Be a writer, no one said

Vee • she/her he/him • 'Sunset,' an LGBTQ+ serial out now (18+) • Writer: Vee (me) & Writer/Artist: @touloser-lautrec • queer & married • 30s • ko-fi.com/sunset_a_story

[sunset-a-story]

Writeblr Intro

Hello, Writeblr! I'm Vee! I'd love to connect with other writers, especially folks who write/are into LGBTQIA+ sci-fi/fantasy stories, and hype each other up!

Sunset is a character-focused slow-build story about people with powers (“knacks”) that are significantly more trouble than they’re worth.

◖SolCorp’s entire goal is to protect knacked people by keeping humans from ever finding out that knacks exist, but with the Corp’s authority and control growing, some factions of Sol agents are beginning to feel like something has to change. The path forward is lined with blood, intrigue, cannibal monsters, and truths they can’t unknow.◗

Sunset is a serial fiction in three arcs: Sunrise, High Noon, and Sunset. Issues go up every Friday. (Patreon members get issues one week earlier plus extras!)

@touloser-lautrec is my amazing co-writer and artist behind the Sunset art and cover art! Go give them a follow!

Content Warning List

Sunset Vol 1. Sunrise: Fully posted (115k words)

Patreon | Royal Road | AO3

Dramatis Personae page

Playlist

Audiobook version

Sunset Vol 2. High Noon: Fully posted (324k words)

Patreon | Royal Road | AO3

Dramatis Personae page

Playlist

Sunset Vol 3. Sunset: Issues posted Fridays (605k words)

Patreon | Royal Road | AO3

Dramatis Personae page

Playlist

Extras on the Sunset Patreon include things like exclusive deleted & bonus scenes, Baguette updates, early access to art and fiction, correspondence from LAHQ, voting power on what bonus scenes we should write, and gift packages of merch!

If you're interested in being on the taglist for Sunset, please let me know in a comment/dm!

Worldbuilding Posts

SolCorp Pharmaceuticals

"A pristine pharmaceuticals office park where everything that happens is always in everyone's best interest."

Entropy Games Inc. (our Big Bad)

"All games have winners, and all games have losers. Not all game pieces are made of plastic, and the warehouses have seen all of them."

The Church/The Children of God

"Sanctuary will be given freely, no questions asked. There is just one edict--Fell the Dogs."

I also offer Alpha/Beta Reading Services!

Details below!

If you're looking for someone to put eyes on your original WIP and offer helpful but gentle feedback, message me!

Why me? I have a degree in Creative Writing. I was gainfully employed as a professional writer for 6 years. I have been published in literary journals and was a founding editor of a literary journal that I helped run for years. I have a 1,800+ page serial, and I just plain love stories. As far as pricing, I charge a $40 flat rate for pieces under 10K words and $0.004 USD per word for pieces over that.

[scribeherself]

seeing people say "this trope has been done to death" as if that's ever stopped anyone from eating bread. BREAD HAS BEEN DONE TO DEATH FOR LITERALLY THOUSANDS OF YEARS AND WE STILL WANT MORE BREAD. write your chosen one AU. write your coffee shop meet-cute. write your 47th iteration of "there was only one bed" because guess what??? we're still hungry.

[drunkeninlovesailor]

As someone whose comfort food is literally bread + olive oil, I second this

[winterandwords]

✍🏼 WIP acrostic tag (FLINCH)

Thanks to @oh-no-another-idea for the tag!

📝 Share a sentence from your WIP that starts with each letter in the word given to you by the person who tagged you

These are from Miles From Morning...

First on the ground’s the loser. Medical are standing by for repairs, so don’t hold back.

Litter gathers in clumps like it’s trying to climb up and become part of the buildings that rise around me.

I’m not a person. I’m barely even a series of numbers.

Not that it matters. Not that I matter. Not that anything does.

Close your eyes in a room where you can hear someone else’s breathing. Try to wake up not still exhausted for a change.

He’s just good at figuring out how to use people, how to move them into the right place in a system they don’t even want to be part of. So fuck him.

Tagging @k--havok, @ls-daydreams, @milosometimeswrites and @rainbowpitofdoom if you'd like to do it, with an open tag for anyone else who wants to join in.

The word for your acrostic is GARDEN 💜

Reblogs, replies etc on my tag posts are always welcome, but if you're doing this tag yourself, please make your own post instead of using mine to start a reblog chain.

Want more of my writing than I post on Tumblr, with all my stories, blog posts, updates, and audio readings? Head on over to my Patreon! There's a free membership option and I'd love to welcome you to my cosy little queer fiction community 💞

[sunset-a-story]

Specified Line Tag

Thanks to @ls-daydreams for the tag!

📝 Find a line in your story that fits each of the parameters given by the person who tagged you, then give new lines for the people you tag

I was given:

A line about a relationship

“It’s been harder without you. All of it. It’s not like I didn’t realize how much I lean on you--I did. I do. It’s not just that. I just like it better when you’re around.” (Sunset Vol 3)

A line that could sum up a character

“Aren’t you tired?”

“Not really,” Reeve lied. (Sunset Vol 3)

A line you're proud of

With a stomach full of swallowed fear, Sage ran one finger down the kitchen counter, past a tall black coffee maker, a dish rack full of clean dishes, and a sink full of dirty ones, likely from breakfast. He could smell chilies and spices, and there were stray dull yellow splotches of dried egg yolk on the plates. Four plates. They ate as a family. (Sunset Vol 2)

A line layered in subtext/that says more than you might think

“You seem like you’re shit outta luck.”

 “Yeah,” Reeve agreed with a humorless laugh. 

“Are you?”

Reeve turned to look at him, brows lowered. “Excuse me?” 

“You know, shit outta luck." (Sunset Vol 2)

~ I struggled to track down something for that last one, so I just picked someone talking in code.

I'll no-pressure tag @willtheweaver @toribookworm22 @ceribrennanwrites @jkit45 @dyrewrites and open tag

Your lines are:

A line where someone lies

A line you find funny

A line about loss

A line with an insult

[spiritbladed]

something something extremely sexy when magic users resort to physical violence. yeah i have the power of god and anime on my side but i also have THESE HANDS. i cast Punch You In The Face. i take my magic staff through which i channel the vast energies of the elements and the cosmos and i cast Severe Concussion And Skull Fracture. casting time for xenoglossy too long, chose the quicker route of Stab You In The Throat.

[luna-azzurra]

The thing about a good character flaw is that it has to be the same thing as their greatest strength just turned up too high. the person who loves deeply and therefore controls. the person who sees everything and therefore trusts nothing. the person who is so loyal they lose themselves. there are no clean villains and no clean heroes and once you understand that in fiction you can't unsee it in people. everyone is just their best quality at the wrong volume.

[luna-azzurra]

If you're a new writer and you're asking yourself "is this too personal, is this too much, will people think this is weird" that feeling is the exact location of your actual voice. The stuff that makes you want to close the laptop is the stuff nobody else could write. The safe version is always worse. Always. I have never once read something and thought "this would have been better if it was a little less honest." go further. It's always go further.

[winterandwords]

✍🏼 WIP acrostic tag (SQUARED)

Thanks to @oh-no-another-idea for the tag!

📝 Share a sentence from your WIP that starts with each letter in the word given to you by the person who tagged you

These are from Miles From Morning...

So I down the first shot in my current round of three and it doesn’t help, but it doesn’t exactly make anything worse either.

Questions that need answers. Reasons for him to stay just a little longer.

Unimportant, replaceable, but useful enough to keep alive.

All I want is to lie down somewhere and not move for a week.

Right now, here, with this stranger doing exactly what I told him to do, I can’t handle what it’s dredging up.

Even weeks after we met, the lingering ghost of his kindness with all its unfamiliarity still has power over me.

Don’t get me wrong, the temptation is definitely there, but I can’t be bothered dealing with the fallout from it.

Tagging @dyrewrites, @eyes-talks-ocs, @indecentpause and @jkit45 if you'd like to do it, with an open tag for anyone else who wants to join in.

The word for your acrostic is HANDY 💜

[leebrontide]

Tree smashed my roof. Like fully took out half my roof. It’s hanging out in my attic.

[leebrontide]

Nobody was hurt but the cats and kiddo are not especially chill. We were home when it happened. Fire trucks came and firefighters taped off my lawn but said it was safe to stay here. The tree is so lodged in they doubt it can move.

They say we’ll need a crane to take the very big, very old rotted oak out of the attic.

Like the part in my attic is too wide for me to reach all the way around. And long enough it’s almost the full length of my house. It’s smashed into the roof on at least 3 and maybe all 4 sides.

[leebrontide]

During June! Frankly, homophobic.

[leebrontide]

Hey, so in the long term we will be fine. The unauthorized skylights will be tarped and the roof will be rebuilt. And also my office will get fixed. I think the negligent landlord who ignored big rotting trees for years despite our repeatedly asking them to do something and despite having smashed other things on our side before will eventually be made to pay up for a bunch, and we have decent insurance.

But in the mean time, uhm, buy my books maybe? Some angsty, very character-focused late YA scifi? Superhero multigenerational domesticity/family drama? Very queer?

Right here.

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

it's okay for your favorite fictional character to be a jerk, in canon or in fanfics, even if they're not a villain or an antagonist. real people can be jerks — good people can be jerks sometimes, that doesn't mean they are no longer good people, it means they are human beings with feelings and complexities.

let your character be a jerk when faced with a challenging situation, when the circumstance warrants them to be a jerk. let them lash out, be angry, make mistakes, do things they end up regretting. it's not bad writing, it's being authentic.

[sunset-a-story]

Sunset Vol 3 Issue 19 is up for free!

Royal Road   |   AO3   |   Patreon

In which the Beatty crew adjusts to a life of hard labor, Anise sees the plans for her future moving closer, and Reeve and Alex go on a first date.

If it weren’t for Gareth and Hannah, he and Reeve probably wouldn’t have made it up the stairs first. As soon as the door shut, Alex was on him, aching muscles be damned. Each struggled in turns to get their shoes off while the other gave them no quarter for rest, distracting them with groping hands. Alex bounded up the stairs, not caring that his thighs complained, to get into their bedroom and only stopped when he heard a thud and quiet laughter. He turned to see Reeve had tripped and landed on his hands and knees on the narrow wooden stairs. 

“I was trying to grab your ass,” he wheezed.

“Get up here,” Alex giggled, “or I’m starting without you.”

Sunset updates tag list. I try to keep it to release updates, long excerpts, and character profiles. Please comment/dm for +/- or to switch to the All Things tag list

@words-after-midnight @chayscribbles @elizaellwrites @theimperiumchronicles @clairelsonao3 @stuffaboutwriting @cee-grice @covenscribe @sejedensekh @void-botanist @oc-writing-corner @rewritingrosie @ashirisu @novel-emma

All Things Sunset tag list

@winterandwords @willtheweaver @thatndginger @albatris @revenantlore @real-fragments @scribe-of-stories @jacqueswriteblrlibrary @asher-writes @eyes-talks-ocs @jkit45 Please comment/dm for +/-

[meanbuddhist]

*turns my attention inwards* mmmmm. no *turns my attention back outwards* oh god

[jennelikejennay]

turn your attention to The Character

[goth-queen]

[ohhelloholly]

[prokopetz]

"You can't ship those characters because they have a problematic height gap" well, strictly speaking we can't ship one of them. The other is well within the size and weight limits of most domestic parcel couriers.

[luna-azzurra]

Just spent 45 minutes researching what a specific street in a city smells like in october so i could write the word "damp." the word is in the final draft. it is doing its job. it cost me 45 minutes and a mild obsession with historical weather records. worth it. the word is perfect. you would not believe how hard i worked on that word.

[thatdisasterauthor]

I think the thing that annoys me most about AI on a personal, day to day, level is what it has done to grammar checkers. If you've never done a lot of editing, or used to 5+ years ago but haven't really in the last couple years, I can't even begin to describe how fucking BAD this shit has gotten. And as an author it is EXHAUSTING.

I just want to catch spelling errors and accidental double spaces and repeated phrases and whenever I use the wrong too/to or affect/effect and shit. But no. They've shoved AI up the ass of every grammar checking software out there and now they all fucking suck and make the most random, obnoxious, nonsensical suggestions.

And yeah, I can ignore all the times it's trying to get me to cut out any semblance of my own voice, or shove things into the wrong tense, or make the most random suggestions on comma usage. But if it's getting all that WRONG, what is it just straight up missing that I SHOULD be correcting? What real spelling and grammar errors are still lurking in there?

[shofarsogood]

A recent example:

Computers used to be able to recognize that and could indicate a new clause and that the next word would probably be a subject and not an object.