Sometimes I write down ideas for posts, but I don’t actually write down anything except facts about my writing, and then when it comes time to write the actual post, I’m just sitting here blankly, like, what the hell does that even mean? I have a vague sense of what I was intending for this post, and I’m sure I’ll work my way there eventually if I’m wrong, but let’s give this a go! Here’s ten facts about my writing?

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It’s always gay.

Literally always. I can probably count on one hand how many straight MCs I have, and I think they’re all in one book? Wait, this’ll be fun! Let’s look at each book! Also, I get that MCs are supposed to be one person, but I write multiple-POV books, and whoever has a POV often feels like a MC to me, so that’s why there are more when I’m talking about my main characters.

sister witches: Henley (lesbian), Theodore (gay), Ileana (lesbian), Kiran (lesbian)

vampire detective: Andrew (gay), Rafael (pan), Sam (lesbian), Penelope (lesbian)

Saintsverse: Landon (gay), Madison (lesbian), Henry (gay), Sam (bi), Miles (ace), Ezra (gay), Vivian (straight!)

Madhouse: Mason (bi), Lukas (gay)

researcher & librarian: Freddie (gay), Florence (ace), Hugo (bi)

I think those are all my main stories that I’m working on at any given time? Saintsverse is hard, too, because that doesn’t even begin to delve into the other series within the universe, but we don’t have time for that. But yeah, look! There’s one straight MC! Look, I have some straight side characters, but I don’t think any of them have POVs outside of Vivian, and I just–I’m not straight, so why would my characters be straight? So yeah, everything is gay, and it always will be.

Every book is connected.

EVERY SINGLE ONE! Yes, this includes bookstore boys, which is literally about two boys falling in love over books, so how could it possibly line up with something like an ancient vampire? I’m not telling how, exactly, but it does, and I love it. Even Saintsverse is technically tied into the rest of the universe, but it’s also in a pretty chill way. Most of the connections are honestly very loose–there’s a scene in Pen boys where they’re in Boston for a field trip, and they stumble across this very good-looking cop, and yes, it’s 100% Andrew (the vampire).

Some of them, however, are more obviously tied together. Sister witches is the culmination of my three big heads of power, so Henley, Andrew, and Mason are all featured in it. But Andrew also shows up in researcher & librarian, and though we never actually hear he’s a vampire in that, iykyk.

There’s usually at least one additional language, but more likely three.

Okay, out of the characters listed above, three are Portuguese, but three more also speak Portuguese fluently, and this is excluding Saintsverse since they exist in a fantasy world, and I’m still undecided on whether or not I want to include Portuguese in that, too. If I do, which is honestly unlikely, I’ll probably end up adding other languages, as well, because, of the characters listed above, five are white? Most of my characters are Latin, and, if they’re not, they’re generally Middle Eastern or South American. This is both because I’m Portuguese and because I want my books to reflect the actual reality of our world, so this is a very roundabout way to say that there is almost always going to be several languages in any of my books.

In sister witches, I think the language total is up to: Spanish, Portuguese, French, Irish, Greek, Arabic, and Gujrati? There is mention of Korean and Hindi, but I don’t actually write either out. And why? Because, again, my books will always reflect the actual reality of the world around me. Do I hear Irish or Greek every day? No, but I do hear several of these other languages, and it makes sense to me to include them.

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There’s always a baker, someone who drives a motorcycle, and tea.

Look, okay, there’s no motorcycle in researcher & librarian, but they literally didn’t exist yet, and if they did, it would 10000000% be Florence. We all know this, let’s not pretend. In the others, it’s Henley, Sam, Landon, and, well, okay, there isn’t one in Mason’s, either, but that’s because there are no cars at all because, duh, iron + faeries = bad.

There’s also always a baker. Again, we’ve got Theodore, Penelope, Miles, Mason & Lukas, Florence. I need food in my books, and I’m talking about this at some point, though I can’t remember what date, so just keep an eye out for it. Food belongs in books! When I was working on the outline for my recent project, sycamore girls, I honestly sat down and plotted out which character belonged to each of these stereotypes that I love.

The tea one’s a bit trickier because literally all of my characters drink tea, but if you really want to see me go hard, just wait for Mason’s story. He owns a teahouse.

I will never have huge age gaps.

I wrote about this actually one million years ago, but there’s zero chance of me going back to find it, so here’s the rub–in sister witches, Theodore is a demon hanging out around 700 years old? He has a wicked crush on the human barista at the coffee shop that Henley works at, but he’s got all these hang-ups about dating him because Finn is very obviously a human. Theo often says that he has an Edward Cullen policy and that he won’t date humans because the age gap is astronomical and makes him super uncomfortable.

This is a spoiler, but also not really because we barely know Finn for five seconds before we find out he’s not a human, but Finn is 100% a demon and always was, and though there’s still an age gap between them, it’s something like 300 years, and it’s a whole lot different when you’re dealing with immortal beings.

The same thing happens in vampire detective, and though y’all should definitely know me better by the time that releases someday in the far distant future, I’m saying it here now: Andrew & Sam will never be together. For one, Andrew is literally the most ancient vampire there is, coming in at over 2000 years old, and Sam is 27? Around there? For another, they’re both hella gay.

If ever you see a super old mythical creature looking like they might be falling in love with a human, you’re 100% guaranteed to shortly find out that human is actually a demon in disguise, or that you were reading something very strange between the lines because why the hell would they be straight?

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There’s a vampire in every single story.

Speaking of Andrew! While I often say that sister witches is the culmination of the universe, Andrew is the heart of it. All of the main heads of power come together in sister witches, but Andrew is one of the earliest stories, and he has become the thing that everything else bends itself around. He’s a MC in the third sister witches, he shows up for a few chapters in the second researcher & librarian, the Pen boys bump into him on a field trip to Boston, I’ve still got to find a way to work him into Mason, but it’ll happen, and he is always going to be threaded throughout everything.

If there are religious views stated, they’re probably mine.

While providing feedback for researcher & librarian, one of my CPs, Sara, said, “You do know that the Vatican is going to hate you someday, right? You’re going to be on the same level as every exorcism movie ever.” And you know what? I can live with that. I can more than live with that, honestly, and I am never going to back down just because someone else has got themselves all in a twist because I called out the fact that they persecuted every single other religion in the world. Does the Vatican kidnap Freddie to exorcise him? Yes. Does Freddie then use the demon hanging out inside him to escape them? HELL YES. Do all of Freddie’s views mirror mine? Pretty much, and that’s just the way it is.

Oh, but the clothes.

I started writing with fanfiction, and my very early stuff is mostly excessive word vomit of descriptions of clothes, yoga, and settings. While I’ve mostly dropped the yoga–Henley is, somehow, the only character that practices on page (Rafael definitely does off page)–and I’ve calmed down the clothes a little, I go hard on every single setting I have. That’s usually a good thing, though, because it grounds the scene in something physical, and you can see the scene unfolding visually.

The clothes, however? Y’all, I’ll never stop describing clothes. One of my friends said once that she thought Henley’s wardrobe was just everything I wish I owned, and she was dead on. Honestly, all my characters wear what I want to, right down to Florence in the 30s. There’s so many clothes, and I’ll go on heaving descriptions at you until the end of time.

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I love metaphors.

I’ve been rewriting one of my books, and one of Chelsea’s comments that always makes me cackle is that I was “really flexing my writing muscles hard here”. Sara often comments on my love of metaphors, too, and you can bet if something is even halfway angsty or sweet, it’s going to come hand-in-hand with a ridiculously elegant and spiraling metaphor. There’s usually at least one character that has a voice like thunder, an excessive amount of bones (I honestly don’t ever want to know how many times the word bones is in Saintsverse, holy), and so much freckles like stars.

CAN’T STOP WON’T STOP

There will always be references.

Until the day I die, I will be referencing LOTR in everything I can get my hands on. I’ve recently been replacing all of my Harry Potter references, and I was getting distracted by a scene I was revising the other day, so I just wrote INSERT STAR WARS QUOTE INSTEAD and carried on. Most of my references are LOTR, though, even down to researcher & librarian because you know what? Tolkien was alive in the 30s, so I just referenced Middle-earth by literally throwing the author himself into the story. Margot & Finn are big fans of dropping Gandalf quotes all over the place, and Freddie is always spouting off about Dante, often in multiple languages. Rafael is definitely going to have a penchant for some absurd romance poet, and Hugo loves Pessoa. There’s Shakespeare littered throughout Andrew’s 2000 years, even before he existed because I can and I will, and all of my favorite TV shows show up somewhere in sister witches. It’s almost always easy to identify, though some of the LOTR ones are a little more obscure, but yeah, it’s a thing, and I’m never changing.