romanticizing the horrors as god intended

🔞🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ late twenties, they/he, disabled || award-winning queer and trans speculative fiction author || recovering ghostwriter || I write dead dove content, don't like don't read and leave me alone || follows might show up as fandomtrashkaye

[marsadler]

HAPPY FALL

It's the season I thrive in, so I thought I'd just do a quick recap of my books which are all under 300 pages and queer and trans horror, most of them romances with HEAs or HFNs. If you're looking for some horror to add to your TBR this fall, I have a little bit of something for everyone!

Blood Orange is a new book this year from me. I read Tithe by Holly Black religiously when I was a teenager, and I've carried a lifelong love for darker fairy tales. This book definitely reflects it. It's more of a dark paranormal romance than straight up horror.

FIRST CREATION was my debut novella in 2023. It's a story about peaches, religion, and coming into your own. It still holds a very special place in my heart. Trans angel c cis demon, a fun 👀 church scene 👀 and a whole lot of peaches.

EYETOOTH and its prequel LONGBONES are truly such a fever dream of a concept that I can't believe so many people love as much as I do. I came up with EYETOOTH after I woke up twice during my wisdom tooth removal surgery. The prequel novelette LONGBONES has been a long time in the making, and I was so excited to explore Dr. Mede's character more. If you like eroguro and medical horror, you might enjoy these.

Made in Blood was drafted entirely while I was listening to the Annihilation soundtrack, and I think it shows. It's post-apocalyptic horror, pretty low spice, and taboo. It's a new book from me this year, and so is FULGURITE.

My newest book FULGURITE (it came out yesterday!!!) is a story about grief and growing up in small towns. It's also taboo, and pretty much a fever dream. It features one of my favorite horror tropes, which is isolated cabins in the woods.

Some of you might remember Blood & Flowers with it's old cover, but late last year and early this year I gave it a deep edit, about a 10,000 word expansion, and commissioned a lovely new cover for it. In this version, there is also the 9,000 word holiday short The God of Bruised Knuckles. It's a haunted house story, a vampire story, and an enemies to lovers story with echos of Romeo and Juliet.

Unholy Favors was my Halloween release last year. It features two novelettes that are about making deals with the supernatural and reaping the rewards (or consequences). It's kink heavy, with somno and primal play.

Last winter, I released a holiday novel that started as me going "what if I wrote something based on that folger's holiday commercial?" and then turned into so much more. This is a story about rage and rebellion as well as smooching your brother on the lips. It's a dystopian sci-fi future that I wrote after the election when I was really mad.

I am so excited to soft launch my Halloween release for this year! I've had an idea rattling around in my head based on The Ring and those old jumpscare emails people would send you where the car got really small and then something would jump out (am I aging myself here? Probably 😂). I'm super excited to share this with you!

WHERE TO FIND MY WORK

Itchio used to be my primary publishing platform, but after they banned a lot of adult content without warning, I've moved to Payhip and Smashwords for my taboo content. I'm still publishing on Amazon as well, and right now I'm testing putting some of my books in Amazon's KU service for 3 months at a time.

You can find them all here and check out my catalogue!

Mars Adler

queer speculative fiction author

[not-mjmarlowe]

It’s hot. It’s tender. It’s sexy. It’s raw.

get your copy here!

[emmaharwoods]

photos by the artemis ii crew

[thatdisasterauthor]

The first images are coming out from yesterday's lunar flyby and HOLY SHIT. HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT.

[godslaughters]

Dead Christ (details) by Philippe de Champaigne

[sea-spines]

cnidarian dreams

[vexheart]

[loubis-and-champagne]

X

[dwynartist]

we ride for hope and joy and to thrive, however the world may be

[valtsv]

"i never could say no to you" is one of my favourite phrases in the entire english language because it's so casually cruel. even when it's spoken fondly or lightheartedly there's this dismissive implication of blame to it, like twisting a knife. whatever happens next is on your hands. i want you to know that i betrayed and destroyed myself for you.

[valtsv]

[fuchsea]

btw i want to say that the entire tumblr community banding together is what got these changes reversed so i hope u all realise the power of a reblog and start reblogging posts instead of just liking them this is the reblog website so hit that button right now

[marsadler]

Hii! I have yet to read any of your books, but they're cover illustrations are all very well done and intriguing, and it's hard to choose based off of the cover art what to read. So, mind giving me your own top three favorites out of your books, and I'll read them? Thank you 🫶

Thank you so much!! Aaaa this is hard lol! I'll try to give you 3 different vibes 😂 and I won't include any of my taboo books since I know that's not something everyone wants to read!

Eyetooth seems to be one of my most popular, and I do adore what I did with it a lot! I wrote it after I woke up multiple times during my wisdom tooth surgery, so it's also sort of a personal book.

Blood & Flowers is still one of my favorite relationships I've written, and I love vampires, haunted houses and enemies to lovers!

Unholy Favors includes one of my favorite shorter stories I've ever written (Silvertongued Dreams) and it's a little bit different from the others, I think.

Thank you again, and I hope that you enjoy!

[marsadler]

hey im a big fan of your work !! ive very recently read almost all of your novellas and short stories <3 they’re very gripping !!

ive been DESPERATELY hunting down authors with similar tone or vibe ! but have unfortunately not found anything. i would love to support other indie authors ! do you have any recs ?? tysm !! <3

Hello!! Thank you so much for your support and your kind words! And I apologize for how long it took me to reply, I was Thinking about my answer 😂

If you're looking for more religious horror, I'd recommend @kyleskeleton and @ghostpoetics. Kyle's book The Church of the Mountain of Flesh was life changing for me, and Morgan Dante has several really wonderful books with religious themes and romance. (Also if you like vampires they have lots of vampires.) Arden Powell's The Bayou is such an excellent book as well, and they have some books that have gender noncomforming characters as well! Claude Hamesh writes some excellent religious themed work as well, check out In The Hands of an Angry G-d. I would also recommend @nicosraf, Ezra Arndt, Tyler Battaglia, Enoli Lee, Larkin Bryne, and Lucien Burr.

For more body horror or darker horror themed stuff, I'd recommend @wolfehorror as well as Achilles King from starshinepub. Claustrophilia by Ezra Blake was a big influence for me writing Eyetooth, so if you want some heavy body horror, check that one out! Gemini Fletcher has a book that I still think about to this day, Gutted.

@thornyfilth has some really excellent horror as well as some contemporary trans fiction that I absolutely adore! If you like darker contemporary, also check out Sera Quim. I'd also recommend Rien Gray for gorgeous prose and complex fantasy worlds, as well as dark contemporary work with nonbinary and sapphic rep. @ladzwriting has some excellent world building and darker themes as well! @tdcloud is another author I'd recommend!!

Some more authors:

Felix Graves

Adik Graves

VT Hoang

Hex McKenna

Johannes T. Evans

Sancta Seraphina (has a religious novel out!)

A.A. Fairview

Georgina Kiersten

@emrynbird

@ninawolv3rina

@aidenemesser

There's probably more (there always are lol!) But this is already getting to be a super long list and hopefully will be enough to get you started!

[bisexualbaker]

So it seems like some of you might be interested in learning more about Dreamwidth.

Listen, here's the thing: Dreamwidth is not slick. It is not fancy. Its base code was originally put together some two decades ago or more, and it looks like it. It can't do much with images and definitely not with video—like, I think there's some way to embed video, but I have no idea how to do it, and hosting it on Dreamwidth is, uh...

The point is! Dreamwidth is a lot different from Tumblr. It's closer to Tumblr than it is to Facebook or Instagram, but it's a lot more old-school internet than Tumblr is. And that means that, for anyone who wasn't on the internet some ten, fifteen years ago, there's probably going to be a steep learning curve. It can take more effort to post things there, and more effort to find your people, its image hosting capacity can charitably be described as both "limited" and "poorly organized", and overall it may still never be the kind of website where you, personally, will want to spend a lot of time or do a lot of things. Dreamwidth does not and will never have an app, for pretty much the same reasons as AO3.

But there is one thing I can guarantee, and that is that Dreamwidth is willing to fight for us and our rights. They're already doing so.

[explorersaremadeofhope]

Since this post isn't super specific in terms of facts I'm gonna be just adding some off the top of my head! (More at OP's link, this is just for the 'first glance pls' crowd)

Dreamwidth is predominantly text. Your feed will not be as visual as on Tumblr. -> You can embed videos from e.g. YouTube, and you can post your own images/video, but Dreamwidth itself cannot host the images/video (like Tumblr can), so you will need to host them somewhere else, like imgur, and upload via link in the New Post editor.

Dreamwidth's New Post editor is very similar to Tumblr's. You can work in Rich Text (click buttons to do all the formatting), or HTML (code all formatting manually).

Your feed is similar to Tumblr's. You see the posts from the people and communities you follow, most recent first, and only those. -> When reading, you can filter your feed (Reading page) and see only posts from people, or only posts from Communities.

No reblogging. Everything you post on your blog stays on your blog. It will be seen by fewer people -- this is a pro and a con. It will never spread wildly out of your control, and nobody can add anything to your posts.

Multiple levels of privacy. You can set your entries viewable to everyone, just friends, or just you, on an entry-by-entry basis. It can be changed after posting. Within "just friends", you can create more defined filters, and e.g. show an entry only to your Severance fan friends and not to your 911 fan friends. Or whatever.

There are comment sections under each post! You can delete comments on your entries. (You can also write very long comments. Up to 16k characters.)

You can make VERY LONG posts. The limit is 300k characters. You can easily host fanfics or long fic chapters as journal entries (and a lot of people do and always have done!). -> Long posts can go under a Read More (Tumblr inherited this function from LJ and DW.)

Communities function like shared journals with mods, where all community members can make posts, and comment on each other's posts. You follow Communities the same way you follow people.

You can find communities by searching Dreamwidth for an interest (eg "crocheting") and filtering the results to Communities only.

Managing your friends: You can let someone read your entries (Grant access), or follow their blog (Subscribe), or both, depending on what suits you.

YOUR USERNAME IS FOREVER. Basically. If you want to change it, you need a token that costs money. (It's one of the few ways they get any money in, since using the site is free.) Choose carefully! :'D

[bisexualbaker]

Thank you for the at-a-glance summary! I do have two minor corrections to make, and one addition.

First, Dreamwidth does have its own image hosting, it's just non-intuitive for anyone used to Tumblr or Facebook or Instagram or what-have-you. Free users get 500 MB, which is not a lot for artists; paid users get 1.5 GB, and premium paid users get 3 GB. You can only embed images uploaded to Dreamwidth on Dreamwidth. Find out more about Dreamwidth's image hosting at this link. Again, this isn't really a lot of space for artists, and to the best of my knowledge there currently isn't a way to buy more storage space; your best bet may be to set up an account at squidge.org to host images instead.

Second, there's no native reblogging feature. It is technically possible to do with the use of a third party script, but it's not something that's built into Dreamwidth. You can find out how to reblog things on Dreamwidth at this link. What it effectively does is copy the post to share on your own account, without informing the original poster, so it's not quite the same as a Tumblr reblog, but if reblogging is something you rely heavily on, you may like this workaround.

Third is something really cool about Dreamwidth's cut tags (the native "read more" feature): You can close them. You know how on Tumblr, the second you add a Read More, everything you put after that is under the Read More? Not so on Dreamwidth! If you close the cut tag, you can have more stuff that's visible outside it. You can even have multiple cut tags in a single entry! (And that's not getting into things like nested cut tags 👀)

If you have any other questions about Dreamwidth, I'll do my best to answer them! Message me or reply to one of my posts here, or come visit the community Newcomers on Dreamwidth, or the Tumblr community Dreamwidth Sharing, and we'll see if we can't help you out 👍

[bisexualbaker]

Socchan's Dreamwidth Tutorials (as of 10/6/25):

What to post about on Dreamwidth Dreamwidth alternatives to talking in the tags A quick guide to mood themes The (beta) Create Entries page Personal Communities: Dreamwidth's "side blogs" What do I do instead of reblogging? Audience on Dreamwidth vs Audience on Tumblr Cut Tag Basics

[tomfoolerytotality]

Superman isn't woke. You're just so evil that you see a man doing acts of kindness and you think it's a targeted political agenda

[otakuvampyre]

This but for people this post is talking about. 🤣

[laikaspeaks]

Get peer reviewed, bitch.

[pukicho]

Hello, we’re big computer company. We are truly grateful for your support! Our latest update will add a giant shit in the middle of your screen. You cannot remove it.

[endlesss-rain]

[marsadler]

Every time someone tells me that what i'm writing is gross and wrong, I think of two more, grosser and more fucked up ideas to write. Like a hydra.