the fishman cometh
Chapter 1 Reveal of Breathless: a Fish Monster Romance
Too much with the fish puns already? No? Yes? Because I got more. Baby. I got more.
Anyway.
Hey! Welcome to another newsletter by me, romance author and late-night-worrier-because-something-is-definitely-trying-to-get-me-while-I-sleep, Cat Wynn.
If you dgaf about what’s going on with me and you just want to take a look at the first chapter of Breathless, feel free to scroll to #4 at the bottom!
If you, like Marie Kondo, love mess, then continue on, my friend. And enjoy this numbered list of things I’ve decided to write about for this edition of Good Times Only.
#1. Embarrassing Things I Did This Week
Let’s talk about how embarrassing existence is!
So, this was technically last week, but a very embarassing thing that I did recently was forget to BCC hundreds of email recipients across multiple emails (eg to all my ARC readers).
Whoops, sorry about that. Truly bad form.
Luckily, I didn’t get any grief about it.
But you know that feeling you get when you’ve read an email like fifty times and you’re certain you’ve done everything right and you’ve double and triple checked yourself and you’ve sent a prayer to the email gods and you’re like okay I’m positive POSITIVE I’ve got this bitch locked down pat.
And then you hit send and ….well, you know how the rest goes. You find out you made eighteen different grammatical errors and spelled someone’s three-letter, first-name wrong and called your mom a whore in the middle of a paragraph for some reason.
It was like that. That’s the feeling.
Along with that, another embarrassing thing I did this week (technically last week) is release my ARCs to all my ARC readers!
Jesus Christ, releasing a book is SO embarrassing and anyone who tells you differently is an absolute psychopath who loves themselves way too much. (kidding!…?)
Because can you imagine the absolute levels of delusion you have to have in this day and age, in this unforgiving relentless capitalist economy, in this trapped by the Demiurge forever doomed to this material world kind of existence, you have to have to be like yeah I think I’ll write some words that come from within the very depths of my soul and encourage some strangers to give me ALL their opinions about it.
Can you imagine how absolutely out of touch you have to be to do something like that?
Quite honestly, it’s clownery.
So, yeah, my ARCs went out this week.
#2. What I’ve Been Into Lately
Gnositicsm & Anime.
Kinda weird I know, but we’re all one of god’s originals, aren’t we.
Last week, I watched this anime called NANA about two female roommates who become very close and develop a complicated friendship that becomes the center of their lives even when they’re not together. It’s really sapphic coded and wry and fun and bittersweet and giving all the 2001 vibes and aesthetics in the best way possible. I actually cried a few times?
And while each character develops separate romantic relationships with men, the relationship that is really valued, the relationship that is really the heart of the show, is the one between the two women.
However, the thing that sucks about this series is that it’s not completed because I guess the creator fell ill (sad). But I knew that going in and I really steeled myself to the idea that I wouldn’t get any kind of closure.
And I didn’t!
And it was painful!
And I recommend it to you as well. (:
If you watch or have watched NANA, and you wanna chat about it, ppplllease let me know. I’m dying over here.
Moving on.
Okay, let me explain the part about gnosticism.
When I was in college I took a class on Modern Christianity because I’ve read the Bible like a hundred and eight times (derogatory) and I thought, no problem this class will be the easiest A ever.
Well! Turns out that class changed my life and I ended up deconstructing from Christianity and questioning every belief system I ever had as a result. But one of the first mythos we learned was Gnosticism.
Part of my (weak) understanding about gnosticism is that there is a (somewhat) evil entity called the Demiurge who created the material world and trapped all our human souls into it where we can never escape to enlightment and are cursed to reincarnate in our material bodies again and again and again and on into eternity. The Demiurge also happens to look like a lion with a snake’s body (hot!)
I’ve been mulling around in my head how I can use the gnostic myths for some romance fodder or some kind of plot inspiration, but I haven’t quite come around to anything yet. Maybe too esoteric? Maybe too obscure? I’m not sure it would resonate. But fun to think about!
What do you say? You want a gnostic-myths based romance??? Anyone??
#3. What’s to Come
Here’s your link to pre-order Breathless!
Breathless releases 4/30! But the paperback will be available for order 4/28. Also…
As a heads up, I’m doing another group giveaway in about another week or so, so if you like to shoot your shot at winning lots of books, stay tuned. I’ll be including a copy of Breathless in the giveaway.
I also have plans to write two more books in the series besides Breathless. Those who have been here may have already seen the rough draft chapter reveal of did of Dreamless, which is a why-choose dark-ish romance with Kate as the main character.
And, unrelated, but there will be a new episode of Tall, Dark & Fictional releasing soon with author Avery Flynn. For those of you not in the know, TDF is a podcast about romance fiction by romance writers that I host with my writer friends SJ Tilly and Gabby Marie.
Last thing for this little section. If you really wanna see me talk some shit, you’re not gonna find it here in my newsletter. You’re gonna have to follow me on Instagram. Sorry. Instagram stories are where I keep all my secrets.
If you wanna see videos of my dogs, then TikTok is the place to go (may TikTok RIP, thanks a lot the American Government.)
#4. Chapter Reveal
Chapter 1
I wake with a gasp, hand to neck, back to headboard, body bent to the darkness.
I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.
Except I can. I’m breathing right now. Oxygen pushes through me like a bike pump, labored and hard.
It’s happening again. The suffocating. The drowning in my sleep.
Use your grounding techniques.
That’s what my therapist would say. Well, before I fired her. Before I realized stepping out of my apartment was a nearly impossible task. She would say, “You won’t suffocate in your sleep, Jules. Your body breathes for you. Trust your body.”
“But what if it doesn’t? And what if I don’t?” I’d reply.
Bodies died all the time, morphed and changed and surprised their dwellers. There was nothing inherently trustworthy about them.
Grounding techniques. Focus!
Right. I turn my gaze to the sparkling rectangular glass across from my bed. My aquarium. An anchor of space and time in my bedroom. But there aren’t any aquatic creatures inside. I could never be trusted to keep something alive. Not even myself.
Bubbles flitter from the pump at the corner. My heart rate slows while I watch the fleeting spherical dance. The aeration of oxygen throughout the water mimics the aeration of oxygen throughout my blood.
My breath settles.
My stare glazes over.
Exhale.
Sometimes, I wonder what it’d be like to be in that aquarium. I wonder what it’d be like to look through the glass from the other side.
I wonder who I’d see.
Chills run up my spine, and I shake them off, blindly grasping for my phone buried in the sheets next to me, its screen a comforting luminous glow.
Four thirty-five in the fucking morning.
Too early to rise; too late to go back to sleep.
I roll out of bed, naked save for the cotton granny panties, and sweep up last night’s robe from the floor, shoving my arms through the green floral sleeves. My friend, Kate, gifted me this robe last year for Christmas, its slinky silk sticking like seaweed around my limbs. I tighten the sash in preparation. An inside girl’s armor.
After I’ve scuttled to the kitchen and collected an enormous bowl of Froot Loops—“You shouldn’t eat that junk.” My mother’s voice swims into my head. “Models don’t eat sugar.”—I wander back to my bedroom, plop down at my desk across the wall from my bed, and shove sweet, wet spoonfuls in my mouth.
I squint with a frown as the light blares from my computer screen.
I’m a copywriter, so I don’t have to commute to an office. I don’t have to mingle with coworkers. I couldn’t even pick my boss out of a lineup if you put a gun to my head.
If it weren’t for my friend, Kate, no one would even know I was alive. Like, what if I really did stop breathing one day? If my lungs just quit their job? No one would know I was here, shriveled up on the floor, like a dried-out sardine.
With that thought, my fingers type in the search browser. A familiar website, but it’s not work. It’s more of an interest. A hobby.
The Freemont Aquariumaniacs Forum
I visit this forum every once in a while. At least, it used to be every once in a while. Now, it’s more like every single day or whenever the idea strikes me that I should put a fish in my tank. Or maybe a snail. A crab.
The people are nice, the community active.
And I don’t have to participate; I can lurk. Scroll and read about the lives of others to my heart’s content. I don’t even have to leave my apartment . . . which is something I avoid at all costs anyway. I never go farther than the coffee shop next to my building.
For the most part, the forum members don’t ask me about what I did this weekend. They don’t poke and prod for details about my life, or lack thereof.
Instead it’s just betta fish this and scorpion fish that. I like that.
Especially one person in particular. We’ve been messaging a bit.
But it’s not like that, I swear. We just chat sometimes.
About aquariums in the local area. Mostly. And, fine, other stuff too.
Besides, I don’t even know what he looks like. He’s a total stranger on the internet, and I wasn’t born yesterday. He could be a hideous, disgusting monster. Right? Or a total fucking catfish.
I glance around my bedroom behind me, the unmade seafoam bed, and a pillow surrendered to the floor, casing half off, cotton-white underbelly exposed.
An empty frame rests on the nightstand, which I’ve meant to fill with a picture of my mother, my only remaining family.
But somehow, I can’t ever seem to find the time.
I check the updated posts on the forum and breathe in deep.
Betta has fin rot . . . AGAIN. Think I’m going to kill myself.
Magic crab keeps disappearing and reappearing. Where’s he going? A time loop? A portal?
Can a guppy suffer from depression?
Is my neon tetra pregnant? Because I am.
Hmmm . . . I scroll, scroll, scroll, click, click, click. No new messages from my friend. A sensation in my belly droops.
May as well start this miserable day.
I change into sweatpants and an old T-shirt that says Just Breathe because it’s good to live aspirationally, and pad my way to the front door, forcing the thong of my blue flip-flops between my sock-covered toes and sneaking down the concrete stairwell of my building.
Better the creepy stairwell than the risk of running into the creepy neighbor, Jason. Still, when I glance over the railing, the hole in the middle of the spiral curve gives me the feeling that I’m circling a drain.
I make my way to the hole-in-the-wall coffee shop next to my building, where I get the same thing every time with my scrunched-up wad of dollars. “Black coffee, please.”
“How you doing, Jules?” the owner asks me as he takes my money in exchange for his goods.
I don’t know how he knows my name since I’ve never introduced myself, but his face is crinkled from old age, little gray hairs sprouting from his ears and nostrils. He wears a black and white keffiyeh around his neck. A small sign hangs off the ninety-degree cliff of his counter that reads something in Arabic. I don’t have the guts to ask him what it says.
His voice is soft. “You hangin’ in there?”
I just nod, don’t look up. Even though this small coffee shop is one of my safe areas, I’m still on high alert, muscles tensed. He’s a nice man, but I can tell by the pitying look in his eyes that he feels sorry for me. As if he worries each time I turn up at his shop. That kindness lands flat, though. Sympathy makes me itchy to the gills. I’d rather he just not look at all.
I’d rather no one look ever.
He hands me my coffee, so strong it could strip the grease off an airplane engine, but I like it that way. I grip it hard in my fist as I scurry back into my building and up the stairs, the harsh LED overhead lights accentuating my eerie blue veins, almost luminescent beneath my pale skin. I shudder at the sight of my own flesh. Did it always look this way?
My reflection flashes next to me, distorted and dingy in a wire glass window but still unmistakable. The pale blonde hair, the light blue eyes, the tall, thin figure. I’ve been called beautiful many times before.
My mother used to enter me in baby pageants. That’s how it all started. “And you hugged every judge! Never fussed!” She’d brag to her friends. As I grew older, the parading didn’t stop.
Next came the clothing catalog shoots and the teen magazine covers. Then the runways and editorial spreads.
Until, one day, when I was around twenty-three, a woman approached me with a business card. “You look like someone who’s searching for something new. Here, take this.”
I flipped the card over. Galaxia Business Conglomerates. It looked like a scam, but I went to the website listed on the card and applied for a position as a copywriter. That’s how I finally got out of modeling.
“You let your looks go to waste,” my mother chastised. “Do you know how many girls would kill to have your figure? Your hair, your eyes, your nose? The opportunities I’ve gotten for you?”
“If they want to kill me for it, I wouldn’t stop them,” I mumbled back.
That used to really piss her off.
“Ever since you quit modeling all you do is mope, mope, mope around the house all day. Don’t go out like normal girls. Never even had a boyfriend! Really, Jules?”
But how could I have a boyfriend if my looks made me worthy of murder?
Not to mention, that’s when the dreams began.
Well, not really dreams. Nightmares. And I don’t even know if I can call them that because I never remember them. All I know is that for years now, I’ve had the same problem. I fall asleep, the world goes dark, and then I wake up . . .
Breathless.
The heavy emergency-exit door swings open loudly. I’m relieved to make it back to my apartment without running into Creepy Neighbor Jason. Once returned, I plop down in my chair, close out the Freemont Aquariumaniacs forum—still no messages—roll my head to each shoulder, then click on my assignment for work.
The Infinite Web of the Multiverse
I type.
Scientists hypothesize that millions of other universes, collectively known as the multiverse, each with its own laws of physics, lie beyond our visual horizon.
Furthermore, some scientists conclude that any number of physical universes exist and that we each likely inhabit the one with the most appropriate characteristics for our best chance of survival.
I let out a scoff. The idea of a multiverse, to me, a person who lives in this three hundred square foot studio apartment, is hilarious. My world is small, airtight, and compressed.
The multiverse may function as an ever-expanding web-like system that connects each universe to the next. Scientist Theodore Lake recently shook the scientific community with his theory that portals might also exist in key elemental areas of each universe that may allow entry into other or parallel universe systems. This theory has been widely criticized as, at worst, “scientific mumbo-jumbo” and, at best, “optimistic science fiction.”
Whoever owns the company I work for is into some seriously weird shit, but as long as the assignments and paychecks keep coming, I couldn’t give a shit. I glug down the coffee, shaking my head because it’s so hot it burns my tongue. Fuck.
But a notification lights up at the corner of my screen.
One new message from Mackthefishguy
My pulse quickens, and I welcome the immediate distraction, clicking the notification. His avatar is a profile of a fish. A mackerel, I think, sleek, pale, and opalescent.
Mack: It’s Friday morning. Is your tank still empty?
Mack knows about my greatest aquarium shame. About the total lack of aquatic creatures in my care. It’s an inside joke of ours.
Jules: As empty as my soul. Happy Friday.
Small talk, I know, but I actually kind of like it with Mack. We’re just two normal people having a totally normal conversation.
Mack: Friday, Friday, Friday. You know where the fish crew goes on Friday nights, right?
Jules: Where?
Mack: Anywhere that’ll drop the bass.
Jules: Booooo!!!
Mack: Okay, okay, okay, tough crowd. I’m a fish guy, not a jokes guy. But for real, what’re you up to?
I run my fingers through my hair, noticing all its knots. When was the last time I showered? I shake away the thought. More importantly, what would it be like to hang out with Mackthefishguy on a Friday night?
Jules: The usual. The girls come over for drinks, we hit the town in miniskirts and heels, and then stumble home at closing time.
A lie.
Mack: Really? You strike me as more of an introvert, but hey, what do I know?
Jules: That’s because I’m actually going to sit in my apartment and eat instant ramen. But the good ramen that comes with the oil packets, not just the powder. Although I like that kind too.
The truth.
I send the message and chew on my lip as I wait for him to respond. I wonder what he’s fishing around for—if anything.
Finally, typing bubbles appear.
Mack: Don’t you want to know what I’m up to?
Jules: Nah.
I snort to myself.
Jules: Kidding. What’re you up to?
Mack: I’m expanding my tank again.
Jules: Again? But don’t you only have one fish?
Mack: Yes, but he’s growing. Even if I don’t want him to.
Jules: Don’t you think he could use another fish in the tank with him? Isn’t he lonely?
Mack: Other fish don’t like him.
Jules: What? Why not?
Mack: He started out cute, but now he’s turned into kind of a freak. Too ugly.
Jules: I don’t believe it! Then I pause before typing the next words. Send me a picture.
It sounds like nothing, right? Asking for a picture of a fish. But this is an escalation of our conversations. We’ve never exchanged pictures before. And even if I don’t want to admit it, I’m testing the waters. What else can we exchange . . . ?
Mack: Sorry, he’s camera shy.
My heart sinks a bit at the rejection, even though it’s silly. We’re talking about fish. Fish tanks, at that.
Typing bubbles appear again.
Mack: But I’ll send you a picture of the new tank, how about that? I haven’t switched him over yet.
I raise my brows.
Jules: Deal.
Mack: Incoming.
As I wait for the picture in my inbox, I click through my open tabs. Multiverse. Aquariumaniacs. Fanfic.
I click back, and the message from Mack has arrived with an attachment.
Why am I so nervous to see a picture of an empty tank? Something about it feels so personal.
I open the attachment and gasp, hand to mouth.
The tank is huge. Bigger than anyone could possibly need for one fish, unless he’s keeping a shark or dolphin in there, which the Freemont Aquarium forum people would find highly unethical. But the enclosure takes up half the wall. Next to the tank, tacked up, is a framed picture. It’s too blurry to make out what’s inside, but it kind of looks like the face of a man.
Hmmm. Could it be? Could that be Mack? Why would he have a picture of himself on his own wall? Then again, he is a man . . . they do weird shit like that.
And what could he possibly need with a tank this enormous? But also, we did meet on a fish forum filled with fish fanatics on a local forum called the Aquariumaniacs.
What was I expecting?
I click my mouse to zoom in on the picture, narrowing my eyes to inspect closely. There’s a reflection in the tank of the room in front of it, but it appears mostly empty other than a long white couch.
Then something in the corner of the reflection startles me. I blink hard to determine the image, and then my adrenaline spikes.
What the fuck is that?
There’s a creature in the picture. Or at least part of a creature. Surely that can’t be a fish? Can it?
But it looks like a fish.
I lean in, mind racing.
At least, it looks fish-like. But also . . .
Also, it looks like a man.
#5. Goodbye
I took a risk, and I wrote a weird book.
xoxo,
Cat
Writing up my arc review for Breathless today! I loved it! Can't wait for Kate.