🏳️‍🌈RJ Martin - Queer. Cat Parent. Author.

@rjmartinwrites.com

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🏳️‍🌈 Pansexual Author of WLW Fantasy and SciFi Romance 🖌️ Occasional Artist | AD⚡HD but trying medication 🛰️ Trekkie | 🔬 Science Nerd No pronoun preference 🚫 No AI 🌐 https://rjmartinwrites.com

Elsa breathed in the fragrant steam off her coffee, letting the scent and the heat infuse her. After five years in the wilderness, a cup of real coffee was a miracle. She wondered if dead gods still performed miracles. She expected there were grand treatises on that subject. For her, it was a passing thought while she enjoyed her first sip of coffee.
Phoebe stood, meeting Zoe’s eyes. Alone, an awkward moment passed. Then Zoe couldn’t help but chuckle. “What?” “Nothing,” Zoe laughed. “You’re still a little sprout in my head, and here you are, almost as tall as me.” “You’ve been gone a long time,” Phoebe said.
“You were always her favorite anyway.” Phoebe laughed. “Faye was her favorite! The stray you brought home that she didn’t have to push. No expectations, no responsibilities.
One last arrow. Her nerves were strangely calm. She nocked another arrow and took aim, letting out a slow breath. By Artemis, this one needed to strike true.
1 - Dýrhildr Dýrhildr was pretty sure she was dead. She emerged from the frigid void of sleep into a hide roof stretched over her, painted with images of the sea and strange geometric shapes. Wind battered the sides as the blizzard continued to rage outside. What a strange, cramped shelter. It smelled of smoke and oil and leather and fish. Were the poles made of whalebone? A woman brooded by the fire, raven-haired and plump as a seal in summer. A sealskin was draped over her shoulders, over a strange hide tunic painted in red and blue patterns. Was this some soul collector ushering her to her final rest? Had Dýrhildr frozen in the blizzard? Surely not a Valkyrie. No way she’d earned that. Her sentinel stirred, preternaturally blue eyes shifting to her. “You’re awake.” Dýrhildr only managed a whimper. The stranger leaned forward to stir a small pot over the fire, tapping the wooden spoon on the clay. “You’re lucky I found you when I did.”
“That’s a long journey from here, especially this time of year. Gambled with your mercurial gods and almost lost.”
What a lovely place to sit and see the world. The forest stretched out across the valley below, out to the patchwork of fallow and planted fields and the great sward of pastureland. No wonder they had settled here, it was verdant and rich. She took out some smoked venison from her bag and cut a portion, throwing it into the wilds for the Goddess. She didn’t hear it land. “Is this what you want me to do?” she asked the Goddess. “This isn’t what I am. I don’t want these people to get hurt, but I’m not a fighter. I don’t shoot people. Once was enough.” Her palms itched. “If I ever needed guidance, it’s now.” There was no bolt of lightning or vision. Sometimes she wondered if such stories were true, or if the gods were more subtle.
She flinched as a hand ax struck the door frame next to her, thrown by a young man with the same muscular build as Dýrhildr, though it didn’t fit him the way it fit her.  Inga took that step back, putting her feet outside the longhouse until she was welcome. “No need to be dramatic, Hafr.” Dýrhildr pulled the ax from the wood and strode through the hall like she owned it, through the cleft the flying ax had cut in the group.
#LesFicFri “Goodbye” A server brought her food. It looked like seaweed and fried bananas topped with crickets. “Make your point,” Knockout said, “before I make you eat this… whatever it is.” “Speed your ass up,” he said, standing. “Or whatever shit she’s put you through will seem mild compared to what the Federated Systems will do to you.” She gave him the finger as he walked away without the courtesy of a goodbye or a fuck you. Before she could test the “food,” her phone went off. A reminder she hadn’t set up. hope you’re enjoying your downtime btw, next time I’m tying *you* dwn ♥B
Dýrhildr offered a smile and her bowl. “Could I get some with some meat in it?” Inga solemnly ladled her a proper bowlful. Though there was no spice or vegetable in it, Dýrhildr had run out of food the day before yesterday and it was like the gods’ own mead. “Thank you,” she said again.
An artists rendering of a pipe, with the text "ceci n'est pas une pipe"
Words 74916 Target 75000 Progress 99.9%
Waking up next to mother and child was a new experience for Artemisia, but there was something reassuring about it. Something that felt right. Dio made cute little noises in his sleep, mumbles and gurgles. Kleio mumbled in her sleep too, her lovely lips half forming words. Kleio stirred as Artemisia tried to slip out of bed. “Go back to sleep,” Artemisia whispered. Kleio hummed, stretching lightly, a gesture that was far more attractive than was right. “I’ll be up in a minute to start my bread,” Kleio mumbled. She threw her tunic on with an easy knot and slipped outside to start her leatherworking by the light of a fire in Kleio’s oven. She still owed C-ko a quiver.
“Where the hell have been?” Kleio yelled, dropping her sewing and rushing out to the riverside to meet her. “Out in the wilds,” Artemisia said, leaving the bulk of her load at the edge of the wood and kneeling by the river to wash the blood from her hands. What a figure she struck, tall and taut, glowing with sweat and dirt, dried blood washing into the water. “Communing with the Goddess.” Standing on opposite sides of the narrow river, they were only a few feet appart. It still felt like a gulf. “I thought you’d run away,” Kleio yelled at her. “I’ve been terrified you’d abandoned us.”
**** smiled. “And how do I get there?” “She has to choose you. No one can know what Her criteria are, but we try to live the life and make the sacrifices that we might be worthy, that She might see us.” ****’s eyes were pained, but her smile sweet. “Nothing’s ever certain.” “No. That’s life, though. We never know what’s on the other side of that mountain.”
“Hmm.” Kleio agreed, less reassured by that uncertain answer, though Artemisia delivered it firmly. “And the other name?” “Oh, ‘the Eagle’? Because I’m always on the move. Can’t keep my feet on the ground.” She made a gesture of a bird flying. “Never in the same place long.” Kleio frowned. That was even less assuring. “Not even for a few months?” she asked pointedly. “I promised Zoe I would see this through.” As if that was a firm statement on the matter. “She’s not here anymore.” Again, Artemisia looked up from her chore. Her eyes were serious. “Well then. I promise you, Kleio. I will see this through to the end. By Artemis’s bow.” Kleio held her eyes. Nodded. “On your goddess’s name, then.”
She towered over Artemisia’s students, her gaze neutral, militaristic, handling her bow like a staff. Artemisia rolled her eyes at it. Zoe the Goofball, trying to be Zoe the General. “I hope Mama Bear has been thorough in your training,” Zoe said. “Because today we march up that mountain and see what we can kill.” Artemisia was suddenly glad she’d pushed them as much as she had.
With a bump, Artemisia wedged herself into the seat next to her. Kleio was too tired to think about it — she lay her head on Artemisia’s shoulder and snoozed for a bit. She was vaguely aware of the archer repairing her bracer. Not so different from the womanly arts. Kleio yawned and pulled her blanket around herself tighter against the morning chill.
Rage, the God sang in her ear, and she raged. She screamed her song and batted away blades and struck horses in the eye and knocked another from his mount and beat him bloody. Her own blood mixed with her attackers, and she raged harder, chasing the third horse off with rider, and threw her staff after him, striking him on the head and knocking him from the animal’s back. She leapt on him herself and beat him until he was dead, choked on his own blood.
A sketch of a muscular woman with a bow and quiver of arrows holding a baby
A sketch of a woman with a bow over her shoulder and a flower in her hair
“Fuck, you’re serious, aren’t you?” “Deadly. You and I can do something here. A little work, a little blood, and we can safeguard these women’s futures. What better a thing to die for?” Artemisia looked away. Out over the rolling wilderness. Up the mountain. Zoe knew that look. “But what’s on the other side of that rise?” she asked. “More trees,” Zoe said flatly. “You have to keep your feet on the ground sometime, Fletch.” “Never had to before.”
Her Blushing Hero Mariah Rae Birch Sapphic Lady Knights Book Three
Again Kleio pulled away, and this time Artemisia let her go. “I’m sure you would,” she whispered with far more regret than she cared for. “I’m sure you’ve gotten a lot of practice.” “Comes with the life,” Artemisia said, running her hand awkwardly through her hair. “Take my pleasure where I can get it, because I might be twenty miles away by the next night.”
Artemisia was already awake, as she often was. She’d gotten in the habit of starting her customary early-morning fire in Kleio’s bread oven rather than the firepit. Kleio greeted her reflexively, barely awake, and turned out the loaves she’d made the night before, fed them again, and shaped them. All automatic, a ritual she’d been doing for years now. Since before he’d moved here, and feeding herself and her husband had been her responsibility. She used to bake with her mother in the morning. She missed baking with her mother. Then she brought Dio out and half-slept on the bench by the door. She and Theron used to sit next to her in the morning, when he was done with the animals.
“No apologies, no regrets,” Artemisia said with more confidence than she felt as the man bled on the road. She tried her best impression of Zoe: “Only stand your ground next time. There are thirty nine more to count before we can afford to let fear or guilt swerve our aim.” Fortunately the next horses to round the bend were Zoe’s and Faye’s. Collectively they breathed. “That’s three,” Zoe announced, looking at the body on the ground.
“Tell me what you need,” the archer said. “I’ll take care of it.” “I’m sure you would.” Kleio almost told her — nay, begged for — what she needed. To be pressed into her bed and have these seven women worked out of her. Seven. Seven was a good number.
Unsure what else to do, she followed Kleio on her errand. She approached a woman paler than most in the village, probably due to the unreasonably wide-rimmed straw hat she wore. A particularly nice loom was set up in the shade of an awning. “Hey Erer,” Kleio greeted the woman. Erer watched Artemisia warrily as she and Kleio bantered and traded bread for undyed cloth. “Thought you’d left,” Erer said, her voice cold. “Thought I’d stay. Zoe has gone to recruit warriors to fight for you, and I mean to find women here willing to take up the bow in their own defense.” The woman’s look was flat. “Good luck. I don’t think you’ll find anyone willing.” “I hope for your sake I do.” Erer scowled, but said nothing more. * * * Unfortunately much of the sentiment was widespread. They weren’t willing to risk the wrath of the bandits. They weren’t willing to go against Eudocia. They weren’t willing to leave the only thing they had. Even if they had nothing left. “This is what I’ve been dealing with,” Kleio said on their way back to the cabin. “You haven’t left either,” Artemisia observed. “Much for the same reasons.” “I know. At least I want someone to help.”
“You look good with a baby in her arms,” Kleio giggled. “Don’t even say that.” Kleio sat next to her and arranged the shawl in her lap, straightening out her thread. “He likes you,” she said, threading her needle. She set the sheep doll on Artie’s knee. “Most other women he just cries and cries.” “He knows the Goddess is with me,” Artemisia said.
A small knot of women had gathered in the village square. Zoe and Nysa were circling each other with knees and waists bent, grinning like madwomen. Suddenly, Nysa surged forward, and they grappled. Kleio brushed up close to Artemisia, drinking in the warmth of her. “What are they doing?” Kleio murmured to Artie, adjusting Diodorus in his sling. He had brightened up when he’d seen Artie. So had Kleio. “Wrestling,” Artemisia murmured. “Why?” “Do those two really need a reason?”
Artemisia stopped to wipe the sweat off her brow, and saw Kleio watching, and waved with that awkward smile of hers. Dio was finally asleep, so Kleio fetched up a cup filled it at the river, and drifted over to Artemisia, who drank gratefully. “You chop wood better than I do,” Kleio said, blushing foolishly. Artemisia laughed. “Someone has to do it. And it gets the blood flowing.” It certainly got Kleio’s blood flowing.
“Safer to leave,” Zoe continued. “Go back to your families. When your men return, they’ll go looking for you.” “I put down roots here. I was going to be fruitful.” Kleio hugged her baby close. “Now I have a harvest of one, and I’ll be damned if I let these monsters uproot us.” “Your pride doesn’t do you any good if you’re dead."
Councilwoman Belshazzar had a face that looked like she hadn’t smiled for a century, despite being in her sixties. The kind of silver fox you knew better than to let bite you. Tyre had never met her, despite being in similar social circles before she left Bastion. Maybe the Belshazzars had known better than to associate with someone as worthless as her father had turned out to be.
Staging losing battles wasn’t hard with greeks these days. The Macedonians, now they would put up a fight. They’d been fighting off barbarian invasion for hundreds of years, they were expert fighters. But the Egyptians didn’t want real war. They wanted agitation and fear. If someone got lucky, you found a man who could really inspire the people and actually muster the bodies to overturn a crown. It happened. That would be great, to be right-hand man to a puppet-king, eventually have to betray him when he failed to follow orders.
“Dio’s been quiet,” Artemisia said. “He likes the rain,” Kleio said fondly. “So did Theron.” “I find it dreadful.” “Finally, something about the natural world you’re not enamored with.” Artemisia glanced at her, annoyed. “There are things I don’t like out there. Leaches for one.”
A colored pencil drawing of a large mammal eating from a tree
Zoe stroked her face, smiling as she gazed into the eyes of the woman she loved. “Your gods didn’t put us together just so they could take me away from you—” “Actually that’s exactly the sort of thing they’d do.” “—not if they know what’s good for them.” Kyra laughed. “Sacrilege. How are you going to punish the gods from the underworld, my love?” “Start with Hades, of course, and work my way up.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Just the two of you out here. Must be lonely.” Kleio shrugged carefully. “It’s the lot I’ve drawn. Can’t draw another one.”
“Our worst mistakes are the ones we never make,” she murmured. Rete leaned close and asked in a stage whisper: “What does that mean?” “It means I should tell Phile how I feel.” Her mentor threw up her hands. “I give up. Do what you want.”
Artemisia always felt on edge returning to civilization, though this tiny village nestled in the valley between three mountains barely counted. She was used to the quiet isolation of the wilds or the intimacy of a small hunting group. People made her nervous.
Artemisia marched to the shrine and leapt onto the dais, placing herself between the gathered women and the idol. “Today this is a shrine to Artemis, not Demeter,” she announced. “So that she can see this village and its future and decide if you’re worthy of her aid.”
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Nysa stopped herself from laughing at the sight of her Amazon, bumbling toward her hovel by the sacred stream, the most recent iteration in a lifetime of rebuilding. Every time she returns to this trashheap of city, she has to rebuild it. Next time she’ll wrap it in poison oak, let the misanthropes who would tear down a woman’s home regret it afterwards.
A woman in blue drinking a man in red's brain through a straw
“I’ve seen how many of your fields lay fallow and how thin your herds are,” Zoe said, projecting to the whole of the gathered villagers. “After you thresh and hull all that wheat, are you going to have enough to satisfy the army you’re supporting with grain and mutton? They’ll either leave you to starve, or, if they’re smart, cart you all away as well. In six months the lot of you could be scattered throughout the uncivilized world, with new names serving new masters who don’t even speak Greek. Either way your husbands’ homecoming will not be a celebration.”
“What’s this?” she asked, setting her basket down by the washing rock and surveying their lumber pile. “Just a project to keep us busy,” Artemisia said. “A month left to harvest, Zoe won’t be back for at least a week. And it turns out E-ko’s husband is the village stone mason? She’s going to cook up some lime for stucco and knows where to find pumice to make concrete. It won’t be pretty, but it will be private.”
Title: Unchain My Heart Subtitle: A Sapphic Fantasy Romance in Classical Greece Author: RJ Martin Image: Two women in silhouette in front of a mountain. The first has a sword on her hip and has tattoos on her arms. The other is wearing a red cloak with a fur mantle. They're chained at the wrist.
Tyre rolled her eyes. “Tell me about growing up in Westfell. But only good things.” That took a moment. Her childhood hadn’t been particularly carefree. “My mother,” she finally said. “She had already seen my sibs off to their own adulthoods when the Grand Marshal brought me home. She did everything she could to make me feel like her own. It took me a few years to come around to her, but she never let me feel like I was anything but her child.” She actually smiled thinking about it. “I remember Midsommer’s Feast, she made the best pasties and pork pies. My siblings and their spouses and children would come around for the day and just eat. And mead. Mom made the best mead.”
They were tired, cold and sore as the little mountain village emerged in the valley below. Artemisia’s feet ached from a long trek over the mountains in the wilds of Macedonia, and she felt somewhat jealous of her compatriots and their horses. “I need a bath,” she griped, knowing full well they all did, but she felt like she’d earned the right to complain. “A bath and to put my feet up for a week.”
black and white image of tattoos on the arms and torso
Artemisia loosed the arrow, but the arrow thunked into a house behind the beast. One more. Her nerves were strangely calm. She nocked another arrow and took aim, letting out a slow breath. By Artemis, this one needed to strike true.
Artemisia the Hunter returned, her hair tied back sloppily, her skin still shimmering with moisture after her bath. She’d put on a simple dress, pinned with antler clips, and a cord about her middle to give the dress shape. Kleio noticed the shape, the swell of her breasts under the fabric, the breadth of her hips, but she also noticed the way her muscles bulged and flexed as she moved. She wasn’t the beast that the warrior was, but she was tone and tan and Kleio’s knees weakened at the thought of the strength in those arms.
A small knot of women had gathered in the village square. Zoe and Nysa were circling each other with knees and waists bent, grinning like madwomen. Suddenly, Nysa surged forward, and they grappled. Kleio brushed up close to Artemisia, drinking in the warmth of her. “What are they doing?” Kleio murmured to Artie, adjusting Diodorus in his sling. He had brightened up when he’d seen Artie. So had Kleio. “Wrestling,” Artemisia murmured. “Why?” “Do those two really need a reason?”
She took another bite of dried venison and and watched the forest dance below her in the gentle wind. The wilderness was beautiful. That was part of why she’d chosen this life, even if it had been hard. She loved the green, the smell of good wet soil and wild olives in bloom, as much as she loved the thrill of her arrow landing.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Nameless said breathlessly. “At your service as long as the alcohol flows, baby,” Nysa purred.
“Zoe!” Kleio burst in, panting and resting her hands on her knees. “Great Zoe, Artemisia caught a scout out in the wilds.” “A scout?” She threw a glance at Faye, who shook her head. “I’ve been up and down the valley,” Faye said. “There’s no army near.”
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The woman sighed. “And I see you received the fool’s welcome.” “More like no welcome.” “Yeah. I’m sorry, we’re all a little on edge, and few strangers who come through here. After all that’s happened, I’m afraid many of us have forgotten what hospitality is.” Thalia could say nothing that wasn’t bitter agreement.