“Are you doing Secret Santa this year?”

“Yeah, but I got Chloe, and you know she never likes what anyone gets her, and she always comes in under the dollar amount by as much as she can get away with. That wouldn’t be so bad, except she brags about it. You were supposed to be getting me a Christmas present! Why is it appropriate to tell me that you saved seventeen dollars out of a twenty dollar budget? It’s like, come on, Chloe, read the room.”

Continue: https://wordpress.com/post/leemoyer.wordpress.com/4922

They weave his earthly incarnations out of sticks and straw, erecting them as monuments to the harvest, as bulwarks against the closing cold. They build him because they can, because they are compelled to do so, because they remember, on some deep and binding level, that it’s the sticks and straw and tinder or it’s beans in the bread and blood on the snow.

Continue: https://leemoyer.wordpress.com/2021/12/22/yul-byrner-the-small-god-of-harvest-sacrifice/

She began with a mondegreen. This is not a unique origin among the small gods, although she is perhaps uniquely proud of it, as had the mishearing occurred under other circumstances, it might have turned out far less well for everyone involved.

Continue: https://leemoyer.wordpress.com/2020/12/18/auntie-claws-the-small-god-of-polar-fleece/

People assume she’s a newcomer, a fad, a frivolous flash in the pan. But she was there when the first pumpkin pies were being baked; she was there when the first colonist cookbook was published, in 1769. She was there when the British raided the rest of the world for flavors they could steal, and while her appearance may be sweet and adorable, her hooves are soaked in the blood of empire, for without conquest, she could never have been born.

Continue: https://leemoyer.wordpress.com/2020/06/26/the-small-god-pumpkin-spice/

They call on him so much more than they ever realize.

Want a car to start? Want an engine to fire, an egg to cook, a cigarette to light? Want to go through your life without being wreathed in a halo of brief, brilliant fire, burning away to nothing in the moments between the cinder and the scream?

Continue: https://leemoyer.wordpress.com/2020/05/06/smaurs-the-small-god-of-perfectly-applied-flame/

2025 Literary Pin-up Calendars
LIMITED EDITIONS for a LIMITED TIME.

Back in 2014, I collaborated with a stellar array of authors on the last of my trilogy of Literary Pin-up Calendars. Now, a decade later, the stars are right and the calendar dates line up perfectly for 2025.

We only have 150 calendars, so act fast! See link for shipping details.

Order your calendar for 2025 here: https://leemoyer.bigcartel.com/product/2025-literary-pin-up-calendar

Sometimes education isn’t enough. Sometimes you can study and study and try and try, and never quite cross the last bridge between where you are and your heart’s desire.

Sometimes you need to tell the perfect little lie to get there.

Continue: https://leemoyer.wordpress.com/2020/06/12/yucan-tu-the-small-god-of-faking-it-until-you-make-it/

The cat is in the way.

This is a basic fact of the universe, simple and immutable. The sun is shining, the wind is blowing, the cat is in the way. The world is spinning, the atomic structure of the universe is decaying, the cat is the way. The faithful pray, the apostate condemn, and the cat is in the way.

Continue: https://leemoyer.wordpress.com/2020/09/11/obsidious-small-god-of-occluding-cats/

If she could make people understand one thing and one thing only, it would be this: that food has no moral value, and that anyone whose pantry can be considered “full” is a virtuous person in her eyes, regardless of whether that fullness is kale chips and quinoa or Girl Scout cookies and pre-mixed buttercream frosting.

Continue reading: https://leemoyer.wordpress.com/2020/08/31/kitsch-annette-the-small-god-of-organized-pantries/

She has so many more faithful than she desires, or than realize their loyalty to her. Fully half of those who worship her with unflagging devotion would be horrified beyond all measure if forced to clearly confront the damage they have done, if forced to see with open eyes that they betrayed their own ideals. She despises them for refusing to look at their children without preconceptions, for refusing to understand, for refusing to see as they are seen.

Continue: https://leemoyer.wordpress.com/2021/11/05/железной-леди-small-god-of-bad-mothers/