most ardently

book babbling. main: leatherjacketmixtapes

[pastel-pink-psycho]

[spookyboywhump]

I do really love it when women write graphic and fucked up things. I feel like so often people react to fucked up fiction with “of course a disgusting man would write this 🙄” and it often carries an unspoken (honestly sometimes spoken) message of “a woman’s PURE and DELICATE and FEMININE mind could NEVER think of something this VILE”. Thank you women in fucked up fiction 🫡

[manuscripts-dontburn]

The pretty classics section

[scottlynch78]

"Locke Lamora and the Bottled Serpent" e-book

Hey hey, everyone-- the story originally published in two parts in GDM was collected, corrected, and very slightly expanded by yours truly for a special limited edition from Conversation Tree Press. Now that that edition has been devoured by wolves, Conversation Tree has also released a nice normal e-book for everyone:

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GZYBK64S

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0GZYBK64S

Amazon CA: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0GZYBK64S

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/locke-lamora-and-the-bottled-serpent

It should also be up at B&N and Apple soon. Cheers!

[thelibrarywaltz]

anyone else start a series and then get distracted with other books and then have to go back a few years later and reread before continuing bc you forgot everything? or is that just me

bonus: new case insert and pop socket for my kindle!

[dilf-din]

Is this anything

[virtualyric]

I said finally, a question, "Solya?" The name felt strange on my tongue, moving, like the high shadow of a bird, circling; even as I said it, I felt the brush of a piercing eye. "It means falcon, in the spell-tongue," the Dragon said.

In Naomi Novik's fantasy book Uprooted, the protagonist's culture is probably based on Polish culture (the kingdom is called "Polnya"). But the language of magic seems to be based on Hungarian?

The wizard called "the Dragon" is named Sarkan, and the Hungarian word for dragon is sárkány. The wizard called "the Falcon" is named Solya, and the Hungarian word for falcon is sólyom. There's also a spell called "loytalal":

"Loytalal," I said softly, to the small coiled braid of Kasia's hair: good for finding the whole, from a part, the scribbled note on the spell had said.

This is probably related to the Hungarian word talál, which means "to find".

Maybe someone who speaks Hungarian could figure out the meanings of the other magical words in the book.

[naominovik]

Author sticks her head in to say that the magic language of Sarkan and the other wizards (which comes from the sorcerer king and his people's magic tradition) is indeed based on the Finno-Ugric languages, but not a direct translation of any one of them -- I came up with most of the individual words by translating one or more of the underlying meanings that I wanted into combinations of Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian, then mashing them up together and choosing sounds that I liked.

[fictaddict]

[freckles-and-books]

“Just because someone says something with passion doesn’t make it true”

[the-dust-jacket]

I finally saw Sinners! Yes, it was amazing!

In honor of this gorgeous movie, here are a few books featuring history, horror, race and colorism, music, monsters, siblings, and things that go bump in the night.

Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark

Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas

Fledgling by Octavia Butler

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle

Sister Mine by Nalo Hopkinson

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland

That Self-Same Metal by Brittany Williams

[the-dust-jacket]

Bringing this back for your spooky reading season delectation.

[samireads]

A cup of (decaffeinated) tea and a good book to finish off my weekend 😌✌🏻

[babblinbook]

Black and gold bookstack 🖤✨

[aliteraryprincess]

Something skitters across Holly's mind: Julia in the glade a long time ago, the tender amused curl of her mouth, This isn't forever. It snatches Holly's breath: she was wrong. They are forever, a brief and mortal forever, a forever that will grow into their bones and be held inside them after it ends, intact, indestructible.

Tana French, The Secret Place

[longseasons]

all these excellent books come from some random penguins house?

[the-wanderer]

[jems-library]

Book mail. I can't wait to start this

[x-v4mp3y3lin3r-x]

but seriously I wish more people would read indie queer books instead of just whining about how mainstream TV never does anything queer. like I KNOWWW it's because people think they're Too Good™ to enjoy the lowly self-pub stuff on Amazon/Itch, but I'm sick of hearing y'all whine day in and day out about how you can never find queer romance media to enjoy, and then never actually take the recommendations that people give you

don't have money? join Queer Liberation Library. Follow authors and wait for their books to go on sale.

struggle with reading because of e-reader inaccessibility? my favorite e-reader is "Moon+ Reader" because it's free and has tons of accessibility options. it takes a little bit of finagling to get used to, but you can even make your books look like ao3 works (if that's what you want)

don't know what to read? cool, let me tell you about all these mlm books I've read (specifically mlm because remember this account used to be for my gay posting, but everyone feel free to reblog and add other queer books you've read!) and I'll link the goodreads pages so you can read the synopses if you're interested

trans authors highlighted with a star ✯

The Tithenai Chronicles by Foz Meadows ✯ - A great adult fantasy duology about an arranged marriage, murder mysteries, and fantastical politics. Great book for people who like high romantasy and hate miscommunication.

Mismatched Mates by Eliot Grayson - This is a long series of standalone romance novels about animal shifters, warlocks, and vampires (oh my) which is NOT OMEGAVERSE and doesn't include any mpreg. These books are pretty silly and I enjoy that. I recommend reading the first few in order, but you don't have to!

Vampires of Eden by Karla Nikole - This vampire romance series is connected to Lore & Lust but I'm recommending it because I think it's lesser-known. Karla Nikole's writing has been getting better and it shows with this series. The vampire lore is really unique. Should be read in order, but book 1 is kind of a slog? I LOVE book 2.

Twilight Mages by Eliot Grayson - Standalone fantasy romance novels set in a universe where some mages are cursed with needing to fuck or die. The first 2 books are about mages who have to bottom, the 3rd is about a mage who has to top. Odd premise but weirdly interesting books. Definitely for people who like CNC (or maybe for those who won't admit it lol)

Radiance series by Tavia Lark - Fantasy romance novels with an over-arching plot of taking down a corrupt religious institution. Demons, magic, all that good stuff. I'm gonna be honest, these books are all pretty different but equally great. Like, genuinely.

Darkmourn Universe by Ben Alderson - These are gay bodice rippers. That is how the author describes them, and it's an apt description. They are good books!! But they are bodice rippers, and so if you're looking for healthy contemporary romance.. this isn't that. If you're looking for fucked up stories loosely based on fairytales (Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Hades and Persephone, Little Red Riding Hood) this will be a fun time for you

The Prince's Dearest Guards by Beau Van Dalen ✯ - M/M/M with a trans protagonist, these indie novellas are definitely interesting. They're only a few bucks on Itch, and then you get to keep the epubs forever, so give them a chance, you might like them!

The Flowered Blade by Taylor Hubbard ✯ - Another fantasy book with a trans protagonist but this one is about an elf prince being held captive by an orc. (Yes, fantasy racism, I know, I know.)

Love Immortal by Kit Vincent ✯ - Vampire/human romance in a "dark academia" setting. (Which is to say, a weird college in bumfuck nowhere Vermont) With a little bit of murder mystery sprinkled in. Dracula fanfiction.

Galaxies and Oceans by N.R. Walker - A contemporary romance about healing from abuse, mourning, and Australian lighthouses. I've given my opinions about this book in the past, so I'll just say it's highly rated and a pretty good slow burn cozy, vibey romance.

Cloudy With A Chance of Bad Decisions by Fae Quin - I don't know how to describe this book. It's a contemporary romance about two guys whose invasive families are trying to force them together during a camping trip? I DON'T KNOW all I know is that it left me fucking gobsmacked every 5 pages. Hilarious read. The main character has a dildo named Nine Inch Neil. insane.

Last Courtesan of Olympus by Amanda Meuwissen - This is the first erotica on this list, it's about a courtesan being bedded by the greek gods. Extremely interesting premise, I haven't read the sequels but book 2 is about a guy sleeping with the norse gods?

I'm done listing shit, I gotta go eat dinner. my point being to just start reading shit, even if you think it's silly, even if you think the premise is bad, just fucking read. You have literally nothing to lose.

also no I didn't recommend any BL media because I think the "just read BL/GL" shit is a fucking cop out, too. there's tons of queer romance media on the western market and we can enjoy both gay romance books AND gay manga simultaneously, we don't have to pit either culture against each other. (read The Metalhead Next Door tho thank u 😋)

[batking-lich]

i haven't parsed through all of these fully, but if you're looking for places to get more recs, may i suggest:

lgbtqreads.com is a big site where you can easily find things by genre or rep

there's the queer comics database for comics

there are tons of sites for lesbian/sapphic recommendations, including iheartsapphic, the lesbrary, the lesbian review, and so many others if you've got time to sort through them all

beffynicolereads has a big list of queer fiction

the queer science fiction and fantasy book database's website is a liiittle broken but i think it still technically works?

the transfeminine review covers a wide variety of books by transfemme authors and just announced the winners of the reader's choice awards. also here on tumblr @thetransfemininereview

there's a couple of different aspec databases, this one is dedicated to short stories while this one is a bit more broad. author claudie arsenault used to have a really big one but took it down in september i think due to costs

the disability book archive has a massive list of books by disabled authors and/or featuring disabled characters that you can also filter by other kinds of rep. they're also on tumblr @thedisabilitybookarchive

s. qiouyi lu has a big list of specfic works featuring characters who use neopronouns

a few blogs i've seen here and there on tumblr that might be interesting to check are @aro-who-reads, @haveyoureadthistransbook, @the-bi-library, @qbdatabase, @transbookoftheday, @sapphicbookclub, @sapphicbookoftheday, @queereads-bracket, and that's just from a few cursory searches i've done. if you really dug in and went hunting you could probably find a whole bunch more

reddit's also a pretty good place to find indie stuff! for instance r/romancebooks has sooo many megathreads, including a megathread of megathreads focused on diverse books. there are a lot of specific niche subreddits that you can search through or just pop in and ask for what you're looking for. a lot of reddit readers i've seen are pretty voracious in their particular niches and keep a good eye on new releases

also, people on itch.io organize bundles all the time, where you can get a really good sample platter of indie authors for a good price, so if price is an issue that's something to watch out for. i've found some decent stuff that i may not have heard of otherwise because it was in a bundle

[haveyoureadthistransbook]

I'd also like to have @free-queer-books as a really great resource of indie queer lit for those who don't have money to spend :).

[kay-claire]

Seriously, I got really into reading queer indie books in 2020 and I hav not looked back since. Audiobooks are so great too, I'd much rather listen to a queer audiobook than watch a show on Netflix that's going to get cancelled after season 1 any day.

[x-v4mp3y3lin3r-x]

I'll plug your site because your books sound interesting!

y'all I'm sorry the text is small and cramped I had to zoom out to fit everything in my screenshots lol

And I'm not gonna screenshot any of the comics because Tumblr gets angry about 18+ stuff, but those look good too!!

[kay-claire]

thank you 😭💙

[lgbtplus-literature]

I bought a lot of ebooks off smashwords recently and last year I read several ARCs of queer indie novels by following indie authors and seeing them recommend each other. Challenges on StoryGraph can be a good place to find ideas too as you can see what other people are reading for the challenge.

I also started this list of places to find ideas for books recently and will be updating with more places as I come across them.

My favourite queer indie books I’ve read recently:

Like Salt and Whisky by Merlina Garance (trans F/genderqueer M second chance romance)

Inhuman Nature by Marra Moore (sequel Survival Instinct out this month) (M/M/M vampires in Brighton)

Phase Shift by Terra P. Waters (sci-fi with multiple queer side characters)

Binding Bricks by Ami Spencer (NB/F second chance romance)