#queer authors

[elizmanderson]

annotated hardcover giveaway

it's The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fisher's first birthday, so I'm celebrating with games and giveaways on social media all week! for my own sanity, the full schedule of events will happen only on Instagram, but this giveaway and select other events are happening across platforms.

if you're interested in reading the silly comments I left on this hardcover - including roasting my own characters, letting you know where I was doing my annotating that day, and occasional insights into the writing of Remarkable Retirement - here's how to enter:

rb this post

follow me

for a bonus, tag a friend in your rb or the replies

this giveaway is open internationally to anywhere that can accept shipments from USPS. while it is taking place across platforms, there will only be one winner because it took me months to annotate a single copy.

the giveaway will run until 9a.m. EST this Friday, 26 April 2024.

in the meantime, you can take a quiz to find out which character from The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fisher you are: click here to take quiz on UQuiz

[noahhawthorneauthor]

I'm part of a queer and indie author podcast, and my episode comes out next Friday! How did this sorcery happen?

Find out more here, we'd love to have you.

And don't forget to say hi to @tesscarletta @ashen-crest @nothwell @ninawolv3rina

They're on Tumblr and part of the podcast too.

[songoftrillium]

Meet The Art Team

Hello Kinfolks!

I've been really looking forward to this post for a while, and it's now time to unveil the art team I've assembled to put this project together! They're some heavy hitters that y'all ought to recognize, so without further ado let's meet them!

Mx. Morgan (They/Them)

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Mx. Morgan G Robles (they/them) is a freelance artist and illustrator based in Seattle, Washington. Their work is best known for its use of macabre themes, animals, and nature. They use these themes to explore mental illness, gender identity, or simply to make neat skulls.

They're known for producing book covers for several major publishers, and they've been brought in to design our book covers as well. In addition, they've developed a number of inside pieces as well!

Dogblud She/Her

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Dogblud (she/her), is a Midwestern cryptid working as a freelance artist and writer. Her work is near-exclusively sapphic, centering primarily around werewolves, werebeasts, and their strong thematic ties - horrific or otherwise - to all forms of womanhood.

A long-time fan of Werewolf: the Apocalypse, she's joined our team to produce all of the tribe artwork for the book, in addition to a number of other contributory pieces!

Meka (Any Pronouns)

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Meka is a Scottish comic artist with a flair for the dark and extremely bloody and a long-standing love of monsters and what they let us all explore-- for better and worse. Vehemently underground, they build stories about horror, grief, depersonalisation, and the isolation that comes with being just a little too weird and too angry to swallow whole. Art and catharsis go hand in hand, as far as she’s concerned.

In a throwback to the original game series, Meka has joined to produce a 22-page fully illustrated comic for the series entitled Cracking the Bone. A postgraduate in traditional comic artistry, we're extremely fortunate to have them on the team.

M.WolfhideWinter (He/Him)

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He is a part-time freelance illustrator from Scotland. His work is heavily inspired by the rugged terrain (and rain) of Scotland with a focus on werewolves inhabiting the wild landscapes both past and present. He explores themes of mental illness, societal stigma, dark folklore, and sad werewolves in the rain.

WolfhideWinter has joined our team as our monster-maker, dedicating their time towards depicting our primary antagonists of the garou: The Black Spiral Dancers, and the Wyrm's brood! We can hardly think of a body horror artist more fitting for the role.

----

As a final addendum, we have an additional writer that's joined the team at the last minute.

J.F. Sambrano (They/He)

Patreon

J. F. Sambrano is an author of horror and (urban/dark/depressing?) fantasy and an advocate for indigenous rights. He lives in Washington (the state) and is originally from Los Angeles (the city); the differences are staggering but the ocean and the I-5 are the same. He is Chiricahua Apache (Ndeh) and Cora Indian (Náayarite). He may or may not be a believer/practitioner of real world magic. If he were, he would not be interested in your hippy-dippy, crystal swinging, dream-catcher slinging garbage. But magic is real, let’s not fuck around.

Beloved Indigenous World of Darkness author J.F. Sambrano is joining our team to depict the Bastet in the Dawn Tribes! A friend and frequent topic of discussion on this blog, we are honored to have him on the team to bring the Werewolf: the Apocalypse he's long-felt the world deserves to life!

[b-a-pigeon]

As you might expect from a couple of queer indie authors, Fell & I are going hard on the sales and promotions for Pride Month! I'll try to summarize as succinctly as possible, and remember that you can always click the links for a full synopsis ;)

Are you in the mood for...

✨ An emotional, reflective gay fantasy romance following a werewolf cowboy whose family takes in an amnesiac vampire? Fell's debut novel, Both Sides of the Moon, is on sale! You can buy a paperback for $11.99 & the ebook is on Countdown Sale June 3-7, starting at $0.99!

✨ A short and sweet sapphic contemporary fantasy read? My novella Worm in a Jar is pay what you want on Gumroad all month, so you can download it free if you'd like!

✨ A not-romantic fantasy novel with queer trans protagonists, about a demon and a demon hunter who must team up to prevent an imprending wave of violence? Our upcoming collab, Hierarchy of the Unseen, comes out June 21! It's up for preorder now, and available as an ARC on Netgalley :)

✨ The above, and also deals and/or supporting queer trans authors? This month, we're running a special offer on Patreon: all new & current patrons starting at the $4 tier will receive a free paperback of HotU (in addition to the ebook downloads, early access to our work, behind-the-scenes exclusives, and more already offered to patrons)!

✨ Finding more queer indies to support? Check out Pride SFF Reads & Read LGBTQ Authors on Bookfunnel!

I'll post about these individually in the coming weeks, but just wanted to throw it all out there at once 🖤 Reblogs appreciated! Thank you all for your support!

[duckprintspress]

Pre-Orders Now Open for “Many Drops Make a Stream” by Adrian Harley!

Pre-orders for Adrian Harley’s debut sapphic fantasy novel Many Drops Make a Stream are now open!

A memory-stealing cult. The ever-watchful City of Eyes. Making small talk. Join Droplet as she faces all these horrors and more…

Vigilante shapeshifter Droplet has trained her entire life to take down those with more power than scruples, but she still makes mistakes. When a rescue mission goes wrong, a memory-stealing cult of blood mages escapes with kidnapped captives in tow. To save them, Droplet reluctantly teams up with the outgoing, tenacious Azera. Droplet knows better than to trust a human—she made that mistake once, and that person’s betrayal scattered her community across the known world—and she can tell Azera is hiding secrets behind her sunny smile. But if they can’t learn to work together, even Droplet’s own memories could be lost.

Many Drops Make a Stream, Adrian Harley’s debut novel, is the stand-alone first book in a series of related fantasy-mystery-heists featuring the shapeshifter Droplet and the friends and found family who work alongside her to fight the corrupt powers-that-be. Many Drops Make a Stream is rated general (adult) audiences and features shapeshifting shenanigans, a nascent f/f quarrelers-to-lovers pre-relationship, a wonderful extended cast of family and pseudo-family, necromancy and blood magic and spellwork (oh my!), and one (1) very angry goose.

For this campaign, we’re offering:

Many Drops Make a Stream e-book (ePub and PDF formats)

Many Drops Make a Stream digest-sized trade paperback book (bonus: every single print book comes with a bookplate signed by Adrian Harley!)

Droplet!Dux Die-Cut Sticker

Many Drops Make a Stream Cover Art Print

Shapeshifting Droplet Enamel Pin

Patron-exclusive extra wooden coaster (for people who support Duck Prints Press at the $10/month and $25/month level on Patreon and back this campaign)

Better yet, you can get a discount by picking one of three bundles:

Many Drops Make a Stream E-Book + Merchandise

Many Drops Make a Stream E-Book + Print Book

Many Drops Make a Stream E-Book + Print Book + Merchandise

You can learn all about the book, the author, the campaign, and our offerings by visiting the pre-order page NOW!

Want a chance to win a trade paperback copy of Many Drops Make a Stream? Help us spread the word about this campaign by liking and signal boosting our posts on any of our platforms that including “sharing” functionality (such as Tumblr, Mastodon, Bluesky, and Facebook), and you can get up to 4 entries per platform where you share!*

Campaign backers will also get bonuses based on the number of signal boosts our posts receive! All the social media links for sharing are on the linked pre-order page, so help us tell the world about the awesome book, and who knows – you might win a copy! (But only if we fund, ’cause we can’t afford to print the book if we don’t fund, so help us make sure people who want to buy The Awesome learn that The Awesome exists!)

*sweepstakes rules and conditions

[going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi]

plotting all my characters on these charts

[icaruswithwingsofwater]

Enjoy this frazzled meme I made today while procrastinating 😵‍💫😅

Whether you’re writing drunk or high, remember to edit sober, my friends ✌🏻😌✨

[coffin-flop]

i found this on canva and totally forgot I made it at some point. so here's a list of some of my personal fave authors who use they/them, neo, or multiple pronouns :3

Aiden Thomas

Rivers Solomon

Emery Lee

Anna-Marie (A-M) McLemore

Sarah Gailey

Akwaeke Emezi

(the links lead to author's website or wikipedia page, depending)

[makingqueerhistory]

Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative

Melissa Febos

In this bold and exhilarating mix of memoir and master class, Melissa Febos tackles the emotional, psychological, and physical work of writing intimately while offering an utterly fresh examination of the storyteller's life and the questions which run through it. How might we go about capturing on the page the relationships that have formed us? How do we write about our bodies, their desires and traumas? What does it mean for an author's way of writing, or living, to be dismissed as "navel-gazing"--or else hailed as "so brave, so raw"? And to whom, in the end, do our most intimate stories belong? Drawing on her own path from aspiring writer to acclaimed author and writing professor--via addiction and recovery, sex work and academia--Melissa Febos has created a captivating guide to the writing life, and a brilliantly unusual exploration of subjectivity, privacy, and the power of divulgence. Candid and inspiring, Body Work will empower readers and writers alike, offering ideas--and occasional notes of caution--to anyone who has ever hoped to see themselves in a story.

(Affiliate link above)

[djrusso-romance]

From my instagram:

Mon Reyes did the artwork!

Before there was Xavian, the sweet-and-spicy bodyguard space elf... there was Five. An equally smart but deadly gargoyle-like alien just trying to get the F off the planet so he can be left alone in peace.

He gets more than he bargains for, of course, when he crash lands in the Netherlands and meets Sanne.

Parents aren't supposed to have favorites, but as an author, I definitely do. Stroopwafels & Starlight's Five and We Own the Stars's Xavian are two of my favorite MMCs I've written!

If you read and enjoyed We Own the Stars, then I highly recommend moving straight into Stroopwafels & Starlight.

***

Something I haven't mentioned in the past because it never comes up in the plot itself is that yes, this book is still inherently queer, because Five is pansexual! If you're cute, have a cute personality, then you're game to him.

Sanne, on the other hand, is straight. No one has asked me about her, but I figured I'd mention it anyway hahaha.

[noahhawthorneauthor]

The Trans Rights Readathon starts next Friday, March 22nd. Here's 30 trans books to get your motor running.

[byronicist]

"I came into this world already scarred by loss on both sides of my family. My Indigenous side; my European side. My father and my mother were the kind of damaged people who should never have had children. But of course, they had me, and so my first language was loss."

Deborah Miranda, When Coyote Knocks on the Door (2021)

[b-a-pigeon]

Seeking beta readers for a queer fantasy romance novel

Fell A. Marsh's Taker of the Third Path follows Linmiru, a hedgewitch led by his god to an abandoned inn at an ancient crossroads. His task there is to meet the next person to take the overgrown "third path."

Months pass, and a growing connection with one of the inn's guests leads Lin to question his devotion to destiny—but the fate of the world rests on his prophesied meeting with the taker. And when the day finally comes, Linmiru must confront the reality that nothing at the old crossroads has been as it seemed.

If you're into character-driven fantasy, romance that explores darker, heavier themes, queer and trans characters, and some unique and vibrant world building, you'll probably love this book as much as I do!!

No experience required—the goal here is to get authentic feedback from real readers. All you need to apply for a free copy is a love of fantasy and/or queer romance and the willingness to give your honest opinion! The beta reading period begins later this month, so get in while signups are still open!

✨ Learn More & Sign Up Here ✨

[duckprintspress]

In honor of the 54th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots – June 28th, 1969 – Duck Prints Press is thrilled to share with you how we’re celebrating Pride Month: with queer stories, of course!

Introducing our Pride 2023 Bundles: two collections of short stories, one general imprint, one erotica, each priced at a discounted $19.69, with all purchases benefiting two wonderful queer charities selected by the authors of the stories in the bundles: The Ali Forney Center and the Transgender Law Center.

We’ll be donating roughly 35% of the proceeds from these bundles to charity – the Press is donating 10% off the top, and many of the authors chose to donate part of their royalties as well, bringing the totals to approximately 40% of the list price of the erotica collection and approximately 35% of the list price of the general imprint collection.

How This Works

you buy one or both bundles between now and July 28th, 2023.

we tally up all the proceeds earned and do some math-e-magic to figure out how much we’re donating!

we divide the charity share in half right down the middle and, within the first week of August, we donate raised money to the Ali Forney Center and the Transgender Law Center; then, we post the proof we’ve done so.

you get fantastic stories!

we all get that happy, glowy feeling of knowing that money has been well-spent on fantastic causes!

About the Press

Duck Prints Press is a queer-owned indie press, founded to publish original works by fancreators. We’ve been in operation for over 2 years, and in that time we’ve worked with well over 150 creators to publish four anthologies and almost 70 other stories, from shorts to novels, and we’ve got more on the works (our fifth anthology is Kickstarting RIGHT NOW, as a matter of fact!). The vast majority of our creators and their creations are queer/LGTBQIA+ (maybe even all, but we don’t out anyone and we don’t ask demography because, frankly, it’s none of our business).

20 of our authors have chosen to include their short stories in one or both of these short story bundles, and these 20 and others nominated charities, then voted to narrow it down to these two! Participation in these bundles was entirely voluntarily, as was choosing to donate shares of royalties, which about a third of the authors have opted to do.

About the Charities

Note: These charities are not affiliated with the Press, do not know we’re doing this fundraiser, have not endorsed this in anyway and are, as such, utterly uninvolved in this beyond being the beneficiaries of our efforts! Text is from the websites of each charity and is being used under fair use laws.

The Ali Forney Center was founded in 2002. Committed to saving the lives of LGBTQ+ young people, our mission is to protect them from the harms of homelessness and empower them with the tools needed to live independently. A 24-hour program, The Ali Forney Center never closes its doors. We provide more than just a bed and food for those in need — from initial intake at our drop-in center to transitional housing and job readiness training, we provide homeless LGBTQ+ youth a safe, warm, supportive environment to escape the streets [of New York City].

Transgender Law Center is the largest national trans-led organization advocating self-determination for all people. Since 2002 we’ve been organizing, assisting, informing and empowering thousands of individual community members towards a long-term, national, trans-led movement for liberation.

About the Bundles

(this is getting long, so read more...)

We’re offering two bundles: one containing 14 stories from our general imprint, the other containing 11 stories from our erotica imprint. For all the deets, you’ll need to visit the page for each story, but here’s an overview…

Titles in the General Imprint Charity Bundle:

A Mutual Interest by Alec J. Marsh

The Problem with Wishes by Annabeth Lynch

Let the Solstice Come by D. V. Morse

Warmer Lights by Era J. M. Couts

An Odd Gathering of Peculiar Cats by J. D. Harlock

Dead Man’s Bells by Nicola Kapron

Widow’s Black by Nina Waters

twin flames by nottesilhouette

A Shield for the People by Puck Malamud

Much Ruckus by R. L. Houck

Bubble, Bubble by Sage Mooreland

Settling Down by Theresa Tanner

Best Friends AND… by Tris Lawrence

To Fill My Cup by Violet J. Hayes

Approximately 35% of the $19.69 list price of this bundle will go to the charities.

Titles in the Erotica Imprint Charity Bundle:

Pas de Deux by Aeryn Jemariel Knox

Study Hall by Alec J. Marsh

A Safe Place to Land by boneturtle

Clerical Error by Dei Walker

In the Moonlight by E. V. Dean

We All Need to Get By by Lyn Weaver

The Fated Prince by Mikki Madison

Lust by Nina Waters

No One Right Way by R. L. Houck

Easier Than Expected by Samantha M. Piper

Urchin Juiced by Xianyu Zhou

Approximately 40% of the $19.69 list price of this bundle will go to the charities.

What are you waiting for? Come get some great stories, support a queer-owned business this Pride, and benefit two fantastic causes. Win-win-win situations don’t get much better than this!

These bundles will only be available for one month, so don’t miss out. Visit our webstore between now and July 28th and get yours!

[lenialenient]

REAL JOBS COVER REVEAL

I was originally gonna wait for paperback preorders to be available as well before I stop being coy about my cover, BUT I simply don't want to wait anymore, so, here it is!

The weird and wonderful cover illustration was created by the fantastic and ever-patient 0hlee_ on Twitter, the rest was edited by yours truly. I wanted the cover to emenate the same fun and ultimately vaguely distressing vibe as the book underneath it and it seems we got there!

For those outside the loop, Real Jobs is a book about art and capitalism, about trying to make art under capitalism, and about the inherent horror of being in your early twenties, wanting to do art, and having to do capitalism. It's also about a queer flatshare and crying at Subway (Eat Fresh).

Ebook Preorders are already available and Paperback Preorders are set up and due to trickle in gradually within the next week and a half across most platforms - don't worry, I'll let you know about them.

[leebrontide]

Ahahaaaaa inflation has impacted proofreading costs in the 6 years since I last looked.

Like. Fair. Inflation is kicking all our asses and people need to feed their families and such. I'm not trying to fuck up anybodies financial security.

But ah.

I really hope y'all buy Names in Their Blood. Cause I have to pay this person, cause God knows I can't proofread this myself. You've all seen my unedited writing on here.

Feel free to prep for my upcoming book launch by downloading book 1 in the series for free, and reading it now, so you'll be hype for book 2!

It's still free, right here.

Go get some queer multigenerational family YA drama with superheros, brain altering nanites, government corruption, and more. Tell your friends!