Oh, It's Hester!

 Have you ever heard of a Portuguese Man O' War ?  Spooky water things is my jam (RE: Seafood ), and everyone is tired of my niche interest, so I'll dump these abominations here when I feel like it. Today, we have the Portuguese Man O' War .   Rebecca R. Helm. Image by Denis Riek. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portuguese_man-o-war_Physalia_sp.png Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International Also called the bluebottle (which isn't as cool), they are jelly-fish-like creatures in the Atlantic Ocean and the India Ocean, floating at the surface. They float passively with their gas-filled bladder at the top, and their poisonous tenacles can reach 160 feet long ( Oceana ) though the average is about 30 feet long ( National Ocean Service ) (though these numbers tend to fluctuate depending on who is reporting). Even when they are dead, they can sting you! (Rude.) Their stings "shouldn't" be fatal, but they hurt a lot.  These creatures look...

In my current YA vampire WIP, the MC can ask one question a night, because her maker is generally annoyed with her. Eventually, she's going to run out of questions, or she'll get flippant, or she'll just ask funny questions. I thought I'd Google annoying questions. #1, my Googling wasn't on point. I know. BUT, the AI generated answers are so terrible, I have to share. (Sorry the quality isn't great!) Ah, the AI cringe. And I think it's evidence why AI can't replicate human writing because it lacks the human spirit/humour. At least right now.  After this, though, I found an interesting site I thought I'd share to the bots that scrape this blog: The Vampire Maman . They have these posts about Stupid Vampire Questions , and I love them. My favourite(s), that I've seen all over, is "Can [X] kill vampires?" And the answer, from the maker in question, is, "That will kill anything, so yes, obviously, it would kill you." All while he ...

  Amazon.com | Amazon.ca   Facebook | Instagram | X | BlueSky    I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me meets Into The Drowning Deep , for fans of dark tales of questionable morality and teenage mistakes. Brent’s best friend, Steven, vanishes. Brent hopes his friend is out sailing the world, getting tattoos, and drinking hard lemonade. Then Steven’s boat is recovered, but the man has vanished. Men go missing around the water of seaside towns, and it’s no different for Star Harbour. Pieces of men wash ashore, maybe not. Officially, it’s a random coincidence with no connections from one savage dismemberment to the next. Watch the news, stay off the water when they say to, and the wave of tragedy will devastate the next town. Time moves on. But Brent doesn’t. He spirals and ventures out to the water to meet whoever stole Steven. Instead, he meets a mermaid. She’s gorgeous and compassionate, and he’s hooked. More men go missing from his town, and it doesn’t matter...

Hi.  This is me. I'm Hester.  Hey. Hester is pretty short already, but you can call me Henny, Hettie, Hessy, or Hestie, if you like.  And this is my blog. I'm an author, maybe you read Seafood ? Probably not, and that's ok. Seafood is about mermaids, murder, and terrible teenage decisions. I write horror. I hope to have some more projects published at the end of the year.  I'll mostly be posting about writing. I'm not terribly active online, and I value my privacy.  And honestly, I feel overwhelmed about 90% of time, so for my own sanity, I won't post much. Unless I'm feeling excessively clever, or happy, or proud of myself (doesn't happen too often). I'll post here for longer content.  For shorter content, you can find me here: Over at Bluesky . The site formerly known as Twitter . Your grandma calls this the Book of Faces .  The site that scares me, Instagram .