call me al. they/them. south indian. here we work with fruity characters and flowery prose.
WELCOME TO MY BLOG!
i’m al, they/them, trans and tamil [the holy t-nity]. i’m an artist and a writer and i’m currently juggling my first year of college with a webcomic and two novels and like, seven bottles of some shitty soft drink. you can find me playing dangerous games like “how many times can i describe this sunset before i get punched in the face?” or just lying on the floor on any given day idk man cold tiled floors just hit different
MY WIPS
LITTLE BY LITTLE. queer south indian coming of age webcomic! follows siblings sameera and anbu being disasters and dealing with really good-looking rivals, rekindled childhood friendships and b*ard exams.
A MILLION HOMES AND NONE OF THEM IS YOURS. litfic novella about a mother-daughter duo who find themselves in a dangerous, magical world after a fight and are forced to sort out their tumultuous relationship in order to find their way back before the mother’s pregnancy is due.
DEAD GIRLS DON’T SAY SORRY COMING FEBRUARY 6, 2024! PRE-ORDER HERE
wait i got excited. this is what the book is about - here’s what it says on the penguin random house website!
ABOUT DEAD GIRLS DON’T SAY SORRY
What does it mean when your best friend is dead and your instinct is relief? A stunningly immersive debut about toxic friendships, grief, romance, and new beginnings.
Friendship, at least for me, has never been anything but complicated.
Before: One year ago, best friends Nora and Julia were starting their senior year of high school, with plans to apply to the same university so they wouldn’t be separated. When Dillan Fletcher comes back to town, life as Nora knows it begins to unravel. And then, the unthinkable happens.
After: Months after surviving the accident that killed her best friend, Nora Radford is stagnating. Dillan has remained by her side, but he and other friends are starting university, while Nora is still trying to unravel the lies that Julia told, lies disguised as friendship.
DEAD GIRLS DON’T SAY SORRY is an absorbing page-tuner told in two timelines about how friendships evolve, how growing up can reveal the dark side of those you trust most. And it’s about how even in the face of tragedy, we can find our way out of the dark and have the courage to step into something better.
I grew old, and you became what you always wanted; A boy and a ghost story.
from my upcoming wip- about a closeted trans boy named Lea, who is forced by his family to become a faith healer. Set in the Northern Philippines on the end of Spanish colonialism and the beginning of the American occupation.
Lea (red skirt) can cry tears that can heal any illness, and he met Pablo (tall guy with glasses) who is an errand boy, who used to work at the fish market selling herbs- and Pablo wondered why Lea was always showing up to his stall looking beat up and buying kilos and kilos of onions.
Lea is autistic and a closeted trans guy, and he is perpetually trapped by his extended family in a “disappointment’s room.”
Lea’s family wants to take advantage of his miracle, and they always make him cry- at first, like most abuse, It starts tame, by making him chop onions all the time and he cries and cries and they collect his tears and sell it in bottles.
Oh, and Pablo has like 100 jobs. He is a cartoonist and an orphan, saving every penny he has to go to uni, so that maybe he can one day illustrate for newspapers.
I always thought of Pablo as kind of like. A punk kid. Well, as punk as a filipino boy from the north during the 1900s can be. Has a lot of scrapes on his knees, dresses in hand-me-downs with his dad’s black leather belt. glasses taped together, Plays the bandurria-
meanwhile Lea grew up in a mestizo (filipino-chinese) household. Family used to be very wealthy but has fallen onto hard times. Lea has little dreams and aspirations, but she used to be a painter with a lot of potential- but she is defeated when she cannot be her true self.
Hence, Pablo and Lea are two boys who never got to be boys.
I tend to write exclusively troublesome and bastard-ly women who are, more often than not, drug addicts… maybe. I don’t know, that’s not my business or yours, is it?
My stories aren’t bound by any genre but literary fiction is my primary focus.
Outside of writing, I dabble in art with a focus on drawing canines.
I also speedrun video games when I can, decent runs in TLOU 2 and Little Nightmares 2 are my main goals at the moment.
While I’m always working on new ideas and writing for new stories, most of my works are alternate universes to my main story, The Sparrows, which revolve around the same cast of characters—primarily Benji Russells & Vivian Hart.
THE SPARROWS (Serial) — ; A petty thief for hire, Benji Russells, is recruited by a team of thieves to right the wrongs of the corrupt and powerful.
WHERE THE WILDFLOWERS GROW (Novel, Werewolf, AU) — ; When Vivian Hart and Benji Russells are sent out on a job, it’s the catalyst for a run-in with a cult and a race for their lives across the Arctic.
A SPARROW’S GHOST (Novel) — ; On the run from a cult in a post apocalyptic setting, Quentin meets a child running from his past, too, and together (reluctantly) they face the worst unknown: moving forward.
everyone has a ship thats just: theyre perfect. they hate each other. theyre married. they havent spoken in 15 years. they have date nights three times a week. theyre divorced. theyre pining, its unrequited. its requited. theyre starcrossed. theyre meant to be. theyre doomed by the narrative. they love each other. theyve never held hands. they wont stop making out at parties. they cant look each other in the eye
BLOOD RED:favourite piece of dialogue from your wip
ooh fun one!! picking my short story gravel hound for this.
“When you stare at strangers through the window of a car or on a bike, making intense eye contact that could mean anything, wondering if they’re concerned, or amused, or disgusted, or an amalgam of these three. Or something else entirely. And secretly you enjoy this—this sliver of a moment when you’re captured in someone else’s mind, boldly filigreed there, before dissipating forever. You’ll never see each other again and it makes the rendezvous safe, unaccounted for. It lets me be awful when nothing else can.”
“I think that’s a little pretentious.”
“I think it’s life-changing.”
BUBBLEGUM PINK:if you could only write one genre for the rest of your life, what would it be?
probably litfic lmao. a) i love pretty prose and litfic is the best place for it b) i need weird unhinged seemingly plotless stories to fuel my existence tbh c) and also it’s what im good at and i enjoy things so much more when im good at it
DUSTY ROSE:your personal favourite character in your wip.
so im choosing house plants for this ask, but the version of it i call “corporate au” [it’s an exes to lovers story that takes place with them in their 30s. basically in that the entirety of ‘house plants’ is a flashback and the actual story takes place when they’re much older. i will talk more about this in the future but i consider this to be the canon luniper storyline!]
anyway, juniper is one of my personal faves. they’re just. so clumsy with their life and relationships but in a way that makes you empathise with them because you know how deeply she cares for the people in her life and how she’s trying to do better. + they have a terrible sense of humour which is always fun to see
PRIMROSE YELLOW:what’s your least favourite genre to write?
i don’t really have one considering that ive written primarily litfic? that being said, when i was going through my worst writing slump [it started in february 2021, when i finished house plants, and lasted basically till the end of 2022 😭] i couldn’t really stand any genre so that’s that. i think if i had to pick it would probably be mystery/thriller because i do not think i could write a purely mystery plot to save my life 👌
