Story Collection: Witches of Fruit and Forest

Banner for Nine Laws: Aromantic Spectrum Fairy Tales. Image features a tree in the foreground, lanterns hanging from its branches, against a background of heavily-overgrown grey stone walls and archways leading into smaller courtyards. Vines and ivy cover the walls, archways and steps; an array of grasses grow around the bases of trees and walls. Text is set in a white, slightly-curving serif type; white curlicues matching the text, set in each corner, form a broken frame around the text.

February 26, 2023February 26, 2023 ~ K. A. ~ Leave a comment

Witches of Fruit and Forest: Nine Laws Short Stories cover by K. A. Cook. Cover features scenery of a dense forest of green and gold leafed trees, the ground underneath covered by thick clusters of grass and yellow-flowering shrubs. Background shows pink flowers peeking through the foreground shrubbery. Text is set in a white, slightly-curving serif type; white curlicues matching the text, set in each corner, form a broken frame around the text.

All know that acceptable sexual attraction walks in twain with romantic love and intimate partnership. Sorcerers’ wives know that their daughters must marry to further power’s cause. Royals know that a kingdom’s prosperity demands the happily-ever-after of monogamous marriage and future heirs … and if romance here cannot be found, it must at least be feigned. In a world so constrained, where can a princess give language to her aromanticism? Where can a baker avoid his mother’s insistence that he love and wed? Where can a villager celebrate that dreaded, threatening possession of desire untethered from love?

Where else but in a witch’s company?

Witches of Fruit and Forest collects all Nine Laws short stories: tales of magic and fantasy exploring aromantic identity.

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Fiction: The Lies Lovers Tell

Banner for Nine Laws: Allosexual Aromantic Fairy Tales. Image features a tree in the foreground, lanterns hanging from its branches, against a background of heavily-overgrown grey stone walls and archways leading into smaller courtyards. Vines and ivy cover the walls, archways and steps; an array of grasses grow around the bases of trees and walls. Text is set in a white, slightly-curving serif type; white curlicues matching the text, set in each corner, form a broken frame around the text.

February 25, 2023February 25, 2023 ~ K. A. ~ Leave a comment

For a hundred years, I am bound to a witch’s servitude. I’m not free to be in love. Will you accept this?

Thorn Bloodvine passes hir days trapped in a tower. Well, ze does if “trapped” encompasses “climbing out the window and down the beanstalk whenever the whim takes hir”. Magical wards and a wall of brambles surround hir prison, but neither prevents hir from tending hir garden … or the local youths from raiding hir strawberries. A fearsome witch does dwell within said tower, but hir magic is best suited to creating oversized vegetables. Quirks aside, Thorn laid hir truth at hir lover’s feet before they took to bed: ze cannot become Fortitude’s partner.

But when Fortitude speaks one simple word, Thorn’s carefully-ordered world falls apart. For it isn’t just a fairy story that prevents hir from becoming a woman’s happily-ever-after.

But no matter hir honest explanations, Thorn’s lovers come to expect something hir barren heart can’t feel and hir straightforward mind can’t mimic.

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Pride Cross Stitch: Allo-Aro Dragon

Handdrawn illustration of a green meadow foreground with green pine trees growing against various green-hued mountain ridgelines. Scene is overlaid with the dark green/light green/white/grey/black stripes of the aromantic pride flag. The text Aro Worlds Crafts sits across the image in a black, antique handdrawn type, separated by two ornate Victorian-style black dividers.

February 24, 2023February 24, 2023 ~ K. A. ~ Leave a comment

As I’m deep in the middle of last-minute proofreading, today’s Aro Week post is something small, cheerful and slightly goofy: a little allo-aro dragon.

A cross-stitched patch sitting atop a blue microfibre blanket. The patch features a green dragon with darker green wings, undersized compared to the dragon's body, and a belly striped in yellow and gold. White splotches dapple the dragon's back and yellow spikes trim its spine and tail. The patch is stitched on white aida and edged with a double row of white blanket stitch, resembling a lace trim.

Because I wanted to keep to pride colours, the darker green stitches for eyes, nostril and lips don’t stand out against the lighter green. I should have stitched them in black as per the chart. I do like how boxing in the stitches with squareish outlining adds to the goofiness, though; this little guy belongs in a vintage video game!

This design is by Durene Jones and was published in issue 321 of the UK magazine The World of Cross Stitching. This issue includes a 41-pattern set of fantasy and mythology-themed motif patterns (great for patches) with a colour palette making heavy use of greens, yellows, white, grey and black. Perfect for aros who like fairy tales!

I stitched this piece in the Sullivans equivalent to DMC 401, 403, white/blanc, 727 and 725. Rather than edge in buttonhole stitch as usual, I finished this patch with a blanket stitch through each hole along the edge of the design, followed by a second row of blanket stitch worked through the stitches of the first row. This gives the aida edges a lace-like trim … and it’s a lot quicker than buttonhole stitch. So much quicker!

This issue (released last year) also has a watermelon tag pattern that’s begging for an aroflux or abro makeover. I may be planning to stitch the unicorn and pegasus designs onto a green cotton tote to make another aro-themed bag, because who doesn’t need more than one?

Fiction Collection: Loveless Aro Friendly

Handdrawn illustration of a green meadow foreground with green and yellow pine trees growing against a mint-hued sky. Scene is overlaid with the grey gradient/green/light green/green/grey gradient stripes of the loveless aromantic pride flag. The text Aro Worlds Fiction sits across the image in a black, antique handdrawn type, separated by two ornate Victorian-style black dividers.

February 22, 2023February 25, 2023 ~ K. A. ~ Leave a comment

As an autistic, loveless aromantic writer who prefers that my feelings of attraction, connection and affection not be contextualised with a word that doesn’t always feel applicable, I thought Aro Week the perfect time to collate those stories written for aromantics like me. This post lists my works with loveless aromantic protagonists and those that don’t presume an aromantic protagonist’s ability to love and/or label their experiences as love.

My other aro works can be found on my fiction page.

What Makes Us Human

Moll of Sirenne needs prompts in their girdle book to navigate casual conversations, struggles to master facial expressions and feels safest weeding the monastery’s vegetable gardens. Following their call to service, however, means offering wanderers in need a priest’s support and guidance. A life free of social expectation to court, wed and befriend does outweigh their fear of causing harm—until forgetting the date of a holiday provokes a guest’s ire and three cutting words: lifeless and loveless.

A priest must expand a guest’s sense of human worth, but what do they do when their own comes under question? Can an autistic, aromantic priest ever expect to serve outside the garden? And what day is it…?

Contains: A middle-aged, agender priest set on defying social norms around love; an alloromantic guest with a journey to undergo in conquering her amatonormativity and ableism; an elderly aromantic priest providing irascible reassurance; and the story of how Moll became Esher’s guiding priest.

More info: Loveless aromantic narrating protagonist.

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Pride Bead Tutorial: Aro Stars

February 21, 2023February 20, 2023 ~ K. A. ~ Leave a comment

This tutorial transforms kandi bead stars into pride-coloured ornaments, charms, keychains, zipper-pulls and necklace pendants. They’re simple and quick to make–plus most materials are readily available at dollar shops and craft stores. Flags with four or more stripes (horizontal or vertical) can be transformed into pride-themed stars using this technique, meaning your pride display is limited only by your bead collection!

Seven beaded stars sitting on a blue microfibre blanket. Three stars are made from pony beads, attached to a small piece of ribbon or cord as a dangling decoration, and four are made from seed beads and are attached to a necklace cord via a jump or split ring. One pony bead and one seed bead star is made in the colours of the five-stripe aromantic flag; one pony bead star is made in the colours of the seven-stripe nebularomantic flag; one pony bead star is made from the colours of a four-stripe cupioromantic flag; one seed bead star is made from the colours of the five-stripe allo-aro flag; one seed bead star is made from the colours of the four-stripe quoiromantic flag; and one seed bead star is made from the colours of the six-stripe aro-ace flag.

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Book Edition: The Girl and Her Unicorn

February 20, 2023February 20, 2023 ~ K. A. ~ Leave a comment

The Girl and Her Unicorn: a Nine Laws Short Story cover by K. A. Cook. Cover features scenery of a dense forest of green and gold leafed trees surrounding a pond. A white unicorn stands on the edge of the pond, its hooves surrounded by mist. Faint rays of light shine down from a night sky onto the pond. Text is set in a white, slightly-curving serif type; white curlicues matching the text, set in each corner, form a broken frame around the text.

Ponder Sheafed can’t stop asking questions. Ze isn’t the girl others presume hir to be. Ze won’t become a wife or let a wedding’s absence stopper hir lust. Ze isn’t good, so maintaining hir kinsfolk’s high regard demands a complicated dance of stealth, secrecy and untruth. Ponder does, however, own some ability in deception … so when tragedy befalls hir family, how does ze explain that–despite all appearance to the contrary–ze can’t trade hir life’s service for a unicorn’s magic?

Only virtuous maidens may enter the forest to seek a creature as pure as a unicorn. Returning home empty-handed avoids provoking Father’s rage by confessing unacceptable truths, so what options has ze other than embarking upon a farcical quest for hir family’s salvation … and dreading the failure to come? No unicorn can ever grace an unrepentant liar!

Ponder isn’t good. But neither, ze discovers, is the unicorn.

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Pride Embroidery: Subtle Allo Arrows

November 13, 2022February 22, 2023 ~ K. A. ~ Leave a comment

To finish @aggressivelyarospec‘s Aggressively Arospectacular 2022 event, I have a final embroidery piece to share with you all.

(I live in Australia, so for me the week is complete. What’s the good of living in the future, however, if you can’t indulge in a little time trickery … as long as it’s still Saturday somewhere?)

In contrast to the Aro Bag, this one’s so subtle folks can be forgiven for not recognising it as pride-themed: