#Support for Indie Authors

[jgmartin]

writing tip #3255: the fewer the fucks given, the better the writing. get out of your head and onto the page.

[apolline-lucy]

hey i did a little redesign of my book cover because i didn’t like the way the blurb was written before… how do you like it now?

check out my book, THE SILVER BIRDS, if you’re into sapphic dark fantasy with witches, monsters, spooky deaths, and a whole cast of grey characters!

[goodluckclove]

Hey guys, we're all aware that if you get contacted by a person with some variation of an account like @catherine-med123 that they're clearly a scammer, right?

We know not to trust someone to market our books who doesn't have a full name or any professional, or even amateur credentials?

We can tell the icon is probably a stock photo?

This is all very clear to all of us right????

[stanningjay]

Auro, the God of Spring, turns to stone each year at his season’s end, only awakening the following year at its beginning.

For four hundred years, it has been a dreamless sleep for Auro.

This year, he knows he will dream of Alexios until he can walk the earth again.

🖼️ by @crossroadart-seabear

[dionyrtal]

orange banner alert!!!

oh, i am at a loss for words. my only wish for this book was to find people who just wanted to read another sapphic vampire romance book and i'm so glad i found them. but also, this book release has already surpassed everything i could only dream about a year ago. i'm forever grateful and so glad that you're here<3

happy reading and thank you for being a part of this journey, enduring my silly tiktoks and reels to market this book, and waiting patiently for paperbacks (if i don't get a response soon, i'm in your walls ingramspark!!!!!)

[marydublinauthor]

Little personal post! Last night @kendsleyauthor and I were featured with another local author at a fantasy panel via our local indie bookstore! (Anne joined via discord on my phone!) We got to talk about world building, magic, The Heart Between Kingdoms and Shot in the Dark!

Dreaming forever that I can do this full time someday 🥺

So wild to be talking about Jon and Sylvia and Cliff to THE WORLD IN PERSON?? After all this time!

[chaospixiemagic]

Shame on the publishers supporting and PROMOTING the AI trend. Shame on the studios for trying to REPLACE writers with AI bullshit.

This series is my life. I have poured over a decade of myself, my wins and losses, my heartbreaks, into MY books. AI can never replace or replicate real human experiences, nor should it. Otherwise, what is the point of living? What is the point of art, enjoyment, tragedy, love, loss, triumph?

Writers are HUMAN. Artists are HUMAN. Keep it that way.

If you’d like to support this human writer, you can click here to check out The Mapweaver Chronicles!

[lizzardson]

people spreading the pirated version of tsc are driving me crazy its 99 cents I will literally buy it for you

[b0rtney]

you want homosexuals in every conceivable scenario?

Boy oh boy do i have the substack for u: mine!

NO PLEASE LEMME TELL U THE STORIES BEFORE U LEAVE--

Current is Cinnamon Muffins. TLDR: Six queer boys in a homophobic tiny town in Iowa are trying to survive winter break dodging awful parents, social stigma, and mental health crises.

Next up is How to Get Away with Marriage. TLDR: Guy with awful, religious parents marries guy who is living paycheck to paycheck so they can both get all their younger sisters out of their shitty situations (but they fall in love ofc).

Longer desc of these plus the stories coming in the next months are below the cut! (Genres include fantasy, sci-fi, dystopian, mystery/thriller, coming-of-age)

Cinnamon Muffins centers on Taylor Macready, a homeless senior in high school holed up in a sleeping bag under a bridge after his parents kicked him out. He's fully ready to just accept death when it starts snowing on him while he's stargazing, but social outcast Wes Post is taking his nightly walk in a new direction and stumbles (literally) on his longtime crush, Taylor. Dragging Taylor home, Wes's parents prove themselves the only reasonable parents in this book by setting Taylor up on their pullout couch and nursing him back to health. Then Wes, whose closest school relationships include the kids who bully him for his anxiety-related speech impediment, has to get in touch with Taylor's friends to let them know the situation. Meanwhile, the mean girls of Swisher High School are starting a campaign to get homosexuality banned at school. Administratively, it gets nowhere, but it inspires several small-minded shitwads to take matters into their own hands. While Taylor is used to getting into fights, Wes isn't, but he'll have to sink or swim, because the teachers are not paid enough to care what happens in the hallways during lunchtime.

How to Get Away with Marriage opens with Luke Providence, son of a devoutly Baptist family in Nebraska, proposing to Patrick Demden, son of a recently-deceased alcoholic mechanic. The wealthy Providence parents have a longstanding agreement that once their children get married, they will receive a trust of $100,000 to use on the down-payment of a house and to start a life with their spouse. Patrick's younger sister tutors Luke's younger sister, but Patrick's sister is 16. This age gap doesn't matter much to the Providence parents, but it matters a lot to Luke, so he strikes a deal with Patrick: tell the parents he'll marry the sister, legally marry the brother, everyone gets to move to Colorado and escape abusive religious parents and crushing poverty. He needn't have done something so elaborate, Patrick would have married him for any reason at all. But the secret doesn't stay secret forever, and the Providence parents eventually come knocking, trying to recollect their children and their money.

Future stories I'll keep shorter, but feel free to ask about them either in the replies or my askbox and I'll elaborate!

Assassin x Demon King will be getting books 2 and 3! ADK is about an assassin and the king he was supposed to kill, both of whom have quit their jobs and started trying to save as many people as the assassin killed before he dies of a slow-acting poison in twelve months. Books 2 and 3 will have things getting awfully tragic and somewhat more horny than before! (No smut will make it into the print versions of these, that will remain on my substack alone)

How to Find Your Friends After the End of the World is a fantasy inspired by the isekai anime genre. Five friends in their 20s are on earth as it is wracked by a violent battle between the Heroine of the Gods and her Nemesis, and then, suddenly, they aren't. Earth has been destroyed and they are now on a new planet, in new (non-human) bodies, strewn across continents! On their new wrists, they have tattoos with each others' names, plus one (or two) new ones: their soulmates. Court politics and wastelands of monsters await them as they try desperately to reach each other, and their soulmates try desperately to reach them.

HtFYF will also have a prequel, focusing on the events that led to earth's destruction, and the battle between the Heroine of the Gods, a young woman, and her Nemesis, who seems to know more about the gods than she says. Why do the gods keep choosing such young heroes? What has the Nemesis done to put the world in such peril? Will the Heroine get to graduate on time despite the sleep she's been missing!?

The following do not yet have titles, but are fully fleshed out works ready to be thrown onto Substack:

A trilogy of eleven teens assisting in the fight against an agency that traffics, tortures, and then sells children with preternatural powers and abilities, and an exploration of the trauma those kids emerge with.

A murder mystery where a woman's sister dies, the police rule it suicide, and the woman enlists the help of a rumored contract killer to help her solve the murder-- but why does this rumored murderer-for-hire seem to know so much about her sister's death? And who was truly responsible?

A campy novel about a woman who graduates college, goes back to her hometown, and finds her highschool crush is still there, still single, and has since come out as gay. Of course, the only solution is to co-adopt an at-risk child from a neighbor.

This post will remain pinned on my profile, but for the next few days I'm having a sale on my substack tiers-- 20% off! That makes the cost to you just $8 per month to get a chapter every other day. 15 chapters for $8; that's a steal!

[stjohnstarling]

—A sensual and transgressive story of forbidden love

Father Sebastian Black might be a saint, or he might be the devil himself. Poor Agent Quentin Day, sent to investigate a wine forgery ring, finds himself irresistibly falling for the silver-tongued, mysterious priest. It’s a tragedy for him - after all, priests are off-limits, aren’t they? Or is Father Black more than meets the eye?

Please consider helping to support a self-published queer author's first novel fighting back against copaganda narratives:

Amazon || Payhip || Goodreads

"A devilishly good read" - Goodreads Reviewer

"Father Black was both what I expected it to be and a very unexpected wonderful surprise." - Goodreads Reviewer

"I read it all in about two days, only setting it down for work and sleep. I was even reading it during meals!" - Amazon Reviewer

[kjscottwrites]

I wanna help get LGBTQ indie writers paid this month so let's start a thread! If you've got a piece of writing (be it a novel, a collection, a book of poetry, a short story, erotica, whatever!) for sale online or in bookstores that u would love for more people to read, HERES YOUR SIGN to reblog this with links to your work <3

[heathercauthor]

Gotta love when they forget to clue others in 🤣

Book info:

The series is called Earth Sucks! A queer apocalypse tale that brings Tumblr's Humans Are Space Orcs to life.

It's the apocalypse, and Feng has a knack for pissing people off.

Mercenary Feng is both the hunter and the hunted, searching for his missing family while hunted by the alien intruders who are trying to get him to stop blowing their shit up.

Life gets worse when he must befriend one of the alien creatures to survive. She grew up on stories of humans, and Feng’s about to upend everything she's ever known—if they don't get each other killed first.

"Readers may appreciate the many twists and betrayals..." —Kirkus Reviews

"Action-packed, fast-paced sci-fi story bursting with psychological games and manipulations..." —Readers' Favorite

If you like the Last Of Us, the 100, or unlikely allies in the slightest, check out Earth Sucks On Amazon, Kobo or Barnes and Noble!

[apolline-lucy]

i am beyond thrilled to share the cover of my debut novel, THE SILVER BIRDS 🐦‍⬛🖤 it will be released September 26, 2023!

On a cursed island where birds steal hearts and blades of grass cut sharper than knives, two young women driven by revenge take on solving a series of mysterious deaths.

•flawless art and design by @ouijacine who did a phenomenal job bringing my characters to life✨

•the book is already on Goodreads and StoryGraph, if you’d like to add it to your tbr 🥺

[uranusguided]

Hey my publisher finally got my book series, The Silent Trilogy, up on Apple Books! Check it out!!!

My publisher calls Silent Trilogy 'X-Men meets Good Omens'. That's not wrong but it is a series about abuse, colonialism and the importance of love in ways those aren't.

In more detail: the Silent Trilogy is an urban fantasy series set primarily in Hobart, Australia. It tells the story of the dainisa, a not-so-hidden magical community, focused primarily on their non-binary Princess, Torao Yamaguchi.

Desperate for her child to have a better life than she did, the leader of dainisa Amaya Yamaguchi sparks a revolution to claim Australia as a magical continent where dainisa can live in accordance with their own laws, not those of humans. However fighting power is a complex thing in a world built to function on injustice, and a pretty siren desperate for revenge could ruin it all…

Narrated through the eyes of a human who doesn’t quite get it, the Silent Trilogy is about the narratives we build of history. It's an exploration of trauma, the ways people learn to live with it, and how bigotry works. Also there's angels and demons messing things up. More info on the website!

I finished this series a long time ago but I'm still very proud of it!! It's a niche story I had a lot of fun with. I wrote this NB protag before I even came out myself so that's always cool. And every time I have to reread a part of the series I have a really hard time stopping cos I enjoy my own work so much lmao. So hopefully you'll enjoy it too!!

(it's also on Amazon if you prefer kindle, and if you don't wanna support either, well, chuck me a couple dollars on Patreon)

[hellishrebukesystem]

Hello Tumblrinas!

Do I have some excellent traumacope poetry for you tonightttt!

My poetry collection (linked above) deals with religious trauma, abusive relationships, obsessive possessiveness, and the fallout of mental illness in a end of a world sort of situation; it's got layers my friends, like a ogre or an onion.

Do you like Hannibal, Yellowjackets, The Haunting of Bly Manor? Do you enjoy phoebe bridgers, boygenuis, paris polma, and the antlers?

Do you want cannibalistic obsession? Want criminal yearning? Want desire? Want want want?

Please find all of this and more at the link above and if can't afford to pay for it I'm linking the pdf--just be sure to like and reblog if you download the free pdf!

Thanks, enjoy!

[dionyrtal]

VERTIGO PEAKS IS UP FOR PREORDER!

I am beyond excited to announce that Vertigo Peaks, the first book in The Vertigo Legacy duology, is up for preorder! Thank you for your endless support. And please save your preorder receipts for I have planned so many special things for you!

[Photo credit: Nona Limmen]

Here’s the blurb:

An unexpected guest. A tempestuous liaison. A marriage falling apart.

In the eclipse of her marriage, Valerie’s days are cold and lonely. As Ethan Vertigo’s new bride, she suffers from isolation and hostility from the townspeople. That is, until an unexpected traveler appears at her door to seek refuge from the snowstorm—Mircalla Karnstein.

The mysterious and charming visitor’s presence is accompanied by feverish nightmares and itching puncture marks, and Valerie’s reputation is threatened when Mircalla draws her close with passionate midnight escapades.

As rumors of a plague terrorize the town and the dark secrets of Vertigo Peaks surface, Valerie struggles to reconcile her growing desire for Mircalla and her role as Ethan Vertigo’s wife.

When every love story begins with blood, does it matter who bleeds first?

Inspired by Sheridan Le Fanu’s timeless Carmilla, Vertigo Peaks is the first book in a sapphic vampire romance duology. It is best suited for mature readers.