#support queer authors

[oliverferrie]

I'm extremely happy that Sugar People is part of the Pride Month campaign over on Bookshop.org. It's on 20% discount, the code is PRIDE2023 and lasts until 30th June.

It's only available on the US site, so if this doesn't apply to you, please consider sharing and passing this on to any US-based friends!

The full list of awesome queer-authored books that you can get with the discount is here: https://bookshop.org/info/pride-2023

So if my particular brand of dark, horrifying, reality-bending fiction doesn't appeal to you, there is probably another author in this list who does!

(Book link, incl. blurb and more info: https://bookshop.org/.../sugar-people-oliver-ferrie/19960992 )

[jbankai89]

Did you hear that I put out a book? It's available on Amazon in Kindle and Paperback. Hardcover and KU should be up within the next day. -Queer content. We have trans girls, trans guys, qpoc, poc, and so many more things.

-we have stories about why you shouldn't go wandering alone in the Arctic, a transguy with the world's most annoying neighbour, a muslim gay guy who inherits something from his Nani that no one would want...and so much more.

Support queer authors, please share. This will ONLY be available on Amazon, it won't be available anywhere else.

Buy Here

[totallynotaraccoonindiscuise]

Should I make an alt purely for writing my shitty litte gay books or should I use my main

[quinntamsin]

Hey kith and kyn, this last year was a nice bit of stability. I”ve continued to put out new content including three new short stories, a lot of this was in part because I launched my Patreon last May. It’s paid for my discord to have some new emotes as well as some other whistles.The major thing though is it meant people thought all my silly work was worth something. So out of everyone who has liked, reblogged and even more on my stories. I just asking, please fi you like my stuff, consider dropping a $1. It helps put money aside for fiction related projects as well as supports the fandom we’ve built up over the last decade.

[apolline-lucy]

POV: you’re on a date in a coffee shop in seoul with your favourite fictional queer character. she’s a liar, but one thing that’s true is that she’s obsessed with you.

THE ANATOMY OF DYING

[goodluckclove]

I've been meaning to say something. (100 follower hot take)

Hey! Thanks for stopping by. I hope you've had a nice day. Why don't you rest with me for a while? I made some chocolate chip cookies - with shortening instead of butter, so they're very soft and very chocolatey. I made way too many and they aren't my wife's favorite, so I could use some help in eating them.

You're probably a writer, right? Or maybe you think about how you could be. Browse the tags here, or on other social media platforms. Maybe you used to write stories as a kid. I bet those were fun. Teachers might've thought they were impressive, or they dissected them line by line until the words didn't make sense in your head anymore. Either way, if you're here you're probably here for a reason.

(rant alert)

I dipped a toe in online writing communities on and off. My last attempt was forty-five minutes scrolling through the writing hashtag on Youtube Shorts (so TikTok, I guess? I don't know). I didn't like it. I really didn't. The thing that sticks out the strongest in my mind is one particular video where a woman claims that every story needs a second act plot twist.

Huh? Every story? All of them? Why? Since when? Who are you? What qualifications do you have to make a statement like that?

That's the common thread that makes a lot of writing spaces very uncomfortable for me. Successful writers are really only successful in their genre and for the given moment, so they don't have that much objective authority in the craft. And yet I see a lot of people deciding the things that you can't do in writing. Or the things you have to do, and how you have to do them. It was so much of Writeblr at first glance that I almost dipped out once again. I didn't, though, and I'm glad I didn't because now I get to watch some of the next great storytellers from across the world grow and examine and forge their way forward.

No one can teach you how to write. No, that's not true. Teachers teach literacy. Handwriting. Typing maybe - do schools still teach typing? Let me try saying it in a different way - no one, not one single person on this goddamned planet, has the right to tell you how to make a story.

I was supposed to get my MFA in creative writing before my first breakdown. My uncle stayed in the program I was meant to be in, and a few years after I dropped out he graduated. Recently I had the thought to look up his thesis novella, and as I searched I found myself regretting my decision to leave school. If I stayed and got to develop my writing in an actual class, with other writers and a knowledgeable professor, how much further along would I be than where I am right now?

It was bad. His novella was terrible. It was so bad I had a small existential crisis for, like, three days. He spent so much money on years and years of professional education and came out with a truly soulless story that read as if you prompted an AI to write the next Great American Novel. So if you think you need a writing degree to be a legitimate author, it could help connections-wise, but it ultimately won't be the thing that does the work for you.

Not all advice I see online on writing is bad. I find the people who are able to capture the "I" statements of therapy and phrase advice as things that have worked for them, or things that they personally enjoy, to be fine. Some writing advice can spark inspiration.

But if someone is the type of person to boil every story down to troupes and cliches, and then immediately say that every story that uses the trait they don't like is automatically bad for everyone? I'm dropping the kindness for a second - that's trash. That's a trash take and I see far too many writers use it as a reason to stop before they begin.

I don't like whump. I say my reasons in previous posts if you go back through my blog. But you will never hear me say that any story with whump in it is bad, because I don't know that. You might prove me wrong. I am an adult human being and I have the humility to admit that I can like something I didn't expect to. I genuinely enjoy the direction of The Human Centipede (only the first one) and if you cringed just now that probably means you haven't seen it.

There are so many types of books and movies and plays and comics out there. To enjoy a specific genre is fine, to ignore the existence of everything else is a really, really, really odd thing to do. Maybe someone will hate your story because they think everything should be Neil Gaiman, and therefore have no way to understand your epistolary high-Western. You are not the wrong end of that situation just for existing.

And at there is a definite threshold on how many writing tips you can gather before they stop being useful. If you find them interesting, that's one thing. That's fine. But if the culture of creativity online has made you feel like you need to educate yourself on every possible angle before you can write a story, you are actively harming yourself.

Imagine taking the level of structure you put on yourself in that way and putting it on children playing pretend in the backyard. Oh, Susie, don't you know that it's overdone for your Kitsune have dead parents? Xyler, shouldn't you ask someone else before you decide how Spiderman would react to this? It would make no sense and they do not need it. Kids will make a whole world out of nothing and it's the most fucked thing in my heart that at some point they get access to Reddit and dipshits start insisting that's wrong.

They aren't wrong and you aren't either. Your favorite creative influencer can't tell you your story, strangers on the internet can't tell you your story, your teachers and loved ones can't tell you your story. They can influence it, but they can't write it honestly the way you can.

You do that. That's the thing you do.

Man that makes me upset. I can't tell you how to make a story, either. If anyone sends me asks for writing advice the most I'll do is say what I've done before hopping into your DMs and starting a direct conversation. it's so personal to each individual artist, and I'd like to think that the people selling these classes and software and promoting these platforms haven't thought about that before. Otherwise it does feel manipulative. If you have a willingness to practice and imagine and really experiment with the possibilities, you are ready to write your story.

And if it doesn't work? Try again. That's what you do.

Stephen King has written roughly a thousand books and maybe five of them have decent endings. He is unimaginably successful.

I'm rambling now. I think I got that out of my system. I was really worried to say this out of fear of being too weird or somehow reverse-gatekeeping so hard that it circles back into also being a bad thing. I've just spoken to a lot of people who I still think of throughout my day, and I truly ache for them to get past the fear of creation. Because it's worth it. It's worth it and it's fun, even when it's messy and you're tired.

Let it Be just came on. Beatles. I haven't listened to The Beatles in a long time. Feels a little apropos.

I love you, reader. Reader, Writer, Colleague. Take care of yourself. Especially the little you, still sitting there in the backyard of your soul, bathing in the sun with their bare feet in the damp earth.

Consider joining them, maybe.

[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

[bibliophilecats]

April 18 2023: LGBTQIA+ Character

I am really happy how many books with queer characters I could find on my shelves.

[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!

[gusthegremlin]

I know it's kind of old news now, but instead of continuing to consume media that's being put out by corporations too greedy to pay writers and give them decent working conditions, my advice?

Read Fanfiction

I know you've probably heard it before (tumblr veterans, I'm preaching to the choir), and maybe you haven't and don't care (all of the incoming reddit and twitter refugees, please keep an open mind, fanfic is fairly common here and not considered as "cringe" as other parts of the internet), but please hear me out. By reading fanfiction, you are doing two (2) important things while also getting your fix for your favorite characters/worlds/tropes.

First, you are essentially boycotting those awful, awful corporations that have driven writers to strike. Like the 07-08 writers strike made unscripted reality TV boom, the writers strike today has stirred up thoughts of using AI to get around hiring writers. In order to keep humans in creative control, we need to consume media made by humans*

Now, secondly, by reading fanfiction, you are supporting small artists and writers. Not only are you supporting the writers of the actual fanfictions, but you also might be supporting their beta reader or their cover artist.

Archive of Our Own (or AO3) is my go-to site. It's an archive (duh) that's non-profit, volunteer run, and the tagging system is nearly flawless, in my opinion. You can find nearly every fandom, every ship, and every trope. They also have an app. It's not as good, but it does offer some accessibility options.

There's plenty of other sites as well, but AO3 works the best for me. I recommend it highly, especially since there is an option to exclude certain tags, which is incredibly helpful in weeding out triggering fanfics.

I know some people have mixed feelings about the strike and how it affects their favorite media, but please remember why they're doing it. Writers deserve better, especially since they work so hard to continue creating your favorites. So, in these trying times, when you miss the world and characters that these writers were creating, turn to the other talented writers who have taken them up and are creating stories with them.

Read Fanfiction

*This isn't just fanfiction, of course, though that is probably the easiest way to do so, but also supporting fanartists, small novelists (idk if you've seen, but 7 Deadly Habits of the Modern Demon Summoner by @animentality is all over my dashboard and I couldn't be happier), smaller podcasts (I recommend DND actual play podcast for those of you who want your action fix), and generally watching indie and small production movies and shows.

TL;DR - don't continue to support corporations during the writers' strike, read fanfiction and support small artists and writers.

[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

[fellamarsh]

The fate of the world is at stake... but nobody is listening.

✨Read the book readers are comparing to Priory of the Orange Tree and The Left Hand of Darkness✨

Hierarchy of the Unseen is a queer fantasy novel about a shiftless demon named Kor and a devout demon hunter named Mitzli who must team up to avert a wave of demonic violence.

If you like character-driven fantasy with immersive worldbuilding, trans protagonists whose stories aren't centered around transphobia, and fresh takes on demons and vampires, then this is the book for you!

Reviewers are calling it "addictive, immersive," "fresh, and engaging," with a "richly realized, exciting world and interesting central dilemma," whose protagonists "feel distinct and real" and "make a great comedic duo."

You can pick up a copy here (to support two queer, trans authors during Pride month!) or read the full blurb and check out reviews on Goodreads or Storygraph.

[rs-hawk]

Want To Get More Content?

Hey my lovely fellow monster fuckers lovers, just a little reminder if you’d like to support me, you can check me out on Ko-fi or Patreon. Each website has exclusive content so make sure to check out both if you’re interested.

I’m in a precarious position at my day job as I ended up reporting some harassment, racism, transphobia and just general bigotry from both my management and employees, and I was put at another location that is twice as far away. Unfortunately, this is putting a huge strain on me mentally, emotionally and especially financially. It’s the main reason why I’ve been kind of MIA lately. The investigation is likely to go on for over another month, and I’m spending about a whole shift’s work on gas a week now. I would really appreciate anything anyone buys because even $1 will get you something on both ❣️

I would also love to connect with other authors/artists about how they handle their day jobs (especially large corporations) who’s discrimination against them impacts their work and how they help work through it because I’m feeling very dejected atm.

[noahhawthorneauthor]

Presenting all the artists I have worked with on my author journey thus far. 🏳️‍🌈📚🎨

Because I'm Team Human, and always will be.

Lianne Peterson, fantasyspritestudio on Instagram, is also a crochet artist, which is how I first met her. Back in the day, I made crochet toys and sculptures, and she still does. One thing led to another, and after she read my first book, we collaborated on the Iverbourne Tarot project, which expanded to include other indie artists.

Then we did the special editions together, which includes the tarot art as full page illustrations, and the scene with Lythienne threatening her boytoy—Panrauth, I mean. Also, that fan art of Novak still makes my heart sing. The plant guy is Lysander from the Levena books, and also fan art that I treasure.

@gagakumadraws has done so much work for me, this isn't even all of it. She is an absolute gem of a person and artist, and I'm so thankful to be able to call her my friend. There are the five Iverbourne cards, The Rebel Foxes cover, and so much Arlo and Thatch, from Phantom and Rook. There's the inside of the bookstore, and side characters like Silas (silver hair boi) and Arche.

Art not pictured are beautiful spice scenes, the outside of the bookstore, and a pirate play scene from Phantom and Rook. Oh, and a certain enby wolf shifter all tied up in knots.

@prince-peachie did some character art for me, depicting Novak as he first meet him and when the demon comes out to play. I first fell in love with Peachie's AFTG fan art, and I love everything he does!

The bottom left is Novak and Alvis on the ship, brought to life by @kislurysuje around the time Prince of Sylvan came out. It was one of my first printed pieces of gay art, and I love it so much.

The Moon is Eros from the Iverbourne series, and her card was created by @sholdthebus who I found on Tiktok. She does some amazing work, and has a Pride Armory! Think pride themed pins, like bisexual battle axes.

And my beloveds, @crossroadart-seabear and @foxglovefaun

I love these covers so dearly. The colors, the emotion and detail. Bear did Phantom and Rook, and Fox did Matsdotter and Adrastus. I love that the colors of the sequel echo the first book, and while each artist has their own style, the books look like they belong together. They are both fantastic people, and beautiful artists.

So yeah, fuck AI, and scream about your favorite artists. 🤘✨

[majicmarker]

ᴡʜᴀᴛ’ꜱ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴠɪʙᴇ? : a sex shop romcom, is available at multiple retailers in ebook + paperback (and hardcovers exclusive on amazon)!

💓 synopsis

💓 links to buy

[ᴄᴏᴠᴇʀ ʙʏ @redbelles—ᴏᴘᴇɴ ꜰᴏʀ ᴄᴏᴍᴍɪꜱꜱɪᴏɴꜱ!]

[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!