Author: C.M. Seybolt
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There’s a peculiar kind of madness in finishing a book, knowing exactly what it cost you, and choosing to open it again. I didn’t begin the year intending to write two novels. I had sixteen chapters of a story I’d abandoned a year earlier. I couldn’t remember its title. I didn’t particularly care. As far…
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Espionage, Coffee, and Reality on the Brink Crystal navigates her café shift like a covert operation, decoding signals and dodging surveillance. But when the mission dissolves into a birthday party and a scholarship letter, she’s forced to confront the terrifying possibility that warmth might be real. Briefing: The Mission Begins Crystal navigates her café shift…
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When truth surfaces, loyalty drowns. A girl attending Parents’ Weekend is pulled into a covert Foundation assessment and discovers the family who raised her were never parents at all — just assets preparing her for activation as Code Name: KRAKEN. Parent’s Weekend I was halfway through planning my escape — the real kind, not the dramatic‑teenager…
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A dream‑wedding unravels into something watching from the other end of the rope. What you drag up doesn’t always let go. The Rope: A Short Horror Story “I dreamed I was getting married, which should’ve been my first clue something was horribly wrong.” The psych nurse blinked at me as if she needed the meds more than…
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A mythic story about truth, memory, and the moment a life splits in two.. I wrote this piece for a contest exploring the theme of “the unseen.” It didn’t place, but it stayed with me — the voice, the threshold, the ache beneath it. I’ve revised it lightly for clarity and cadence. I’m sharing it…
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For the last two weeks or so, my author site has been sitting behind an “under construction” screen while I rebuilt it from the inside out. Pages rewritten. Sections reorganized. Entire hubs re‑voiced. The Daffodil Girl has finally been given her own space. The kind of work that looks simple when it’s finished, but feels…
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Acknowledged but not crowned tier After five rounds in the Writer’s Playground, I’ve realized that participation-only spaces eventually drain more than they give.Patterns tell the truth that individual outcomes hide. One loss means nothing. Five losses reveal the architecture of the room. I’ve seen the same structure repeat: the top tier crowned, the honorable tier…
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What it means to leave the creative homes that shaped our beginnings “Every pond has its edge. Every writer eventually learns to swim beyond it.” When a Room Holds Your Beginnings As fledgling writers, we search for a community that will hold our awkward beginnings — the crawling, the tumbling, the stumbling — and help…
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A Collapse, A Pattern, and the Choice Not to Fall Apart When the World Fell in a Single Day This weekend, a world collapsed.Not metaphorically — literally. My website was built and destroyed in the same day. Four months ago, that would have been enough to send me spiraling. I would have taken it as…
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“The only place on this infernal internet I actually want to be is my blog.” Because sometimes the simplest truth is the one that saves you. I had the TV playing in the background — the kind of mindless noise you put on when you’re too tired to care and too wired to rest. I…