JL George

@jlgeorge

Author of THE WORD and various other things. She/they | hi/nhw.

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JL George@jlgeorge· 1d

Your last saved meme is now your moral philosophy (With apologies to my dear English friends)

Text superimposed on the characters Shinju and Asuka from Evangelion

A: FUCK ENGLAND! I HATE ENGLAND!
S: You watch football, Asuka?
A: What the fuck is football?

JL George@jlgeorge· 16d

What's your sign?

Top sign reads "BAR". Sign underneath it reads "not suspicious".

JL George@jlgeorge· 20d

(Sorry to be so millennial about it but)

Drusilla and Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

JL George@jlgeorge· Jun 23

Spent this evening learning about some fascinatingly gruesome mermaids, several of them Welsh 👀🧜‍♀️

Professor Diane Purkiss stands in front of a slide titled Watery Women in Wales.

JL George@jlgeorge· Jun 6

Post an album you've listened to 100+ times. (Look, I even did hard mode: no Manics!)

Album cover of Live Through This by Hole.

JL George@jlgeorge· May 31

I’ve noticed a number of the recent, big SFF books I’ve read have a kind of… thinness to them. I don’t mean in terms of page count. Most of them are around a respectable 400 pages. But they’re so slick and sleek I feel like I’m watching a stylish action movie, not reading a book. Plot events zip along, everything is wrapped up neatly at the end, and nothing remains unexplained or floating, to niggle at the back of my mind. Anything that initially looks like friction, an interruption in the smooth story-fabric, turns out to be a plot-relevant design feature.

JL George@jlgeorge· May 29

#SFFChat Here's one of my MCs thinking about his ex. She and their daughter speak Welsh; he doesn't.

He thinks of Siany at seventeen, shitfaced on Smirnoff Ice in Newport TJ’s and crying because she’d lost an earring her nan gave her, snarling, Cer i grafu, at him when he told her to calm down and take deep breaths. How the Welsh had slapped him in the face, a reminder that there was part of her he’d never be able to touch.

JL George@jlgeorge· May 27

How I should be allowed to spend every day over 20C

A black and white cat lying in the shade of an umbrella

JL George@jlgeorge· May 8

JL George@jlgeorge· May 7

Without stating your age post your favorite film released the year you turned 18.

JL George@jlgeorge· Apr 26

After a few months of querying and making lists of publishers to submit to, it's been fun to get back into the playful drafting stages of something new. Here's a... meet-cute? meet-awkward? between the main characters of Untitled 90s Witch Book.

Abi started, clapping the book guiltily shut.

The woman was her age, or only a little older, short and wiry. The shaggy cloud of black hair that framed her pale heart-shaped face was pierced through by a streak of white. Pointed chin, ski-jump nose, lips softly parted as though she was about to ask a question.

But it was her eyes that drew Abi in. They were the colour of green glass and their gaze made Abi feel as though she’d drunk a whole bottle of wine, or at least, how she imagined that might feel—as though every secret in her heart might come spilling out of her unbidden, and then she would kneel and lay them as an offering at this stranger’s feet.

The stranger looked her up and down, lips twitching with the beginnings of a smile that showed a tiny gap between her front teeth. “Library’s over in Camelford,” she said, jerking her thumb toward the bus station. “Takes a while, though, so I’d get going now.”

JL George@jlgeorge· Apr 24

15/2026: Portrait in Mustard by Wendy Allen. Poems about art, sex and intimacy that revel in fine detail, like miniaturist paintings.

Book cover: Portrait in Mustard by Wendy Allen

JL George@jlgeorge· Apr 20

14/2026: Pet Shop of Horrors collector's edition, #3. I'm not sure I can really separate my enjoyment of this series from the nostalgia, but regardless, this volume includes some of my favourite chapters.

Cover of a manga volume: Pet Shop of Horrors collector's edition #3.

JL George@jlgeorge· Apr 16

No, no, I absolutely do not need any more story ideas

Finds from the site include remains of mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, reindeer and wild horse, alongside more unusual discoveries such as hippopotamus bones dating back around 120,000 years, when warmer conditions allowed such species to roam what is now Wales.

JL George@jlgeorge· Apr 15

13/2026: Deadbeat Druid by David Slayton. Much of a muchness with the rest of the series, though I think the spooky carnivalesque underworld is my favourite setting of the lot.

Book cover of Deadbeat Druid by David R Slayton

JL George@jlgeorge· Apr 2

12/2026: More Than This by Patrick Ness. This was a book club pick. While I can enjoy the occasional YA, this one fell firmly into "I'm not the target audience" territory.

Book cover: More Than This by Patrick Ness

JL George@jlgeorge· Apr 2

11/2026: Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor. I had mixed feelings on this one -- picked it up because of the SF and metafiction elements, but ended up finding those the weakest parts of the book and was far more compelled by the family drama aspects.

Book cover: Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

JL George@jlgeorge· Mar 19

This feels like a pretty big clue...

Title of another post from the above blog, reading "I put my 450,000 word literary fantasy novel into a next-generation LLM, and here's what I learned".

JL George@jlgeorge· Mar 13

#SFFChat I guess this counts as both, because I'm definitely the opposite of a neat freak

The place was always so painfully neat he used to tease CJ about having OCD. In truth, something about the way he fussed around reminded Dannyboy of his old girl, the way she was always on her feet, wiping or dusting something, fluttering from task to task and jumping back up the moment she sat down. Her way of keeping at least one thing under her control, because Dannyboy’s old man and his temper were as unpredictable as a live volcano.

As far as he knows, CJ didn’t grow up with a growling bear of an old man, or any kind of dad at all. Still, he kept his little domain fiercely tidy, and Dannyboy was the only person he ever allowed to mess it up.

JL George@jlgeorge· Mar 10

10/2026: Tomie by Junji Ito. Fucking great. (I also need to go re-read @magencubed.net's Tomie essay with this fresh in my mind bc damn)

Cover of the Tomie manga omnibus by Junji Ito

JL George@jlgeorge· Mar 6

#SFFChat This is not the joyous renewal you're looking for...

My hand met something gelatinous. I snatched it back, feeling as though I’d inadvertently come into contact with some slimy underground organism, a blind worm or deep-sea fish with needle-sharp teeth.

The thing in the tub was a translucent mass, almost colourless but for the hint of grey-green it lent to the water. I lifted it and saw that it was less a mass than a sheet, a wrinkled, tattered thing. I thought of the glue we used to cover our hands with in school and then peel off in long strips to make the girls gag.

Then I thought of snakes shedding their skins. Of inchworms and chrysali.

There was no point in chasing after Cai now. No matter how far he had or hadn’t gotten, I couldn’t follow.

JL George@jlgeorge· Feb 22

9/2026: Eartheater by Dolores Reyes. Loved this -- gritty modern Gothic that makes no attempt to sand the edges off its sullen teen heroine.

JL George@jlgeorge· Feb 20

8/2026: Room by Emma Donoghue. I have liked other stuff by the author and it was certainly compelling, but the cutesy narrative voice got wearing.

JL George@jlgeorge· Feb 17

7/2026: A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon. Ultimately ended up enjoying this, but took some getting into. Suspect I am just not the ideal audience for epic fantasy with a prologue three chapters long.

Book cover: A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon

JL George@jlgeorge· Feb 17

#sludgepit #wip #h #sapphic Wales, 1897. A nurse at an isolated island hospital finds her patients dying and the island beseiged by grotesque creatures -- who call to her in her lost lover's voice.

Salt Angels
Two black and white images, a woman looking out to see and a woman in a white veil praying.

Adult horror
~30,000 words

Screwed-up sapphics
Island isolation
Welsh history
Body horror
This religious revival is not as much fun as it looked
Hot girls siarad Cymraeg

Wales, 1897. Life as a nurse at Flat Holm Isolation Hospital at the end of the nineteenth century is exhausting, lonely, and involves a veritable ocean of unpleasant bodily fluids. It's a job few women would choose, but Margaret Gwilym isn't most women.

Margaret left her home in the Rhondda under a cloud after an entanglement with Dwynwen Pritchard, the wife of a local preacher. Amid the suffocating fervour of a religious revival, Dwynwen's secretive belief in otherworldly creatures she called ‘angels' offered Margaret a glimpse of new possibilities. They fell into a passionate romantic relationship.

But strange events swirled around Dwynwen like flies around a corpse, and Margaret began to doubt her own sanity. When Dwynwen's husband discovered their affair, Margaret was heartbroken. The isolated island of Flat Holm seemed like somewhere she might finally be able to heal.

For a time, she's content, if not happy. But when her patients begin seeing eerie figures, Margaret recognises the visions they describe from Dwynwen's stories. Then they begin to transform into the strange creatures themselves, vanishing into the sea and leaving Margaret alone.

When a letter from the mainland informs her that Dwynwen is missing, Margaret starts to have visions of her own where the ‘angels' call to her in Dwynwen's voice. As she fights to hold onto her humanity, a new possibility takes shape before her - that of undergoing a transformation of her own and joining her lover under the waves. Isolated and helpless in the empty hospital, she starts to wonder: could giving in really be worse than this?

JL George@jlgeorge· Feb 17

#sludgepit? Oh, go on then. Now querying: The Brotherhood of Vultures, #wip, #f, #h. Dannyboy's spent his life harvesting the souls of the dead, a loyal member of the Brotherhood, but now he's haunted by his very own ghost -- a dead lover bent on uncovering the rot at the organisation's heart.

Adult dark fantasy
97,000 words

Found family (derogatory)
Misplaced loyalties
Harvesting the souls of the dead for profit
Ghosts (wet)
Here for a bad time *nu-metal playing*

Don’t worry, the cat is fine

JL George@jlgeorge· Feb 17

This a CAT checkpoint. Show me the most recent cat image on your phone.

Two cats, one tabby and one black and white, on a bed. The black and white cat is sitting on a book.

JL George@jlgeorge· Feb 13

While I'm in a sharing mood, here's a snippet from "The Last Days of Don Juan Jenkins", out in ebook from Monday or -- because Amazon timing, I guess? -- available to order in paperback right now. www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1637894031/

The moment they were out of sight, I ran for the lakeshore, heading for the spot where Cai had vanished. The cold of the water was biting; after a moment I stopped being able to feel my legs.

I slowed as I approached the place he’d sunk. There had to be some kind of a shelf in the lake-bed, a sudden falling away. But how deep could it be? I squinted down into the water. In the dark it was black and opaque as oil.

“Cai?” My voice echoed out across the surface and died. “Cai, where are you?” I clawed uselessly at the surface of the lake, a gesture like scooping earth from a grave.

There was nothing for it. I was going to have to duck under. I took a deep breath, held my nose.

“Hiya.”

Cai’s voice came from behind me, low and amused. I started and spun awkwardly, a drunken dance move on numb feet as the water tugged at my sodden jeans. He was crouched low in the water, so it lapped at his chin. His hair was plastered to his head in a dark, dripping helmet, his huge tawny eyes like glass in the moonlight. His smile unsettled me, though I couldn’t have said why.

JL George@jlgeorge· Feb 13

Context: CJ has just taken a rescue cat to the emergency vet in the middle of the night, and fully expects to arrive home to an empty apartment, especially since Dannyboy bitched about it the whole drive there. Instead, he finds Dannyboy on his couch. #SFFChat

“That fuck-ugly cat still alive?”

CJ slumped down on the couch. “Vet’s gonna call me tomorrow. Today. Whatever.”

The warm weight of Dannyboy’s hand on his knee surprised him. “You’re really worried about that mangy furball, ain’t you?” The way he pronounced ‘ain’t’—‘ent’, what even was that?—normally made CJ laugh, but right now all he wanted to do was curl in on himself further.

“I don’t wanna see anything else die,” he said. “Not for a couple days, at least.”

“Soft boy,” Dannyboy sighed, but with none of the edge it should’ve had. “You’ve gotta stop adopting ugly, messed-up old things.”

JL George@jlgeorge· Feb 6

#SFFChat From the novel I'm querying atm. The River is where the dead go -- part afterlife, part hungry god.