M. G. Roach
Repository for info about my wips and whatever I'm doing!Currently: writing a new draft of What I Became Under the Blackberry Bushes!
I'm a writer polishing my craft and aiming for publication! I like writing character-driven weird fiction with a strong psychological horror element, exploring themes of adolescence, transcendence, taboo, and emotional isolation.I also write and illustrate zines about everything from Vocaloid music to Catholicism to how to keep pet bugs. They're freely available and I'd love for you to read them!
What I Became Under the Blackberry Bushes
After a lukewarm suicide attempt, a depressed and aimless twenty-something reconnects with a childhood friend, who has metamorphosed into a satyr-like creature. She follows her down a similar path of physical transformation, interrogating her past and getting to the root of her omnipresent sense of discomfort.The goal is to write a transgender story that doesn’t conform to the familiar, even cliche ways we speak about gender and transitioning today. I want to capture something fiercely relatable to anyone who feels a disconnect or discomfort between their physical self and ideal self, the self they show the world and the self that reflects the soul. I also hope to capture the importance of childhood memory and imagination and how sexuality grows out of that part of our experience, and to depict wild, strange characters who feel complex and occasionally abrasive or amoral.Currently: I have a completed draft in novella form, but I was dissatisfied with the story progression and rhythm, so I'm expanding it into a full novel. (This is far from its first form change since I started writing it in 2021!)
The Most Secret Confession of Etienne Corillaut
A psycho-sexual-religious nightmare based on true events, chronicling the downfall of the 15th-century serial killer Gilles de Rais through the eyes of his servant and accomplice Etienne Corillaut ("Poitou"). The master and servant are bound together by a horrible secret: Gilles's compulsive murders of peasant boys. Yet Gilles is seduced by the mysterious, magnetic magician Francois Prelati. Poitou watches in jealous despair, not just for his lord's affections, but for the mystical heights both seem to reach while he remains earthbound.Currently: about 2/3 of the way through a first draft. It's an intense story, I've never written anything that needs so much research before, and I needed to take a step back bc I was getting overwhelmed! I hope to return to the wip after completing my latest draft of WIP 1.
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untitled Cthulhu Mythos Project
A multiple-perspective, non-linear story about a group of friends at Miskatonic's sister university, and how one of them performs a ritual to beckon the King in Yellow, Hastur. Madness, murder, and monsters ensue, but the focus is on the pre-existing psychological troubles heightened by their supernatural situation: their individual feelings of social alienation, sexual anxiety, and suicidal despair. The Cthulhu Mythos has been one of my greatest muses and guiding lights since I was in high school, and I'd love to write in the universe, in my own way.Currently: I have bits and pieces amounting to maybe ~35k, but this one needs a lot more time to cook.
I'm constantly thinking about the characters and concept, but I'm not sure how to execute it.