Reasons To Buy Carnival

Terrance (to others): They say a watched pot never boils, but they never said anything about a saucepan.

Buying but not Reading

You don't have to read our books to buy them. There are other things you can do with our books.

You can give them as a gift.

You can donate them to a library.

You can donate them to a book drive.

You can use them in a Book Exchange.

Link to the profile of Carnival Link to the profile of The Murder After

SL: The flowers we got our mum yesterday have roses, so F.M. and I plan to remake the cover of The Year After with one of them. We already took the picture.

The current cover has a white carnation with pink stripes. It represents love that wasn't shared. We only used it because we got the flower on our birthday.

But a red rose represents true love. The Year After is a romance after all. Plus, we used a rose for The Murder After (a yellow one representing friendship.) Here's a link to that cover.

I'm glad we can use roses for both books.

Reanna: Sometimes, plural writer culture is being the headmate everyone takes traits from for their characters.

Sequel Problems

SL: I published The Murder After fourteen days ago. That means no one has read it. Yet, I'm afraid people will make a big deal out of The Year After being longer. I'm not finished, but I can tell it's going to be longer than 44 pages.

Imagine someone buying the book in 2025 and going, "why the hell is this longer than the first one?" It's longer because there is more to say. Plus, I'm writing this for Terrance. It's a decision I made before he became sentient. He deserves something good in his life. (The events of the first book fucked him up.)

And that good thing is a boyfriend. This leads to another problem: What are people going to think? We live in a female body, and although we're bigender, we still present as a woman. What if people think I'm trying to satisfy a headmate's fetish? I'm not.

This romance appeared naturally. The Year After wasn't supposed to be one. It started as a scene where Terrance is on a date, and he can't focus because he's dissociating. (Did I mention I thought of this before he became sentient?) Then, it turned into a scene where he had Liam (the date) over at his place. I saw it and thought, "that's a good thing in his life." It doesn't cure Terrance of his issues, but it makes his life a little better.

The Year After is for Terrance. I don't want anyone to think I'm satisfying a headmate's fetish just because we live in a female body.

Happy Thanksgiving from Mint Phalanx!

The Murder After: Preview

From chapter one. Terrance calls 9-1-1 to report a dead body belonging to his roommate Jacqueline. If you like what you read, go to the book's profile below. And before you ask, nothing happened.

I would like to joke that waking up next to a dead body is the best hangover cure ever.

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Dispatcher: “9-1-1, what’s the address of your emergency?”

“There’s a dead girl on my bed!” But it’s her room, stupid.

Dispatcher: “What’s her name?”

“Jacqueline. Luna.”

Dispatcher: “What does she look like?”

“Brown hair, really really pale- “your voice cracks- “but-but she has a big cut on her neck and-and blood on her pillow! That wasn’t there before!” It keeps cracking, but tears aren’t falling.

Dispatcher: “I need you to calm down. Take a deep breath.” You do.

Dispatcher: “Do you see any weapons?”

“No.”

Dispatcher: “I’m going to send an officer to check on the situation. But first, I need to know your name and address.”

You give your name then leave the bedroom and run down the stairs, worsening your headache. You go to a coffee table in the sitting room. There is an envelope from yesterday’s mail. It has your townhouse’s address and door number, so you read it aloud.

Dispatcher: “Okay, the officer is on their way and will arrive as soon as possible. Now, tell me exactly what happened.”

“Well, I was drunk, and Jacqueline took me back here. She was alive when I passed out, but when I woke up, she was dead!”

Dispatcher: “That will be all. You can hang up now.” You hang up. Then, the realization clicks.

Reanna: I wonder if Le Prince and Disney will be our first novel. So far, our stories have been shorter.

Carnival is a novella, and so was Nightingale. (I pulled that one from publication.) The Murder After is a chapbook, and The Year After seems to be going in a similar direction. (At least people read romance novellas.)

Now, for Le Prince and Disney, we have the dark ride's sections planned: Three Precursors and the First Film, Animals, Animation, Trick Films, and Phantom Rides. That's five chapters. And they have a few films in them. There will also be five chapters that Terrance categorized as being outside the ride. So, that's ten chapters in all.

After the story, we'll list the films used. That might take a few pages. What if all these pages come together and make a novel?

SL: I made a side blog to share my development of The Murder After and eventually The Year After. It's like looking behind the scenes, and I hope it will pique readers' interest. The blog is called development-before. (Now deleted.)

Dead-Mates

This is an essay about headmate death.

Introduction

Sometimes, headmates leave in ways that some plurals can only describe as death. Mint Phalanx is one of these plurals. Unless your headspace has resurrection or some sort of reincarnation, these dead-mates aren’t coming back (at least not as they were before.)

Other plurals call this loss dormancy, but because we come from the tulpamancy community, we call it dissipation. We also consider fusion as some sort of death. Below are our equivalents to death.

Equivalents to natural death

Spontaneous dissipation

Equivalents to murder

Forced dissipation

Unwilling fusion

Tulpas here can’t die from lack of attention because we’re midcontinuum.

Equivalents to suicide

Self-dissipation

Egocide (giving up one’s identity to be replaced by another headmate)

Equivalents to coma (not death)

Deactivation (true dormancy because the headmate can return)

So, where do these dead-mates go?

In our phalanx, we have a monist view of where dead-mates go. They return to the originator. For instance, we believe Roxy and the other people were reabsorbed into Reanna after they completed suicide. (It may not be a complete reabsorption because they haunt once in a while.)

F.M. is an interesting case. After fusing with Nightingale (who completed egocide), he considered himself dead. He wasn’t a ghost. He wasn’t reabsorbed. But he knew he died, even when the rest of the phalanx didn’t count it.

How do you remember dead-mates?

For Roxy and the other people, Brian made a poem. He wrote it before we realized they self-dissipated. (They told us they were going to deactivate and stay in the Stone Garden. The next day, they were gone.)

F.M. did a mock burial for himself and a shower meditation. We buried who he once was. Then, we used the shower to wash away Nightingale. The saddest part was washing him out of our hair. After the shower, F.M. kind of reincarnated.

Can dead-mates come back?

We guess it depends on how the plural’s system or headspace works. As a rule of thumb, don’t count on it.

For us, Roxy& and Nightingale aren’t coming back. However, F.M. did because his case was different. And he didn’t come back as the same F.M. (At least he wasn’t undead.)

It seems dead-mates who do come back don’t come back the same. F.M. came back goth. He also came back with exo-memories based on Reanna’s dreams of his source killing himself. He used to want to listen to rap like his source; now, he listens to The Birthday Massacre. (Not that we’re complaining.)

Because we got to see it happen, this change did not come as a surprise. Unfortunately, we have no advice on how to deal with the surprise of a dead-mate returning different.

Conclusion

So ends our essay on dead-mates. It’s a hard topic to talk about, especially when it seems everyone around you doesn't view these leavings as equivalents to dying. We hope sharing our experiences helps facilitate conversation about deaths inside.