What February turned into, what March might do next, and how I’m learning to stage the fire instead of emptying the drawer.
February got away from me in the best way.
I leaned hard into slash and finished four pieces back to back. Irrelevant with Navi, Link, and Ganon. Examiner with Marvin the Martian, Elmer Fudd, and Yosemite Sam. Draw with M. Bison, Guile, and Dee Jay. Retrieval with Bowser, Peach, Mario, and Luigi.
That is not a subtle month.
I was clearly interested in power and control and what happens when you tilt those balances just far enough that someone has to confront themselves. A couple of the stories surprised me once they were finished. One of them hit harder emotionally than I planned. Another did exactly what I wanted and left the room slightly crooked.
Everything continues to land on my site first. I have been releasing to AO3, and I plan to keep doing that, but I want to structure it more deliberately. I do not want to just upload and disappear. I am starting to think about rhythm, about how stories unfold across platforms instead of scattering them all at once. I can move fast. The question is whether moving fast is always the smartest move.
The piece that still has my attention is Jurisdiction, my take on what happens after the fairytale between Triton and Eric. There is a sequel outlined that digs further into Bastion and explores history that was only implied before. That world feels deeper now that I have lived in it for a while. I do not want to rush it just because I can.
On the longer side, I completed and edited a novella called In Plain Sight. It follows three birthday parties over three years and one man trying to get his life together for his child. There is clown sex in it. I know how that sounds. It works in context, and I am oddly proud of how grounded the emotional core ended up being.
EarthRite edits are still moving, but they are slow. That book lives in a different register. After weeks of writing aggressive slash, stepping back into mythic recursion and layered intimacy takes a shift in posture. It is not worse or better. It just demands something steadier from me, and sometimes I have to fight my own momentum to give it that.
One more slash piece is forming for now. Caught with Gaston, LeFou, and Adam is shaping into something more interior and fractured than spectacle driven. I am interested in what happens when the loudest character in the room starts lying to himself.
I also keep thinking about Backdoor Point. I miss those CYOA characters. They are chaotic in a way that feels personal. There is also a Peter Pan retelling in progress and more Porn with Plot ideas hovering around the edges of my attention.
If I am honest, my ADHD brain does not respect production schedules. It locks onto whatever has the most heat and drags me with it. That is how I end up finishing four pieces in a month. It is also how I end up staring at EarthRite and having to deliberately slow myself down so I do not bulldoze it.
I can churn and burn stories. I know that now.
What I am learning is how to stage them. How to let them breathe. How to build anticipation instead of emptying the whole drawer at once.
Personally, I am still navigating the fact that I manage a warehouse by day and write explicit mythic queer fiction at night. Those worlds feel separate, but they both demand structure and discipline. Only one of them lets me break rules on purpose.
Some of these scenes still affect me physically when I write them. I am not detached from this work. I do not think I ever will be, and I am not sure I want to be.
February was intense and unapologetically hungry.
March feels like it could go in any direction.
We will see which idea wins.
—
Calder N. Halden
(Christopher is not hiding very hard anymore.)