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Aaaaaaah look at all these things I will have for the Montreal Comics Festival!!

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Les livres sont arrivés!!

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Hi all, help a self pub writer out?

Hugo voting season is upon us. While I know that the public reputation of the awards is Big Yikes these days, I still want to take this time to inform everyone that I do have one work eligible for best novel, which is my book Skin Deep!

Please, if anyone has some space left over on their ballot, think of me! And if you like queer supernatural romantic suspence in general, check it out at https://blanchetmarie.com/en/books/skin-deep/

It’s got:

- Selkies

- A hot couple that saw you across the bar and like your vibe (in a poly way)

- Mysteries

- A murder investigation

- Magic

- Bi yearning (tm)

- Closed door romance

- Excessive romanticization of the St. Lawrence River

- AND it’s available in either french or english! (Both were written at the same time but I consider the french version the OG because, among other things, I could do more interesting stuff with character voice in french AND in french the St. Lawrence gets a special word to indicate it’s not a mere river, it’s a fleuve. Justice for the St. Lawrence!)

Also, if anyone else has a novel that is eligible and would like some publicity, I have some space left on my own voting ballot AND I have access to the giga excel spreadsheet a decent amount of the votership uses to track what books are eligible, so I could totally add yours on there :) :) self-pub solidarity heck yeah

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A reminder that I have a webcomic over at @kalipso-webcomic !!! The first volume is about two gladiators who get kidnapped by aliens…

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It is becoming increasingly likely to me that I will have to draw a goddamned map for Married to the Evil Wizard King (free to read here!), and that this map is going to have to include a goddamned mathematically-precise 42-points star polygon because my goddamned Evil Wizard King can't just open one goddamned portal to the magic realm, nooooo, homeboy has to open 42 portals the size of a needle's prick and pluck down his castle right in the middle of the thus created geometric shape of ley lines... 🤦‍♀️ 

(With his evil Bolton Strid-esque deadly little stream -- which he calls a moat even though that's not what a moat is -- running right along the circle where all the lines cross, of course. Don't swim in there you'll mega-die.)

Fortunately, I have found out not only that there is a wiki for MATH, but also I have found this very specialized shape generator lol 

So there's that. I won't have to freehand that bitch or figure out how to make it in Illustrator, my most beloathed of softwares

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UGh when I talk about barrier to entry in book fairs, this is what I mean: 

The region where I was born, where my parents live, have a local book fair where they want to hype up their local authors. Cool! But their website never gets updated, and the facebook page only VERY seldom. So last year when I FINALLY managed to find out the dates of the festival, it was already too late to register (and anyway they answered my FB message months later). 

This year I decide okay, so I'll check way in advance... usually the festival is in november. I check their website, it still only lists last year's dates. I go on facebook.... omg they actually made one (1) post where they say the dates for this year, and absolutely no other info. I go back to the website, I think surely there's a section where authors can register.... oh yay there's a page... it says "to book a table, click here" and no other indication of the year or dates of the event, but okay fine they probably don't want to update the page every year. I click... a goddamn word document downloads??? okay, so I check that out.... "please fill this document and MAIL is to us along with a check for the fees. No later than september 1st or your application will be rejected" 

Fucking hell at least update your website front page to say the dates of the 2023 festival BEFORE september first, if that's the deadline to register!!! (I remember now that this is the shit I fell for last time too, by the time the website OR facebook page had been updated we were well into october)

and this is like. Literally the only book fair I ever found that allows self-published authors to book a table. There was one other one where you could get a few hours at the self-publishing table IF you were from the region and had published YOUR FIRST BOOK in the last two years. EVERY other book fair has either zero online presence, or requires you to be with a big publisher. People keep asking me why I don't table at Québec or Montréal.... well, shit, I wish I could! This is why I stick to tabling at comics festival smh 

oh and also shout out to the festival in the next province over where I emailed them to figure out how I could register, and they sent me a VERY condescending message about how they were proud to be the province's only french book fair and so rejected applicants who only had english books out of principle. Huh okay so did you see the "french" tab on my website? Where my books are listed in french because it's my mother tongue???

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Them ❤

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Books ! You want them, we got them!!

Please visit my website www.blanchetmarie.com/en or check out @blam-marie to find out more about my books :)

Ps: some of them are free to read online 😲

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It’s time for shitposting friday!

Male love interests of my novels (WIPS and published ones), ranked in order of “Oh babygirl, there is something wrong with you”

7. Heka “Deer Knight” (Married to the Evil Wizard King) : Actually doing pretty well? Is a construct created like two months ago, didn’t have time to pick up a lot of trauma yet. The most stable guy in the lineup, an absolute pillar of mental health and zen. 1/10

6. Caspian Sterlet (Space Academia) : LMAO. Lol. Messed up but in a “the author thinks this is funny” sort of way. 2/10 absolute white man failing up mediocrity and the best part is that he’s aware of it.

5. Adrien (Skin Deep) : You guys watched Leverage? He’s like Eliot Spencer level of fucked up, but like pretty stable on average. 4/10 traumatized but he’s acting normal about it.

4. Lie Ingelf (Crimson Vines) : oooooh baby. Now here’s some crunchy trauma, but compared to some others on this list he’s handling it fine. 5/10 He and Adrien are having a beer and absolutely not talking about it

3. Zeta Greenshank (Space Academia) : Oh babygirl there is something wrong with you! (Affectionate) (Compliment). Not in terms of trauma but in terms of he thinks he’s the main character of the x-files and he refuses to be normal about it. Daniel Jackson pre-SG1 core. Absolute chaos gremlin man 10/10 funniest dude at the party

2. Eltanin “Evil Wizard King” Darkmore (Married to the Evil Wizard King) : whoops fucked up backstory and 1000 years of self-imposed solitude to escape a curse go brrrr. Has feelings and doesn’t know what to do about it. 10/10 would bully again.

1. Archibald “Jim” Montgomery (Four Liars in space) : Absolute poor little meow meow, incredibly fucked up, trauma up the wazoo and he’s NOT dealing with it, was once described as “now there was a man that needed to be buckled into a harness and told what to do for an hour or so. He looked like he desperately yearned to escape the pressure of inhabiting his own brain.” 11/10 no notes

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Hey you all know what’s cool?

A free to read scifi romance with neurodivergent protagonists, that’s what’s cool!

How about you check out Four Liars (in space) if you have a minute? It’s set during a space cold war with a space 70s ~retrofuturism aesthetic and it’s a story about main character Chuck, an adhd himbo sunshine gay, who convinces his bff Bee, an autistic disaster lesbian with a special interest in radios, to get fake married so the Space Canadian Military they work for can give them a sweet free house.

But then! Chuck meets his new superior officer ✨Major Archibald James Montgomery✨, who is basically like a mix between an autistic mister Darcy and a James Bond with anxiety, who has a deep and not at all suspicious curiosity regarding the secrets of the Space Canadian Military. Also sometimes he forgets which accents he’s using and he doesn’t seem to know what his own job entails, but that’s super normal and not at all something to be worried about! What’s important here is that he has a nice ass and Chuck’s in love, okay? Priorities, jeez!

And then there is also Iris, The Most Beautiful Woman In The World (according to Bee), who is a tailor who does normal tailor stuff and also is not suspicious at all and what do you mean, the book is named FOUR liars in space??? Anyway I’m sure this will not at any point become relevant. She and Bee are dating 😁

(Meanwhile, Chuck wishes he could be dating Archie but Bee said something something your boss and something something our careers or whatever. He wasn’t really listening, he was thinking about Archie’s ass, again.)

If you think this sounds like a romcom and also a comedy and a fun scifi queer romp that is right up your alley, don’t wait and check out Four Liars (in space) on Tapas today! Updates every week on friday!

Also check out exclusive content for the book on Patreon or have a look at my website for more fun novels and comics! I have a polyam supernatural murder mystery/romance called Skin Deep on sale right now!

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An illustration inspired by one of the (beautiful) images in the Ballet series by Katie Ponder, which I saw in vignette size and thought “oh, the tutu is a clock! Brilliant!” and then I saw in a bigger size and realized that the tutu was not, in fact, a clock, which felt like a missed opportunity. https://www.katieponderillustration.com/ 

 Also inspired by the scene in Martin Scorcese’s movie Goncharov (1973) where Katya remembers training to be a ballerina, back in Moscow. The quote is by Tolstov, and is the one quoted to Katya by Sofia in Goncharov during the church scene (although I’ve always thought that her dialogue in that one scene was a little hard to hear so I had to go back and enable subtitles to be able to really figure out what quote it was!)

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Summer is almost upon us! Looking for your next beach read?

How about picking up SKIN DEEP, a queer polyamory romance / supernatural murder mystery that will charm even the most reticent of readers!

—

Three times over the summer, the lifeless body of a Selkie was found dumped in the river. Naked, and with a missing pelt.

Louison is sent by her clan to investigate those murders and visit the Selkie’s brand of justice upon the one responsible. But soon enough she meets two charming strangers who everyone in town seems to be falling in love with… including herself.

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Paperback available on Amazon and Ebook available everywhere that sells them! Check out blanchetmarie.com/en for full blurb and details

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Me: Skin Deep is a stand-alone novel, which is great because that means people can buy and read it without waiting for a sequel or anything

Also me:

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One Selkie. Two strangers. Three murders.

The small town of St. Adalbert Sur Mer is hiding a dark secret.

Three times during the summer, the lifeless body of a Selkie was dumped into the river. Naked, and with a missing pelt.

Louison is sent by her clan to investigate these murders and catch the killer, but her mission derails when she meets two charming strangers whom everyone in town seems to be falling in love with - including herself. Torn between her rising attraction towards Gabrielle and Adrien and keeping the secret of her origins, Louison must dodge tourists, deadly poachers and wildlife protection agents in a wild quest to find her sibling’s murderer - before he kills again.

Skin Deep is a queer polyamorous story where everyone is hiding something and nothing is as simple as it seems. 

Now available for pre-orders in both ENGLISH and FRENCH

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SKIN DEEP

is now available for pre-orders!!

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À FLEUR DE PEAU

Maintenant disponible en pré-ventes!!

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HELL YEAHHHH the pre-order page of Skin Deep is live!! I still have a lot of work to do (marketing material, ebook formatting, creating the pre-order page on other retailer websites and also page layout for the french version) but things are looking good!!!