#cardno

[layaart]

Here's an illustration I did of Trillin & Sian from How To Get A Girlfriend (When You're A Terrifying Monster), commissioned by the author! Based off La Belle Dame Sans Merci, of course.

[aroaessidhe]

The Monster Girlfriend Special Edition Kickstarter is live!

you can get a deluxe edition of all 3 books in one volume!

Three title page illustrations (by me! I'll post the other 2 on my art blog soon)

Illustrated endpapers (also by me!)

Rainbow holographic hardcover case designed by Isabella Cobb

Sprayed edges, ribbon bookmark, custom interior formatting, signed bookplate

lots more info on the ks page!

[mariocki]

The Saint: Little Girl Lost (5.10, ITC, 1966)

"You're wonderful! Why should you do this for me, taking all these risks?"

"Oh, because you, uh, have a talent for embroidering the truth which fascinates me."

"But that's not the only reason, is it?"

"No. No, your father took over my favourite brewery and the beer's been terrible ever since."

[ulisesbarreiro]

"Token MITHRANDIR & Criptomonedas" Episodio #28 FM 99.9 Capilla del Monte

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

🌙 What to Read After Watching Agatha All Along 🌙

❓ Who is your favorite fictional witch?

🦇 Enjoying Agatha All Along on Disney? Check out these books featuring witches, covens, chaotic queers, & everything in between, perfect for fans of Agatha All Along! List below!

✨🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑✨

✨ Payback's a Witch - Lana Harper 🌑 How to Get a Girlfriend (When You're a Terrifying Monster) - Marie Cardno 🌒 These Witches Don't Burn - Isabel Sterling 🌓 This Spells Disaster - Tori Martin 🌔 The Scapegracers - H. A. Clarke 🌕 Beetle & the Hollowbones - Aliza Layne 🌕 The Twice-Sold Soul - Katie Hallahan 🌖 In Charm's Way - Lana Harper 🌗 Brewed with Love - Shelly Page 🌘 Carry On - Rainbow Rowell 🌑 So This Is Ever After - F. T. Lukens ✨ Spells to Forget Us - Aislinn Brophy

✨ Basics of Spellcraft - L.C. Mawson 🌑 How To Succeed in Witchcraft - Aislinn Brophy 🌒 Sweet & Bitter Magic - Adrienne Tooley 🌓 The Midnight Girls - Alicia Jasinska 🌔 Labyrinth Lost - Zoraida Córdova 🌕 The Shattered Lands - Brenna Nation 🌕 Otherworldly - F. T. Lukens 🌖 Coven - Jennifer Dugan & Kit Seaton 🌗 The Dark Tide - Alicia Jasinska 🌘 Queen B - Juno Dawson 🌑 Her Majesty's Royal Coven - Juno Dawson ✨ Wild and Wicked Things - Francesca May

✨ Cemetery Boys - Aiden Thomas 🌑 The Last Sun - K. D. Edwards 🌒 The Jasmine Throne - Tasha Suri 🌓 The Sun and the Star - Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro 🌔 The Witch and His Crow - Ben Alderson 🌕 Lord of Eternal Night - Ben Alderson 🌕 The Crimson Crown - Heather Walter 🌖 Tonight, I Burn - Katharine J. Adams 🌗 Witches of Ash and Ruin - E. Latimer 🌘 The Severed Thread - Leslie Vedder 🌑 Pumpkin Spice & Poltergeist - Ali K. Mulford and K. Elle Morrison ✨ Love and Other Wicked Things -Philline Harms

✨ Off With Their Heads - Zoe Hana Mikuta 🌑 Practical Rules for Cursed Witches - Kayla Cottingham 🌒 Two Broke Witches - Kate Starling 🌓 Bitterthorn - Kat Dunn 🌔 The Honey Witch - Sydney J. Shields 🌕 The Witch and the Vampire - Francesca Flores 🌕 Spell on Wheels - Kate Leth, Megan Levens, Marissa Louise 🌖 The Witchery - S. Isabelle 🌗 The Hummingbird Coven - Augusta Owens 🌘 Children of the Night - Cara Malone 🌑 The Hex Next Door - Lou Wilham ✨ Malice - Heather Walter

✨ Mortal Follies - Alexis Hall 🌑 The Balance of Fates - Raquel Raelynn 🌒 Edie in Between - Laura Sibson 🌓 Doughnuts and Doom - Balazs Lorinczi 🌔 A Spell for Heartsickness - Alistair Reeve 🌕 Evocation - S.T. Gibson 🌕 The Spells We Cast - Jason June 🌖 An Education in Malice - S. T. Gibson �� Rise and Divine - Lana Harper 🌘 Not Good for Maidens - Tori Bovalino 🌑 A Dark and Starless Forest - Sarah Hollowell ✨ Netherford Hall - Natania Barron

✨ The Poisons We Drink - Bethany Baptiste 🌑 This Poison Heart - Kalynn Bayron 🌒 Over My Dead Body - Boo Sweeney 🌓 Girl, Serpent, Thorn - Melissa Bashardoust 🌔 The Bewitching Hour - Ashley Poston 🌕 Pushing Daisy - Isla Winter 🌕 Daughter of the Bone Forest - Jasmine Skye 🌖 Keep Your Witches Close - Colette Rivera 🌗 Mooncakes - Suzanne Walker, Wendy Xu 🌘 Snapdragon - Kat Leyh 🌑 Runaways - Rainbow Rowell & Kris Anka ✨ Witchlings - Claribel A. Ortega

✨🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑✨

[ren3gade]

@sarasa-cat

i know about weird niche stuff because i study storefronts a lot. but i don't necessarily read it, so i can't explain what about it works or sells or... whatever

like, the tentacle billionaire stuff i mentioned ranks TERRIBLY on zon, as it should lmao, but it exists.

a lot of cozy fantasy is NOT weird. it's buff orc ladies running coffee shops (legends and lattes), or maybe a curvy witch who brews potions and falls in love with a vampire or something (and these run adjacent to cozy mystery i think). i feel like the cephelopod idea (maybe with an eldritch twist) at a sleepy seaside town could be the doorway to like... slightly weirder cozy fantasy monster romance type thing, and here's why:

this is not a ground breaking ranking, she sells a copy every few days, but there is definitely a readership for this, it's cute and i'm glad it exists

contrast with something like tentacles and triathalons, which ranks even better

or the lily mane mm monster romances, but these books are popular for niche books in niche categories. they are not comparable to more mainstream bestsellers in terms of units/rankings whatever.

some of these authors are making a solid living on niche stuff they love, and that's pretty incredible. but the weirdest stuff is usually written by hobbyists because they enjoy it, and doesn't sell very well

[bookish-monster]

RECOMMENDATION

How to Get a Girlfriend (When You're a Terrifying Monster)

by Marie Cardno - find her on Twitter and Instagram

the storygraph link will provide information such as page count, publication date, and community-created content warnings.

How to Get a Girlfriend (When You’re a Terrifying Monster) by Marie Cardno advertises itself as a cozy fantasy romance between a scientist-witch and an eldritch horror (both of whom use she/her pronouns). It’s also the first installment of a duology!

Our story opens with Trillin, the eldritch horror, gaining consciousness as she finds herself separated from the predatory Cthulhian entity known as the Endless in the dimension where they live. She is now capable of having an individual personality as well as wants and desires, and one of the first things she sees upon awakening is Sian, the scientist-witch who has entered the Endless’ dimension to study its inhabitants. (Trillin figures out her individual wants and desires pretty quickly after Sian shows up). 

It’s adorably weird—Cardno doesn’t shy away from the body horror and describes more ever-multiplying teeth and eyeballs than any human is normally comfortable with, but Trillin is, if you will believe this, shy. She has very little life experience that is 100% hers (although she possesses hazy memories of everything the Endless has experienced, since she broke off from it) and when she meets Sian for the first time she freezes up and afterwards feels incredibly embarrassed. Imagine a teenage girl trying to talk to her crush, except the teenage girl in question has over a dozen eyeballs and lots of tentacles and cilia and is generally terrifying to look at.

Cardno is a master of the “creepy cute” school of creature design. Trillin is horrifying to behold, but she’s also adorable and sweet. Likewise, Sian rescues a cat-rabbit-bug-thing that is described as follows: “Trillin stared at the [creature]. It was tiny, and fluffy, and had made itself six tentative legs and two furry antennae on top of its head. It had one eye, then three, and settled on six.” Don’t you just wanna go “awwww” and pet it?

This is a weird book, but it’s also sweet enough to induce dental problems. In some ways the prose reminds me of Terry Pratchett’s writing style for the Discworld series, but with a bouncier and more happy-go-lucky edge; as a cozy fantasy romance, the reader and author both know that the stakes are lower here. Cardno maintains wit and humor throughout her novella—this really is a good book to curl up with when you want something safe, warm, weird, and funny all at once.

Sian herself is a great character as well. She’s big and buff but also unashamedly nerdy, and very tenacious, optimistic, and caring. It takes a very special kind of person to say “nice tentacles” to an eldritch horror as soon as you hop through a portal into a dimension that no other human researcher has ever returned alive from, but Sian makes it work. She’s hysterically funny and quite probably insane, and her growing feelings for Trillin are so cute.

This novella comes in at just over a hundred pages and is a treat all around. Trillin, Sian, and their new pet get into some amazing hijinks to stay alive as the Endless tries to hunt them down and absorb them into its mass, and I devoured the story in just about a single sitting. Overall, I would definitely recommend this to anyone in the mood for some tentacle-y sapphic sweetness.

Find this book on Amazon Kindle (US)

[desperatecheesecubes]

[layaart]

An illustration I did for book two of Marie Cardno's Monster Girlfriend trilogy! It'll be the title page on the special edition that's being kickstarted right now! It's based on one of the lesser-redrawn la belle dame sans merci paintings (by john william waterhouse)

[aroaessidhe]

a few NZ adult sff books!

for @thereadingchallengechallenge following an ask from a week or two ago

most of these authors also have other books that I love! I have mentioned specifically their books that are set here (or Aotearoa-inspired fantasy)

From A Shadow Grave by Andi Buchanan (alternate history fantasy based on a real life murder/wellington ghost story)

The Dawnhounds by Sasha Stronach (queer alchemical-biopunk dystopian fantasy)

No Man’s Land by AJ Fitzwater (queer historical fantasy about land girls in WWII)

The Stone Wētā by Octavia Cade (climate fiction novella about an underground network protecting science data in the future)

The Wind City by Rem Wigmore (urban fantasy set in Wellington)

How To Get A Girlfriend When You’re A Terrifying Monster by Marie Cardno (cute sapphic monster romance novella)

Kurangaituku by Whiti Hereaka (nonlinear myth retelling, this is definitely more in the direction of literary fiction tbh)

Butcherbird by Cassie Hart (supernatural horror/suspense, not quite sff enough for my tastes but might be of interest?)

Wake by Elizabeth Knox (similarly more horror/thriller than sff-y; she also has a fantasy called The Absolute Book that I haven’t read yet)

I already mentioned Na Viro by Gina Cole, but since I think it’s adult I’ll mention it again here! it’s a Pasifikafuturist sci-fi/fantasy

[drowsy-siren]

Since you're up for answering any ask at the moment, what's your favorite monster to fantasize about fucking~? Or just a few ones you reeally like if you can't pick just one, mrow~ ^w^

Ooo hard to pick an absolute favorite but devils, demons, and vampires tend to stick at the very top of my list

Eldritch entities, too (check out How to Get a Girlfriend When You're a Terrifying Monster by Marie Cardno, and the Sucker for Love game if you like this stuff)

Uhm werewolves and mermaids sometimes

And then like very specific monsters, like Nimue from Remnant 2, Shelob from Shadow Of War, and Lady Dimitrescu, Mina Harker from the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie (but she's covered by vampire above too I guess)

[pigeonflavouredcake]

I gave myself permission to get some new books for new year's day but that's it that's all I'm giving myself. I was really bad my book ban last year so I'm trying again this year.

My book buying ban starts now on the 1st of January 2024.

My TBR is 49 books long here's the list:

Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Doors of Eden

Aiden Thomas - Cemetery Boys

Alexandria Bellefleur - The Fiancée Farce

Alice Feeney - Sometimes I Lie

Alison Rumfitt - Tell Me I'm Worthless

Alo Johnston - Am I Trans Enough

Bram Stoker - Dracula

Cordelia Fine - Delusions of Gender

Cordelia Fine - Testosterone Rex

David Attenborough - Living Planet (audio book)

Euripedes - The Bacchae and Other Plays

George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty Four

Hannah Kaner - The Fallen Gods Trilogy #1: Godkiller

Isaac Fellman - Dead Collections

J.B. MacKinnon - The Day The World Stops Shopping

Jaimie Raines - The T in LGBT

Jeanette Purkis - The Guide To Good Mental Health on the Autism Spectrum

Jen Beagin - Big Swiss

Jennie Kermode - Growing Older as a Trans and/or nonbinary person

Jon Krauker - Under the Banner of Heaven

Julia Lynn Rubin - Primal Animals

Juno Dawson - Her Majesty’s Royal Coven

K. Patrick - Mrs. S

Kalynn Bayron - You’re Not Supposed To Die Tonight

Lily Lindon - My Own Worst Enemy

Liz Gloyn - Tracking Classical Monsters on Popular Culture

Malinda Lo - A Line in The Dark

Mark Lawrence - The Library Trilogy #1: The Book That Wouldn’t Burn

Marie Cardno - How to Get a Girlfriend (When You’re a Terrifying Monster)

Mary Shelley - Frankenstein

Maude Ventura - My Husband

Max Adams - The Wisdom of Trees

Megan Abbot - Give Me Your Hand

Mona Awad - Bunny

Naoya Matsumoto - Kaiju No. 8 Vol 8

Ottessa Moshfegh - My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Paul Tremblay - The Cabin an The End of the World

Peter Corbin - Three Jacobean Witchcraft Plays

R.W. Wallace - Beyond The Grave

Reni Eddo-Lodge - Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race

Robin Wall Kimmerer - Braiding Sweetgrass

Sarah Waters - Fingersmith

Sayaka Murata - Earthlings

Sven Holm - Termush

Talia Jager - Without Hesitation

Tamsyn Muir - The Locked Tomb #3: Nona the Ninth

Veronique Altglas - From Yoga to Kabbalah

Walter Stephens - Demon Lovers

William Peter Blatty - The Exorcist

[manaralshibly-blog1]

Diving into the Truth: Environmentalists and Students Raise Alarm on NSW Shark Meshing Program

The NSW government's decision to reinstall shark nets on 51 beaches has sparked controversy, with environmentalists deeming them ineffective. A documentary called 'Submerged' by Western Sydney University students reveals that these nets do not effectively prevent sharks from reaching beaches, potentially providing a false sense of security.

Recent research by Cardno indicates that most shark interactions occur at beaches with these nets. Critics argue that the nets threaten non-target marine species, with approximately 92% of caught animals being unintended. Activists and politicians advocate for humane alternatives to the outdated shark net program. Greens MP Cate Faehrmann urges the government to abandon the program in favour of more effective and humane strategies. This ongoing debate emphasises protecting marine ecosystems while ensuring beachgoers' safety.

As new technologies and research reveal the negative consequences of shark nets on marine life, there is a growing call for alternative and humane shark mitigation strategies. This ongoing debate underscores the need to protect marine ecosystems while safeguarding our shores in NSW.

-Considering the controversy surrounding the reinstallation of shark nets in NSW beaches, what alternative strategies do you think could effectively balance beachgoer safety and marine life conservation? -

[tekaihau]

If you’re into this, I highly recommend How to Get a Girlfriend When You’re a Terrifying Monster by Marie Cardno, an extremely fun novella about magical scarfies and the lovely monsters/tentacle beasties they fall for

[OC] witch x (jealous) monster girlfriend🔮🐙.𖥔 ݁ ˖ (witch OC belongs to @ greenmoonie on tw)

[anntickwittee]

Libby

Currently Reading:

Ancillary Justice

Rogue Community College by David R Slayton (reread)

The Nightward by R.S.A Garcia

Letters to Half Moon Street by Sarah Wallace

A Market of Dreams and Destiny by Trip Galey

Doctor's Orders by Diane Duane

Icarus by K. Ancrum

The Uses of Illicit Art by Wendy Palmer

On Hold:

A Coup of Tea by Casey Blair

Tuyo by Rachel Neumeier

Sir Callie and the Champions of Helston by Esme Symes-Smith

Sir Callie and the Dragon's Roost by Esme Symes-Smith

Sir Callie and the Witch's War by Esme Symes-Smith

Her Majesty's Royal Coven by Juno Dawson

Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell

Masquerade by O.O Sangoyomi

The Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

Spells and Sensibility by K.L. Noone and K.S. Murph

Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis

Ammonite by Nicola Griffith

Sargassa by Sophie Burnham

The Diablo's Curse by Gabe Cole Novoa

The Dragonfly Gambit by A.D Sui

The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older

How To Get A Girlfriend When You're A Terrifying Monster by Marie Cardno

Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett

Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao

Waiting to be Notified:

The Tomb of Dragons by Katherine Addison

The Orb of Cairado by Katherine Addison

When the Tides Held the Moon by Venessa Vida Kelley

Emberclaw by L.R. Lam

Chef's Secret by Kelly Yang

Idolfire by Grace Curtis

Viscounts & Villainy by Allie Therin

Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher

The Gentleman and His Vowsmith by Rebecca Ide

Voidwalker S.A. MacLean

Lackaday House by K.J. Charles

Among the Burning Flowers by Samantha Shannon (?)

Espíritu by Aiden Thomas

Saltcrop by Yume Kitasei

A Mouthful of Dust Book by Nghi Vo

The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri (?)

Completed:

The Forbidden Book by Sacha Lamb