Els Writes

Author, Freelance Beta Reader Currently Writing: Project Nameless Currently Editing: Fateless Currently Reading: Too many beta reading jobs to think about published books... Currently Stressing Over: Preparations for moving yet again.

[els-writes]

that awkward moment when you realise you might have actaully written three love interests for your character...

black cat, misunderstood girl

gold retriever, excited boy

bunny rabbit, sweetheart girl

like i had always planned a certain endgame romance but... i didn't expect this

[brynwrites]

The SELL YOUR BLOOD cover is here and it’s GAY! ✨

This standalone installment in the Guides for Dating Vampires series has:

💞 Horny AF demisexual awakening 🩹 Hurt/Comfort 🍆 Public teasing ♿️ Autistic and chronic pain rep!

No one ever stirs Clementine the way his fanfics do, until an accident forces the vampire to buy blood from a bitter vigilante with a dark past, and he acquires a taste for the man in more ways than one. It’s a shame his first crush swore off all relationships a decade ago… 

You can pre-order the ebook now, or pick up both ebook and paperback (plus read it in KU) on March 30th!

[els-writes]

what if i just stopped writing the actual books and just wrote cute nervous romance scenes

[desperatlytryingtowriteabook]

*screeches back from the rubbles of used notebooks*

I’m alive

[asnowyplover]

sorry I kept my sense of childlike wonder! sorry it leads me everywhere I go!

[prompts-in-a-barrel]

“I can’t believe she kidnapped my cat.”

“As if people didn’t hate her enough.”

“My cat. To blackmail me. I have three children. She chose my cat.”

“To be fair, your cat doesn’t have armed bodyguards.”

[concerningwolves]

Book piracy survey

Have you ever pirated a book? I want to hear from you! Never pirated a book in your life? I want to hear from you, too!

Book piracy is a real hot potato of a topic right now, what with the IA Open Library appeal, and there are A Lot of opinions flying around on all sides, some of which are informed, some are uninformed, and some raise very interesting and oft-overlooked points. A lot of the conversation I see happening comes from a very USA/UK-centric perspective too, and I'd like to get a wider range of input, as well as trying to better understand the culture (and cultural influences on) book piracy.

Here's the survey:

Book Piracy Questionnaire

This is an entirely judgement-free space. I'm just collecting information in the hopes of writing a balanced (and less USA/UK-centric!) blog

Provisional deadline to complete the survey is 5th of April 2023 (depends on responses; I might extend)

The survey takes about 5–15 minutes to complete, depending on how many questions you choose to answer and whether or not you go into greater detail. Only the first section has required questions; the rest is all optional.

As for what I'm going to do with the survey results, I'm either going to present the data in a blog post, or write a full article-style post on the topic (again, depends on the volume of responses, and also my own time and energy).

Thank you in advance to everyone who contributes, be that by filling in the survey or by reblogging this post / otherwise sharing the survey. If you have any questions, or if something is unclear, please let me know.

[amygdalae]

Fantasy authors are now banned from titling their books anything to do with crowns, thorns, precious metals, roses, blood or bones. You hauve to think of something else now.

[mecharose]

23 and 31

23. Describe the physical environment in which you write. Be as detailed as possible. Tell me what’s around you as you work. Paint me a picture.

a picture is worth a thousand words. behold my liv zone

I also like writing at coffee shops! and at the NYPL rose reading room, this super fancy library hall that overlooks Bryant Park and has these cloud murals on the ceiling:

yes i am extra. but this^ is 100% free to visit for as long as u want >:) (u just can't bring drinks alas my emotional support coffee)

31. Write a short love letter to your readers.

o dearest readers, I write things I find interesting and fun to explore, that stay in my brain and refuse to leave (in a good way lol). so if you feel the same, then I love love love you. you're more than I could ever ask and exactly what I most hope for <3

weird writing questions ask game!

[gender-luster]

reblog to give the person you reblogged this from the motivation to finish a wip

[anexperimentallife]

I feel so attacked right now...

[randomramblesofaraven]

…Do you ever see people critiquing specific word usage in novels and wonder if they know that language can be used in fun and figurative ways? And that this is half the joy of writing?

An example off the top of my head - if I say ‘He gave a whisper of a smile’, it does not mean that the smile is literally whispering; it means that the word ‘whisper’ invokes a sense of smallness, due perhaps to subtlety or shyness, and that is something I want connected to your mental envisioning of this dude’s smile. 

Saying ‘But that makes no sense; a smile and a whisper are two different things’ misses the point e n t i r e l y

[randomramblesofaraven]

this resonated, huh

[sialiasnest]

Beach Day

[sialiasnest]

Now in colors!

Yellow has opinions

Orange's enthusiasm has no boundaries

Purple is a good listener. Also has dug a little hole in the sand.

Blue dreams of the horizon

Green is soooo stealthy and fierce

Red is very proud of them.

[els-writes]

Over 4 years ago I made this post about Laszlo's nicknames for Evelone.

Godless is now Fateless, but Laszlo is still Laszlo, so here some of her names in the final novel:

Evelone-I-shall-panic-when-I-deem-it-necessary-Spinel

Evelone-parents-love-me-Spinel

Evelone-the-sea-air-is-bad-for-my-cuticles-Spinel

Evelone-I-think-my-cabin-needs-a-few-more-personal-touches-Spinel

Evelone-conversing-is-a-skill-I’ve-been-blessed-with-and-you-lack-Arms-Spinel

[els-writes]

It's been a minute.

Or... many of them.

But I'm really keen to get back into posting and writing on tumblr again! If there's any other authors posting about WIPs or their novels, please let me know, so I can check you out!

Meanwhile, I'm off to try to clean up my blog and get back into things!

[els-writes]

The First Summer Together {part1}

The rest of the students were silent, many even avoiding looking up as Mar waited. He spun the dagger absentmindedly in his hands. Even Tobin’s hand wasn’t even so much as twitching. Mar tried not to find it irritating; when they played team games, he was always the first picked, because they all knew he’d had far more experience than anyone else here. Now that they’d be pitted against him, they weren’t so excited by his prospects. His hand slackened around the dagger, ready to throw it back into the box.

A hand raised.

The girl was staring at her feet, her hand not even higher than her shoulder. The cropped black hair hung forwards, nearly hiding her face completely as she chewed on her lip. Mar’s grip tightened again. He smiled.

Nuru nodded. “Thank you, Miss…?”

“Varma,” Odell answered when the girl didn’t speak.

“Miss Varma. Up you come.”

The girl stood, shuffling her feet as she crossed over to the box and picked out one of the other daggers. She looked at it in her hand, shifting it as if getting used to the weight.

“Have you sparred before, Miss Varma?” Nuru asked, moving over to push the girl into place opposite Mar.

She looked up at the Knight, sucking in her lips for a moment before she spoke. “My older brother taught me how to punch?”

Someone snorted from the step. Mar glanced over. That Alastair boy was smirking.

“That’s as good a start as anything,” Nuru said. When she lifted her eyes to Mar, her eyebrows twitched upwards.

Go easy, they said.

Mar nodded, turning to face her. Nuru took a few steps back.

“Aim to disarm your opponent. I don’t want to see those daggers hitting anything too hard, and nothing above the shoulders.”

The girl was staring hard at the floor, her gaze sometimes flickering nervously to Mar’s hand where he held the dagger, but never once rising to look at him properly. She was about Mar’s size, with a small scattering of freckles over her brown skin. Her nose was squashed, short, and her eyebrows were thick, constantly furrowed together in worry. Though her clothes were perfectly well looked after, they were just a little too baggy on her shoulders – as if they’d be handed down from a larger relative. Mar felt strange facing off against her. She looked like she might keel over from nerves. But this was a spar, and she had volunteered, so he grounded himself.

“Go!”

Mar lunged.

The space between them grew bigger. The girl’s eyes were moving everywhere, like she was desperately searching for an escape route, her brows furrowed in what Mar could only assume was panic. If she was that nervous, why volunteer? For what seemed like forever, every time Mar moved closer, she moved back, or to the side, keeping well out of his way. The spectators were silent. He glanced over at Nuru, but she gave nothing away with her steady gaze.

Gritting his teeth, Mar lunged again. This time, the girl didn’t move so far away, but as he shifted to one side to knock the dagger from her hand, she was turning. He blinked and pulled his hand back to his side – she’d moved before he’d even had the chance to do anything more than twitch. He tried again, from the other side this time, and the same thing happened. Then he tried a feint. Another. He tried to kick with his leg. To duck down before he hit. No matter what he did, the girl moved away just before he made any decent movement. He felt slow, sluggish, like his body couldn’t speed up to meet her.

But she never looked up from the ground.

Frustrated, Mar tried everything. Every trick his mother had taught him. There was no going easy on the girl, she didn’t give him the chance to. She dodged far too easily, seemingly before he’d even started to move. It didn’t feel like any fight he’d ever experienced. He was panting before he knew it, sweat beading at his brow from the effort of overthinking every one of his actions and promptly being outmanoeuvred by her. Every time he tried to disarm her, he felt himself far too open to a counterattack that never came. She never even tried to swing for him.

“Speed up, Gavril!” Nuru shouted. But he couldn’t. There was no chance to.

“Varma, get an attack in! Don’t stay on the defensive.”

The girl blinked. Her head turned slightly – caught off guard by the order.

And Mar hit her.

It was sudden, a desperate attempt to get some sort of advantage whilst she was distracted. His free hand shoved at her shoulder, and it was enough to stagger her. She stumbled backwards; eyes wide in panic. He snapped his arm out towards her, knocking the hilt of the dagger against her wrist. She released her own dagger as she slipped backwards to the floor.

She sat below him, staring at her wooden weapon lying beside her – as if forgetting she’d had it in her hand at all. She wasn’t even winded. Mar stood gasping for air, his shirt damp against his skin, exhausted, and she looked no more put out than if she’d just been knocked over.

“Good work, both of you,” Nuru said, moving to help the girl up. “Tidy up, and sit down. Next volunteers?”

Mar flung his dagger into the box, his eyes never leaving the girl even as he returned to the step. She was rubbing at her wrist. The two girls she sat beside snickered at her loss.

But it hadn’t been her fault.

“You were going easy on her, weren’t you?” Tobin whispered as Mar took his seat. “You weren’t even finishing your movements. Giving her time to dodge. That was nice of you.”

No, it wasn’t. He’d not done it on purpose.

---

Project Campus Tag List: @multimousenette @kriss-the-writing-nerd @theouterdark 

If you want to be added/removed please just let me know ^^ 

[residentanchor]

Why is it that sometimes, you just wanna sit down and spoil your story to someone? Just… Randomly tell someone the ending or twist to the story you’re working on?