Sadness & Sadness Accessories Available Now!
I am honored to announce my upcoming first collection of poetry, Sadness & Sadness Accessories. After two decades of writing poetry, I am self-publishing this collection that focuses on transition, trauma, and looking for hope amidst tragedy. It is available now on Amazon.
Would you give up anything and everything to be yourself? This is the aftermath of transition, and I sort through the wreckage, looking for the pieces of me that still have life in them.
“If there is nothing new under the sun, then Aurora’s poems lie tucked beneath a shade tree. As Aurora examines how appearance can be a false advertisement for inward essence, she starts with her own experience—what it’s like to know you are a woman before being seen as one—and proceeds to shake other things free from their faulty labels. She describes teaching students as they write “essays about the National Anthem / as though it isn’t a song celebrating the beauty / of a bombing.” She reveals the lack of imagination of author JK Rowling—lauded for dreaming up wizards with powers of transformation but failing to see that “magic was in [the trans community] the whole time.” Enough of lying labels, of what’s been in the sunlight so long it’s grown stale, her poems seem to say. Aurora craves the “satisfaction [...] of seeing yourself as indelible / instead of a ghost haunting your own life.” She unflinchingly brings the inner outward, with a fresh voice that will “fill [the]room” even though it “sometimes still doesn’t have room for [her].” This collection of poems is a fresh exploration not only of gender, motherhood, and the trans experience, but of humanity. It is essential reading for those tired of obvious narratives, sun-parched and withering. It offers company and clarity for readers digging into the rich dirt of their interior selves, looking for the tender and explosive seeds that Aurora believes are begging for our care.”
- Amy Barger
“Vulnerable, restorative, liberating—Aurora shouts not into the void but across the chasms of time and memory in this arresting collection of poetry. She weaves an odyssey of self-love and acceptance that feels melancholic at times and triumphant in others but always, always hauntingly tender. Sadness and Sadness Accessories is such a necessary body of work in a world where authenticity has become a business and grief an industry. The experiences and emotions we wade through are almost confrontational in their honesty, and in many regards, being a reader here feels more like bearing witness to an excavation of self. As Aurora digs into the viscera of womanhood through fraught introspections on love, mothering, and femininity, she offers herself up as an eternal work in progress in the best way—a woman always changing, evolving, and blooming. She reminds us that what of the world we cannot bear, we conjure with words instead.”
- Kaylan Freeman
Reading Sadness & Sadness Accessories is like venturing into a gay bar for the first time-- you'll marvel at the dreadfulness of its vile beauty. Distressing, provoking, and queerly satisfying, Aurora's words welcome you to sit uncomfortably at home. To read her work is to bear witness to an intimate process of injury and healing, while she challenges conventional ideas of childhood, beauty, and education with effortless execution and transition.
- Jacklyn Boggs
“In a captivating set of poems, Aurora allows the reader space to reflect on their identity and sense of belonging through her experiences. This collection gives refuge to trans and nonbinary people while holding a mirror up to their allies’ faces and forcing them to confront their ‘stumbling words and good intentions’ (Maty’s Day). It also gives an expert and deft fuck you to transphobes and their supporters alike.”
- Chanteria Milner
My name is Aurora Hatchel, writer of poetry, stories, plays, and anything that makes my heart sing.
Elliot Tanner & The World’s Curse is now on my Patreon!
I’ve just posted the first chapter of my trans Harry Potter fanfic series, Elliot Tanner & The World’s Curse, on my Patreon page. In July, I’ll be posted the story publicly on a plethora of sites, but early access and advanced chapters will always be through my Patreon.
My Shadow’s Keeper now on Amazon
My debut novel, My Shadow’s Keeper, is now available on Amazon.
As her shadow magic awakens, Thiala is drawn into an elite group of freedom fighters. Her people, the Drow, have long been oppressed by the Empire, and acts of sabotage and espionage are their only way to strike back. She is torn between her fanatic mother and sociopath mentor as she prepares for a vital mission: starting a war between The Empire and their longstanding allies, the High Elves. But the Empire hires adventurers to defend their kingdom from threats like Thiala and her squad. As a group of do-gooders ruins Thiala’s perfect plan, she has to adapt and sink deeper into darkness.
My Shadow’s Keeper is a dark fantasy story that questions the line between fanaticism and nihilism, between freedom fighters and terrorists, and between heroes and villains.
Serotonin, Love, and Acid
No one would think Elijah Parker has superpowers. He spends most of his days in bed avoiding his abusive father and his nights playing guitar alone in his room. To the world, Eli is entirely unremarkable, but Madeline Snow never agreed with the rest of the world. As a painter, she’s learned from empty canvases that the extraordinary always starts with the ordinary.
When the artist and the musician are assigned to work on a project together, Eli suddenly has a reason to wake up in the morning, and Maddie has something she can’t stop painting: their song. It’s a small fire keeping two lonely people warm as a hurricane of baggage swirls around them.
And of course, things get worse before they get better. Eli’s father is the only thing more out of control than Eli’s mental health. Maddie’s family collapses around her, and she retreats deeper and deeper into herself. They both grasp for any source of happiness that will keep them afloat in this storm: serotonin, alcohol, dopamine, art, love, and acid. Because that’s what works for everyone else, right?
Right?