whatbettyread

i am bread. author and fanartist, i draw tiktoks about books i'm reading. feel free to tell me to read a book. i'm gay and have a wife.

[k1ttyy-br41nss]

happy pride

[quadrilioquy]

[transbookoftheday]

Champion of the Rose by Cat Aquino and Dominique Duran

In the arena, where life is cheap and spectacle is everything, Rey must decide what kind of game he’s willing to play.

As the largest kingdom in the Known World, the Empire of Sagrada is built on the keystones of conquest: gold, glory, and the Dying God. But when Princess Rosa unexpectedly finds herself the next heir to the throne, she is determined to change Sagrada for the better—until her father announces a glorious tournament of gladiatorial fights and blood magic, with Rosa’s hand and her throne as the prize.

In a desperate bid to win her own hand, Princess Rosa chooses Rey, a trans swordsman from the colony of Himala, as her champion in her father’s tournament. Kidnapped by Sagradan conquistadors and raised as a fighter, Rey is equally desperate to win his freedom and return to Himala with his partner, Teo. But, haunted by the past and his own quest for revenge, Rey is soon caught up in the destructive spectacle of the games, where the cost of power is blood, and the true prize is yet to be revealed.

A bold reenvisioning of the colonial history of Spain and the Philippines through an epic anti-imperialist fantasy about fighting for freedom in the face of empire.

[aroaessidhe]

2026 reads / storygraph

The Night of Baba Yaga

historical thriller novella, translated

set in 1979 Tokyo, a woman is kidnapped by gangsters and after trying to escape, is allowed to live if she becomes the bodyguard/driver for the gang boss’ sheltered daughter

as she gets used to this new job, the two young women grow closer, and start to dream of a life outside of the one they’re in

butch/butch

[spacefruitpress]

👽️ Check out Rena Butler's We Come in Peace - a sassy, outer space MM romance story about diplomacy that gets steamy. Now available on Kindle Unlimited!

[crypt1dglyph5]

Reminder to tie down your werewolves next full moon

[leebrontide]

Ok, it's taken me SIX YEARS to make this. But I did it! It's done! Please watch it!

It's my first animation project, which is why it took so long. I had to learn to animate to make it. It's only a bit over 2 minutes, but I made it the best I possibly could. Please please please watch it. I am so proud of it.

It's a trailer for my first novel- a late YA scifi/superhero book.

Is it absurd to make a fully animated book "trailer" for a book that's been out for 6 years, with voice acting and commissioned music (by the fantastic @plottwiststudios) ? I mean yes. Of course. I'm not even doing this for real marketing purposes because this is a ridiculous thing to do. I don't even really think it'll sell books but the process of making it made me really really happy.

But I love my fictional disaster queers, and I love my book, and when I was a kid I thought I'd grow up to be an animator. I've always loved animation, and I was really, really happy to make something animated myself. I'm really proud of how it turned out.

No AI used.

Please watch it. Please share it.

If it does make you actually want to read the story, you can see all the buying options for ebook, paperback, and audiobook.

I start my next animation project- a fake anime opening credits for book 3 in this series, starting next month.

Please Reblog!

[leebrontide]

Anybody who wants to can repost this to Instagram or TicTok btw. All I ask is that you leave the whole thing intact- credits included, and tell me if it got views. I don't want to deal with those platforms but I just want people to see what I made.

EDIT: Or Reddit. Apparently my beloved wife is too much of a lurker on there to be allowed to post in many of the communities.

[whatbettyread]

[whatbettyread]

@thislittleguylikes

[whatbettyread]

[sphingidaes]

"hurt people hurt people" yes mistress. anything for you mistress.

[sphingidaes]

I Will Die In Combat For You Mistress

[amandapostman]

truly believe that self-censorship is the death of good horror. i mean i know i’m biased because i am trying to get a fucked up book published, but i feel like so many good ideas are stopped in their tracks because the writers are so afraid of being judged. i mean, hell, i went through the exact same thing writing my book. my dad had to continuously tell me to stop self-censoring and to write from the gut, because i was terrified that other people would hate me or be disgusted by me because of what i wanted to write. i didn’t want to pour myself into the book and then have people read it and realize that i was secretly a bad person. and like, look. i’m not going to pretend that everyone in my life is thrilled about this book, now that I’m talking about it openly. there are people that mean a lot to me who think that writing about incest and sexual assault and gratuitous violence is fucked up. and guess what? we’re still friends. i respect that they’re uncomfortable around those subjects and will probably never read it, they respect that i wrote it and still hope that i find success, and we talk about other shit! at the end of the day, it’s horror fiction. they know my character and trust that I won’t push it on them. and there have been far more people that have been very excited about the book, people that i wouldn’t have expected! self-censoring is almost shooting yourself in the foot— you’re not telling the story you want to tell, you’re telling a watered-down version of it. readers can always tell when someone is really excited to be writing what they’re writing, and when they’re walking on eggshells. get more fucked up! push it to extremes! that’s going to be so much more interesting for both you and your audience. don’t censor yourself before anyone else gets to see it, you’re just doing the critics’ job for them. they think it’s disgusting? oh, you’ll fucking show them disgusting.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

Nature Documentary: these deep sea creatures can withstand crushing pressures of thousands of pounds per square inch!

Me: they’re not withstanding a goddamn thing. The pressure is a part of them. Their interiors and exteriors are equalized. Just because your respiratory system is built around a pair of fragile poppable bubbles-

[asteroidtroglodyte]

You don’t know me

[synonymsfordismember]

Gross Stories for You and Your Loved Ones

It's been a big year for publications, so I'm updating this post once again with my available stories! Some are free online, some are pay to read, but shoot me a message if anything's outside your price range and I'll just send you a pdf no problem.

Blanket CW: My work is horror and horror adjacent, and features gore and potentially uncomfortable sexuality more often than not. Proceed with caution; particularly intense works will have additional content warnings.

The Hero: A nasty little story about smoking weed and working food service and performing acts of incredible and senseless violence on behalf of your coworkers. Published in Mangoprism.

Satellite Office: A nameless lesbian engineer forced from her workplace after a traumatic event develops an unusual medical issue, which exposes hairline cracks in her marriage. This probably has nothing to do with what she does for work. Published by Sans Press in their Stranger anthology; nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Polly Says: On the eve of their annual guys and dolls trip, three iDollators and their silicone brides gather in the basement of their cohort's most ambitious for the unveiling of the newest enhancement to his doll, Polly. Things go downhill pretty quickly from there. CWs for sexuality and gore. Published in Cloaked Press's Nightmare Fuel: Body Horror anthology.

Born Sexy Tomorrow: A group of lovable twenty-somethings discover a nonverbal naked woman in the woods outside their lakehouse. CWs for heavy gore and cannibalism, I'm not kidding. Published in Reader Beware's fourth issue.

The Sound of a Gong: Every day, Cecilia, the lady of the house, is murdered with a hammer by the lord she never sees. Every morning, she wakes anew, trapped within the manor's walls. A Gothic time loop featuring light incest and lots and lots of circles. Published by Tales to Terrify, available to listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Rufus: Isolated and grieving in hot suburban sprawl, Aria Wilson returns to her childhood home for a summer alone. Rufus, the man next door living full-time as a dog, thinks she could use some company. Published by A Midnight Kind of Place in both text and podcast form, plus an interview with me about Rufus's origin as A Guy to Scare My Wife With, writing with alexithymia and my projects in progress!

NEW! Dead Wife: After a brutal car accident, two childhood friends meet in a basement to resurrect the narrator's dead wife. However, they fail to resurrect the dead marriage, and balk when Nora arises livelier than before. Published in Horrific Scribblings. CWs for domestic abuse, animal death and explicit sexuality.

NEW! Yes Chef: Both a culinary genius and a certified asshole, head chef Mikal Rime is tasked with preparing a special, one-time menu for a client at the haute orbital restaurant Escrow. His hunt for rare ingredients warps him in more ways than one. Published by Penumbric Speculative Fiction Magazine. CW for body horror (but like, sci-fi body horror).

[amysbooksnthings]

underrated queer romance books

Read these books and give them a little more love!

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

I just wanna say. since following you it's gotten way easier to ignore the impulse to exhaustively explain and put disclaimers to every damn point i make when i write. if you won't read me in good faith within common decency, then you're either being deliberately pedantic, being an asshole, or just stupid and not worth wasting the energy on preemptive appeasement. people are smart enough, they can put in the legwork to actually think about what i'm saying.

ooh say that

[biggestcommunismbuilder]

When it finally clicked for me that "if you decide you don't like me based on an incomplete understanding of who I am, that is absolutely Not My Problem," a lot of things really simplified really fast

[bigbigbigtruck]

been trying to live by this wrt my writing

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

I just wanna say. since following you it's gotten way easier to ignore the impulse to exhaustively explain and put disclaimers to every damn point i make when i write. if you won't read me in good faith within common decency, then you're either being deliberately pedantic, being an asshole, or just stupid and not worth wasting the energy on preemptive appeasement. people are smart enough, they can put in the legwork to actually think about what i'm saying.

ooh say that

[biggestcommunismbuilder]

When it finally clicked for me that "if you decide you don't like me based on an incomplete understanding of who I am, that is absolutely Not My Problem," a lot of things really simplified really fast

[bigbigbigtruck]

been trying to live by this wrt my writing

[socialpants]

There's an awful trend in reading that's this CinemaSins kind of rejection of abstract concepts and suspension of disbelief, that makes people say it's bad writing when authors use descriptions that aren't immediately one to one with physical reality.

Like it's bad when a "tattoo is undulating" (as opposed to... "drawn in a wave like pattern on the skin"?), or when hair is "wet wheat from a late Summer field" (as opposed to "sort of brownish light yellow that dries lighter, but is not actual wheat stalks growing on someone's head but kind of reminiscent of the color and texture"?), or when when ice cream tastes like midnight at the fair" (as opposed to "ice cream flavour bringing back memories of undefined ice cream flavours that are individually popular but always tied to a memory of late evening at the fair ground and probably smelling vaguely like popcorn and sugar"?).

Please. We have to get back to understanding abstract descriptions that evoke feelings and memories and mental images or things we haven't experienced yet. This hyper utilitarian way of reading and judging text is killing fiction. it's robbing you of experiencing things you haven't actually personally experienced.

[synonymsfordismember]

My sci-fi kitchen horror story "Yes Chef" is out now with Penumbric Speculative Fiction Magazine!

Set a couple of decades before the events of Space Trash, Yes Chef follows turbo-divorced bipedal isopod Mikal Rime, a head chef tasked with putting together an unforgettable dinner party for a weapons magnate's very forgettable wife. His penchant for rare ingredients takes him places his sous chef Susan wouldn't go with a gun.

This story has been cooking in the queue for more than a year, and I am beyond excited to finally be sharing it. It's set in the Space Trash universe, but focuses on some of the aliens that don't get much screentime in Space Trash and, like many of my stories, does not end well for anyone. Cws for body horror, some gore and animal death.