Inkblot

Caitie Leigh’s road to pursuing writing has been one hell of a roller-coaster ride, one that has taught her to have the courage to defy people’s expectations and chase her dreams. She hopes to encourage her readers to do the same through her writing, for she would not be the person she is today if she didn’t have the strength, courage and persistence to believe in herself. Caitie loves to write thrilling mysteries and heart racing romance and fantasy. Her characters are clever, fearless and blissfully in love but in real life, Caitie Leigh is anything but her characters. While she has taught herself to have courage in her writing, she has never been in love herself. She’s a sucker for a great romance and gets giddy anytime a great love story evolves across the page. As a result, she loves to lose herself in her own writing.

Chelsea is the daughter of two still-in-love-after-thirty-years child-hood sweethearts, yet chooses to write about affairs, fear of intimacy and deception. Infer what you will. Writing is a way for Chelsea to come to terms with how she sees the world, which to her, is mostly a scary place. However she finds solace in small things such as tipping waiters (something you should always do), giving people good old hugs, and reading anything from Oscar Wilde to James Patterson.

A restless soul with too much energy for her body and too many thoughts for her mind. Believes that the past is something to be examined and learnt from but also thinks that believing that could just be an elaborate excuse to stay stuck. Hasn’t made up her mind on a lot of things except that flowers are pretty. Takes an absurd amount of pictures featuring flowers. Would almost always rather be outside than indoors and dreams of living in the countryside. A life as full of inspiration as it is flowers in her garden. No more being caged.

Eiri J Brown is an artist, mainly working with illustration but sometimes experimenting with poetry. They use writing as a means of venting, without grabbing the person closest to them and screaming like a depressed anxious hyena. In their spare time, Eiri likes to praise clowns, think about axolotls and water their dying marigolds.

Debate still rages over the ownership of this piece. Officially it is credited to Ty Weinert, a QUT university student. Intelligent, creative, humble. These are all words Ty would use to describe himself. However, it is known that Mr. Weinert's gardener, a German immigrant named Hans Krüger, argues that he authored the piece. The two are currently engaged in a heated legal battle. Mr. Weinert states that he wrote the piece in between volunteer shifts at his local orphanage (our sources failed to locate any orphanages within the vicinity of Mr. Weinert's residence). He claims that Mr. Krüger is merely a disgruntled employee, who was terminated after asking to use the bathroom. Mr. Krüger claims that the piece was written by himself when he was employed by the other man. He points to the red stains on the original manuscript being his blood, spilled after his employer forbade him from wearing gloves, claiming they “spoil the fertility of the flowers". Mr. Krüger also claims that Mr. Weinert was black out drunk on a banana lounge during the construction of the piece.

Some people are great bakers. Some can play the trumpet so well you almost consider not calling the police on them when they do it at all hours of the night. And some try out so many things that they end up relatively mediocre in all of them. This is exactly what happened here. Whether it was indecision, lack of commitment, or just one crumpling wave of stir-crazy anxiety after another; Lina, an ecologist, artist, horse rider, rock climber, sushi lover and all-round nihilistic millennial, has decided to venture into the world of creative writing and acquire yet another self-expressing hobby to bury their insecurities in. At least it’s cheaper than horses.

Snowflake is an ugly cat with no other distinguishing features. Son of the crack addict who lives next door and utterly convinced that they own the entire complex. We're talking so confidently aggressive that they will try to hiss down a moving car because it's in Their driveway. Fortunately, they're almost always too tired to deal with people's crap, but somehow managed to hear about, plan for, and submit to our weird little magazine (though we suspect they stole it from somewhere).

About the human – It calls itself Siahne. Mostly it’s Sia. Sometimes it’s Pixy. It has a penchant for trash romance, abstract humour and horror. Why does the human feel the need to drink so much coffee? The human forgets to feed itself. But will prioritise the aforementioned coffee. Often takes on too much and then wonders why it’s burning out. The human is a little strange. Rarely takes photos without sunglasses. Likes the colour red.

Short hair, long legs, and a proclivity for high waisted pants. Gets way too excited over fruit in grocery stores. Irresponsible plant mother and owner of too many pens. Wears the same green cardigan every winter going back no one knows how long. Maintains that ibis are beautiful birds and people are just stereotyping jerks. Wrote this piece in an attempt to ease the pain of their existence, through tears, at the back of a bus.

So what can you see in this image...? Me, having sex with your mother? Well, I have something to tell you... Son, your mum's a lesbian. Okay, that will be $200, thank you for visiting Dr.* Barton's Psychiatry service. *not an actual doctor of psychiatry, actually a poet, doesn't even have a degree in poetry, results may vary, authorised by the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom, Coral Sea Islands

The patient one. The one who spends hours combining and recombining shapes until they lose all meaning, and then backs up to make the final version...slowly. See what they did there? That's a stylistic choice that slows the pace of the writing to match the tone of the subject matter. That's also something that they do: just polish away at a text until all the pieces line up with no jagged edges. Unfortunately, this means that they're too slow at everything to get anything done without help, which is a truth both troubling and freeing in nature.

Ipsum

The incredible mind behind the website. James is a hard-working tech dude who's never read a single InkBlot publication but still put up with hours of poorly worded requests for both the incredibly simple and the borderline impossible. If you ever got even a hint of professionalism from the rest of the team, then it was probably just James rubbing off on them.