About the Author

I don't give out much of my personal info online because I was born on the cusp of the current state of things : the internet wasn't new by any means, but it hadn't been so assimilated. I grew up browsing kids' sites (do those still exist?), and when I was in school we learned internet safety by making silly little PSAs. Massive social networks didn't exist yet, and the current model of selling data in demographics didn't either. *shrug*

That being said, a few words won't get me in trouble. I come from a strange family and a boring little place. I spent a lot of time in my early years alone, and naturally I developed a habit of talking to myself and an active imagination. So fiction serves me well. Fortunately I discovered how much I love it at a young age. I wanted out, I wanted a genre as far away from my life as possible and I got it.

So I love fantasy, and at the same time I deeply, deeply hate it. The core aesthetics are what I love, the implementation, not so much. Some of y'all need to get some new ideas. So many things are left unsaid, other things overdone. Cliches I'm sick of include monarchy (you won't catch me reading abt aristocrats), destinies and fate, lazy magic systems and the tired cultural settings: Celtic, English, Norse, Greco-Roman, pick-your-poison. Yeah I know Tolkien did these things, but he's been dead fifty years. I want to see authors do new things, break the mold a little. And I am really fucking TIRED of seeing the same books pitched to me again and again. They catch me with a neat cover and a cool, unique premise, and then they totally fail to deliver. Aesthetics matter to me a lot of all people(so far I've spent more time on this site designing it than adding stuff) but it isn't EVERYTHING. The fundies still count.

I need fantasy that is DIFFERENT. More imaginative, less misogynist. There's a few books that I thrive on but they ain't much. So I have a little hope that I can help change that by ranting into dead space. And you shouldn't just write what you know , but what you'd like to read. I want to make known my thoughts about writing, fantasy and non-fantasy alike, with the hopes of perhaps swaying a few people's minds. Just because your project has these tropes doesn't mean it can't be improved, mine did. And everyone, including myself, can always find room to grow. I guess this turned into a mission statement more than anything ""about"" me. Cheers for reading this far about a stranger's life.

Where do you get your graphics?

Most of the graphics on my page are old book illustrations I took from the public domain and touched up in Photoshop. This gallery in specific is where I got a lot of them. Check out my public domain resources page!

The background for the Night Skies theme was made by Jack the Vulture. Thanks, Jack!

Contact

My email is lsiekiera@proton.me, just in case you need to send me hate and/or fan mail. I don't check it that often.

The Smallweb

The smallweb is a collective term for individuals who run their own sites, as opposed to being merely another user on a big tech platform. I've always been a tech hipster and I love learning about niche and underground web stuff. For the time being, this site is hosted on Neocities, though my site may outgrow what the hosting framework is capable of supporting. Other users can follow my profile or chat here. This means that this entire site has been hand-coded and administered to by me. It may be a bit simple compared to blogs made with Wordpress or Tumblr, to name examples, but I really enjoy this level of control. I really want to take my time producing this site and its articles, so it can have the most meaning to you and me. If you have a strong interest in anything and a passing interest in learning to code, I highly recommend Neocities, and the smallweb in general.

You can always reach out to me with webdev and writing questions or resources. I already have a library of resources here, but it can't solve everything. A fundamental part of the human web is to share knowledge and ideas freely and I'm glad to help. (human web actually sounds too creepy to use. I mean smallweb..) The best way to reach me is on my neocities profile