Wesley Watts: Author, Twilight Fancier, Human Beehive

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

The Sapiosexuals of Sci-Fi Writers Group!

“Welcome to Fiction in Focus, a podcast where we explore the craft of writing without taking ourselves too seriously. I’m Nathan Harms. And I’m Wesley Watts. Each episode we’ll discuss uplifting topics like the soul crushing pressure of expectations, the suffocating grip of self doubt, and the swift kick in the unmentionables of rejection. We’ll share our experiences, struggles, and heartaches in the hope that you might find some small measure of comfort in our collective misery. Or at least, have a laugh at our expense. So grab a pen, paper, and your favorite writing snack and join us as we put fiction in focus.”

“Welcome Word Nerds to Fiction in Focus! I am Nathan Harms and...”

“...I am Wesley Watts” Wesley completes the greeting, welcoming their three listeners to yet another episode of their podcast Fiction in Focus.

“Today we have a special topic as our brave host Wesley here decided to take one for the team and dabble in immersion journalism by joining a...drumroll please...local writing group!”

Wesley patiently waits for the sound of a weak drumroll, which has been edited smoothly into the audio of the podcast.

“I can’t believe I lost that bet” Wesley says, his eyes projecting a thousand yard stare that can only mean one thing: the writing group was, as many writing groups are, a shitshow.

“That’ll teach you to bet on who the new Pope is going to be” Nathan says with absolutely no sympathy. “It’s never the people on the list, it’s always a surprise!”

“I’ll tell you what’s surprising is how many people use the library to print and distribute weird pamphlets.”

“Would you consider a pamphlet a type of creative writing? Did you ask them to join the group?” Nathan asks innocently, knowing from their texts behind the scenes that the pamphlet thrust upon Wesley claiming to teach him how to “develop masculine potency by staring directly at the sun” was probably perceived not only as non-fiction by the writer, but also possibly as a personal insult by Wesley.

“You know, if it had only been one pamphlet about erections it probably would have been fine” Wesley said. “But it was the end timers that destroyed my will to write and eventually to live.”

“Whoa, slow down there, I think you’re getting ahead of yourself” Nathan said. “”Let’s back up and give some context to this bad boy. So you joined a writing group at your local library. How did you find this group?”

“Well, the library was advertising on Facebook, which should have been my first red flag.”

“Everyone advertises on Facebook” Nathan pointed out. “We advertise on Facebook.”

“And to my point, these are red flags.”

“Fair enough” Nathan capitulated. “What was the name of this group?”

Wesley rolls his eyes upwards, as if signaling to the camera that he had nothing to do with this group name. “It was called Sapiosexuals of Sci Fi.”

“Are you sure this was the library? The public library? Does your wife know about this group?”

“So anyway, I joined this writing group because I lost our bet and I had to be the one to meet strangers on one of my only free Saturdays, and that was the group that was kind of relevant to my writing style that met on a day I had free. I wasn’t exactly flooded with choice here. And it started out fine. There were about ten of us, and we all met in a conference room and went around and talked about what we were working on and what stages we were at, and then we talked about what our biggest challenge was.”

“And what was your biggest challenge?”

“Getting motivated to write a sequel when I have to spend my free time attending random writing groups for this podcast.” Wesley said dryly.

“Ooh, were you there networking? Did you drop the pod?”

“I did not.”

“Coward!”

“As I was saying, we were having a pretty regular time going around the table talking, but the conference room had this big glass window, and there seemed to be a lot of activity outside in the main part of the library. A lot of people were lining up to use the copier. Which is great, it’s always nice to know where there’s a copier or printer, so I wasn’t thinking there was anything weird about it, but then one of the copier people stuck one of their copies in the window. And it was a pamphlet.”

“Was this the erection pamphlet?” Nathan probed.

“No, that person ran in later and shoved that right in my face. This first pamphlet was just about breeding. That humans need to make more babies for agriculture. And I did think that was weird, but anyone can use the library so it’s not my business. We kind of laughed it off and continued to talk about our books. And then another person wandered into the room. They wanted to know if it was the sci-fi writing group, and they were working on a pamphlet about hydroponic farming in zero gravity. Which I guess could be a type of creative writing if you’re doing it as a piece of fiction. But it didn’t seem that this person was writing fiction. And this was, to reiterate, a fiction writing group. The fi in sci-fi stands for fiction.”

“So what happened? Did the moderator ask the person to leave?”

“She did ask some questions, like ‘oh and is this part of a larger work of fiction?’ and ‘a pamphlet is an interesting choice, did you find worldbuilding to be challenging?’ but the person didn’t bite and didn’t give us enough to ask them to leave. So we kind of continued and tried to ignore them, but they were going through their bag and they had literally hundreds of pamphlets about this hydroponic thing and then they spotted a friend through the windows and started to gesture them into the room...”

“Oh no” Nathan cackled gleefully. He’d already heard this story, of course, in their pre-podcasting texts. But Wesley was still slightly traumatized in a way that was getting funnier with time.

“So then the new person wandered in and started shouting about how in the end times, we’ll take to the stars and we need to have as many babies as possible with the smartest people so that the babies are smart. Kind of like a reverse idiocracy. And it’s like ok, this has to be a bit. This is a theater group and they’re descending upon the library as some kind of crossover public art thing. And then the church showed up.”

Wesley was telling his story with a mostly straight face, pausing occasionally to try to phrase what he was saying in a way that wouldn’t come off as judgmental. After all, who was he to judge someone else’s beliefs, or to alienate any end-timers who could become potential readers or listeners? It was just good PR. Nathan was not having the same luck with his own expression, and was bent over laughing with tears streaming down his cheeks.

“Now when you say church...”

“I guess I mean cult. I mean I don’t know, maybe they’re very relaxed, maybe they’re low control, I don’t know and I don’t want to know. But they had a van.”

“Red flag!” Nathan cackled.

“I’m sure they’re on Facebook.”

“Red flag!”

“I don’t want to say the name of the group because I’m afraid they’ll find us and make this our problem again, but they poured into the library and started whispering to people about how the world is going to end soon and we need to become more fertile so that we can make smart babies to colonize the skies. I think they targeted the writing group because of the name of the group. And that’s when the man with the potency pamphlet came barging in and gave me personally a pamphlet about increasing my masculine energies.”

“Now, I have to ask, did he give this pamphlet to anyone else directly?” Nathan asked innocently.

“He did not” Wesley answered dryly.

“Did they get kicked out of the library for being too loud? This seems like a violation of library rules.”

“They were being pretty quiet considering how many of them there were. They were also paying for copies. It’s something like ten cents a page, so when you think about it, the library benefits a little in allowing them to stay and kick out copies of pamphlets all afternoon. They were a little annoying, but they were pretty quiet considering.”

“It sounds like when you have a public service, you never know who’s going to show up to use it. And isn’t that really the beauty of a public space? The rich diversity of thoughts and ideas?”

Wesley smiled grimly at the camera, keeping his thoughts on this to himself. He had a feeling if Nathan had been the one to be beset by pamphleteers he might have felt differently about the situation.

“Well I’m glad you didn’t get kidnapped by the end times cult with the van” Nathan said kindly. “Although it would solve your problem of writing a sequel. Hard to write a sequel when you’re updating a cult’s website as forced labor. Speaking of websites.... how’s putting up your own personal website coming along?”

“....fuck you, Nathan.” Wesley said.

“And there you have it, Word Nerds! Wesley’s first local writing group experience. If nothing else, it’s an experience you can use for inspiration later. We should all be so lucky.”

“I can’t wait until you have your own experience” Wesley said. “We’ll see how lucky you feel.”

“Join us next week, when I’m sure we’ll have new fun things to talk about. Maybe Wesley will have joined that cult and we can compare lentil recipes. Thanks for listening, everyone!”

“See you next week!”

[Podcast ending theme music]