited: the pov characters are having a story narrated to *them*.

The Tipping World (A Path of Endless Crossroads):
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.

The city lies in the west, upon grassland empty of trees, not so arid that large-scale agriculture is untenable. It’s surrounded by a sizeable quilt of farmland and pasturage, surrounded first by a ring of shabby neighborhoods. They encircle walls that are tall, thick, impressive, soldiers in uniforms patrolling the height. Still, the presence of those brick or plaster tenements nuzzling up against the defensive edifice makes it clear it’s been a long time since whoever is in charge here worried much about military threats.
Don’t bother looking for a river: the water comes from an underground aquifer pumped up to cisterns beneath the city by means of magic, the use of which has since been lost. The magic, not the infrastructure. It was all put in place back when the city was built, those impressive, now-decorative fortifications raised. Back when this was called an empire, rather than the Eastern Federation of Allied Principalities.
Within the walls, it’s mostly nicer. There are a few neighborhoods where structures of disintegrating plaster and mortar-flaked brick lean toward one another drunkenly across too-narrow streets. By and large, though, these are the more well-heeled neighborhoods, enterprises concealed modestly within shops rather than spread out for the world’s delectation in open-air bazaars. There are trees planted along the streets, many of the homes set back within a patch of lawn. It is to one of those we go, where the household is stirring as the sun stains the eastern sky one autumn day in the three thousand three hundredth year since the first stone of the pyramid at Rai Selu was placed.

The hour was advanced, and few were the people still up, keeping company with bats and cats, when a stunning pulse of cerulean light tore the heavens open at their height. The handful of sentries who had the dubious privilege to witness the phenomenon were left scratching their heads, uncertain they had seen anything: the deep blue light had not left blinding afterimages in their vision. They blinked their eyes forcefully as if trying to conjure the venous retinal imprint, peering fearfully up at the night sky where a hefty swath of stars had fleetingly gone dark, as if someone had spilled a pot of ink at the ether’s apogee. For a further moment, all was still, and they tried to tell themselves it had been nothing more than an owl, passing betwixt them and the moon so that they were cast in deeper shadow.
Then the ground shook hard enough to cast glasses off of shelves, a single vast percussion as if the gods had been holding the world inattentively and dropped it. Roosting starlings burst from trees, cats hissed, horses kicked the doors of their stalls restlessly. Bells murmured their dismay to be disturbed so late.
In a modest apartment in the largest settlement in the area, a man sat up in bed. He twisted one way and then the other, squinting into every corner as if the innocuous nighttime shadows of his bedroom hid the truth. Having failed to spot the secrets of the cosmos in his laundry hamper, he cursed and tossed the covers back.

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jul 2

#WIPSnips 'knock'

It felt like they had fallen through a crack and wound up outside of reality. This was more true than not, and it had not been an accident, but it was hard not to fear that something had gone wrong once you were here, immersed in the consequences.
Then they were back in a world of sensations, everything uncommonly vivid as the senses rushed to consume all possible evidence that they were somewhere real. An unfortunate fact because they were falling. “Hell!” Ṛith̥ucaṛide had time to exclaim before they landed on their side with bruising force. They hadn’t fallen farther than a foot, maybe a foot and a half, but their landing-pad was bald stone: it hurt. Nearby, someone let out a strangled shout.
“What the shit? Are you okay?”
They sat up, brushing a loose strand of hair out of their face. The speaker was an older man, fengelm, who had been standing so close it was lucky Ṛith̥ucaṛide hadn’t bowled into him and knocked him down as well. He extended a hand, and Ṛith̥ucaṛide took it gratefully, allowing themself to be helped to their feet. “Thank you.”

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jul 1

Almost forgot to say! For the next 4 days, each book in Tipping World is %50 off on itch. You can get all 9 for $25, which is just silly. But I did it anyway! A society of warrior-mages lose the narrative and turn on each other: the perfect binge. itch.io/s/193124/sum...

Against a background of a high-country valley, mountains in the background and a stormy sky.
The Tipping World:
step into a world where your thoughts control what's real
and you see lies and hear fear.
The complete 9-book epic now available everywhere.
The covers of 9 books are shown, each depicting a shadowy figure with a sword against a different landscape. The books are A Path of Endless Crossroads, The Bull at the Start, The King of Ill-Omens, A Mirror with an Edge, The Hour of the Day, Tally the Betrayers, Under a Sign of Butterflies, Bells Begin to Ring, and Symbols' End.

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jul 1

#SummerofStories Heya! I write fantasy in several subgenres as MC Burnell, almost always second-world. Common themes are intrigue, iconoclasts, and cities. I'm currently working on the sequel to my upcoming (August) release, an urban fantasy about corporate greed and badass faerie-people

Background is a calm, sandy shore, small waves making foam.
#Summer of Stories, a #WritingPrompt game hosted by @Kayleighdiaz.com
1. Intros/ genres

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jul 1

#WIPSnips 'scarf' It's very hot and humid here, and I resent/ envy this passage

It turned out the funicular was their destination after all, and now they had collected the rest of their party, they made for the stairs. It was a windy day here but so warm Pherul loosened his scarf; he had been dressed for the arctic, but it wasn’t even freezing here.
Accompanying them was a bag of dark canvas with an oleaginous sheen to it as if it had been treated, smaller than a trash bag but bigger than a purse. It moved like it had weight to it. Its contents were soft and yielding, with no sharp edges or straight lines, and when he realized that had to be Bocitus in some form, reduced to mud or ash or something, it was hard not to stare. It didn’t smell, and he wasn’t sure whether it made sense to expect it: at this point, all they knew was that he had been mysteried to death. Even the ancient, magical people were confused by it.

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jun 30

If you just can't quite get into cozy fantasy because there isn't enough swearing and bad choices, check out Zimanges! Gay, ace, and NB rep, a group of fuckup roommates, and a heist! books2read.com/Zimanges mcburnell.itch.io/zimanges

On a gray background, the cover of a book depicting a man walking away down a shadowy city street, a spooky orange handprint behind him. Title: Zimanges, author: MC Burnell. Text on the cover reads: ‘A city this unique can’t be saved by heroes. What it needs is an oddball band of weirdoes.’ Arrows point from the cover to the phrases: Cozy slice-of-life/ a dashing wizard set to self-destruct/ a nifty fantasy city/ the ringleader is a pile of leaves/ a heist pulled off by novices!/ sweet queer romance, no tragedy guaranteed.

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jun 29

#WIPSnips 'water'

It was so quiet here, and that was really brought home as they moved out onto the water. The tight space between the surface of the estuary and the lowering canopy magnified sounds, making them uncommonly loud, but all this clatter was natural. The splishing of tiny waves against tree roots in their thousand-millions. The blorts and skrees and plots of frogs talking to each other or hopping into the water. The ceaseless, ubiquitous tapestry of whispers that was a soft breeze wending through the eaves.
The trees grew densely everywhere they hadn’t been cleared to make space for buildings, and Ṛith̥ucaṛide had their eyes peeled at first, watching for roots or low-lying branches. They gave up after a minute because Chacha kept glancing over her shoulder, choosing the route for herself, and they could sense she did not want or need their help. If they insisted on trying to help her anyway, it would make her miserable because she wouldn’t want to tell them to just shut up and would feel guilty for being annoyed by the officiousness of it. It was the right call, but they felt tetchy not contributing and sat with their hands between their knees to keep them still.

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jun 28

#WIPSnips 'sensational' Non, and all the synonyms I tried handed me passages I'm pretty sure I've shared. This one's boring but slightly cute I guess

“I can already guess you’re going to insist we go to SP.” They rolled their eyes dramatically. “As if those twats have anything we don’t other than being at the bottom of the ocean. And a kind of, slightly amazing deep-sea canyon with geothermal vents. And cephalopods. But aside from that!”
He smiled. “I never thought to ask. Do you have a rival? Not you personally, but your city?”
“Yeah. Sort of. Mebelsoth̥eṛia, the other city in a desert.” They pointed at one of the blorby nut-shapes along the branch of places he had not yet visited. “They’re dicks.”
He laughed when that was all they said. “Because…?”
“I don’t know! I’ve been trying to figure that out since I first went there!”
He laughed again.

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jun 26

Check it out! All queer books, none of them romances, for those who want to see an awesome LGBTQIA MC solve a mystery, save the day, or whatever! sheilajenne.com/queer-heroes...

Against a pale rainbow background, the covers of 14 books. Text reads: Queer heroes sale, June 23- 30.
sheilajenne.com/queer-heroes-sale
The books are:
The Dragon Next Door, Vanessa Ricci-Thode
Awakenings, Claudie Arseneault
Haroun and the Study of Mischief, Lynn Strong
Wizard’s Debt, Niranjan
We Gather, M.C. Burnell
The Blood Divide, Zan Lowell
Demon Marked, Kat Kinney
Chai and Cat-tales, Lynn Strong
How I Became a Therapist in Another World Vol. 1-4 Omnibus, C.A. Moss
A Life in Too Many Margins, S. E. Thomson
Non-Player Character, Veo Corva
The Citizen of Eastport, VB Ruth
Manipulator’s War, Elise Carlson
Black Sails to Sunward, Sheila Jenné

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jun 25

Seek justice for a dead loser no one liked. Walk the streets of an unbelievably strange and unique city. Angry-laugh with a narrative character who gets why you're mad. Oh, and MULTIPLE. PAGES. OF MAPS. October 7th Pre-order now books2read.com/book-Erosion mcburnell.itch.io/erosion 🌈📚🪐 #Booksky

The cover a book called Erosion by MC Burnell. A bespectacled man in heavy winter gears walks amid dirty snow and trash. Behind him, a fabulous city of vibrant pink seems to erupt out of the aurora.
Text reads: You think there's nothing in the world worth fighting for? What about the world next door?

Against a background of rainbow glitter, the cover of a book called Erosion by MC Burnell.
Arrows point to these phrases: A world like ours, bang alongside a magical otherplace... and it's populated. Raid corpo HQ. Gratuitous billionaire murder. Buzzcut assassin of dubious allegiances. Roller-derby pixie person. Mind-shattering faerie city. 2 MCs: boring human normal-person/ wrathful NB sommelier. Missing body murder mystery. Glacial slow-burn. Like, geologic time.

Pixies a/k/a Map Nerd@mcburnellauthor· Jun 25

#WIPSnips 'pyramid' Didn't have one in Erosion but We's magic-system is *pyramid-based* so have a very scary moment! (the complete alt-text didn't fit, so the last 1/2 of the last paragraph is in the replies for folks who need it!)