lachelle.xyz
Lachelle Seville is a nonbinary writer and hobby illustrator based in Detroit, Michigan. They write speculative fiction about messy midwesterners and bizarre encounters. You can usually find them reading on the job, rewatching Smallville, or brainstorming remixes of 19th century bangers.
about
music
I downloaded Logic Pro X in December of 2019 and started making music for the first time at the start of the COVID pandemic. Since then, I've experimented with standalone albums and with projects meant to accompany other creative projects. When it comes to my productions, I like dark melodies, retro synths, and sine waves. you can find me on Spotify, Apple Music, and at the links below.
books
It’s been a year since Oasis stumbled away from Blessed Falls with wings carved into her back and too many scars to count.A year spent razing delusions of being an angel's vessel, proving to her brother that she doesn’t belong in a psych ward, and mourning the loss of her mother's vinyl pressed ashes.A year spent struggling to feel human again.Enter Laura, the mesmerizing stranger who claims to hear Oasis’ heartbeat, who reads her hand-written memoir like scripture, who makes her feel closer to found than lost.Laura is the most recent face of the eternal Count Dracula, ruler of the shadows, chimera of the Devil, and embittered victim of libel.The Van Helsing Institute have been waiting for a glimpse of the dragon’s underbelly, and eagerly approach Oasis for her help in a ploy to kill Dracula for good. But not every wound from Blessed Falls has cicatrized, and Oasis realizes she may be a danger to Laura—and to herself.Yet no one is as dangerous as Laura—the first vampire, the Devil's plaything, and the person with whom Oasis finally feels human.Oceans of time have passed since she last had a drink, and she will not let Oasis go easily.
"With a stunning blend of depth and humor, DARKNESSES is a retelling unlike anything I've read before. Seville presents a fresh take on vampires that breathes new life into Stoker's classic, weaving together elements of identity and interpersonal relationships that truly modernize the story on which it is built. In Laura, Seville presents a fun, nuanced take on Dracula that reminds me how enchanting and innovative the retelling genre can be, while in Oasis, Seville gives the audience a relatable, resilient, and infinitely readable hero. I found myself laughing one page and on the verge of tears the next. Complicated narratives and an inventive world create a rich tapestry that both pays homage to its source material while bringing it to entirely new heights, as well. Seville is a voice to watch and I cannot wait to see what they come up with next."Courtney Gould, author of The Dead and the Dark
"DARKNESSES is a lush retelling of a classic with all the fun of the original. Seville will take you into the depths of pain and darkness, then guide you back up with a gentle hand and humor, all the while snagging you with each poetic sentence. You will fall in love with these characters and be sad when the last page is turned."Brendon Zatirka, author & translator
"Sexy, smart, heart-wrenching, and somehow still laugh-out-loud funny. Seville has taken something old and made it wholly new. Is this book massive? Yes. Will I read it again and again? Also yes. It doesn’t matter if you think you don’t like vampires – do yourself the favor of buying this book immediately."Olivia A. Cole, critically acclaimed author of The Truth About White Lies
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“Contemplative, poetic, and romantic, DARKNESSES is like fine dining for every lover of vampires and the gothic tradition. With literary prose and complex relationships, Seville immerses us in a world as ethereal as it is real, as dark as it is hopeful. This is truly Dracula for the modern age.”Ryan Douglass, NYT bestselling author of The Taking of Jake Livingston
The shooting didn’t end when the AR-15 ceased to fire. First came the Xanax addiction, then the alcoholism, then the rape, then the marriage to a monster. Five years later, the echoes of gunshots are finally dying down, and with divorce on the horizon, 25-year-old Polly Cyrus is ready to find her people and start over—no matter how difficult the COVID-19 pandemic makes it.Unbeknownst to her, someone else has already been looking.Ikaros, 27-year-old son of the master craftsman Daedalus, was halfway to Sicily when he fell into the sea and woke up the next day in someone else’s body, 3,000 years into the future. The only familiar thing is a face from a drawing on his father’s drafting table: Polly’s.The world is bigger, the gods hold no sway, and without his own body, the possibility of Ikaros starting a life in the twenty-first century seems far out of reach. Meanwhile, the vampire Polly married is hellbent on ensuring that her demons prevail, and that she has a fatal fall of her own.Soon, the duo’s scramble for answers puts them in the orbit of the wayward gods still finding their footing in a godless world. But the dust from the fall of Olympus has yet to settle, and even the gods must learn that fate takes no prisoners and always has the final say.Release date TBA.
BIRD BONES
July 12, 2004 — ELIZABETH, NJOne-year-old Bird Bones, whose stalwart sobriquets include C'mere, Kitty Kitty and Get The Hell Off That Grass, has a hard-earned reputation for benevolence, having spent her time away from the litter leaving bird bones on welcome mats, peeing in rosebushes, and getting into homes and garages she doesn't belong in. Nights like this often find her gazing at her domain from 16661 Pomegranate Avenue, a hard sell of a house gone unsold for so long that the serpentine ivy and jungle of grass have begun to reclaim its civility.The living room windowsill provides Bird Bones with a glimpse of the speckled sky above the fence separating the street from the train tracks. Two street lamps form a net of light at the dead end—a hole in the night, too bright to see the rushing locomotive behind it. The floorboards tremble as it chugs west. The horn's echoes fold back on the silence like a hymn.Something swirls, like fallen leaves or loose mown grass. It spirals out slowly, a looming shadow with no source.Bird Bones watches as it takes shape, like flecks of ash reassembling—flecks of ash that beat the breeze, that sing in shrill notes and move like a cauldron of bats.The cauldron molds into one bat—one thin, upside-down bat swinging gently from the street lamp. The light bleeds back so that its outline is as defined as an angel descending: its sharp ears, the fluff on its head, its leathery, cape-like wings. Its eyes are closed. A yawn shows two twinkling fangs before it swings and takes flight.The train's horn thunders again, cleaving the night air.Bird Bones leaps from the sill as the bat made of bats lands in the grass and begins to carve a path towards the house, clarifying with each step. Its eyes are smaller, shrewder—the width and height of a human's. But where whites and irises should be, there's nothing but pools of churning dark red—churning brown in Bird Bones' feline vision, like what spills from the mice whose heads she bites off and delivers to the worthy.The train blares again, masking the sound of breaking glass as the shadow punches through the window. Its silhouette eclipses the streetlight, but where a shadow would fall from its figure is nothing but unbroken light.Bird Bones flattens with fear, a blob of spiked orange fur on the polished floor.The shadow borne of nothing reaches for the petrified cat and opens its mouth with a soft purr, jaw unhinged, fangs glistening.
1
July 8, 2019 — Manhattan, NYI balance my phone against the cash register and lean forward on my wooden stool. I see my lips: thick and round—and dry. I apply a fresh coat of cocoa butter Vaseline from the small jar in my plaid flannel pocket. The roiling puce clouds outside the bookstore window are exactly how I feel right now. My cramps are killing me, and the ibuprofen I took at noon is taking its time kicking in.I flip through the pages of a Frankenstein paperback again and again, too fast to actually read, but slow enough to note its defects. It's an older edition, with a worn cloth cover and a few beverage stains on the inside. The marginalia's written in small cursive—stuff like 'the original deadbeat dad' and 'hubris gone wild.' Marginalia is a gift for someone like me—someone who gets turned around the moment a paragraph goes on for more than a few sentences. And sometimes, the notes are more entertaining than the book itself.After a moment, I set the book aside so that I can buy it later. Kennedy keeps reminding me of my discount whenever he sees me looking at something for more than a few minutes, and this seems like a good reason.Full Cauldron is a quiet place. As Manhattan's first female-owned, new-and-used science fiction and fantasy bookstore, it's a haven for an array of comic and book lovers: Trekkies and superhero fans, mystery lovers, literary fiction readers with a preference for the Victorian and Gothic. It's a haven for me because it's galaxies away from what I left behind.As I reach for another book from the appraisal pile, I notice someone approaching the counter. She's a glowing shade of dark brown, with curly laid edges and a silken ponytail. Her gold tracksuit is giving the type of Y2K royalty that reminds me of my mother's DJing wardrobe. I can't look away.She puts a stack of books on the counter. "Hello.""Hello." I nearly knock the unpriced books over getting to my feet. "Did you find everything okay?""Very okay." She pats the topmost book in her pile.It has a rust-colored leather cover and gold calligraphy letters on the spine. The title—Dracula—ripples in the light. It's $65. I reach for the next. It's another copy of Dracula, only this one is annotated with essays in the back. The third is a mass market paperback copy of Dracula, but with a dark painting on the cover.The stranger laces her fingers on the counter, stroking the wings of a golden bat around her middle finger, and watches as I ring them up,"You must be a big fan," I say."I am not a fan of any size," she says, ponytail swishing left and right as she shakes her head. "These are to burn.""Why?""Because I cannot do anything worse to them.""Oh." I search for something to say. "I...haven't read it." I almost add that up until now, there's been no room in my life for anything like it—that everything around me has been about being closer to angelic, and that I'm starting to think no amount of pop culture consumption can wash that away. But that's not cash register talk, so instead, I say, "It's about vampires, right?"The stranger runs her tongue over her teeth. "Right."I tear her receipt from the register and slip it into the first book. "It must be bad if you're burning such a nice copy.""Nothing about this book is nice." She pauses while picking up the stack. "But you would not know," she says slowly, smiling. "You have not read it.""I don't have to read it to know that your lungs deserve better than smoke from a book you hate," I say. "Are you gonna keep coming back to check our inventory? It could get expensive.""Money is of no concern to me." She's holding the books like she means to leave with them, but hasn't moved. "You know nothing of the vampire known as Count Dracula?""I know about the vampire bunny known as Bunnicula," I say. "And I know Carmilla. I read it in college." And experienced a sexual awakening so intense that I would've made a Tinder account for the express purpose of finding a girlfriend if I hadn't been failing so many classes. But this isn't cash register talk either, so I keep it to myself."I will note this," the stranger says thoughtfully. "Just to be certain that I understand wholly, you—" she points to me "—have never read this book—" she indicates a copy of Dracula "—by Abraham Stoker.""I didn't even know Abraham was his first name.""It is Abraham," she confirms.Yet again, I can't come up with anything to say, so I keep staring. After hours spent on autopilot, it's dawning on me that this is no longer a passing conversation had solely to fill the silence of a transaction.Is she flirting?I almost laugh out loud before the thought's even completed.Of course she's not.I'm as far from a catch as can be.Unless...?There's no unless.The universe hand-delivering a breathtaking woman in all gold to flirt with me is as close as I can get to a cosmic joke without leaving the galaxy."I learned something today." I return to my stool and grab another book to price. When I straighten up, she's still there, watching with her fingers laced under the stack. "Need anything else?""You."The Left Hand of Darkness slips out of my hand. I don't pick it up. "For what?""You have shown concern for my lungs, and you have never read this book," says the stranger. "And I am certain many reasons more will become apparent to us both."I clear my throat and glance around the store, like someone amongst the shelves will raise a cue card with my next line. "There's plenty of people out there who want you to take care of yourself and haven't read Dracula. You just haven't met them.""Why would I meet them?" she asks, brow quirked. "I have you."My mouth dries out. I lick the Vaseline off my lips, heart sprinting. "I'm lost.""This may have been the case before, but I have found you. You are mine." The woman adjusts the books in her arms, seeming satisfied—relieved, even. "Do not forget this. And do not," she says sternly, raising the stack, "read this book."I try and fail to form a response. She leaves through the open door, and disappears among the ambling pedestrians, all rushing towards their destinations against the countdown to imminent rain.Another customer approaches the register with a question, pulling me back to the present. After some time, I fall back into the silent groove of examining and pricing books, although with a more discerning eye, just in case Dracula is among them.
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bio
Lachelle Seville writes books about supernatural sapphics. They are a writer, artist, and budding literary and art historian at University of Michigan. Born and raised in Detroit, they lived in San Jose, Brooklyn, San Francisco, Oakland, and Los Angeles before circling back home. Darknesses is their debut novel.
darknesses
Lachelle Seville’s debut Darknesses is about the scars that shape us, the pieces we lose to darkness, and finding solace in people you didn’t expect.
synopsis
It’s been a year since Oasis stumbled away from Blessed Falls with wings carved into her back and too many scars to count.A year spent razing delusions of being an angel's vessel, proving to her brother that she doesn’t belong in a psych ward, and mourning the loss of her mother's vinyl pressed ashes.A year spent struggling to feel human again.Enter Laura, the mesmerizing stranger who claims to hear Oasis’ heartbeat, who reads her hand-written memoir like scripture, who makes her feel closer to found than lost.Laura is the most recent face of the eternal Count Dracula, ruler of the shadows, chimera of the Devil, and embittered victim of libel.The Van Helsing Institute have been waiting for a glimpse of the dragon’s underbelly, and eagerly approach Oasis for her help in a ploy to kill Dracula for good. But not every wound from Blessed Falls has cicatrized, and Oasis realizes she may be a danger to Laura—and to herself.Yet no one is as dangerous as Laura—the first vampire, the Devil's plaything, and the person with whom Oasis finally feels human.Oceans of time have passed since she last had a drink, and she will not let Oasis go easily.
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