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what my dashboard would actually look like in 1861:

i can't believe no one is talking about the war in the united states

i'm so sick of posts about the war in the united states; why is the hellsite so america-centric

IF YOU ALL DON'T STOP POSTING UNTAGGED SPOILERS FOR THE NEXT INSTALLMENT OF GREAT EXPECTATIONS I SWEAR TO GOD

george eliot setting off a flurry of debate regarding which other authors are Actually Secretly Ladies

put down "idylls" and read some actual arthuriana 🙄🙄🙄

are gothic and sensation novels poisoning the minds and morals of the youth? discuss.

a call-out post by a lady's maid of her former employer, leading to the latter getting doxxed

extremely gung-ho spiritualists

swifties but make it jenny lind

coquette but make it pre-raphaelite

james steerforth x y/n fic written by someone whose URL is rosadartles

temperance movement discourse

Girls When Whatever Our Souls Are Made Of His And Mine Are The Same

"getting a lot of anthony trollope vibes from this" <- guy who's only ever read anthony trollope

hysterical unsourced posts about the horrors of white slavery with thousands of notes; debunkings of the same that have maybe a few hundred

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I've Got a Jar of Dirt Brand New Updated Web Site

Hi, everyone, it's me! Tumblr user austrohungarianwriteblr, also known as Molly MacKenzie! I haven't used this blog as much lately because my original-writing obsession was briefly taken over by 1. playing RPG video games and 2. writing full-length novels about the weird women I invented to star in said RPGs. Anyway, hi! I'm back now!

With a Christmas-romance novella coming out soonish (dear God I hope) and a passionate desire for Attention, I've done some serious updating and refurbishing of my beloved webbed site, mollymackenzieauthor.com. We've got:

Merch!

Bonus Stories!

A Uquiz!

et cetera and so forth. enjoy!

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booktok did ruin a lot of romance novels bc of the demand for instant gratification but culturally it is kind of a slay that so many young women are just reading smut and masturbating all day #respect

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That Time a Published Author Told Me to Un-Queer My Novel

So, I don't think I ever shared this story on Tumblr before.

As you may know I've spent the past ten years turning my old Welcome to Night Vale fanfic into a stand alone novel called Echo of the Larkspur. Now, I haven't been working on it ten years straight. I'd pick it up, do a bunch of editing and rewriting, submit it to agents/publishers, get turned down, put the book away, wait 2-3 years, dust off the book, re-edit and rewrite, etc etc. A cycle that repeated itself far too many times that I would like.

Well, during one of these cycles when I was in the 'get rejected by every agent and publisher I submit to' stage I asked the writing group I was in what I was doing wrong. Because at this point I had reached a hundred total rejections and I was starting to suspect that the issue was with me.

One of the members of this writing group, a male author who was traditionally published, offered to read my first chapter and give his advice on how to fix it. This was, in retrospect, a mistake. But I was desperate. I sent him the first chapter and waited for his response.

Folks. The email he sent me changed my life.

First he said that agents wouldn't publish my novel because it was Sci-fi with hardcore gay erotica in it. This is curious because while the book certainly is queer, at no point in the conversation with this man did I say it was hardcore erotica. Nor did the first chapter feature any. It's almost as if he assumed that just because something was gay, it had to be hardcore erotica. Interesting.

He went on to say that a Human/Robot pairing was weird and that there was "No Way" my story could seriously address the issues of a relationship like that. Once again, he only read the first chapter. He just...assumed I wouldn't think of that? And that my book wouldn't cover it?

The author then said “I also felt that the LGBTQ inclusion really seems to cloud things.” Direct Quote.

And then this is when he said my favorite quote of them all:

The idea of a book being a sci-fi with romance AND a mystery is a Modern Art Marzipan Owl. It's just too confusing! No one can handle a story that is a mystery in a sci-fi enviroment AND has a romantic subplot! THEIR BRAINS WOULD LITERALLY EXPLODE!

Thankfully he had a solution to my book problem. His answer? Turn the book into an Action Spy Thriller and turn S.A.G.E., a robot that identies as a gay man, into a sexy lady robot who needs a MAN to teach her what it means to be human.

(I assume the male lead will teach the 'confused' female robot how to be human via his penis.)

Now my favorite part about this advice is that at no point did he outright say "Remove the gay part". No, instead he sneakily changed the robot love interest into a female robot as if I wouldn't notice. Just sort of swept away the gay bits as something totally unneeded and just mucking up the narrative. Also that's not the plot of my story, I have no idea where this virus thing came from.

(Also note that the female robot can't be robotic-like at all. Must preserve the average straight-man sex drive at all costs I guess)

He then finished his email basically saying that I should remove everything that 'traditional publishers' don't like (aka the queer parts) and make it easier for 'your average reader' to digest and my book will be good as published!

When I said this email changed my life I meant it. Because it made me realize I'd rather be self published and unknown than traditionally publish milquetoast trash like he suggested. Like holy fuck. If I removed all of the "Difficult" to digest stories out of Echo of the Larkspur then there wouldn't be a book left!

So here I am. Self publishing my Marzipan Modern Art Owl of a book. I know it'll never see the inside of a bookstore or top the charts on Goodreads but hey, I'd rather it speak to one person than have a thousand people get excited for the part where the male lead teaches the lady robot how to be human (via his penis).

If a Queer Sci-fi/Romance/Mystery novel sounds like your jam then consider preordering it!

Looking for something to read now? Can't afford the book? Willing to read in exchange for an honest review? You can join my ARC book readers here!

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Hungarian women, Hungary, by Mohos Zsófia

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love books. because it’s like what if something happened

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You are never letting a WIP rot. You are doing it a service. Your WIP is a sourdough starter and the five words you wrote that one day were all it needed to sustain itself. It will bubble and be ready when you are.

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a writing competition i was going to participate in again this year has announced that they now allow AI generated content to be submitted

their reasoning being that "we couldn't ban it even if we wanted to, every writer already uses it anyway"

"Every writer"?

come on

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A lot of people genuinely do hate or dismiss romance novels because they think all sexual frankness in fiction is immoral and harmful, or because they think women (and only women) are too stupid to know fiction from reality, or because they think it’s gross and laughable for women (especially ones they don’t consider fuckable) to have sexual desires, or because they automatically assume that anything popular with women is inferior, or because they only care about fiction being formulaic or light entertainment when it’s something women like. This doesn’t mean that every romance novel is great and deep and progressive, but these people aren’t coming from a good place with their criticism and they don’t deserve a pass.

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seeing straight men be disgusted by booktok smut recommenders has actually radicalized me to the side of booktok smut recommenders. girls your taste may be atrocious but i will never disparage you for exposing mainstream discourse to the concept of soaking through your underwear. spent my whole life listening to men talk about penises it’s about time they get jumpscared by women talking about pussy in crude detail on social media. go forth and goon my warriors

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Female Power Romantasy novels can be indulgent as they like with giving the MC all the powers and hottest love interests and overcomplicated backstories, and I will cheer that on. Yes, there is a place for this! I see your vision, girl!

But the moment it starts talking about blood purity, her divine right to rule, and how ubermensch her babies will be with the man with the equally super special bloodline? You're doing girlboss eugenics at that point.

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So I made a bluesky.......

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(goes to open my shopping list but accidentally opens the list of content warnings for my novel) which aisle has the internalised homophobia

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I admit I always find it funny when people whose entire business is media give on-the-record quotes that sound this much like the villain of a movie about hosting a charity talent show to save the beloved local library.

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Writers when it's time to write the story no one forced them to come up with in the first place 🙄

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I worry sometimes that my love for my original writing has paled somewhat and been overshadowed by my love of dumbass fanfic. Oops