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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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 Patch Patterns: Aro Arrows, Part One

Six digitally-created versions of cross stitch pride patches, arranged in two rows of three, against a background of a textured partially-translucent aromantic pride flag. Text between the two rows reads Aro Pride Patches in black type. Patches include a rectangular patch in aroflux zigzag stripes, an idemromantic heart, an aro flag text patch reading "aro", a square in quoiromantic stripes, an arrow design in allo-aro colours and a second arrow in nebularomantic colours.

February 22, 2022March 8, 2023 ~ K. A. ~ Leave a comment

A couple of years ago, I posted a tutorial for making pride-themed arrow cross-stitch patches. Unfortunately, the template I used back then made it difficult (read: time-consuming) for me to post patterns covering flag style and stripe variants. This isn’t the case with my current template, so for Aro Week I thought I’d update my arrow patterns to cover a greater selection of aromantic flags … starting with simple horizontal stripes.

Four cross stitch patches sitting on a blue microfibre blanket. Two of them are arrows stitched on a single-colour rectangular background, edged with buttonhole stitch; two of them are arrows with the buttonhole edging shaped around the arrow itself. All arrows have a tan and light tan shaft, grey arrowhead and fletching in the colours of various horizontal-striped pride flags. From top to bottom: rectangle allo-aro arrow on light green background with green edging, shaped allo-aro arrow with white edging, loveless aromantic arrow on dark green background with yellow/green multicoloured edging, and shaped quoiromantic arrow with mint edging.

Folks who need help with materials, stitching, finishing or attaching patches should check out my tutorial master page.

Previous patterns are available at my pattern gallery.

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Fiction Collection: Aromantic and Transgender

September 16, 2019February 25, 2023 ~ K. A. ~ Leave a comment

This is a separate list of all my works featuring autistic and transgender/non-binary protagonists. My other aromantic works can be found on my fiction page.

It’s also worth noting that my protagonists are like to be various combinations of autistic, queer, multisexual and disabled. Not all of these stories focus on aromanticism or gender, but they all feature a non-cis, non-alloromantic narrator.

The Girl and Her Unicorn

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.

Contains: A genderless, non-partnering allo-aro who speaks lies to live hir truth in a village that prizes a girl’s goodness above all else … and a unicorn whose duty to humans has been wildly misrepresented.

More info: Protagonist feels strongly connected to hir family and friends, but does not label this feeling as love.

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Fiction Collection: Aromantic and Autistic

May 3, 2019February 25, 2023 ~ K. A. ~ Leave a comment

This is a separate list of all my works featuring autistic and aromantic protagonists. My other aromantic works can be found on my fiction page.

It’s also worth noting that my protagonists are like to be various combinations of trans, non-binary, multisexual and otherwise-disabled.

Some of these stories do not focus on the aromantic, and one story, Certain Eldritch Artefacts, is more an example of an aromantic not yet knowing it than an aromantic narrative. (Do the alloromantic usually build a successful romantic relationship with an inappropriate crush by first spending a year travelling around another continent?) The sequel, Love in the House of the Ravens, depicts the beginning of Darius’s finding this out…

What if it Isn’t

Cover image for When Quiver Meets Quill: Collected Aromantic Fiction by K. A. Cook. Cover features black handwritten type on a mottled mustard background. Cartoon images of arrows--in four different styles--sit in diagonal rows across the cover, the fletching and shafts coloured in the stripes of the green/light green/white/grey/black aromantic pride flag.

What if her love is a dull, flickering, rare thing, so insubstantial it makes better sense to disregard it as meaningful? What if her love is quiet and companionate at best while Keiko loves with fairytale passion, a woman who wants and needs to be wanted?

Pretending to be girlfriends while casing an art gallery with Keiko shouldn’t be a problem, but once Jessie realises things have gotten a little too real in the façade they’re showing to the world, the only thing to do is ask.

Contains: A stand-alone, fluffy, contemporary short story about a greyromantic autistic and the beginnings of a QPR.

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Fiction Collection: Aromantic Centred

January 16, 2019February 22, 2023 ~ K. A. ~ Leave a comment

This is a separate list of all my works with aromantic protagonists centred on aromantic experiences and narratives. My other aro works can be found on my fiction page.

It’s also worth noting that my protagonists are like to be various combinations of trans, non-binary, multisexual, disabled and autistic.

The Wind and the Stars

True love’s kiss will break any spell. Always be kind to wizened crones. The youngest son is most favoured by wise foxes and crows. Princes save princesses from beastly dragons and towers overgrown with briar brambles. A happily ever after always involves a wedding…

The Wind and the Stars is a short aro-ace fairy tale about heroes, love, adulthood and the worlds we make in the stories we tell.

Contains: a non-amorous, agender, aro-ace protagonist inventing the fairy tales that describe their life.

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Fiction Collection: Allo-Aro

January 15, 2019February 22, 2023 ~ K. A. ~ Leave a comment

Here you’ll find my complete and in-progress works featuring allosexual-aromantic narrating protagonists. Most pieces are available as free reads, but One Strange Man is currently a subscriber exclusive on Patreon. Alternatively, you can find many in my Bones of Green and Hearts of Gold fiction collection.

Please expect protagonists to be various combinations of trans, non-binary, multisexual, disabled, mentally ill and autistic.

Hallo, Aro

Is it “aay-romantic” or “arrow-mantic”? What if she hears “I’m a romantic” instead of “I’m aromantic”? What if she says “isn’t that just friendship” or “that can’t be real” or, worst of all, “I’m looking for something more”?

Hallo, Aro is a series of flash fiction stories about allosexual aromantic characters navigating friendship, sexual attraction, aromanticism and the weight of amatonormative expectation.

Contains: Dragons, a duchess’s daughter, an autistic who collects pride merch, odd voyages into creative non-fiction, allo-aro werewolves, the power in aromantic discovery and a whole lot of allo-aro feels and experiences.

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