Alethea's March Mayhem

Mar 7, 2023

(Yes, my loves, there’s another scrolling bonus at the end of this newsletter. Enjoy. 😁)

Hello, everybody!

It’s March now, which means it’s officially Spring Break here in FL until Chris & I leave for stormchasing in May (assuming there is chasing to be had this year, as crazy as the US weather has been).

I’m sniffling like crazy because everything is blooming (including all my desert roses!), I’m aching from training sessions with Michael, and I’m behind on a bunch of projects I wanted to finish. BUT I’m starting to see some poetry sales (yay!) and I’m making headway on the Photography Project (double yay!) so at least some things that bring me joy are moving forward.

Which, I’ll be honest, is all I really need to happen right now. It’s the little (but mighty) things.

On the other side of all that is a YA horror novel rewrite I ALSO want to nail down before we leave for stormchasing (that’s just a really great deadline to have). So…time to batten down the hatches and get some stuff done!

Hope you are are safe and well!

xox
~💜~
Alethea

See Me, Hear Me

My next Fun & Games session with Tempest is March 12 — come hang out and play games on Zoom with us! CLICK HERE to join the cool kids’ club!
Craft Zoom Friday this month is March 17 @7pm ET! ALL PATRONS ARE WELCOME to join and chat while working on your own craft of choice! (Or not, no pressure)
I’m on TikTok! For better or worse…

Stormchase 2023 Gas Fund

Publications

My poem “Sunshine Times” (aka “from Florida, with love”) is now live over at New Verse News. My Patrons will be receiving this in their inbox today — ALL my Patreon subscribers get free poems every Tuesday!
On The Edge of All This - A Changeling: The Lost tie-in novelette. Once upon a time in the autumn of 2020, I wrote a fairy tale about true love and a storm chaser. I titled it “On the Edge of All This,” after the song I have words in on The Fireside Sessions. (Remember when we made that album with Gary Lightbody from Snow Patrol?) My season is Autumn (of course) and you don’t have to know the world of Changeling: the Lost to understand the story – you just have to know that all worlds are on the edge of Faerie. My story is a mash-up of “Beauty & the Beast” and “East of the Sun, West of the Moon.”
The Hitherto Secret Experiments of Marie Curie (April 11) - When asked if I was interested in writing “an alternate history about a young Marie Curie getting mixed up in dark fantasy shenanigans”, of course I said YES. (Dead Women in STEM FTW!) “Marya’s Monster” is about a young Marie Curie who befriends the monster under her bed while coming to terms with the death of her mother. And in true Alethea Kontis fashion: the more you know about Marie Curie, the more you will appreciate the many, many amazing and magical and TRUE threads woven into this heart-wrenching tale.

New @ Patreon

Patreon Update: All subscriber levels (yes, even $1) now have access to #FriendlyFriday, #SmileMail Saturday, the Poetry Project, and monthly Craft Zoom Friday hangouts. Coming soon: Early access to the 2023 T-Shirt Project designs!

If you’re a patron (or would like to be one!), leave a comment and let us know what else you’d love to see!

Come be Creative With Alethea and Tempest!

Join our Fun & (Writing) Games Salon! Each month, Tempest and I play a writing-based game to get creative juices flowing. No pressure, no stress, and no insisting that what you create needs to be polished or sold or anything. It's all about having fun and also getting some creative support between sessions. Next one is March 12!

K-Dramas I’ve Watched Since Last Time

Big - Starring the delightful Gong Yoo (my future husband). It’s the Freaky Friday concept - a quirky teen swaps bodies with an older man (Gong Yoo). The reason everyone doesn’t love this drama as much as Goblin or Coffee Prince is because the writers shot themselves in the foot. We, the watcher, 100% fall in love with “Gong Yoo acting like a teen,” but when the souls return to the correct bodies, who are we supposed to root for? Gong Yoo, or the teen? Trouble is, we kind of want neither. Wouldn’t the heroine feel the same way? Tough to pull a satisfying ending out of that hat.

You’re Beautiful - One of Park Shin Hye’s earlier works (Inheritors/Heirs, Memories of the Alhambra) and about music, so I 100% loved it. Novitiate PSH is found on her way to Rome and asked to take her twin brother’s place in a superfamous idol group. Of course she can sing (what TV nun can’t?), and of course all the other members of the group eventually fall in love with her in their own ways. And everyone is beautiful. Loved it!

A Piece of Your Mind - This was a perfect drama for the rainy day on which I watched [most of] it. Quiet, sweet, and technically sci-fi, though the SF element is so tiny that it may as well be magical realism. I was surprised at just how much this one was everything I wanted it to be.

She was Pretty - I will watch Park Seo Joon in literally anything. In this, the heroine was pretty as a child, but grew into a ruddy-faced mouse after adolescence. So when formerly chubby PSJ seeks to hook back up with his childhood first love, she takes one look at his utter handsomeness and chickens out, setting him up with her hot friend instead. And then, of course, the two MCs end up working for the same fashion magazine. A delightful office romance ensues! (Bonus: some great kissing, and Choi Siwon who is *chef’s kiss*. Follow him on TikTok.)

Fated to Love You - I mean…sometimes the hero is just ridiculous. And the heroine is a quiet Mary Jane. And…it kind of works? I dunno. Good but not great.

I Hear Your Voice - I’m 100% here for any Noona Romance starring adorable Lee Jong Suk (see also: Romance is a Bonus Book). The rest of the plot is sort of Why Her with a magical While You Were Sleeping-type element. Loved it, but def. more a legal thriller than a romance. (& way less sexy than Hwang In Youp in Why Her. *fans self*)

I Am Not a Robot - Our adorable heroine from A Piece of Your Mind is asked to pretend to be a super-advanced robot (for complicated genius ex-boyfriend reasons). Our male MC (who owns and is testing AG-3) is a picture-perfect Byronic hero, tortured even further by his disturbingly deep feelings for a robot. This light SF romp is utterly delightful . 10/10, would watch again!

Hotel King / My Girl - I’m lumping these together as “Lee Dong-wook classics.” (Gong Yoo may be my future husband, but LDW is the love of my life.) Both are those campy K-Dramas that contemporary dramas make fun of, and both star Lee Dong-wook and Lee Da-hae. My Girl is to Lee Dong-wook as Boys Over Flowers is to Lee Minho. In my opinion, of the two, My Girl is better (and shorter).

CLICK HERE to see my Top Thirty-eleven K-Dramas of All Time!

⭐️ If You Shop @ Amazon - Help Me for FREE!

Make sure you get there by using one of my Associate Links! (Works best on a desktop, not mobile.) Just click THIS LINK (or any other link I post to get to Amazon), and then buy whatever you need. It doesn’t have to be anything of mine! I will get $ from JB for simply SENDING Y’ALL TO AMAZON. At no cost to you! Bookmark it to save time!
https://amzn.to/3K6BCuk

Enough About Me

Now I’m ready to hear from you! 🥰 Just one note: the comments are my community space. Please act the way you would if you were in my actual treehouse 🤗

SCROLLING BONUS!

Congratulations! For scrolling this far, my gift to you is this fun over-the-top trailer for the storm chasing movie Supercell (coming soon). Be sure to notice the fabulous storm footage from some folks I know!

Also, the three rules of Storm Chasing given here are pretty accurate. They’re just way scarier when Skeet Ulrich says them. LOL. And if you want to help us out with Rule #1: