#writers don't ask for much

[highdreaming]

I just had a great idea: I'm gonna wait till my latest work gets at least 5 reblogs before posting the following work.

Let's see what happens 😋

[luminique]

hii hii lumii !! I ADORE your interpretation of lighter so far— I love him smm

anyways, I hope my req is okay but I was wondering if you could do a comfort fic ? maybe reader has been a lil distant lately and just in some feels and he gives them a lil talk after being blown off here and there to find out they were having issues w their mental health and not feeling good enough and maybe he’s caught off guard because reader is usually so out going and always has a smile on their face and to see them feel so small makes him wanna take care of them so much and gives them so much reassurance and gentle kisses and cuddles 👉👈

I hope it’s okay !! I’ve been in the feels lately

hi anonn !! im gonna answer this one first because i've been in the feels too and i think we all deserve some reassurance, especially after all of the sad lighter story.

i don't take lighter for the kind to be too intrusive. that's not to say that he doesn't notice the way you're staring off into the distance, as if always having something on your mind. or the way you left earlier than usual for the SoC's nightly hangouts around the fire. or the way you had just been distancing yourself from him.

maybe you just needed a day, or two, and so he waited. he waited, and waited, but it just seemed like it was getting worse. he was beginning to get anxious, coming up with possibilities and worse case scenarios. even his favorite grape-flavored lollipop couldn't reduce the anxiety that was building up inside of him as he followed after you one night.

he shook off his nerves, spending quite a bit of time at the front door of your lodging while in blazewood. mentally practicing what to say so that he wouldn't make things even worse than they already were. one step, two deep breaths, three knocks on your door. he cleared his voice, usually confident and smooth but now carried a hint of worry in it.

"hey, uh... everything alright?"

you could hear the ruffling of his jacket, the soft metal clinks of his gloves. he didn't dare open the door until you allowed him to, so he waited, just like he always had. "lighter? yeah, everything's fine," was that a slight crack in your voice? no, no, he had to have imagined that. he knew it was wrong but he had waited long enough. he turned the knob, opening the door just a little bit but still not walking in.

"you don't have to tell me everything. just... know that i'll be here, waiting for you." he wasn't the best at comforting, nor was he good at even navigating these sorts of things but at the very least, he wanted you to have the knowledge that you had him. it didn't take long for you to finally get up, opening the door that separated the both of you. you looked so... different. the light absent from your eyes, the edges of your lips normally turned upwards but now they weren't. if he couldn't say what you wanted to hear, maybe you'd understand through his actions.

his arms wrapped around you. squeezing you just a little tighter than usual as he somehow made the both of you waddle backwards into your room. he had kept his gloves in his pants, not wanting to hurt you even more with them. his embrace was a familiar warmth, like the fire during particularly cold nights in the outer ring. you could hear his heart racing, was it from nervousness? anxiety? fear? even he didn't know.

he took this as an opportunity to place soft kisses on the top of your head but then stopped all of a sudden. he turned around to the door and realized that it was still wide open. he kicked it close with his foot, feeling embarrassed at the fact that he had to stop because of something so minor. he wanted you to feel safe, to have privacy, to be able to breathe without others barging in. technically, he had invaded this space of yours but you were slowly melting into him, as if you had been waiting for this too.

every passing second hugging you, kissing you, it made his own worries disappear. he hoped the same for you as you slowly spoke to him about your own problems. as he listened, he'd pause every once in while to give you a deadpan stare. not because he was making fun of you or anything, but it genuinely baffled him how you could say such things about yourself. you felt so insecure about yourself and your image, about being with him, being with the SoC. he had to physically stop himself from just blurting "i love you" every time you said something so degrading.

instead, he chose to wait and listen. his calloused hands gently caressing yours, his lips pressing kisses on the side of your head as you nuzzled into him. he loves you for who you are, the person in front of him, not the image that you had made yourself out to be in your mind. but he waits for you to let it all out before he says anything else. he will wait, he will listen, he will always be there for you.

[muffinlance]

Do you get the impression the live action is treating us like utter morons?? Like I thought that making it aimed at an older audience would open the doors for more subtle story telling, but no, they're just using monologues to tell us eveything! Like in the second episode Katara's like 'oh his power isn't that he's the avatar, it's that he ~connects~ to people'. Girl we're not idiots we can see that!! And the first episode with Aang's goddawful 'I don't want this responsibility' monologue

THIS, YES. The word that keeps coming to mind is definitely "subtlety". The show for literal children? Had it. The remake for adults? Not so much.

[erinwantstowrite]

Erin HELP. How do you get out of writer’s block. Please. I’m stuck and I have NO idea how to continue on and I’ve already rewritten said scene twice 😭😭

i have to break it to you now... writer's block is a bit of a misnomer. instead of a writer's block (or art!!) i would call it a "writer shift" or "level up," when you feel like everything you're writing is terrible, it's because you're growing as an artist! you're just seeing your art with a more critical eye, learning and adjusting. which i can probably get to another time because that's not what you asked

so!!! what is probably happening is that you don't like your outline as much as you think you do. this happens to me ALL the time. i go into a chapter thinking that i've got everything i want all set up and then i'm surprised when i procrastinate or i rewrite it several times (my record is 8 times). a good 86% of the time i end up changing my outline and trying again and it goes much better for me

if that isn't what's happening or you just REALLY like your outline, there might be another problem and here's some ideas:

go back and read your set up to that scene. you might not have given it a proper introduction/natural progression into what comes next, or you might be forgetting something

try drawing out a map of your setting and imagine your characters walking around it. there might be some white room action happening and it's bothering you

it could be something about your dialogue! try acting out your dialogue in a one person play and see if it feels natural for you to say (as in like, technicality. if you can't literally say the words then it might be hard for your reader to read) and if it feels like something your character would say

[genericpuff]

idk who needs to hear this but if you're a writer looking for a webcomic artist and the best offer you can come up with is a 50/50 split "after gaining revenue", then that's literally asking for free work just with extra steps.

like first of all (and i'm sure people are gonna fight me on this) writing a webcomic and drawing a webcomic is not a 50/50 split, a scene that took you a half hour to write will take them hours to draw so it's literally more like 30/70

but also even IF your comic gains revenue, it's still not gonna pay for that labor, there are comic projects out there that have been going on for upwards of 10 years and beyond who are still maybe only making like $30/month on their patreon... and you only wanna pay them $15 of that?

please just consider writing a novel or short stories, or doing tabletop campaigns, or pitching scripts to comic publishers, or learning to draw yourself (even if you're bad at it! webcomics are allowed to grow and evolve in their art!), or doing RP, or doing anything that will get your ideas and stories out there without being at the expense of a whole ass other human being doing the brunt of the labor for free

no matter how dedicated you are to an idea or how convinced you are that it's truly a unique one that's worth working on, none of that will pay for the labor and time and efforts of people who you're asking to work for free to make your dream a reality. They have their own dreams that they're working on too.

[bixels]

So I l’ve been getting into your ko crisis story lately (it all sounds rlly awesome btw) and i was curious - you’ve said in the tags in a previous ask that ash is comphet, so is that gonna play a major role in her character arc/journey in any way?

Yeah, the story basically covers her journey of redefining her identity as a queer Asian-American disabled woman in a sports-entertainment industry, which is a media landscape that specifically targets, exploits, and fetishizes people like her.

[starscreamingg]

Detroit Become Human and why does this game decide that the problem in society is individual people treating androids poorly because those androids are choking them out of the workforce and NOT the corporations and governments who deliberately designed the androids to do this

[stormikitty]

Cosmic Love prompt:

Danny and Damian have been engaged since they were babies. The Fentons wanted access to Lazarus water, and they made a deal with the league of assassins to get it. Danny is trans. Danny and Damian haven't seen each other since Damian was 10 (I imagine Danny is anywhere from a few months to a year younger, so Danny was either 9 or 10 at the time). They had been seeing each other twice a year the last time they saw each other. They used to have more time scheduled to spend together before Damian started training to be an assassin. They weren't getting along when they last saw each other. Danny was upset/angry that his life had been planned out for him and that he was going to be in an arranged marriage. Damian was kind of a jerk at the time (because of trauma but he was still a jerk), and he thought Danny was being a jerk too because having his whole life planned for him was all Damian knew and it didn't make sense to him to get upset about it because that's his reality that he just had to accept. Damian does care about Danny, and cares about what he wants too. But they were kids. They were upset about their situation and frustrated and angry with each other and their families. They haven't had contact with each other at all since Damian came to Gotham.

Skip forward a few years and Damian has fallen in love with his best friend, Jon. He tells his family and Jon about the arranged marriage even though it's likely not going to be a thing anymore since he has cut ties with the league.

Damian and Jon start dating.

Danny is 16 and on the run from his parents and the GIW. He only managed to escape after he had already been captured and vivisected. He goes to Gotham because it'll be harder for his parents and the GIW to find him there. He runs into Damian and Jon at a park while he's at a point in his life where he's got nothing left an he's just sad, scared, angry, lonely, and he'd just about sell what's left of his life for a hug.

[piko-rose]

Don't mind me, just making a collection of Sonic and Knuckles being together because I want more of their sibling dynamic and I love them

If anybody is wondering, I took these pictures from YouTube, NOT Paramount+. The first full episode is out for free if you wanna check it out.

Please do not tag as ship.

EDIT: Okay so apparently I can't find the full episode on YouTube anymore lol. Just wanted to put that out there in case anyone didn't know.

[logansgaar]

Watching Isaiah Bradley's mind control play out in CABNW: this is literally why Bucky kept him a goddamn secret even from Steve, after Isaiah had to fake his death to escape and live in some semblance of peace, and publicizing him without asking his permission first was a fucking dangerous thing to do to the poor man's safety what the hell were the tfawts writers thinking

[rochenn]

1. for the choose violence ask game?

1. the character everyone gets wrong

ONE THOUSAND YEARS JAIL FOR TCW WRITERS for getting that absolutely GOLDEN layup in AotC and then NOT doing jack fuck with Dooku. They looked right at Christopher Lee's deliberately nuanced portrayal in that movie (within the script's and direction's limitations which were indeed very limiting. Have I ever mentioned that George wasn't too good at writing Dooku either?) and did NOTHING. They made him a Saturday evening cartoon guy in the Saturday evening cartoon and I am inconsolable

I cannot get over how they squandered his potential!! And Asajj's by extension, too. And why do I have to cling to CW 03 for any screentime of them both even just existing in the same room? Like genuinely do we ever see them physically next to each other? They're supposed to be master and apprentice bro something went terribly wrong here!!

Also to bend this back to the fandom and to beat a dead bloated decomposing horse: Obi-Wan. Novels have been written about his fanon alter-ego so I'll just say that most people actually write him just fine until any type of relationship emerges! Ppl want to swaddle this spiritual master and veteran shock formation leader in a blanket so bad they gotta nerf him to hell so someone can take loving care of the shadow of his former self lmao

[ihearnocomplaints]

Could you write about Moon helping Y/N (who is stubborn about sleeping since they are afraid of nightmares) to sleep? Carrying them, putting them to bed, music box, blankets, cozy time, sleepy vibes. Since Moon is, well, Moon, he will probably stay awake and watch over y/n, making sure they have no bad dreams.

That was super specific, yeah... Just make my dreams come true and I'll give you this candy: 🍬 Deal?

(I'm super happy that you're super bubbly too! BUBBLY TEAM!!)

Hello! Welcome! I will be glad to fulfill your request hehe! thank you for the candy!!!

Enjoy this little drabble :] I liked writing it.

Another yawn escapes your lip. You catch Moon's flinch out of the corner of your eye. "You're tired," He grumbles. Shrugging, you go back to what you were doing before, putting pen to paper to express your creativity. You don't have any rebuttal, so you just give a noncommittal grunt.

A clawed blue hand gently plucks the pen from your hand and sets it aside. You groan and look up at the animatronic. Moon's faceplate rotates to look upright at you as he bends over you. "It's not even bedtime yet," you respond, nodding to the analogue clock on the wall.

6pm.

Moon gently traces a dark circle under your eye. "Dinner, then bed." He pulls your chair away from the desk you were sat at, making it clear that he was not going to argue. You begrudgingly stand and make your way to the kitchen.

You couldn't deny how exhausted you felt. It was difficult to walk. To even think. Of course you're tired. Yet, the mere thought of closing your eyes for even a second makes you sick to your stomach with anxiety. You could feel your chest constrict, making it harder to breathe.

Moon follows you to the kitchen, making sure you stay on task. You take a few deep breaths and rummage through the fridge. There are some leftovers that you don't really want to eat, but it's the best option for you at the moment. You open the microwave and place the food in, punching in the time to heat it up.

As you wait for your food to cook, you lean on the counter and try to ignore the way Moon watches your movements. You know you're tired and you know that your movements reflect that. You can't help the way that you yawn or how gravity seems to try to force your eyelids closed.

The beeps of the microwave make you jump, awake and aware. You pull your food out of the microwave and suck a sharp breath of air as you hold the hot dish in your hands. It wasn't your smartest move, but out of pure spite you stick to it. You can feel the way Moon rolls his eyes at your stubbornness.

You set your food down at the table and eat. Moon opts to clean the kitchen while he waits, letting you eat in peace. When you're finished, you take your dishes to the kitchen and clean them on the sink. You hesitate to leave.

"Are you ready?" Moon holds his hand out to you, and you stare at it before slowly shaking your head. Your nerves get the best of you. You know what's waiting for you when you go to sleep. You don't want to deal with that anymore. Not tonight. You can't handle it tonight.

Moon sighs, pinching where the bridge of his nose would be were he human. "C'mon, I'll carry you." He kneels to your level and holds his arms out to you. You know you're not getting away with refusing to sleep tonight, so you let out a sigh and hesitantly step into his arms. You hold onto him as he picks you up, securing you in his arms.

You rest your head on Moon's shoulder as he carries you to your room, feeling the anxiety bubble within you. He hums gently, rubbing your back to soothe you for a moment. When he gets to your room, he carries you in and gently shuts the door behind the two of you. It's dark.

Moon turns on the lamp that rests on your nightstand and pulls back the covers of your bed. You cling to him as he bends to set you down. "Come now, don't be like this," His raspy voice calls as he runs his fingers through your hair. "I know that you are scared, but it's okay. I am here. I won't leave your side." With his reassurance, you slowly let go of him and lay back on the bed.

Moon's optics brighten with delight now that you are cooperating. He covers you up with plenty of blankets, making sure you're nice and comfortable. You take a few breaths and let your eyes fall shut. The bed dips as Moon takes a seat right on the end of it where he usually sits.

The gentle lullaby of his internal music box begins, and you feel yourself slowly drifting off to sleep. It's comforting knowing that Moon is there to watch over you in your sleep. You feel... safe. He begins to quietly hum along to the music box and you finally drift off to sleep.

You don't have any nightmares that night, nor a hint of a bad dream. There's just warmth and comfort.

[chaoswillcalmusdown]

is it just me or is there a recent(past few years) increase in people just. caring so much about what actors think ?

like, yes, sure, it can be interesting, but i don't actually give a flying fuck. their opinions don't matter more bc they're acting out the script.

actors are not writers. actors are not the source text. actors do not carry the correct answers to their character's future or inner life

[stormyoceans]

Sleepover ask -

PuenTalay headcanon, at Properly Old. Not forties, not fifties. But like... 70+.

😘 go!

DIDN'T EXACTLY PLAN TO CRY MY HEART OUT ON THIS FINE FRIDAY NIGHT BUT NO YEAH I CAN DO THAT SURE WHY NOT IT'S GOOD IT'S FINE IM FINE IM DEFINITELY NOT ALREADY TEARING UP OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT

basically this is the thing im sensitive about. so i took some of the headcanons i already had about this and tried to write them a little bit better, but i feel like they might be..both too specific and yet not specific enough at the same time ;;;;;;; still, i hope they can be at least an interesting read!!!!

SO HERE GOES NOTHING

it feels kinda silly to start with this but. they have matching pill organizers: blue for talay, pink for puen;

talay has diabetes and high blood pressure (too many sweets), puen has arthritis;

talay also has to go back wearing glasses because of presbyopia, while puen somehow still manages to have better eyesight than him;

don't ask me why, but i always loved the idea of puen eventually starting a garden in their yard (i blame the pink trumpet tree and the lotuses) and now not even his aching bones can keep him away from his veggies and his flowers;

when they were younger, puen was always the one getting up late and trying to keep talay in bed, but as they grew older their habits somehow switched: puen would usually wake up at dawn, and after staring at talay snugged closely against him and marveling at how their bodies still fit together perfectly after all those years (soft paunches and weary muscles and fine bones and all), he would throw on a dressing gown and slip into a pair of rubber boots to go putter around the garden;

talay would wake up some time later and slowly make breakfast before calling puen back inside to eat together;

when puen's arthritis gets bad, talay gently holds puen's hands in his own and rubs the thin, speckled, slightly gnarled skin with ointment, before pressing a kiss on top of them;

puen still loves to take baths, loves to sink in the hot water with all his creaking joints and let himself relax for a while. talay can't join him in the tub anymore, which is a pity, but he's always there to help puen out, to wrap a towel around him and pat him dry;

despite his worries, puen still has a full head of hair, but it's all gray now. talay has less gray hair but more lines on his face, especially around the eyes (puen loves them);

technically they're both retired, but puen still writes from time to time, especially children's books, and talay has learned he actually enjoys painting quite a lot (and even sold a couple of his works);

im fully convinced they would adopt a kid some time after the our skyy's events, but by now the kid would have grown up and started their own family, and while of course they're very close and puentalay are wonderful grandparents (or even great grandparents!!!!!!), not long after their kid went to college, puen started to brought in stray cats and never really stopped after that (talay did try to stop it the very first time, but it's hard to say no to puen, especially when he's holding a tiny kitten he just saved from the streets) [also no matter how many cats they had throughout the years, they all somehow fell in love with talay. talay always jokes that it's because puen is a cat himself];

one morning, talay gets out on the porch to call puen for breakfast and suddenly he can't speak. there’s a painful buzzing in his head and a strange sagging feeling on his face, and when he tries to call puen's name his mouth doesn't cooperate. somewhere in the distance, their new stray, a tabby who loves to follow puen around in the garden, is meowing almost desperately. the last thing talay remembers is puen's pale face and puen's arms wrapped around him;

talay's had a very mild stroke, but thankfully there was no damage. with some rehabilitation and some adjustments of his meds, he is back walking and talking and cooking and painting like before. puen gets stricter with their diet tho, and he insists they go for a walk every day. in the past, he had sometimes joked around pretending to feel sick or to forget about stuff just to tease talay. now, he doesn't find it funny anymore. they aren't able to talk about their fears, but they don't need to speak out loud to understand each other. some nights they just spend hours kissing, slow and purposeful and certain, focusing on what makes them alive: the cadence of their breaths, the tremble of their bellies, the clutch of their fingers;

they don't really talk much about the alternate universe anymore, not because they don't remember it or no longer think about the people they met there, but because they've built a life and a family in their own, and they like to believe that so did everyone on the other side too. sometimes tho, when it's late and they're lying in bed together, fingers entwined and foreheads touching, talay would asks "in our next life, do you think we’ll find each other again?”, and every single time puen would whisper fiercely, holding talay so tightly it almost hurt, "i found you across universes, i'll find you across lives too";

there was a time when they both thought they would spend the rest of their lives alone. then, they found each others

[not-poignant]

Hi Pia

Feel free to ignore if this is unwelcome, but have you ever thought about publishing traditionally to sublimate your income and draw in new readers? I know you've self published two books already and that you didn't feel like they did very well, but maybe the experience would be different if someone else was in charge of marketing and all the other business stuff?

Obviously everyone's experience is different but as an author myself who's published both trad and self, traditional publishing has been a completely different experience and has allowed me to focus more on writing because I'm not the one responsible for advertising/marketing/financing anymore.

There are a ton of literary agents nowadays that want to represent diverse and lgbtqia+ fiction, some of them even in Australia.

Websites like Reedsy, AgentQuery and Jerichowriters have extensive directories to find literary agents.

(This is lengthy folks so I'm putting the other two parts (and my response) under a read more! Also putting it under a read more so the anon can skip my response since it's very 'here's all the reasons I can't do this' and they just might not want to read that, lmao)

(continued -> )

Trad publishing houses have better resources for marketing and helping authors get more attention than any self publishing website could.

Obviously most authors, unless they're really prolific, don't get a huge advance (the average is between $1000 - $5000) but getting your foot in the door or on the traditional publishing "ladder' so to speak can have a huge benefit for your serials. Because it gives you more exposure. Plus it's in the agent's best interest to find a publishing house that accepts stories that contain darker themes and negotiate the best deal for you.

For some reason places like Amazon and the like accept and keep up more "dark" books that are traditionally published than they do with self pub ones. Maybe because they have more respect or leniency for publishing houses? I have no idea. But you could use this to your advantage. I think I remember you mentioning that writing novels felt quite isolating to you? But you already have 2 completed novels (3 if you count the fae one) that you could potentially revisit or rewrite to your liking and get them represented by agents.

You already have a loyal readership and that's very attractive to trad pub houses and agents.

As well as trad publishing, you could also make s simple website that doesn't require much maintenance. It could be just a landing page that says something about you and then has links to your tumblr and patreon where you're more active. That way you increase the chances of getting your serials found by additional readers and also come across looking more "professional". Not that you're not professional now. You are and I admire you greatly, but the unfortunate reality is a lot of people still judge by appearances and some will be more drawn to an author's website than a tumblr page, at least at first. So I think having a simple landing page would open up another door for you to benefit from.

Trad publishing is work but definitely not as much as self publishing, and you can continue on with your serials. Getting an agent can be time consuming but I personally believe the pros outweigh the cons and I also believe that your stories would be a huge treasure to the growing lgbtqia+ market. Seriously there needs to be more!

These are just suggestions and thoughts and like I said before, feel free to ignore. But I know you've mentioned wanting to grow your career in the past and I genuinely believe you can do so with some of these pathways.

~

Okay, my response. Posting this because firstly I think the suggestions could work very well for other authors reading this! And I hope they take the advice to note, and secondly because I haven't talked about this for a hot minute so let's talk about it again.

So the TL;DR is yes I have considered traditional publishing. I have actually been traditionally published in short stories, poetry, and also had my art published on covers and re: interior illustrations. But my Fae Tales works got soundly rejected when I sent them to publishing houses that were doing open calls for that sort of material. I've never heard back from an agent and I never expect to, heh.

~

Now for a bit more detail

I have been traditionally published before (it's how I got my writing out there long before I ever wrote serials), and yes, I have approached publishers with my writing since then. In fact Tradewinds was written for the traditional publishing market, and it got soundly rejected, and then shelved. The reasons it was rejected ran the gamut from 'I don't like that these fae eat humans no one is going to relate to these people' (while the editor then went on to publish vampire books idk) to 'There's too much worldbuilding you can't expect readers to keep up with this' to 'Your stories are too long, no one wants to read characters talking all the time.'

Meanwhile in my online serials I was getting feedback like 'my favourite chapters are the ones where the characters just sit in a room and talk' lol.

The traditional publishing world is also not quite as utopian for most authors as you make it seem. I'm friends with a lot of authors who are traditionally published because that's the world I came from, and unless they're solely in KU and doing generic rapid release formula romances, none of them are making that much money. Certainly not enough to live off. It may have been that you were very fortunate, anon, but I know hundreds more traditionally published authors that left trad pub to make money, and I know about 5 in trad pub personally who are making enough to live off of.

Only one of those is really writing what she truly loves to write, and even then, publishing houses have refused to commit to her entire fantasy series (and she's regularly in 'Top 10/20 Women Fantasy Authors in the World' lists) and forced her to finish the series prematurely. Something I never ever have to worry about in self pub.

The reality is that in trad pub these days, you're still in charge of most of your marketing unless you're one of the big earners for the publishing house. In fact I'd be expected to keep even more of a social media and marketing presence than I do now. I don't do almost any of the things you're supposed to do as an author in marketing to be appealing. I don't have a Facebook author account. I don't have an Instagram author account. I don't maintain or regularly send out newsletters (which automatically puts me in the like 0.05% of authors who make money doing this lmao).

I don't know if you ever have looked that closely into what m/m publishing houses expect from most of their authors, but the newsletter swaps, cover releases, review circuits, interview circuits and more are fucking grueling. We're expected to be responsible for our advertising and our marketing to a fairly massive degree. Some traditionally published in m/m still have to pay for their release blitzes out of pocket. These publishing houses, by and large, do not offer advances. You say most authors don't get large advances. I don't think most authors in this arena get offered advances at all unless they're somehow miraculously acquired by a Big 4.

We're expected to have an already established social media presence because of that (that's why it's so appealing to publishers that we have social media presences already, anon, so we can market, they can save money, and we still see only a minimal cut from the royalties).

And you still have to focus on your finances, because publishing houses like Dreamspinner straight up didn't pay a whole bunch of authors for so long they destroyed careers. They still haven't paid some of their authors. And they're still running a business and people still buy their books.

Trad publishing houses have better resources for marketing and helping authors get more attention than any self publishing website could.

This is true if a) they're a big publishing house and not an indie publisher of which most LGBTQIA+ publishing houses are and b) they're willing to use them on you.

The authors that make the most money get the most resources. If they believe you're going to earn back your advance and move thousands or tens of thousands of units per book, then yes, you will get those resources.

I have been told so many times now - even from friends who run publishing houses, including one who works at HarperCollins - that my work will never be mainstream enough to have broad appeal. They literally told me not to keep trying re: trad pub, because that was my dream for a long time. These folks have given me rock solid advice in the past, it's one of the reasons I'm doing so well now via Patreon + Ream. But they were like (paraphrasing) 'you don't write 60-80k romances and you don't want to and that's not your strength anyway, you're multi-genre which makes you hard to market, you write psychological and literary trauma recovery which is hard to market, you write character studies which are hard to market, publishing houses often don't commit to series anymore if the first two don't move units and if they pulled the plug you'd be contractually obliged to never finish that series until your contract was up.' I could go on, but it was like yeah...actually. Fair.

For some reason places like Amazon and the like accept and keep up more "dark" books that are traditionally published than they do with self pub ones. Maybe because they have more respect or leniency for publishing houses?

They do, but most publishing houses want very formulaic dark romance which is not what I write.

I have a 300k omegaverse slowburn that still hasn't had any penetrative sex in it, anon. Publishing houses don't want that. They don't expect anyone will wait 4 full length novels to get to literally a single penetrative sex scene.

But you already have 2 completed novels (3 if you count the fae one) that you could potentially revisit or rewrite to your liking and get them represented by agents.

If I rewrote them to my liking, trad pub wouldn't want them. They'd be too long! I think agents etc. take one look at me and go 'oh god, no thank you!' I'm not an easy sell, by any means.

Plus I'm very e.e about all of that with the knowledge that they then give me only about 10-15% of the royalties on the sales, vs. self-pub where I get around 70%, or subscription where I around 80% of it. When someone subscribes to me, they don't have to worry about 85-90% of their subscription fee going to a publishing house. I don't have to think about how many thousands and thousands of books I'd have to sell to make the same amount that I do now via subscription.

As well as trad publishing, you could also make s simple website that doesn't require much maintenance.

If it was that simple, I'd be doing it. I don't mean this in a facetious way, I mean it in a: I've made a lot of websites, in fact I run one at the moment not connected to my writing (I've been running it for so long it's now in its 20s and can probably has a driver's license). I find it so tedious that I barely remember to check in on it. But forgetting about it means there's always maintenance to keep up with when I get back to it.

Running websites is simpler than it used to be, but it's still not simple. There's hosting and hosting costs, there's server changes, there's back-end maintenance etc. I'm considering it for down the track, but there's a reason I decided to go the route of Patreon over my own site. There are authors (like Christopher Hopper) who actually do subscription through their own domain, but it's a lot of work.

Even placeholder sites are still work. They need updating, details change, story titles changing etc. Maintaining my Patreon + Ream About pages is enough, they're always both a little out of date, lol.

Not that you're not professional now.

Oh no, I mean from a 'traditional publisher looking at me to see what kind of candidate I am' I'm really not though. Like I said, I don't have the newsletter (100 subscribers who get one newsletter a year is not really a newsletter), I don't have the Facebook/Tiktok/Insta/Twitter/Bluesky/Threads accounts, etc. I write multi-genre across multiple steam levels, and I'm allergic to writing serials shorter than 150k. One of my best performing original serials was an 800k contemporary story with no sex in it but a lot of BDSM. It can't be marketed as clean or sweet, it's not high steam, an entire chapter is 'boy saves snail from rain.' Also he was cruel to animals, so not exactly what I'd call a sympathetic main.

And yet that story did so well for me via Patreon + Ream, because people want the kinds of stories that publishing houses generally don't want and I happen to be writing them.

Trad publishing is work but definitely not as much as self publishing, and you can continue on with your serials. Getting an agent can be time consuming but I personally believe the pros outweigh the cons and I also believe that your stories would be a huge treasure to the growing lgbtqia+ market. Seriously there needs to be more!

Anon I just literally do not believe an agent would want to represent me. I have 0% belief in that. Not from a self-deprecating angle but from a 'I am not a good bet for the trad market' perspective. From a 'I have so many friends who are trad pubbed authors who stare at me like I'm insane for writing serials as long as I do' perspective. From a 'professionals in the industry have told me it's amazing I'm doing so well in serials because there's no way they'd take a risk on what I'm doing' perspective. From a 'just because it's queer and diverse doesn't mean it hits literally any other thing a trad pub is looking for' perspective. I've been doing this for 10 years. There are agents who represent work similar to mine who know what I'm doing and wouldn't touch me with a ten foot pole. They're not missing out on a trick, they know I'm not broad appeal, and they're right.

Also the only way I'd have the energy to manage trad pub is by quitting serials. And honestly, I never found trad pub all that much fun while I was doing it for non-novel stuff. It was fine, and it is nice to have my stuff out there, but it was a ton of admin and a lot of going back and forth between people who really only care about marketing a product, and that's great and what they excel at! But I'm too disabled to turn this job into something crushing just to potentially make more money, I'd rather just quit and go back onto a full Disability Pension. I can't see any way I still get to write the stories I want to write, in the way that I write them, and be remotely appealing to a single reputable trad pub or agent.

Also *gestures to everything in this article*

[inseasofgreen]

ghost!!!!

would it be a good thing or a bad thing to simp for zemorri? i feel like i should be conflicted about him, but i am instead simply biased.

anyways, use this as an excuse to give us zemorri lore pls.

thanks :)

Ayy!! My comfiest writer!!

Honestly I wake up everyday asking the same thing. He's not an outright evil character, but he does bring a lot of questions about morals and what is right and what is wrong. Specially in his case when there is no real winning for anyone, at least in book 1. How it unfolds in later books is honestly a mystery to even me. For once I don't have a clear definitive path with my writing, which is exciting!! For the most part. God Zemorri and Sciosa are going to give me a run for my money ripp

But on to some Zemorri lore!!

I was going to go on about some of the more light hearted things, his name, his dragon bond, etc. but I feel the need to dive a bit deeper. Let's go with his claim to the Vultis throne.

Zemorri was raised as a bastard, believed to be the son of a disgraced dragon rider who attempted to betray the Good Emperor Mikath, Zemorri's real father, and tip the odds to the Usurper Xorulth favor. Zevetta actually wasn't told who to claim was Zemorri's father, only that she was to protect him at all costs and prepare him for the day he would have to reclaim his throne. So Zevetta came up with that lie on her own. Knowing that Zemorri would be better received if the man who fathered him died fighting for the Usurper and also who Zevetta could've logically had the proximity to conceive with. So not only has Zemorri lived a lie his whole life, he's done so while being in close proximity to the Usurper.

Zemorri and his mom have played a very dangerous game. Zevetta getting her husband to talk to the Usurper and basically talk Zemorri up while Zemorri is off doing all these "great" deeds in the King's name. We're not even going to go into the fact that his stepfather let Zemorri be raised with his true born sisters.

I should also mention that Zemorri as the imperial champion ranks above the whole military, his stepfather included. He only has to answer to the Emperor. The crown prince too, but that's more of a case by case basis tbh. So him, already plotting and scheming from a young age to claim the throne, mixed with his rank in court, as well as going to Nivra? Simply put, shit's going down in Nivra.

Oh, and a bonus. Zemorri's dragon Indiss is actually a wild dragon. He doesn't listen to the Zrato like one bred, hatched, and raised dragon would. He's also bigger, like x2 the usual dragon Zrato's ride. Indiss also is just a little freak in general, being as his usual breed is quite colorful with patterns on them and are mean. Indiss however is white as snow and doesn't eat everyone and thing he comes into contact with.

Zemorri is going to be either well loved or absolutely despised by anyone who reads POTO and they'll be no in between honestly lmaooo

Tagging the POTO Tag List because yes.

@lord-fallen @inkingfireplace @rhikasa @leahnardo-da-veggie @satohqbanana

@real-fragments @the-inkwell-variable @tildeathiwillwrite @fromthenortheast @heycerulean

@sonnetery @wyked-ao3