All Art is Theft — Mark your calendars! On April 23, 2022, Eunice and Franklin will be presenting a live-stream of the start of a new Passionate Pantheon novel. If you’ve ever wanted to write a novel but don’t know how to get going, or you’ve wondered how co-authoring a book works, or if you’d…

In writing, sometimes it’s best to listen to the story — A few hours ago, we finished a new novella in the Passionate Pantheon universe. When we set out to write, we had an idea of the story we wanted to tell, which we expected to be somewhere between 3,500 words and 3,700 words long. The first draft of the novella…

And When is Sex Degrading? — In a flash, Marel lunged at Lija. Her stick blurred through the air to strike Lija hard in her ribs. She let out a cry of pain, even as she whirled to grab it. She tucked the end of the stick under her arm and charged at Marel, driving her…

What use of light says about use, and ownership, of space — The City at night is a particularly beautiful place — and also, to our Western urban eyes, probably quite alien. Compared to Western cities in the real world, the City inverts the use of space and light. In the real world, we illuminate spaces at night. If you stood at…

How social constructs reflect resource poverty — If you’ve read any of the Passionate Pantheon books, you’ve probably noticed that monogamy is not really a significant part of the City’s social structure. In fact, the concept of monogamy as a norm doesn’t really exist in the City; the idea that partnerships should be sexually exclusive (at least…

Rethinking relationships in a post-scarcity world — In our last essay about life in the City, we talked about how having an extended lifespan and almost total physical safety all the time might change ideas about risk, making physical risk seem much less important than emotional risk. …

How does radical longevity in a post-scarcity society change your perception of risk? — Divine Burdens is out! You can now find it on Amazon (five days after publication, Divine Burdens is still on the site, touch wood, even though they banned the much less edgy utopian scifi that was The Brazen Altar — giant corporations gonna corp, amirite? Welcome to capitalism, I guess). …

How can you write horror in a post-scarcity world…and what does that even mean? — When we started Divine Burdens, the second Passionate Pantheon novel, we consciously set out to write erotic horror. And yet, despite that, the characters in Divine Burdens have lives that are, in any objective sense, better than ours. They have a far higher standard of living than even the wealthiest…

People are More than Vague Blurs — and So Are Characters — Sonder (son • der), n the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own — populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness — an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with…