#world letter writing day

[duckprintspress]

8 Epistolary Books for World Letter Writing Day

Today, September 1st, is World Letter Writing Day. to celebrate, we asked our contributors about their favorite books with a prominent role of letters (both traditional and electronic). Some of these books are fully epistolary, in some, letters play an important part in the story. Contributors to this list are: Shea Sullivan, Alex, Shadaras, Polls, Sanne and boneturtle.

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This Is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone & Amal El-Mohtar

Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, becomes something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean the death of each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win. That’s how war works, right?

Cowritten by two beloved and award-winning sci-fi writers, This Is How You Lose the Time War is an epic love story spanning time and space.

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The Tiger’s Daughter (Ascendant series) by K. Arsenault Rivera

Even gods can be slain….

The Hokkaran empire has conquered every land within their bold reach―but failed to notice a lurking darkness festering within the people. Now, their border walls begin to crumble, and villages fall to demons swarming out of the forests.

Away on the silver steppes, the remaining tribes of nomadic Qorin retreat and protect their own, having bartered a treaty with the empire, exchanging inheritance through the dynasties. It is up to two young warriors, raised together across borders since their prophesied birth, to save the world from the encroaching demons.

This is the story of an infamous Qorin warrior, Barsalayaa Shefali, a spoiled divine warrior empress, O-Shizuka, and a power that can reach through time and space to save a land from a truly insidious evil.

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The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison

This is not the story you think it is. These are not the characters you think they are. This is not the book you are expecting.

In an alternate 1880s London, angels inhabit every public building, and vampires and werewolves walk the streets with human beings in a well-regulated truce. A fantastic utopia, except for a few things: Angels can Fall, and that Fall is like a nuclear bomb in both the physical and metaphysical worlds. And human beings remain human, with all their kindness and greed and passions and murderous intent.

Jack the Ripper stalks the streets of this London too. But this London has an Angel. The Angel of the Crows.

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Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca

A whirlpool of darkness churns at the heart of a macabre ballet between two lonely young women in an internet chat room in the early 2000’s – a darkness that threatens to forever transform them once they finally succumb to their most horrific desires.

What have you done today to deserve your eyes?

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Always Human by Ari North

In the near-future, people use technology to give the illusion of all kinds of body modifications-but some people have “Egan’s Syndrome,” a highly sensitive immune system that rejects these “mods” and are unable to use them. Those who are affected maintain a “natural” appearance, reliant on cosmetics and hair dye at most to help them play with their looks.

Sunati is attracted to Austen the first time she sees her and is drawn to what she assumes is Austen’s bravery and confidence to live life unmodded. When Sunati learns the truth, she’s still attracted to Austen and asks her on a date. Gradually, their relationship unfolds as they deal with friends, family, and the emotional conflicts that come with every romance. Together, they will learn and grow in a story that reminds us no matter how technology evolves, we will remain . . . always human.

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Affinity by Sarah Waters

Set in and around the women’s prison at Milbank in the 1870s, Affinity is an eerie and utterly compelling ghost story, a complex and intriguing literary mystery and a poignant love story with an unexpected twist in the tale. Following the death of her father, Margaret Prior has decided to pursue some ‘good work’ with the lady criminals of one of London’s most notorious gaols. Surrounded by prisoners, murderers and common thieves, Margaret feels herself drawn to one of the prisons more unlikely inmates – the imprisoned spiritualist – Selina Dawes. Sympathetic to the plight of this innocent-seeming girl, Margaret sees herself dispensing guidance and perhaps friendship on her visits, little expecting to find herself dabbling in a twilight world of seances, shadows, unruly spirits and unseemly passions.

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A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan series) by Arkady Martine

Ambassador Mahit Dzmare arrives in the center of the multi-system Teixcalaanli Empire only to discover that her predecessor, the previous ambassador from their small but fiercely independent mining Station, has died. But no one will admit that his death wasn��t an accident—or that Mahit might be next to die, during a time of political instability in the highest echelons of the imperial court.

Now, Mahit must discover who is behind the murder, rescue herself, and save her Station from Teixcalaan’s unceasing expansion—all while navigating an alien culture that is all too seductive, engaging in intrigues of her own, and hiding a deadly technological secret—one that might spell the end of her Station and her way of life—or rescue it from annihilation.

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Ninefox Gambit (The Machineries of Empire series) by Yoon Ha Lee

When Captain Kel Cheris of the hexarchate is disgraced for her unconventional tactics, Kel Command gives her a chance to redeem herself, by retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles from the heretics. Cheris’s career isn’t the only thing at stake: if the fortress falls, the hexarchate itself might be next.

Cheris’s best hope is to ally with the undead tactician Shuos Jedao. The good news is that Jedao has never lost a battle, and he may be the only one who can figure out how to successfully besiege the fortress. The bad news is that Jedao went mad in his first life and massacred two armies, one of them his own.

As the siege wears on, Cheris must decide how far she can trust Jedao – because she might be his next victim.

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What are your favorite epistolary queer books? Tell us in the comments!

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[subby-sab]

Today is 1st of September.

Today is World Letter Writing Day, National Tofu Day, National Cherry Popover Day, Wattle Day.

[luninosity]

"A Flowering of Ink" comes out tomorrow!

"A Flowering of Ink" is my story for World Letter Writing Day - the other stories are by the marvelous folk who were also part of last year's Naked Gardening Day collection - Nell Iris, Holly Day, and A.L. Lester! My contribution is m/m contemporary romance, about 26k, featuring...

~a lonely scientist doing field work on a small island

~an architect who doesn't leave his house much these days

~a piece of misdirected mail, and a handwritten reply, that just might (spoiler: it does) lead to something more... JMS Books link here (currently on sale for Labor Day!) Amazon link here We hope you enjoy!

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

Thinking about "So Long, London" as one does and the "I'm pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free" which is devastating enough on its own as a succinct shorthand of saying "I gave you some of my most formative years thinking we were committed to the same life plans together" (as in building a family life together) but with ~everything~ can also be a statement of her entrusting him with her youthful hopes and dreams and joy and earnestness only for it all to be cast aside and not returned (and at worst, weaponized).

[ahaura]

@fairuzfan suggested people make something for Gaza Strike Day so i wrote a poem. it is intended as a letter from the land of Palestine to its people, set in the near future, after liberation.

[jev-urisk]

A Musing Monday 🎐

Today I'm musing about extradimensional spaces! Like Mary Poppin's bag, or 'eatery that connects to an isekai' anime, or your mind, even.

I do think the mind is a type of extradimensional space. We fit the essence of so many places and moments and people into the folds of our memory, contained in the little box that is our skulls. We imagine worlds, we dream entirely separate lifetimes. It's wild, and amazing, and a little terrifying.

Occasionally I think about how the entire world around me is MY world- in that my only access to reality is through my own interpretations, experiences, and the senses that link to my brain, all of which may or may not be close to the truth of reality. When I die one day, my world dies too- not one creature on earth will live in the same world that I knew due to my relationship with everything perceivable to me.

Before I get TOO existential here though (or maybe I'm getting more existential)- think of what that means for writers! We are masons crafting gateways to extradimensional spaces. Through what we do, people can visit the pocket dimensions of OUR minds, dimensions that have the possibility to continue existing long after the mind/wold that created it expires. And because everyone perceives things through their own lens, writing one story and sharing it creates the potential for countless alternate dimensions; every soul that reads your work will carry their own personal version of it in their mind. If you have a hit count or something similar on your work, THAT'S how many dimensions you've created, at least.

Not only that, but when someone reads what you've written, THEIR world alters. It may be slight, your work or your post might provide a momentary reprieve from the part of their world they're avoiding or decompressing from (which is still a very important thing), or it may give them an idea of their own, it may motivate them to make one choice over another choice, it may alter the very way they think and interact with their family, their partners, themselves. You very well may alter the fabric of what a person is, the dimension of their mind warping with the way it interacts with your dimension.

Never forget that as a writer, or any creator of art for that matter, you are a world-builder, a world-shatterer, a world-repairer; a powerful and magical being that may alter the course of history. Writing is magic, and it's sorcery, and I desperately hope even the small unconfident blogs on here recognize that power.

Tagging a bunch of cool writers: @cowboybrunch @the-golden-comet @lychhiker-writes @wyked-ao3 @rotting-moon-writes

@saturnine-saturneight @asablehart @tragedycoded @autism-purgatory @marlowethelibrarian

If I didn't tag you you're still super cool! The world of my brain is just made of swiss cheese and glitches a lot 🫠💕

@dragoninatrenchcoat @words-after-midnight @sableglass @gioiaalbanoart @illarian-rambling

@badscientist @officialauthorofanotherworld

[4s1na]

when I look at him, I feel like a small kid who's staring at the moon knowing that you’d never get to make it yours but still chooses to admire it every day.

[martyrmarked]

last pre-datv post and while this will all obviously continue to evolve once i know what happens in datv (!!!!), sidri's participation in whatever is to come has nothing to do with solas. as stated before she hopes he can be saved but she doesn't think he wants to be saved and with time and distance her anger towards him is colored in different hues. he's not the driving force in her life and he never has been.

her involvement is because she believes in varric infinitely more than she hates solas. varric believes that solas can be saved, wants to save him, and regardless of her views she will always be right there beside him. if anyone can do what seems impossible to her, it's varric.

she also wants more than anything to protect her family and solas threatens that (it's not about the world anymore, she stopped thinking about the world long ago, the world become unimportant the first moment she stepped onto kirkwall's docks). her daughters are everything to her and she wants them safe, she wants them well, and she wants them to live a life free of everything she endured. they deserve peace, or at least as much peace as thedas' usually allows, and she is determined to give that to them and go home to them with varric beside her.

[tenojan-in-tevinter]

hilarious how much my hawke goes on and on about how blood magic is evil and blood mages suck and there's never a good enough reason to use blood magic. My guy. What was all that shit you did back in Kirkwall then huh? What did you do when you ran out of magic? I guess every time you pulled the blood up from corpses to keep yourself alive was just nothing then huh. Every time your enemies' blood boiled in their veins was just the wind I guess.

[andmakeithome]

happy wip wednesday!! here’s a snippet of the last? second to last? chapter for paper planes au! this will most likely be rewritten as this was mostly word vomit from nano 2022, but here this is anyway! also I’ve decided goose is going to live, so this is going to have to change anyway lol. but I still enjoy this, so voila~

context: mav writes his soulmate (ice) a letter after goose dies; ice then realizes mav is his soulmate and rushes to mav’s base housing to attempt to comfort :’)

"Can I come in?" he asks, voice soft and low. "I just want to talk."

"At…three in the morning?" Mav frowns, glancing behind him as Slider pulls out of the driveway, headlights splashing across the porch. Mav looks Ice over suspiciously as Slider drives away, eyes catching on the crumpled plane in Ice's hand. He stills. His frown deepens as he blinks sluggishly, before his face goes abruptly white. He lifts his gaze, eyes flitting rapidly across Ice's features, eyes wide, fingers tightening on the door frame.

"Can I come in?" Ice asks again, fingers twitching at his side, wishing he had his pen to fiddle with in this awkward in-between. Mav steps aside, silent, and Ice steps into the house.

It's the same as any other base housing, Ice notes, but with little hints of life beyond: Mav's leather jacket strewn across the couch alongside a colorful knitted blanket. Mav's keys resting on the kitchen table. A child's drawings decorate the fridge, strewn up with plane magnets next to a letter.

A letter with Ice's handwriting.

His hand tightens around the paper plane in his hand.

"Is it…is it really…" Mav stutters behind him. Ice turns back to him and Mav shifts, unsure, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. He seems to steel himself before he speaks again.

"Why are you here, Ice?"

"I…got your letter," he says, lifting it into view.

"How do you know it's mine?" Mav challenges. But even behind the brave face, Ice can hear the desperation there, and knows this— these…feelings welling inside him aren't just one-sided. He still takes a moment to mull over his words.

"I was too caught up in being at Top Gun to notice sooner, P," he says slowly, and the use of his nickname makes Mav pause. Ice pushes on, confidence building. "But you talk just like you write. Open and confident, bold and…and unabashed in whatever you say. There isn't anyone else like you," he says, flushing. And it's true, Ice can admit. There isn't anyone like Maverick. That's why he fell so hard, and just over their letters, at that.

"Yeah," Mav scoffs wetly, and immediately Ice knows he misstepped somewhere, "there isn't anyone else who would get their best— their RIO killed because they were too caught up in the competition."

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

The whole discourse about the privacy/secrecy/support thing has been sitting with me for a few days (I mean other than it always does to a certain degree) thanks to all the excellent discussion happening and I know I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said a million times before, but I think what we're seeing and what we're going to learn (e.g. from TTPD) is that it wasn't just the support issue, but how it was shown/handled.

We've all gone out of our way to show that introversion =/= lack of support. Someone can be shy, reserved, etc. and still show up for their partner, whether in public or at home. To chalk any of the differences up to the clash between introversion and extroversion is unfair to folks who count themselves among either tbh.

@thisisctrying said something the other day that hit the nail on the head about how if that support had been offered in private, there very well may not have been a Joever to begin with, or at least not at this point in time. (Sorry for loosely paraphrasing, and for namedropping you! Long time listener, first time poster.)

If this were a case where the "shy" partner said, "I am really uncomfortable with the spotlight personally and do not want to court it, but I will support you in your ambitions and offer you whatever you need to make them happen and make the glare bearable," I suspect that would have gone a long way to making Taylor feel seen and comfortable in pursuing her goals in the way that she now has. Again, that might have been more akin to the balance that seemed to have been struck around 2019 from what we can see, but even speaking in a general sense, there are lots of couples out there, celebrity or not, that have similar approaches where there are highly driven people and busy careers involved.

(A famous example being Dolly Parton's marriage. Tbh I know next to nothing about her and Carl, but she's always heralded as an example in this regard, because her husband is famously uncomfortable with the spotlight and hasn't accompanied her to public events in decades, but she's said that she never minded that because that was always work to her, and what was important was that he supported her in pursuing all her career goals and basically ensured she had a place to call home to return to at the end of the day.)

We're kind of in a brave new world with her current relationship because it felt like, at least at the start, we were maybe watching her figure out her boundaries in real time as to what she was comfortable with or not and adjust accordingly. Like so many have said, I fully believe the extreme privacy thing was initially driven by herself and her experiences in 2016, and she needed that quiet time to recover from all of the things and figure out how to exist in the world again.

Stating the obvious, it seemed like eventually privacy was equated with secrecy, turning the relationship and the celebrity into the elephant in the room and something to never be spoken of to the outside world. People are free to choose whatever works best for themselves and their relationships, and for some the separate public lives might work, but the “kept me like a secret but I kept you like an oath” theme is all over her work and it’s clear that it’s a sore spot for her, because she’s been made to feel shame just for the life she leads so many times in the past.

What I’m trying to say is that it’s pretty obvious something Not Great was happening behind the scenes, which didn’t just amount to “she wanted to be a public celebrity and he wanted to be a private hermit.” (Also, in case anyone forgot, this is a person who also chose a public-facing career who also has to engage in press for it, but I digress.) As her career reached new heights post-folklore, if she had the support at home to do all the things without judgment and with encouragement, and in turn offer the same support to her partner, she may have very well lived just fine with that, not unlike Dolly Parton’s case.

By reading between the lines in all the press since, as well as comments on tour and general ~vibes~ with TTPD teasers, it seems like one of the issues was that that was likely not the case. There was all the stuff that we saw — the reticence to acknowledge each other in the media (particularly on one side), the lack of public support even at events at which they were both in attendance for their respective jobs, the great lengths they went to not to be photographed together at events they attended yet no problem taking pictures with other friends and coworkers, the jobs that separated them, the withdrawing from the public even for work accomplishments, etc. Which could all be manageable if a couple chooses to do so together and are not inherently a sign of trouble in themselves.

But what we’re seeing now I think is a reflection of the things we weren’t seeing then, and it seems to indicate some very deep hurt. (I know, call me Captain Obvious.) And like so many have been saying, it feels likely that that part of that hurt is rooted in that very lack of private support where a person would expect it from their partner. Obviously as a Taylor fan blog I’m going to be more inclined to understand her side of a story, but tbh, it’s also because… this is sooooooo common, and something I’ve experienced in my friend group. (@taylortruther is right when she says most breakups are the same one way or another lol.)

One partner is resentful of the other’s success, or resentful that the other’s priorities begin to evolve as new experiences unlock new goals, or feels the other’s ambitions are not worthy of pursuit, and coupled with perhaps their own struggles in the same domain, it’s easy to see where that can chip away at the other partner’s morale and faith in the relationship. I know I’m just speculating here, but I also don’t think it’s totally unfounded. (Again, because a) I’m picking up what she’s putting down and b) it happens to sooooooo many women even among us dull normals.)

With all the pointed mentions about how much Taylor feels supported in her current relationship and how she in turn loves to offer the same show of support to not only her partner but other loved ones, how she’s stepped out more in the last year to a whole host of events, how she’s mentioned feeling like she locked herself away for years and she’s just proud of her partner and happy she can show up for him even if the chaos around it is unsettling, it paints a picture of what perhaps was happening before last year.

To feel like you’re all alone in carrying the weight of the relationship (or burden of it), of twisting yourself into knots to accommodate the other person’s boundaries (or insecurities) but not feeling reciprocity for your own has to be so painful. (The idea that it may have been even darker and to have a partner not only be unreceptive to your own needs but even perhaps resentful/dismissive/belittling of them is even more painful to think of. I guess we’ll find out when TTPD comes out if that was the case, too.)

At a certain point, that lack of acknowledgement will force your hand to be able to reclaim yourself. And it feels like the further removed Taylor in particular is from it, the more she moves from being sad about the life she felt she gave up by leaving, to angry at the life she felt she was giving up by staying. Especially being in a relationship now where it seems like everything comes much easier, where she can be open about the person she’s with and show up for them, all the stuff that seemed as challenging as climbing Mount Everest in her past is nothing more than a molehill at best in her current life.

TL;DR: I don’t think it’s privacy that inherently spells doom for a celebrity relationship like this; it’s the mutual support and respect that does. If Taylor had felt that in the later years of her previous relationship, I think we could be seeing a different, though not necessarily unfulfilled, person right now in 2024, who’d be happy on tour but whose personal life would look a little different. But it seems like by losing that support she lost parts of herself, and we’ve seen her reclaim that in spades in the last year, and perhaps to degrees she didn’t even realize she could from before all the Bad Stuff started happening in her young adulthood.

I know this was extremely long-winded and unnecessary, especially about total strangers we only know through scraps fed through the media, but I just always bristle at this idea that issues like these boil down to “personality differences,” as though one person wants to live in a city and the other on a remote island, or some shit like that. The whole support (and gender tbh) issue is one that’s just very close to my heart because again, I have seen it play out with so many of my friends in long term relationships and marriages and I just think people in relationships (and women in particular in some circles) deserve better than to feel like they’re being, well, tolerated.

[korixae]

my sister’s trying to finish doctor who before november 25th right and she’s fucking power watching, like she was literally on s10 LAST WEEK and tonight she’s just started s13. she’s been getting up at 6:30 everyday to watch it before school and then stealing the tv from the moment she gets home to the moment she goes to sleep. i haven’t seen her or the sofa in months

[pyrriax]

ANYWHO goodnight tumblr i'll be back on the art grind tomorrow i think 🙏

[robiinurheart33]

Losing my mind cause

I HIT 1 FOLLOWER??!?!?!

Jk we got to triple digits 100 followers babyeee!!!!

Absolutely crazy. Insane. Could not have done anything I do on this blog without you guys. Giving y’all all the love rn

[ikeasharksss]

facing the horrors (applying for summer stuff)

[pastel-rights]

asta.

darling.

dearest.

beloved.

get this man AWAY from me.