Caelyn Sandel

The Wait Strikes Twelve

It's well past my preferred sleep cycle, but a film of day-stress clings to me like a film of astringent oil, keeping me awake and agitated. My partner is still at work.

I am painstakingly cr...

the ecto_foolery update (for everybody!)

Hi! Welcome to my Patreon page. I'm Caelyn Sandel, formerly @inurashii but newly @ecto_foolery as of the writing of this post. I'm now ecto_foolery on twitter, cohost, and discord (ecto-foolery on ...

the ecto_foolery update (for Patrons)

This is the first time I've spoken directly to my stalwart pledges in a long time. I hope you've all been either enjoying or appreciating The Wait; the next part is bubbling up. I apprecia...

11 - the Wait - 11

It's lunch.

I've already eaten, but there's a precious scrap of time before I have to lower my proverbial carcass back into the proverbial swine pit. A tiny moment that's just mine.

I p...

WAIT - X

My desk at work is clean and austere. On it sits everything I need to work.

A basic keyboard and turtle, a reusable water bottle, a photo of my spouse, an administrator's notepad and pen. And...

Nine Waits...

I struggle through my routine like a worm harvester trudging through the mire.

I rouse briefly during the longest part of my daily commute: the lift queue. In an austere lobby, dozens of resi...

Wait, Eight

I stir and the light leaks in through my breached eyelids.

I uncurl the arm thrown over my partner, who snores softly against my chest, and pet their hair. Wedging my face against the pillow,...

7 ~*~ THE WAIT ~*~ 7

I break the waters of sleep at the ripples of my partner's return to bed. I let instinct drive my body to heave itself over and curl around them.

"Welcome home," I murmur. My partner says som...

6. The Wait.

I step out onto the balcony and slide the glass door shut behind me. Half a meter away from closed, the door digs into its track with an earsplitting screech. I leave it.

Carefully lowering m...

The Fifth Wait

I make dinner and then eat it alone on the kitchen bar, staring idly at gray skies through the porch doors. Partner won't be back until after my bedtime, but they can heat up some of the leftovers ...

The Wait for...

I find the notch near the top of the grocery envelope and tear it open.

Three long, flat packages go straight into the freezer. I upturn the bag over a drawer and dump the rest out before pic...

The Wait. 3

I'm back from work with this week's groceries tucked under one arm.

In those moments before I step on the pedal for the front room lights, the little flat is painted with only the flat blue o...

The Wait (2)

Inside the glass doors of the living unit, a big-screen TV bathes the room in a flat cerulean glow, washing away the soft gray of the outside.

I don't know how to turn it off. We have a remot...

The Wait

I step out onto the narrow balcony and look up at a sky-spanning gray smear. None of the dancing gray of ancient TV static nor the flushed hue of a dead channel in that dead softness, just a cold c...

Art of 2020

Well, it's been a year. You all know, right?

As always, thank you so much for your patience and patronage. I've had very little time this year for personal projects or doing much to ...

Concrete Fears and Diffuse Hopes

Hello friends. I've been neglecting you, and I'm sorry for that. Things have been pretty rough for everyone, and I'm no exception— creative work is challenging in times of stress and anguish. But...

Returns

a small dynamic fiction story about letting go and getting back.

(to claim your free c...

a micrononfiction retrospective

(originally told on twitter, edited and formatted for Patreon)

It's early 2010.

I'm dragging myself out of bed at 4 in the morning so I can take the T to Downtown Crossing and ...

Glimpses From Elsewhere is OUT on itch.io!

Buy it! Share it! Post about it! Leave a review! 

What the heck is Caelyn doing?

I'll tell you, friends! Thank you so much for your support and encouragement as I work on some of the biggest projects of my whole life. You've all been so patient with few updates, but making art ...

Big Bloomin' Thank You!

Live and drink, friends! Do you know what you've done? You've pledged over five hundred dollars to help me get paid to make art! That's so amazing!

...

Patreon-exclusive Microfic Collection Preview!!

Hey there wonderful pledges, here it is: the preview draft of my upcoming microfic collection. I wrote these vignettes over the course of years, tweet by tweet, sponsored by small donations from my...

Microfic Collection!

Hello, lovely pledges! As always, thank you so very much for your continued support.

Though Caves of Qud has been sopping up much of my narrative design energy lately, that ...

Metamorph, an experimental Prose RPG

The year is 2023.

It's been almost 30 years since the first outbreak of the Change, and over 20 since the pandemic was controlled by the Metastabilizer...

2019-03-01 15:46:06 +0000 UTC View Post