Been thinking of creatures that live in the forest of Tirffiniol, not just from folklore but just coming up with ideas, mainly for an upcoming scene in book 7. Deer sized or smaller, magical or mundane, but preferably things that would be terrifying yet mostly harmless. The scene I have in mind is going to be a mostly safe but scary adventure in some woods at night with wards that keep out anything too dangerous to be around kids, with a preliminary scene of the same area of the woods during the daytime for them to see animals that won't scare them off from going in at night.

While some animals there are related to Earth animals by way of Earth animals occasionally falling through the Veil into Tirffiniol and using the high magic there to evolve in many interesting ways, most species there are not related to Earth animals. But they may look like Earth animals or something that could exist on Earth, via convergent evolution.

Even if you can't think of anything specific, I love hearing ideas because then the ideas mix in my brain and give me amazing ideas like some recent ones: carnivorous deer the size of cats that climb trees, something resembling a cross between a monkey and an owl, and spider-like things the size of pomelos.

Also feel free to draw from stories you know of various cryptids, small humanoid creatures, and anything spooky you can think of, especially as doing so might jog my memory of similar stories.

Oh, I also want to note this is in the part of Tirffiniol you can only get to by portalling in from Earth in the pacific northwest region, so I'm shying away from cryptids and mythological beings from places other than North America unless they resemble something we have in North America such as how a peryton is a winged deer (and also I have griffins of various sizes), and also selecting for roughly the same sort of ecosystem/climate/landscape as the Pacific Northwest, IE mostly forested, hilly and interspersed with mountains and buttes, and has a wet season; just a little bit drier and interspersed with fields of what looks like grass but only looks that way because of convergent evolution. (These "grass" fields are big enough that massive, elephant-sized unicorns graze in these fields, only going through the wooded areas to get to more grazing areas. But Fae Springs is on top of a cliff on the other side of a ravine from most of these grassy areas, and leans more towards the forested side.)

But that's more for me to worry about. Just hit me up with ideas if you feel like it.

I had a dream during my nap wherein someone mentioned a creature called a "butt spider," which they said was a spider that lives in one's butthole. I quipped back with "They're not spiders, they're crustaceans that look and act like spiders."

So that dream universe has butt spiders I guess, even though they're not spiders. Something to put on the tourism brochure, I guess, as a warning.

I've been able to read again lately because I've been going back to my roots and reading horror. (When I was a kid, I wasn't initially keen on reading books on my own -- preferred to have them read to me -- and what made the switch for me was Goosebumps books, "Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark," and other kid's horror. But then I moved on to sci-fi, fantasy, and the occasional survival story like "Hatchet" and "Brian's Winter." Oh, and I had a phase where I kept rereading "White Fang.")

What I've been reading has been audiobooks mostly. I really liked "The Hollow Places," but I already did a post about that. Currently I'm reading another T. Kingfisher book called "The Twisted Ones," which is a horror take on stories of the "fair folk" and is also apparently a modern take on a classic horror story called "The White People."

Unfortunately, most of T. Kingfisher's stuff appears to be standard fantasy, and I'm on a horror kick, so when this book is done, I'm gonna need something else to read. And I can't stand Steven King's writing, so don't suggest his stuff. (That man's writing style is more boring that watching paint dry while Ben Stein reads technical manuals in his monotonous voice.)

But yeah, I'm taking suggestions. I especially love cosmic horror. Hell, I've got cosmic horror in my Ravenstone series.

Just woke up from a dream where I spent an hour with my parents trying to contain and clean an angry orange cat because I made a cake and covered it with peanut butter, and I was eating it and this cat that I had no idea I owned in this dream world came out of nowhere, jumped on the cake, and got absolutely plastered with peanut butter. So like I said, the rest of the dream -- which lasted a subjective hour -- was just me and my mom and dad trying to contain this cat so we could wash it, and getting the shit clawed out of us in the process.

And the reason I blame Max Miller is because before bed, I watched an episode of Tasting History With Max Miller about a boiled cake called spotted dick, and so of course that's what I was eating in the dream, except I don't know where the peanut butter came from; there was no peanut butter in the video, dream me just thought it was a good idea to slather this thing in peanut butter.

Which, to be fair to myself, is a good idea cuz spotted dick is apparently pretty bland on its own. The video featured a sauce made out of brown sugar and butter, but I don't have brown sugar, so slathering the cake and peanut butter would be a good alternative. How the hell was I supposed to know dream me had a cat? In real life, I never had an indoor cat because when I had cats, they were outdoor cats because my dad is allergic to cats, and I haven't had any cats since then. Nor any other pets.

At least the cake was good.