Welcome to the show. I got tired of having lots of different pages for everything, and I've been meaning to give this name a use for a while, so here it is.

This is the homepage for mostly a lot of stuff by Thomas Castle, aka TheAestheticMerchant, aka Teacat. Stories, serials, whatever else fits. See tabs above for content I'll fill in eventually.

What is the Grimoire Faire?

It's as it sounds. What does a Grimoire Faire mean for you? That's what it is. It was meant as a horror-themed Tumblr blog experience dedicated to folklore and creepypasta, but Thomas felt it was best to spend that time writing stories and being spooky and strange IRL instead, so that's what we ended up with — an unused name, evocative of so much more, and the extant Sorrows Of Blackwood and Pick-n-Mix Comix projects alongside it.

Licensing & Creative Commons Stuff

All this stuff is copyrighted of course (the text and any intellectual property of my/our own creation of course — graphics, probably not, unless they're on the Art & Visuals page or otherwise noted as having been done by me, and I usually have a signature on pieces I've done myself so you should be able to notice it where they are), but I intend to put a lot of it here under a Creative Commons license so this page can be like a centerpiece of all my CC-licensed work. Noting licenses elsewhere can be difficult because I post random stuff all over all the time, so if I have this as a “release source” to cite for which material is licensed, all the better for it. I've experimented with this a bit already as part of the content I wrote for the Other Realms Story Bible, but for one thing, those are under a weird, custom license I wrote that was inspired by the Jenny Everywhere open-source concept (allowing for remixing indefinitely under conditions included in the license terms, essentially), and for another, something felt off about putting descriptions on a wiki when those things have no narrative source to draw from. I mean technically you can still count a character profile as source material, so there's a lot of stuff on there that's sourceable and licensed under the ORSB-specific license I put on those articles, but I still would rather have some of my actual content licenseable under CC for the sheer sake of spreading it around so I don't have to futz with it much more after that.

“Fix it and forget it”, basically. I write it. You read it. Do whatever you want with it, but follow the Creative Commons terms and it's perfect. Remix it. Adapt it. Make a short film. Make your own sequels. If this stuff is all in one place, so all the Creative Commons stuff can be drawn from all together, then I shouldn't have to worry if one piece or another isn't quite finished yet because you'll only be able to draw from what I licensed here anyway. You can also commission me for custom stories and hire me for projects via that email link I just gave you, or inquire there about special licensing for projects and works of mine that aren't up here yet if you're willing to shell out and skip the waiting time.

Also, if you like what I do here, feel free to leave a donation or monthly subscription on my Patreon and/or a tip on my Ko-Fi. Those would really go a long way and help a lot to show your thanks for all the cool, free stuff you're getting from me. If I ever put anything up on Amazon or through Draft2Digital — or, if the stars allow, have a submission published through proper, official, non-independent means — it'll go here too and you'll buy it because I asked you to! Hopefully! I'd really appreciate it quite a lot. Thanks for listening :)