RO CROWN

writer – 30s

[rocrown]

DREAD DEATH

SUMMARY:

Sword at the ready!

The dread will make you want to die. Only your humanity will save you.

Alessia Valcyn is The Mageslayer, buff, brilliant and badass. As the champion of the goddess Kadasana, she is the vanquisher of the undead, slayer of necromages, and charmer of ladies, a lone drifter with a sword and an attitude.

The story begins here!

FOR FANS OF: Dimension 20, Not Another D&D Podcast, Critical Role, Dungeons & Dragons, The Witcher, and Xena: Warrior Princess.

Amazon Kindle Itch.io Goodreads Ko-Fi Linktree

THE TREASURE OF MEANIE ROMERO

SUMMARY:

Introducing Mariner Crane. Private Investigator Extraordinaire. Best Detective in 1960s New York City.

"An old-school detective story for modern readers" – Alicen Skylark

The NYPD has wrongly accused college student Effie Atwater of murdering her boyfriend. Desperate to prove her innocence and desperately in need of help, she seeks out New York City’s best detective with nothing but a plea and a mystery. Luckily for her, Mariner Crane could never turn down a good mystery.

Witness Mariner Crane’s emergence as the quintessential private detective in her gripping debut mystery The Treasure of Meanie Romero. Ro Crown delivers a classical mystery while infusing it with contemporary themes and values. Crown creates an addictive setting and characters reflective of the past and present, and upon finishing this book, you’ll be yearning for future Mariner Crane Mysteries.

The Treasure of Meanie Romero is the first novella in the Mariner Crane Mysteries trilogy with its sequels scheduled for release in 2026.

For fans of Drawfee's Drawtectives, The Sherlock Holmes series by Arthur Conan Doyle, the works of Agatha Christie, the Knives Out films, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Dimension 20's Mentopolis, and Not Another D&D Podcast's Twilight Sanctorum.

Amazon Kindle

[andiedraws]

The Jasmine Throne/Burning Kingdoms trilogy by Tasha Suri

I just read The Jasmine Throne and the entire Burning Kingdoms trilogy by Tash Suri! I’m filled with inspiration to make concept art and visualize the words from the book.

What a wonderful, immersive political fantasy with a deeply moving love story.

Here’s a painting of how I imagined Priya and Malini.

Also: Opening my Tumblr account again after so many years 😂

[rocrown]

The Strands by Ro Crown

Welcome to The Strands! A star system in a far-off galaxy like many others, The Strands differs in one major way. A colossal eldritch god named Alvó'őr lives there, its tentacles creating a vast and complex tangle throughout. But to the dismay of the inhabitants of Icena, a planet-spanning city, Alvó'őr has been ill for nearly a century. It falls upon the intrepid racecraft pilot Katica Kasza and brilliant xenobiologist Syffa Cilryan to save the eldritch god, preserve the safety of their planet, star system and galaxy, and combat the villainous oligarch responsible for nearly killing a god. Along the way, they will marvel at the beauty of the life amongst the tentacles, the forests, animals and civilizations that call it home, avoid fields of debris and tend to their mutual attraction. The Strands is a novelette exploring the toll of capitalism on the natural world, and how great wealth and power always come at a detriment to the environment and the exploitation of others.

[rocrown]

If you've read my book, first of all, thank you so much.

Secondly, please please talk about it. Reblog, post or tell someone else about it. This is the best way you can support independent queer stories. Thanks!

[rocrown]

[antlered-vixen]

I am so tired of short-attention-span, trim-the-fat culture. All writing advice these days is for how to write like Chuck Palahniuk. "Cut 'think', cut 'feel', cut 'wonder' - only action, only pushing forward, show and move and move and move." What if I could emulate this style, and still don't want to? What if I want to write like Henry James, with three paragraphs of introspective musings between each dialogue line? The music advice is, "make it shortform, make it Tik-Tok compatible, make it punchy, hit the refrain as soon as possible." What if I want that 10-minute prog rock piece? What if I want that symphony? What if I want it slow and luxurious and lazy? Movies. Series. Poetry. Bodies. Everything is "trimmed trimmed trimmed trimmed, stripped bare, you have three seconds to win me over, make it airport chic." I don't want to win you over, then, I guess. I want the fat left it. I want the pleasure and the indolence and the indulgence. Fuck this art-advice that's always "your art needs Ozempic."

[rocrown]

(credit: Jorge Urosa)

A Mythology of Poisonous Fungi

by Ro Crown

I held her hand until it was stone, until her temple became a cave, until nature razed her city, until a forest grew in its place. I wrapped myself in the blanket of her waning divinity. I plunged her love into my heart like the tip of a spear, and I bled and bled until a crimson river eroded the land and we became an island. I loved her so dearly it destroyed me. I loved my destruction because it rotted through me in the shape of her until the black tarnish of my soul was her silhouette. Too late to turn back. Too late for anyone to save me. If this last idol was all I had holding up the ceiling of my affections like a caryatid, I’d remember the face of my love when all the world had forgotten.

I laid at the feet of her last effigy. She was an unknown goddess known by only me. She became a mystery. And what became of me? I died the last cultist to speak her name in worship. Neither of us deserved this. Devotion was a two-way street. She had been a light the cosmos pitched into darkness, a black hole in the place of a gleaming star, and I was stuck in her orbit forevermore.

Dressed now in moss, wreathed in vines of kudzu, she stood like staggered menhir, and I expired eternally in her shadow, my undying adoration in an endless unlife. A rusted lichen diadem upon her head honoured a bygone reign. I remained prostate in steadfast reverence, withered in errant bows of graceless sunbeams. Trespassers marked my tomb in this tenebrous haunt, called my nameless epithet as though speaking to a ghost. They infringed on our intimate afterlife, disturbed the earth upon which we strode, plundered the artefacts of our past life, their footsteps soiling our matrimonial bed. We were still there, you heretics!

Her love was an unalloyed ecstasy. Her love was everlasting. Her love was the gift of immortality. Nobody ever warned me never dying wasn’t the same as always being alive. I would do it all again if I could. Even if I knew it would end the same way, I’d be the woman who loved the goddess until the heavens collapsed, until ruin befell us, until an apocalypse fashioned for two buried us. I surrendered my personhood like I surrendered my life, but I could never be nothing. I would never be nothing for as long as I clutched her love like a talisman.

All I became was decay. All I could give was my poison. No one could remove me. Nothing at all could consume me. I endured the maw of oblivion, and when it had consumed my toxins, it choked on its own ichor, and I returned. My mycelium anchored me to this place. My spores scattered, a deathly extolment, and my blood-black fruit issued a sombre warning. I would not leave. I could not be plucked. I visited death onto anyone foolish enough to try. I spread throughout the earth, a bitter notice of our once fervent ardour to all mortals who ventured into the shade. And as they burned from the inside out, they’d know us.

In my memories this was still a temple at the centre of her glittering city. She was still vital. Her voice was a song, her embrace a paradise, her beauty an unmatched wonder, and our life a constant joy. As a goddess she couldn’t truly perish unless nobody remembered her. I remembered. I couldn’t die unless she ceased to love me. I remained. As long as I remained, I’d remember, and as long as she was remembered, she’d love me. We ensnared each other, keeping the other from peaceful nihility forever. Nobody said true love was merciful.

[heytherecentaurs]

dude you gave your emily axford character abs!!!

Thanks for reading!

Yes. I did.

I thought it was a funny reference to Prism Grimpoppy.

I also gave her underarm hair because I think more women in literature should have body hair.

But to be clear, Emily was only an initial point of inspiration. Usually, I pull physical traits from a lot of sources and they become an amalgam of images and imagination. So while the first seed of inspiration was Siobhan and Emily, the characters quickly became their own people with their own appearances and personalities.

I'm so glad people are reading! I'd love to continue this story in a sequel but I can only do that if people read this one!

[rocrown]

The Strands by Ro Crown

Welcome to The Strands! A star system in a far-off galaxy like many others, The Strands differs in one major way. A colossal eldritch god named Alvó'őr lives there, its tentacles creating a vast and complex tangle throughout. But to the dismay of the inhabitants of Icena, a planet-spanning city, Alvó'őr has been ill for nearly a century. It falls upon the intrepid racecraft pilot Katica Kasza and brilliant xenobiologist Syffa Cilryan to save the eldritch god, preserve the safety of their planet, star system and galaxy, and combat the villainous oligarch responsible for nearly killing a god. Along the way, they will marvel at the beauty of the life amongst the tentacles, the forests, animals and civilizations that call it home, avoid fields of debris and tend to their mutual attraction. The Strands is a novelette exploring the toll of capitalism on the natural world, and how great wealth and power always come at a detriment to the environment and the exploitation of others.

[duckprintspress]

How to Write a Great Query Letter

Part 2 of a 2-part series of guest posts by Alec J. Marsh. Part 1, “Why Query Letters are Good, Actually,” came out last week; you can read it here!

Alec is also the author of Duck Prints Press’s forthcoming novella To Drive the Hundred Miles, about a young man coming home for the holidays and finding more than he expected. It’s coming out December 21st, 2022. They know what they’re talking about, as an author and about a writer-writing-about-writing, so read on and learn!

Now that you’ve read the first post in this series, and had a week to reflect on it… are you convinced yet? Are you ready to acquire the most important marketing skill of your career? Great! 

If you’re primarily interested in how to pitch to Duck Prints Press specifically, there will be a full post about that coming out in the near future. But I promise, these skills will help you whatever your writing aspirations are. 

1. The Really Boring Part

Most queries open with a paragraph called “metadata.” This is all the marketing stuff that you need to get out of the way so your agent/editor knows what kind of book it is. This includes 

Title: Self-explanatory 

Length: This is vitally important for traditional publishing. If you are a debut author and your story isn’t within the accepted range, you’ll get automatically rejected by most agents. There are very good industry reasons for that, but discussing that’s a different article. If you want to look at the averages, check out this link.

Genre and age range: This is practical for marketing and readership purposes, and it also puts the summary in context. 

Comparative (or Comp) Titles: This is a tricky one, and a full discussion on selecting appropriate comparative titles could easily be its own separate blog post, but the short version is that you should pick titles that your book can be compared to. That can be descriptive—”Supernatural but set in Eastern Europe”—or genre—”For fans of Tamora Pierce”—or even trope based—”Sunshine/Grumpy romance set in a world of danger and magic.” There are a ton of options, but the main point is to position your story in the market and make it easy to pick up quickly. 

Logline: This serves a similar purpose as the comp titles do and is meant to sum up one cool part of your story. It doesn’t have to sum up the entire story. For example, Gideon the Ninth sounds wild if you try to summarize the plot, but I’ve been able to convince all my friends to read it by saying simply, “it’s about lesbian necromancers in space.” That’s all you need! In casual conversation, this is often called your “elevator pitch.” Imagine you’re at a convention and you get into the elevator with your dream agent, and you have only the length of the elevator ride to sell them your novel. What do you say? That’s your logline.

***Both comp titles and logline are technically optional, and you don’t need both of them. It’s better to write something unique than to waste the space putting something in just because you think you need it. 

2. The Biography

This usually goes at the end of the query. Don’t overthink it. If you have any credentials, put those in; relevant credentials can include past publications, editing jobs, or a creative writing degree. Then write one to two sentences that make you sound interesting. For example, I say that I like long walks in the fog (because I write moody fantasy) and have a history degree (because it inspires my fantasy world building). 

3. The Body

I left this until the last because it’s the hardest and most important part. A killer summary will make up for dull metadata and a lackluster bio. But if the body of your query letter is weak, no MFA in the world will save you. This section should be 300 words maximum.  

Your simplest formula for including what needs to be in this paragraph is four sentences: LEAD, OBJECTIVE, CONFLICT, TWIST. It’s simpler than you think to write the first draft. I promise. Let it be terrible, get it down, then edit it to a fine shine (much like you’ve already done with that novel!). 

Lead: This is your main character. Name them and describe them by including their profession, skills, or other plot-relevant details. 

Objective: What does your main character want? Try to make this as specific as possible. “Longs for  acceptance” is vague and generic. “Wants to be accepted into the Book Guild” is specific and gives a reader clues about their personality and the setting. You can put in some information about motivation here too. Maybe her father was also a bookbinder and she needs to redeem the family name. 

Conflict: Now we’re getting to the meat of it! Why can’t your main character get what they want? Again, try to be specific and don’t leave it to platitudes. If the bookbinders just don’t like her, that’s generic. If they don’t like her because they think she’s as corrupt as her father was and will bring ruin to them, that’s something a reader can really dig into. We have themes implied now! We understand this is a story about family ties, redemption, and preconceived notions, and you didn’t even need to spell that out. 

Twist: This is the most nebulous part of the query. The twist can be a real plot twist, like her discovering that the bookbinding guild also sells occult books. It can be a cool thing about the setting, like the bookstore being on an airship. It can be the romantic subplot, if she falls in love with her rival apprentice. It can be the historical inspiration, if the book is set in a fantasy world reminiscent of Renaissance Italy. In short, what makes your book special? What’s going to prompt people to shove it in their friend’s faces? It’s similar to the logline in that way. 

You can also put the twist at the beginning of the body paragraph, if it’s really cool. You can weave it throughout. You can put it at the end in a mic drop moment. Just make your book sound cool. That’s literally all this is! 

And those three sections…are basically it! Doesn’t sound so scary now, right? Oh wait, it still does? Okay, then, here’s some more tips to help you!

Write down everything you need in a query in whatever order works for you. I do it like a sad, clunky mad libs just so it’s all on the page. It’s a lot of pressure to include all this important information AND make it pretty in one go. 

Ask your beta readers to help! It’s hard to summarize your own stories when you’ve been living inside them for months. I’ve helped so many friends with their queries because they wrote something perfectly serviceable and technically correct that somehow still made their story sound frightfully boring. (This is not a condemnation of their skill as writers. The skills needed to write queries are completely different.) 

Don’t use rhetorical questions. This is mostly personal taste, but I think they’re a waste of space. “Will she follow her heart?” is sort of useless when 99% of stories are about people following their heart. “She must choose between her ambition and the chance at true love” is so much more clear and includes more conflict. 

The body of your query letter actually only needs to include the first 30-50% of the story in most cases—enough to leave the reader/agent/editor eager to know what happens next, and no more. This isn’t true if the twist is necessary to understanding why the story is exciting. Can you imagine trying to sell Gone Girl without including the twist that it was all a set up? That twist took the story from generic true crime to something truly original. So to some extent, you’ll need to use your judgment, but there’s rarely any need to try to fit the whole plot into that 300-word paragraph.

Above all, be specific. 

Do not shy away from giving spoilers (again: BE SPECIFIC). “She finds information that may change everything,” are seven words that tell you nothing. If you say what the information is (“she finds a note from her father that makes it clear he was framed”), you’ll leave the reader desperate to know what the outcome will be, begging for the rest of the story. 

Get the query competent and coherent, and then leave it for at least a week. This is good editing advice for any story, but it’s absolutely vital for a query. Because they’re so short and so much rides on them, every single word you write in the query has to be useful, and every sentence has to be clear, concise, and intriguing. Don’t rush this; it’s better to go slow and get it right then hurry along and face a pile of rejections. 

Have a query beta reader who hasn’t read your story. Make sure it makes sense with no context. Revise it again. Leave it for another week. (I’m sorry. But I’m not really.)

I know this sounds like a lot. Query letters are hard, and the pressure makes it harder. Writing culture loves to hate on them, for good reason. But you learned to write a novel, something that takes years to master! You can learn to write a query letter too. I won’t pretend it’s easy, but it is a skill you can learn, and it’s worth it! With a single page, you can convince people to buy your book, and that’s magical! 

-

You can learn more about Alec here; you can learn more about To Drive the Hundred Miles here, and read a teaser here. And, you can check out Alec’s two already-published erotica works Heart’s Scaffolding and Study Hall.

Who we are: Duck Prints Press LLC is an independent publisher based in New York State. Our founding vision is to help fanfiction authors navigate the complex process of bringing their original works from first draft to print, culminating in publishing their work under our imprint. We are particularly dedicated to working with queer authors and publishing stories featuring characters from across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum.

Love what we do? Sign up for our monthly newsletter and get previews, behind-the-scenes information, coupons, and more!

Want to support the Press and get lots of our stories? Consider backing our Patreon or ko-fi monthly at a level that includes free stories, and read your fill!

[rocrown]

Last minute manuscript changes just days before the deadline?

More likely than you think.

*sigh*

[rocrown]

Anyone else ever spend an hour doing research just to write a single sentence?

[rocrown]

Preamble: I wrote this at 3 am last night in a trance as a storm raged outside. Content warnings for gore (blood), body horror, spooky forest, and starvation.

THE FOREST OF WOE

by Ro Crown

In a petrified forest, the barren trees stood like gnarled skeletons, their canopy and bark hanging like desiccated flayed flesh. Sapped of colour, the forest of ghastly pale haze and deep haunted shadows enveloped Caoimhe*. The wind shook through the trees like a death rattle. Boughs snapped like bones breaking. Her petite bare feet marked a trail through grey dust, touching the putrescent cadaverous ground beneath. And overhead, the moon, gealach, was a fractured faded spectre. Its smaller fragments formed a disc around two larger craggy halves and glimmered like dust motes twirling in a sunbeam, beautiful if they weren’t such a terrible omen.

Caoimhe’s breath coiled in front of her gaunt face. She shivered, a naked and emaciated woman, starving, parched and frail, pallid skin stretched over exposed ribs, each vertebrae a jagged barb, and her shoulder blades like vestigial wings. Grime clung to the hollows of her pelvis and clavicle, her sternum jutting out. The forest had stripped her garments with its needling hawthorns and dense briars, and any remaining rags mouldered during the years counting beyond threescore years and ten. How much time had passed in the greenwood, she did not know, but her body had devoured itself and yet had not aged. Short lank auburn hair blew off her brow, revealing a crescent scar above her left eye, an injury from another lifetime. Once a bright spring green, her eyes had clouded, their faint virescence a callous memory of a distant Eastertide. The salt of her tears had dried at the corner of her eyes and on her sunken cheeks, a stinging reminder of endless sobbing, arid tributaries of an age long past.

Chewing the skin of her chapped lips, Caoimhe arrived at a glade. A frozen loch lay beneath a still waterfall, an icy cascade as reflective as a mirror. Trees near the water’s edge bore steel leaves, sharp blades that sliced her fragile skin when she brushed against them. Each cut was a tally marking the forest’s ceaseless, senseless cruelty.

The ice of the loch slashed her feet like broken glass as Caoimhe stepped onto it. Agony reached into her, clenching its cold burning claws around the last of her humanity and crushing it. Approaching the waterfall, she regarded her reflection, a small animated corpse leaving bloody footprints behind her, Caoimhe’s body denuded of its hair but for a thicket of unkempt russet wisps. She had endured unrelenting degradation at the hands of the forest. It had marred her spirit, fractured her mind, and leached her of vitality until only a gelid void remained.

In the mirrored ice appeared the image of an attractive and bewitching woman, replacing Caoimhe’s ruined visage. Clothed in her long blonde tresses and a fringe of icicles around her waist, the woman greeted Caoimhe. Her roseate cheeks so full of life, her cherry blossom pink lips arched into an easy smile, and after untold miseries, she was a welcomed sight.

“What brings such an abysmal thing to my waters?” asked the woman, her voice lilting and soft, her eyes flaring like embers bursting from a fire.

Opening her mouth to speak, only a muted croak emanated from Caoimhe, her voice having perished from disuse.

“Let me take you away from this awful place.” The woman reached through the ice, her motions as fluid as a stream’s current. “Give me your hand.”

Raising her hand, Caoimhe’s muscles struggled under the strain of the simple act, but she persevered, closing her frostbitten fingers around the woman’s.

In the moment they touched, the woman transformed. Glossy blood gushed from dozens of open gashes over the entirety of her body, coating her in moist crimson, her sallow skin sloughing from the bones. Black and sickly yellow tumours pulsated under her skin, secreting a thick oily stinking ooze. Wrapping her arms around Caoimhe, her razor sharp fingernails gouged Caoimhe’s back, raking them down her skin. The cailleach, a vicious hag, pulled Caoimhe close. She opened her rotting maw and gnashed her wretched overlapping fangs, her decaying tongue slopping from her mouth in a torrent of viscous saliva.

“You should have never entered my forest, fawn!” Sinking her teeth into Caoimhe’s shoulder, the monstrous woman dragged her into the mirrored surface. A dark abyss stretched in every direction, and within the darkness glowed the fiery eyes of many Fomorians. “You’ve released me from my torment. It’s yours now.”

The cailleach disintegrated into pale sand, falling through the invisible floor one grain at a time like an infinite hourglass.

Caoimhe turned back to the ice and slammed her fists into its unyielding surface. She choked on a scream, blood gurgling in her throat as the giant knobbly hands of Fomorians molested her and dragged her mangled body into the torturous oblivion until another unfortunate soul found herself in the forest of woe Caoimhe had inherited.

The End.

*Pronunciation note: This Irish name is usually anglicized as Keeva. (KEE-və)

[birdplushie]

they should make it illegal to end your story with an epilogue where your main female character is suddenly randomly married and has children when she's never once expressed a desire for this previously

[blunella]

[johannamanuela]

Xena’s amazing costumes.

[brainstreams]

[haydenthewitch]

tumblr get out of my walls this JUST happened to me. franticly looking up "FLAPPERS 1920'S?" at 6 in the morning (I haven't slept yet) because vampires. but like. it's an AU about vampires. does anyone care if I do the 1920's wrong? probably not!

[rocrown]

HAPPY PRIDE!!

My queer series of mystery ebooks are available for 99¢ each!

The Mariner Crane Mysteries Trilogy

Set in the 1960s, Mariner Crane is a brilliant private detective who solves murders that exonerate her lesbian client, finds a missing queer teenage girl, and fights bigots at every turn. These three novellas are filled with mysteries to be solved and have a focus on building a community of queer people and allies in order to achieve justice in a deeply unjust society.

For fans of Dimension 20, Drawtectives, Naddpod's Twilight Sanctorum, classic mystery novels and queer stories!!

The Treasure of Meanie Romero The Siren's Call The Bastard Himself

[rocrown]

HAPPY PRIDE!!

My queer series of mystery ebooks are available for 99¢ each!

The Mariner Crane Mysteries Trilogy

Set in the 1960s, Mariner Crane is a brilliant private detective who solves murders that exonerate her lesbian client, finds a missing queer teenage girl, and fights bigots at every turn. These three novellas are filled with mysteries to be solved and have a focus on building a community of queer people and allies in order to achieve justice in a deeply unjust society.

For fans of Dimension 20, Drawtectives, Naddpod's Twilight Sanctorum, classic mystery novels and queer stories!!

The Treasure of Meanie Romero The Siren's Call The Bastard Himself