This novella is dedicated to @AprilJester

I would not be writing this if she hadn't put me up to it. Will get back to people on whether or not this was a wise idea.

I won't be updating this for a long while, I don't think - I have way too much on my plate now (The Adventures of the Hypotenuse, Quran study for Ramadan, short stories for the Panhellenic Games if I can get off my duff, other commitments) and I'm usually not one to post rough drafts/works in progress anyway. When I upload new chapters to Hojo Ginko, I will be uploading a completed, polished book. Until then, everybody gets a teaser.

Hojo Ginko was originally going to be one of two entries in the 2025 Open Novella Contest, using two prompts:

"7. You've always suspected that the stray cat in your area is more than it seems. Now you're determined to catch it shapeshifting and prove it's a shapeshifter. But the closer you get, the more questions arise." (main prompt)

"12. While hiking through a forest, you stumble upon a unicorn's horn." (secondary prompt)

However,  shortly before the first ONC deadline, I realized that I'd bitten off far more than I could chew with the project, and it was too complicated to work as an entry in a prompt-driven writing sprint. I'd be "pantsing" this to get it done, and that's not how I write. I'll probably pick it back up again in May or June. I do want to get the rough draft done before August. For now, I'll leave the first segment of the first chapter up as a teaser.

My goal with this is to get the final draft completed by November, in time for my planned commercial release of What Is Told: A Conglomeration of Confabulations. This novella's going into it.

What Is Told is the book I started so that people on Wattpad could easily find the stories I'd written that were not sexually explicit; the commercial version is the book I plan to publish for my offspring (ages 14 - 22) so they can read my work without getting embarrassed and have something they can show to their teachers, school librarians, friends, etc and say, "See? My mom is an author! Want a copy of their book?" It's a bit off-brand for me, but then again, maybe it isn't. I know this may come as a surprise to some, but I don't just write overly literary, pretentious BDSM erotica. I also write slipstream fiction, literary fantasy, and works of magical realism that don't have any explicit sex in them at all. And then there's my poetry and my art...

Reading is magic. Writing is magic. Genre is optional unless one wants to try to market one's work.