This month I featured a story that I enjoyed reading by Thirdly, and I hope you did too! Odd, as I did not relate to the character (having married at 19) but I could just... get how intensely the characters were feeling at times. I always enjoy that and consider it the mark of a great writer. What did you enjoy about Ash's Marriage Trigger? Make sure you share your thoughts below, after you read this interview Thirdly did for me! 

Do you eat your fruits and vegetables?

Mostly vegetables, as I’m at the age where all fruits are now just considered sugar. Learned that if you eat any greens before anything else, it helps buffer sugar spikes. I’ve been doing my best to stick to that.

If you were an animal, what would you be?

A hummingbird, flying eternally backwards at 25mph, and never knowing where I’ll end up. 

What’s something personal about you that people might be surprised to know?

Soundtracks elevate everything for me: games, shows, anime, and movies. It could be the most basic, plain movie in existence, but if there is good background music or a solid playlist, it's going in my rotation of things to rewatch.

Examples:

Predator Badlands: Dek of the Yautja

The Holiday: Maestro [and literally EVERY project Hans Zimmer touched, because his Chevaliers of Sangreal in the Da Vinci Code, his work on The Gladiator, Inception, the pirate movies, the Dune movies… I could go on forever.)

Ferngully: Spirit of the Trees

Deadpool 2: You Can't Stop This Motherf**ker

Free Guy: Fantasy (Jodie Comer’s cover… and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you have GOT to watch this movie)

Bad Company (2002): Main Theme

The Beverly Hills Cop theme, the Mission Impossible theme, Indiana Jones, Eye of the Tiger…

The OA theme song, The Mandalorian theme song, the Severance opening, the Game of Thrones main theme…

Bratz’s Flash N Dash (from the first PS1 game), Super Mario Land 2’s The Star Maze, Megaman 3’s insane intro, Sonic 3’s Ice Cap Zone (actually, there’s always a song in every sonic game that’s catchy AF… and the Sonic Frontiers game has no right to have so many song slappers tossed in there), Ragnarok’s Rag All Night, Chrono Cross’s Time Scar, the entire Xenogears soundtrack…

For anime BGMs, there’s a song called Frustration from Haikyuu that is gorgeous, Naruto’s ‘Main Theme’ with that one shakuhachi flautist’s soul never fails to impress me (the scatting no one can quite replicate), the entire Tsubasa Chronicle OST and Hikaru no Go OST… I’m not mentioning openings and endings, as there are far too many to list.

Is there one location you’d love to go to research for a story?

I suffer from Paradise Lost syndrome, in which my first 7-10 years of life were spent on an island in a shack built without the government’s permission, so they tore it down when we left. I’m talking “slum beach front property” where I used to catch crustaceans with my bare hands and walk for miles just to get to school. That small neighborhood of low-income locals is gone, replaced with tourist condos. That, and the people who once lived there have passed away.

No amount of money can bring any of that back, so it would be the power of time travel that I’d really need in order to research a story in that location.

If you could give advice to yourself when you first started writing, what would it be?

Let’s see…

1.       Never post anything incomplete. Ever.

2.       Diverse and LGBTQIA+ friends are worth keeping, often over selfish straight friends (regardless of ‘seniority’ and years of friendship)… and they don’t hesitate to provide mutual help with projects.

3.       Everyone has a different method of madness, but starting with a bang and escalating is a solid approach, regardless of the method used. Just beware of Deus ex machina and excessive predictability (a little predictability is fine, though, as there are only so many ways some situations can unfold… and I know some authors who can prove even this wrong and can find that 3rd unexpected path).

What is the easiest part versus the hardest part of writing to a prompt?

Ideas are an endless farm of fornicating rabbits in my mind. Whenever I read a prompt, it’s like shining a spotlight on a singular rabbit, which focuses my attention. For me, it’s easy to add a cast of bunnies to that prompt idea… what becomes difficult for me is knowing where to stop the story and just how far to condense it. 

If I’m lucky, the idea is simple and can be conveyed in a single one-shot piece. The minute I start creating charts to keep track of everything, though, that's when I start panicking.

The most challenging part is wrapping everything up before the deadline.

Your main character, Ash, feels pressured about relationships & marriage. Do you care to share your relationship status?

My relationship status doesn’t exist right now. It turns out I was more gay than I thought I was and, unlike Ash, I’m attracted to women. My life is far stranger than the fiction I write.

How did you come up with the character names in Ash’s Marriage Trigger?

The name Ash was given to me by the prompt, as it’s what Aditus named the character (likely to more easily explain the prompt).

I either look at the words floating around me to make some names up, or I research names that seem more fitting for characters. In this case, my nerdiness came out because the name “Ash” brought to mind “Barren” lands. I ended up naming that whole family desert-related names (Siena came from the hue “burnt sienna,” Sage came from the shrub ‘desert sage,’ Sandy from desert sand, Aster from Mojave Aster, which grows in some deserts…and their last name Barren from the phrase ‘barren desert’). The name “Cove” came from reading ‘Discovery Cove’ somewhere around me, likely someone’s pamphlet.

Ashley, Cove’s daughter… her name was part of the story’s plotline.

Do you have a favorite line or scene in the story?

I have three favorite moments/lines, and they are all major spoilers:

Can you share any of your current or upcoming work (published/unpublished/in planning stages) with readers?

Published: Persistent Pheromones ( https://gayauthors.org/story/thirdly/persistent-pheromones/ )

Unpublished: My Younger Self Rect Our Story Endings (MYSROSE, the third and final WRECK world story. I finished Act 1, but still have Acts 2 and 3 to complete). Come Early, Come Often (CECO, which used to be a collaboration with Robin. Robin gave me full rein to finish it as I saw fit, and I’m working that out, as well.)

Planning: Fowls Committed (my first bird-shifter story, and a collaboration with Luna, which involves an incompetent Viking leader and his quad of soulmates). Loving Sable’s Prime (my first story that features primarily straight couples). Training Toki (based on an old collaboration with Toma, a story featuring winged, gay fairies).

I actually have over 8 more projects, but I don’t even want to think about them until some of my other tasks are completed: 1.  A prequel spin-off to Crossing the Moon, titled Under the Same Moon. 2. An unnamed story of a shaman’s descendant, his narcoleptic brother, and Morpheus. 3. A feline shifter story featuring a nonbinary main character and a pair of twin mates. 4. Tulips and Roses, a (romantic comedy?) sci-fi regarding an outlaw and an enforcer joining forces to right certain wrongs. 5. Dying in 2005, a story written in honor of a close friend of mine who passed away before her time. 6. EPDA, a story of a pair of young detectives, which is both a crime novel and a romance? 7. Another unnamed story featuring seasonal elves. 8. Yet another unnamed story featuring an interesting take regarding souls and soulmates. 9. Kidnapping a Cuddlefish collab with Robin. 10. Borders and Bribery semi-collab with Robin.