blue_keyboard

Writing | Fanfic | Doomed and Dizzy Blue (she/her)

[bluekeyboardwrites]

I saw that after smoke signals you're retiring!?! From the fandom or from fan fiction? Also would you ever try to trad publish a version of smoke signals or an original book?

Hi! I have loved every moment of writing Smoke Signals, even the difficult ones. I’m entering a phase of my career where I really need to give my academic work the amount of attention it deserves, and it seems like a natural door closing as Smoke Signals has also reached the end of the story I set out to tell.

I don’t think I’m retiring from fandom as a person, and I don’t want to make some grand declaration that I’ll never write fanfiction again. But after Smoke Signals, I do feel like I need to step back from writing at this pace and with this level of commitment. This story has been such a huge part of my life for FOUR YEARS, and I’m so proud of it, but it also took a lot of time, energy, emotion, and brain space. I think after such a big project, it's healthy to take a break and try something new.

As for traditional publishing Smoke Signals: no, I would not want to do that. I know some fanfics have been reworked into original novels, and I completely understand why some writers choose that path, but for me personally, Smoke Signals belongs where it is. It was written in conversation with these characters specifically, and pulling it away from that context and trying to turn it into an original book would feel inauthentic to that purpose.

That said, I really hope I’ll keep writing. Maybe not at the same intensity, and maybe not immediately, but I don’t think I’m done with storytelling. I’d love to write my own original work one day, if and when I find the right idea and have the space to do it properly.

[azaablue]

the best fanfiction you've ever read was written by a woman in her 40s before she made dinner for her kids. it was written by a teenager after school when they should've been studying for a history test. and a barista came up with the idea while they cleaned the espresso machine and busser fact-checked it on their break and the post-doc edited between writing grant proposals and the nurse apologized for typos in the notes after a long shift and behind every drabble and one-shot and multi-chapter fic there is a person with a wonderful and interesting and chaotic life and it is such a privilege that we get to be a part of it because they decided to do this thing we all share, for fun.

[bluekeyboardwrites]

Hello :)

First of all, I love love love love LOVE your stories. I've stumbled upon Smoke Signals recently and I cannot wait to devour it 🖤

Second, I wanted to ask whether you give permission for your stories to be bound for personal use? I asked on AO3 a while ago but I don't know whether you saw it. If you did and the answer is no then just ignore this second question please 😅

Have a lovely day, and I can't wait to read the final chapters of Smoke Signals; thank you for sharing your stories with us! 🖤

Absolutely fine with me so long as it's for personal use and no one is profiting off it. Thank you so much for reading!!

[bluekeyboardwrites]

Hi - a new reader of smoke signals here - and what a gift it has been to us all! Thank you so much for creating such an incredible piece of work, truly. I don't know if anyone's ever asked you before, but you mention you're a grad student - has this informed your writing process in anyway? :)

What a lovely question. Doing a PhD has shaped the writing in many ways I was conscious of and some ways I've only noticed in retrospect. The conscious ways first: the author's notes are basically a direct product of academia. Part of this is just the simultaneous nature of the work: when I'm writing a scene about Hermione in the Wizengamot, I'm also thinking about my Foucault assignments for class. I can't unsee that comparison, so I put it in the notes (because in fanfiction, I can do anything! I can break any rule! It's so different from academia in that way). My research practice has also been genuinely useful in looking into post-WWII German reconstruction, which directly informed how I wrote the wizarding world's post-war ideological landscape (specifically, the way fascist sympathizers survive a regime's defeat by becoming suddenly moderate and cooperative and conveniently interested in moving on). Selwyn is a character I could only write because I'd spent a full semester reading about denazification and how thoroughly it failed (the banality of evil is all over Part III).

The messier part of this answer is that academia has also given me some bad habits I've had to actively fight. Graduate school rewards a very specific kind of writing, which is genuinely terrible for action sequences or letting a joke be a joke. There's also something that academia does to your relationship with completion: a dissertation is never finished (we joke that instead, it's abandoned at the deadline). You can always read one more source, qualify one more claim, address one more gap, etc. I think Smoke Signals has that quality. It keeps finding new things to be about. Five chapters from the end and I'm still discovering what it's trying to say, which is either a sign of a living, breathing piece of work or a sign that I need a stricter Smoke Signals dissertation committee, though it's probably both.

The thing academia gave me that I'm most grateful for, though, is permission to take the project seriously. Literary fiction takes itself seriously. Genre fiction is often embarrassed about itself, required to be either apologetic or defensively anti-intellectual about what it's doing. Weirdly, academia gave me the confidence to write this story both without apology and with full confidence that this form is capable of the same ambitions as any other form, and that Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy are a sufficient subject for a serious literary and political argument. I believe that and I wanted to prove it. Whether I have or not is for my readers to decide, but the wanting came directly from the academic world's insistence that rigorous engagement with a text, any text, is always worthwhile.

Thank you for asking, and thank you, always, for reading. xoxo Blue

[bluekeyboardwrites]

Hello! Just wanted to drop by and send kisses and hugs your way (with your consent of course) for writing (and sharing!) Smoke Signals. I've been a bit down lately and your writing has done incredible magic on my aching soul. Been reading it on my kobo, so sometimes I find a passage or three that strike me, move on because i want to continue the story and then hurriedly flip back because I want to annotate some of your lines (I have at least five from just your author's notes, and I think I've highlighted everything involving grief).

If you have the time, would you be able to share which authors or books influenced your writing style? (and if this already exists as a post I've missed, kindly redirect me! And if you dont have time, it's alright either way. Just wanted to let you know I've been swooning over your prose. Will immediately be sharing and recommending to other people asap)

Thank you so much, again, for writing and sharing your work. You've made my year brighter. Xoxo

Dear reader, I’m sorry you’ve been down lately, and I’m very touched that the story has been able to keep you company in any small way. The reason I write is to feel connected to the world, so to see that red thread between us, even as strangers, is such a powerful feeling.

My writing is basically a little compost heap of everything I’ve absorbed. For prose influences, I’m inspired by writers like Donna Tartt, Elena Ferrante, Zadie Smith, Naoise Dolan, Ottessa Moshfegh, Carmen Maria Machado, Garth Greenwell, Elizabeth Strout, and Marilynne Robinson. On a sentence level, I seem to prefer lush, spiky interiority: I write (and enjoy reading) long sentences that build through escalation, then undercut themselves with something blunt/ profane. Prose that can move from tenderness to filth to political argument to grief fast enough to remind me that these facets are all part of the human experience.

My biggest influences though were probably Literary Epic-War/History Novels (like Tolstoy's War and Peace, Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy, and Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke) that really helped me understand the scope and form of the story. Gothic novels helped me a lot with the descriptions/tone: I've always been drawn to stories that treat the past as something that doesn't stay buried and the Gothic understands this better than any other form (I'm partial to Wuthering Heights especially).

Thank you so much for this thoughtful question and for reading!

[bekazimi]

A wizard who terribly misses his witch when they are not together…

[2886beaconstreet]

ao3 asking if i want to see mature content. do i want to see birds in the sky. do i want to feel the wind in my hair and the grass under my feet

[bluekeyboardwrites]

A little note on smoke signals....

Author's Note (1/20/26): I found myself trying to rush to finish the last few chapters of smoke signals before school restarted for the semester and after the years of work I’ve put into this story, I really don’t want to be hasty in finishing it. Draco and Hermione deserve a well-edited, carefully thought out conclusion, which means I'll need to take a little time to focus on school before returning to them (tentatively in late March/early April, once deadlines let up for me professionally). I know that’s a wait, but I’m so grateful for your support and patience. I'll be off socials, but you can always drop a comment on AO3 and I'll answer. xoxo Blue

[my-2nd-account]

[thegirlinthefandom]

I found love where it wasn’t supposed to be.. right in front of me…

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[isitinkorisitblood]

@bluekeyboardwrites This is effectively a draft and I’m going to do another because I don’t like the blocking, but I wanted to share my ‘Ted teaches Draco how to make tea without a wand’ moment.

This was done in Procreate fully digitally.

[bluekeyboardwrites]

Have you read alchemised??? I just finished reading it for my second time and like if you ever read manacled by senlinyu its her book taking manacled and making her own world and magic system. Highly recommend 🫶🏻🫶🏻

I haven't yet but it's on my TBR! Thank you for the recommendation !

[jaxxartbox]

MoM co-workers/lovers complaining about the inadequacies of their fellow co-workers (because lbr, they’re both a little(?) conceited lol (valid)

Just a little something-something I played around with months ago that I never got around to posting here 😬 I don’t think I was happy with how it turned out at the time, I’ll probably revisit again sometime down the pipeline

[bluekeyboardwrites]

"Now then," Draco said, taking in the scene with dark satisfaction. Hermione Granger—war hero, Wizengamot member, the moral compass of magical Britain—was sprawled across the Minister's desk, thighs trembling from the orgasm he'd just wrung from her. The leather-bound ledgers and decorative quill sets had been swept aside, replaced by her body, flushed and obscene against the polished mahogany. "Where were we?" "Inside me," Hermione managed, finding her voice. "Please, Malfoy." His eyes flashed, dark and delighted. "You want to fuck on Cadwallader's desk?" “He deserves it,” she insisted. “Don’t you think?” “Wicked little thing,” he said approvingly. “Turn around and bend over.” 

TINSEL AND TEMPTATION: A CHRISTMAS FIC

Rated E | 25K Words | NOW COMPLETE!

Summary: Lord Draco Malfoy and Minority Leader Hermione Granger are notorious adversaries in the Wizengamot. But when they're forced together at the Ministry's Christmas Gala, they discover their opposition to each other pales in comparison to an incendiary attraction that blurs the line between politics and obsession.

[mina-logan]

Spa day

[mishori-o]

Ssssnakes

Slytherin trio i drew few days ago. Theo is the one take the photo btw

[noor-67]

“I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone.”