#I'M A PUBLISHED AUTHOR

[imnova]

Ok, I, huh... know that nobody actually is here for my content, just what I reblog. But! One of the tidbits in this is mine, so I'm allowed to say it, right? Can I be insane about this for a few minutes, because I am. Totally. Insane. I'm officially published, and even if it's just a little weird rant, well, it's more than I thought I would get. And you can always buy it for the actual interesting authors. ;D

[that-butch-archivist]

"Dyke March 1994" by Morgan Gwenwald

source: The Wild Good: Lesbian Photographs & Writings on Love, edited by Beatrix Gates

[gennyrthewriter]

After TWO YEARS, the sequel to The Backwater is finally out!

Check out These Other Coasts on Amazon!

(Or, as always, hit me up for a PDF. It's MY book I'll distribute it how I WANT!)

If you like colonial-era inspired low-ish fantasy with political intrigue, moral ambiguity, and a whole cast of queer characters, give it a chance!

[reasonsforhope]

Book Publishing Resources

Well, since a few people said they were interested and/or that posting about it on here occasionally was a decent idea, here we go!

I'm MC Calvi, a freelance editor specializing in self-help, psychology, spirituality, paganism, workbooks, and LGBTQ books.

You can find out more about me at my website, where I also offer free twenty-minute book/publishing consultations, in addition to regular editing services.

I am also now offering some pay-what-you-can resources on my website and on Gumroad. I'm committed to offering pay-what-you-can resources because the odds are already so stacked against marginalized authors, and publishing shouldn't be pay to win.

I have two new booklets I'm actually super happy with! They both draw on my eight years of experience in the publishing industry to give authors a leg up.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming as I hit "publish" on another good news post!

[directactionforhope]

Might fuck around and write a book for real

[luceafarul-de-dimineata]

"What will you do once I pass away?" The question came out of the blue, but such strange questions were par for the course at this point. Gamigin was nuzzling to your neck when you spoke, but he wasn't phased.

"I'll revive you. Death won't be permenent in Paradise Lost for as long as I'm around to stop it." You were running a hand through his blue hair, playing with a strand of it.

"But what if you don't revive me? If you can't revive me? What will you do then?" The dragon stopped kissing up your neck and shifted so he would be at eye level with you on the bed. He looked confused and hurt which almost made you ashamed that you asked the question.

"My staff can bring anyone back from the dead."

"Ok, but I age and demons don't what about that? What if I get so old I want to die to end my mysery."

Gamigin looked even more confused by your words. He didn't quite understand why humans aged so fast. He pouted in thought and stared at the ceiling. After a while, with a stern voice he asks "How long do humans usually live for?"

You try to remember your anthropology classes and what the avarage age of death was for your country, but you just can't put your finger on it. "I don't know, 70 or something like that." "70! Only 70 years!?!" He pushed you to the bed and pinned you to it with a shocked expression. His mind was working overtime trying to calculate just how long that timespan felt like.

Finally, he turns to you and holds your hands softly kissing them both. He stares determined in your eyes. "You are going to have the most exciting life ever. I promise you. What do you wish to do before you die?"

You've never seen him so stern, but the question was one that you've many times asked yourself yet never seemed to have an answer to. Gamigin's glare was starting to intimidate you so you gently slap his face.

"Don't look at me like that! You're making me nervous! I don't know what I want to do before I die. I just kind of want to see where life takes me."

Gamigin smiles like he usually does and pins you to the bed with a hug. His staff, which he kept in one hand at all times, jiggled lively as you both collapsed on the cottage bed.

"Well then, I want to cuddle with you and rewatch the 'How to Train Your Dragon' trilogy. And then we can play blackjack and whoever wins has to wash the dishes after dinner!" Gamigin proclaimed before kissing your cheek and nuzzling into it.

"Who tought you blackjack?" It was strange hearing your usually innocent boyfriend putting forth the idea of blackjack of all things.

"My brother Buer. He also thought me the dishes strategy as well. Jokes on him, I won." His giggle was contagious and you two ended up just cuddling and watching movies for the better half of the night.

If your relationship with Gamigin thought you anything, it was that you didn't have to live through bombastic experiences to enjoy life. You were having the time of your life just being close to him.

[see-arcane]

Speaking of Widespread Fanon in Dracula media... they keep depicting Renfield as this servile minion when not only was his devotion to Master conditional, but Mina's influence overrode Dracula's influence so fundamentally...

"Hmm. Too nuanced. Better scrap it." --every Dracula spinoff director and writer for the past 127 years about -checks notes- this and every other other plot point of the novel Dracula

[crow-caller]

Angel radio is 9 years old at this point since publication. I wrote it in 2013, over a decade ago, when I was 16. I think it'd be a really interesting essay/video to reread AR. "I was a teenage author: here's what happened next" but the answer is. It would probably hit a level of depressing real life rumination that would feel both indulgent and too personal. It's kind of hard to talk about being a teenager without it

But also. It's a fascinating subject I wish I was the kind of person to do a large project on— authors and 'failure' and what it is like years later. It's hard to publish a book/be published, and most of the time, it won't become a hot classic everyone recommends. A book is everything to you, but it will likely be forgotten. I know a lot of indie authors who published and then stopped, who published with high hopes and lost those. You just move on, life continues. But the hope you feel when a book comes out is a weighty feeling.

I also wonder a lot about mainstream authors, where this still fully applies. So many authors get one series, one book, and it just doesn't do well enough. And then what? I trawl about the 2010s YA section a lot, and there's so many series that were never finished by authors I've nor heard of, books from the Big 5 that simply didn't become Anything. And then what?

As a writer you need to accept what you have, and be proud, anyway. But the feeling of "this book will change everything, I'm an author! This is it!" Versus the years later "I'm an author. I've published some books. They exist." is.... well, it's something.

[inrainprose]

please leave comments on fanfics today and forever you never know how much you can improve an author's shitty day/week/time

[theharddeck]

bergamot & bygones

what's this? a pwp novel of best friends to lovers paranormal romance novel, with control issues!older sister x dirtymouthed!best friend

Leander raked a hand through his hair and he stood up. Reyna's kitchen wasn’t big enough for him to effectively pace but he gave it his best shot. “This is the biggest favor I’ve ever asked of you,” he said to her back wall. “The last thing I want to do is make you uncomfortable, or feel like you have to, so just tell me, and I’ll literally never bring it up again again.” “Okay,” Reyna said, aiming for encouraging, but landing on confused. Leander crossed the room quickly, sitting back in the chair across from her. He leaned forward and pushed his glasses up his nose; behind them, his eyes were slightly wide, but focused on her. “You can say no,” he repeated, earnestness written across his face and Reyna appreciated his candor, but it was halfway to giving her a panic attack. “You have to ask me for me to say no,” she said, and the corner of his mouth turned up in a smile before he let out a long breath, pushing back in the chair. He looked at her from his seat, expression inscrutable, and then he closed his eyes. “I’m going to go into a rut,” he said, finally, and Reyna’s mind fully stalled. She cleared her throat. "So, what, do you want me to house sit?" Leander reached for the mug again, is fingers curling around the outside of it. He was steadying himself, and when his eyes met hers again, there was something deeply vulnerable in them. "I'm asking if you'll help me through it," he said.

on kindle unlimited, or you can pre-order a paperback through your local indie bookstore!

[mysticfemme]

one day I'm going to write a story about a butch knight and a femme princess and it will be medieval and it will be romantic and it will be everything I wanted as a teenager

[that-butch-archivist]

"Bear and Aphra 2" by Jessica Tanzer, 1989.

source: Nothing But the Girl: The Blatant Lesbian Image, edited by Susie Bright & Jill Posener

[jesncin]

Hi there!! I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what the process of being published was like for Lunar Boy? Were there any struggles you faced trying to get it seen? Any tips for others trying to get their work published? Thank you in advance and I love your work! :)

Hullo there! Sure! Unfortunately things have changed a lot since I pitched years ago so I don't know how replicable my publishing journey is nowadays. But I'm willing to share!

So! I always knew I wanted to write for kids, but in art school we were trained to be cape comic artists. Back then (if you can believe it), making middle grade comics was considered something that would sink your career. At that point in history, American comics was trying so hard to prove "we're not for kids!" that they left a chasm in the market for children's comics. Then Raina Telgemeier's bestselling books proved there was a hungry readership of kids and suddenly the trad pub industry is excitedly picking up middle grade graphic novel pitches (ironically, including cape comics).

I was studying my Masters in the US as this was all happening, and decided to use my time in the program to generate as many middle grade pitches as possible! The first one I made was Lunar Boy, but the story was so well received that it ended up being the one we pushed forward as a pitch and develop the most across classes. On Twitter there was this event: #DVPit, which is a pitching event for marginalized authors looking to seek editor interest on their pitches but also! To get agented. In its heyday (before Melon Husk ruined everything. This event is no longer on twidder sadly. Many pitching events have ceased to happen or are on hiatus from how unusable that platform is now) it was a fantastic event. I got agented on my 2nd try of the event, and it got the industry an early look at Lunar Boy and made them excited to see it out on submission.

My agent, Britt Siess, was extremely helpful with giving us feedback on how to refine our pitch. Not only did she give us story feedback, but I was surprised also by her comics feedback- that was more nuanced than I expected (little did I know that she's a huge comics nerd). She had connections to all the editors I was interested in pitching Lunar Boy to, and we were out on submissions right as we graduated with our Masters degree (during the start of the pandemic lmao).

I already had early editor interest in Lunar Boy which I think helped a lot with getting it picked up. I've been told that it helps to meet editors in person and get chummy with them before pitching to heighten your chances, but that wasn't really the case for me. I've never met my editor (Carolina Ortiz, I love her she's amazing) in person, but she did actually reach out to me long before we went out to pitch- on a Simu Liu tweet trend of all things lmao.

(I didn't end up looking like evil boy band members in pastel clothes in the final book, I went for cultural clothes instead which I think is the more bespoke choice haha) Carolina reached out to me from this tweet and we actually talked back and forth about Lunar Boy, refining the pitch. I felt like she understood the story despite asking for big changes. I don't think she'd do something like this anymore, but I really appreciated it at the time (I wasn't even agented yet). All the editors I met in person for events like Editor's Day at school liked my art (and would even hire me for colorist work and the like) but they weren't interested in Lunar Boy. This was reflected when we finally went on submissions too.

We got a lot of rejections, vague language like "we don't know how to edit this" or "we already have a book like this" (??? press X to doubt). Compounded with all my interactions with editors in person, I felt like I was "marketable" as an artist but not as a storyteller because our stories were so unapologetically QPOC- with culturally specific queer identities to an already underrepresented identity. The editors that were interested in Lunar Boy had personal connection to the story (they were either also from blended families or QPOC themselves). But hey, you only need one yes to get a book deal. We ended up with Carolina as our editor and she's been our rock and champion for this book since the beginning. We were out of submissions in just a week (which is really fast in the industry).

My big tip for getting into the trad pub graphic novel industry is to study the market. A lot of people mistaken publishing as a vessel or platform for their untold story, when really it's a business we compromise with. Pay attention to trends, book deals, shifts in the industry, read your peers' books, everything. Research is key with getting your foot in. Lunar Boy may look like an out-there book, but at its heart it's a story about culture shock, trying to fit in, along with family and friendship problems. In trad pub especially, locking in to sellable tropes and trends is key. Find clever ways to innovate and work within those limitations at the same time. Be open to feedback and changes. I know so many people are held back from getting book deals because they're too attached to their story. It helps not to be phased by rejection and or take things personally. I've been very desensitized to talking about books like a business, since that's what it took for someone like me to make it out there.

I hope that was helpful!

[xigheart]

Jin Guangyao, Lianfang-zun, Chief cultivator, son of Jin Guangshan, who is in turn the son of a long list of people who were never named in text and therefore unimportant, only slept with his sister once, but it sure came back to bite him in the ass.

Inspo Post

[daisywords]

"just focus on book 1 without mapping out the entire trilogy" I need you to understand how much I cannot do that

[rangertessadarling]

I've mentioned this headcanon before, but Will absolutely wrote poetry. A lot of poetry. It started as a coping mechanism, he just really enjoyed putting any dark thoughts or feelings of his in a literary way that made it beautiful. After a while, though he just wrote because he loved writing, he loved the fulfillment it gave him when he turned a depressing thought or a traumatizing experience into a beautiful cadence. Sometimes he would put a melody to it and play them on the mandola for Alyss, love poems, dark poems, poems that didn't even fully make sense to him.

He also wrote several about Halt, and their relationship, although Halt never heard/saw them.

Poetry for Will was a way to put his complicated feelings into words, it was a feeling of closure to have his feelings down on paper.

After Alyss' death, he stopped writing, because he was ashamed of his feelings, and didn't even know how to put them into words, he had never had that issue before, which only served to make the sinking feeling worse.

After the Ruhl incident, and after his emotional blockage was healed, he wrote a poem. It was short, but scathing, and something that Will hoped no one ever read for the sake of his own reputation, they would think he was crazy, or murderous or both. But lets be fair, he kind of was.

He ended up burning that first poem. But he was glad he wrote it.

The rest of his poems were about Alyss. Every. Single. One. Even when he tried to write one about Maddie or about Halt or Pauline, they always drew back to Alyss, she was the denouement of every one of his stories. The resolution he couldn't not write.

Even after Will's own death, when Maddie found all his poetry, the poetry that was written on napkins, the backs of mission reports, stationary, scrap paper. Anything he could find. It was all shoved in a box under the loose wood board in the living room, momentarily forgotten.

But Maddie wouldn't let them be permanently lost to time.

She published them. Not all of them, just the ones that she felt symbolized quite clearly who Will Treaty was, and what he stood for.

Not the intimidating and hard man that some people knew him as through stories of his adventures, but as a man who suffered a great deal of immense transformation throughout his life. He was a clueless curious teenager, a cheeky and astute young man, and a melancholic, yet well-fortified ranger. He was a man who was oftentimes so overwhelmed with his feelings, that he let them spill onto physical paper to arrange them in a way that made sense.

Sometimes they didn't make sense, and Maddie speculated that those arcane poems probably wouldn't ever be interpreted in the way that Will wrote them, but that added to the reflection of who he was.

A man who never quite grew out of the 'feeling too much' stage as a boy.

A man who felt things as a child in a way no one would understand.

A man who never quite grew up.