Welcome, dearest and courageous visitor, you are now in a different place. Or I might say you’re now in the Twiglet Zone. Yes of course I know it’s Twilight Zone but I liked Twiglets when I was young. It’s a Marmite thing, you either love it or hate it. And a lot of people will feel the same way about this site of mine. The reason being I am Little Miss Eclectic, so I do sometimes remind my subscribers that they are perfectly able to go to ‘manage subscription’ and toggle on/off any section they like/don’t like.
This is the second About page I’ve done, about a year to the day after the first one. Now I’ve gotten my head around Substack, plus there’s now so much going on in this different place, I’ve realised a new About page has become urgently required. Especially because this isn’t really a page that existing subscribers tend to visit, but rather it’s often the first place new visitors come to find out what a particular Substack publication is all about (yep – it took me a while – bear with me dearest visitor). Hence the name ‘About’, obviously.
So it kind of behooves me here to attempt to lure your attention and get you to have a look around. Then, hopefully, entrap you into hitting that subscribe button.
I should also attempt to persuade you of the benefits of a paid subscription. Well, despite not being particularly adept at this self-promotion thing, I can promise you a lot more cool stuff than the free version from now on. And if it is any further enticement, then you would be helping to lift me above the poverty line and actually do what I’ve always wanted to do, and that’s earn a living by my writing.
So, in my typical offbeat manner, I’ll try something a little quirky and different and tell you a little story.
My original conception for this site, which I began in January 2024, was for it to be a safe space for a wonderful, if iconoclastic girl called Katrina. Why is she iconoclastic? Well, it’s because she comes from a utopian parallel world, that’s why – and as far as she is concerned (well, me too as it happens) this world is a dystopia. So she has a fair amount to say about that. As do I.
So first of all I would be able to tell you the story of her (mis)adventures in this world via the ongoing serialisation, which you can find in the Serial-K section. This begins with our eponymous anti-heroine just turning up at the British Embassy in Paris (as you do) one bright and crisp November morning in your year 2021. And given that she is perfectly honest with them about having just arrived from a parallel world, well, you can probably imagine the initial reaction. But then, however, a few startling discoveries are made by some of the spooks (intelligence officers, that is) in the Embassy, and the whole thing becomes that bit more serious.
Well, you can start reading that serialisation with my intro, which you can find at that link, or the Prelude & Scene One, which is there. My idea is to give you the first instalment for free (which at the moment amounts to some 50k words), then have the rest for paid subscribers only. You can also read the standalone novella version of Episode I, D-Zero Meson Oscillation, either starting with my intro, or Part 1/10 there.
Then I go a little postmodern. To wit, Katrina also keeps a journal, which she makes public (albeit with redactions – remember there’s spooks involved here) in the Journal-K section, which starts with the first entry at that link. Katrina also writes about her own utopian homeworld in the Liberal Socialist section, which starts at this link. So, if you want a little insight into what’s wrong with this world, and how to fix it, that’s where you want to go. Katrina will be presenting her Liberal Socialist manifesto to you in due course.
Now, given this is her writing all that, you can indeed interact with her in the comments section, in which case, if it’s her talking, the replies will be prefaced with [K].
After this, there’s the Classified-K section, which is probably the one to which many people will have a Twiglet reaction. But like I say – there’s the toggle on/off button. So this is the section where paid subscribers will get some ‘behind the scenes’ posts about Katrina and the serialisation, and you will also get my own distinctly offbeat and humorous observations on the conspiracy theory subculture. Don’t be too put off by that, if you have an aversion to conspiracy theories – I have intended to make it amusing and, indeed, somewhat philosophical/psychological. You may also learn a few things about history too, as it happens.
The final section was my miscellaneous one. Alters is where everything else goes. But then it turned out this section was overflowing, so I have since added a few more. Specifically, those new sections are for my speculative fiction (and, as it happens, speculative non-fiction). So you have the Paschats section, which is, well, everything about the Paschats (you can meet them here), then there is Unofficial-K. These are the ongoing (mis)adventures of Unofficial Katy, who is, well, she a lot like me, actually. You will find these stories very offbeat and funny indeed. And most of them written as if they were movies, replete with a healthy dose of postmodern cultural references. This is the section for my anthology American Visidramas, feat. Unofficial Katy & the Starseeds.
Then everything else lands in the Spec Fic section. As with all the sections, there’s a pinned index file with all the relevant links. I hope you’ll check it out. If you do like spec fic, then I should probably let you know that mine is a mixture of stuff with real meaning, message and purpose to it, profound philosophy, along with a healthy dose of very funny humour. It also tends towards the cinematic.
As for Alters, this is now everything else that isn’t really speculative fiction or Katrina-related. So that’s some of my poetry, my little fragments and vignettes (what most people today call microfiction or flash fiction), my musings as and when, and an irregular feature called Fairytale Sunday, where I offer a different take on fairytales. There’s a little more to it than that, but you can check it all out at this pinned index file. Little Miss Eclectic, remember.
Here’s the Great Image Generator with a fairly good likeness of Unofficial Katy.
Well now, that was a long About page. Well done if you made it this far. And thank you, sincerely. I hope you’ll consider having a nice little browse of my eclectic site, and remaining in a different place for a while.
You may – well, you will – find me all manner of things, but one thing you will never find me, is being boring.
According to my word count, I need another fourteen words to make it to a thousand. So there you go.
Lol – there’s a few more than a thousand now after the edit. Do you like the images, by the way? Me and the Great Image Generator have a thing going on – as you will see, should you – I sincerely hope – decide to stick around for a while.
Even if you don’t, well, just be excellent to each other, eh?
Ciao…
