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@writersraustin
writeblr intro
~☆~
Uh, hi...
~☆~
neurodivergent
queer, non-binary + bisexual
20-something
poet
fantasy stuff
proud pirate of big companies
let art exist for art's sake
nature is a theme, i guess
cats are cool, too
I'm just making this impromptu intro to pin to this blog, so people know I exist. Lol bye.
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WIPs:
The Devil Chronicles series
The Blacksmith and the Prince
Hollard (unreleased)
Vampire Coalition (unreleased)
I first saw you in the beginning of autumn
And we first spoke when all the leaves had fallen.
I gazed at you from a distance all winter long
And by spring, we exchanged a few furtive glances,
timid nods and half waves of acknowledgement.
But I never knew you in summer.
Yet the color of your eyes was made for the season,
the warmth of the golden sunshine in your soft brown eyes.
I never saw you again.
Autumn will commence once more in a few days but will our paths converge this time around?
Will this be the coldest winter without the stalwart sight of you?
Will the rebirth of spring finally decide to make you mine?
Or will the heat of next year’s summer witness me without your presence?
If there is truly no lifetime where we are meant to be, may I bury all thoughts of you in between seasons.
But let this be an eternal shrine to your memory.
May you live forever in my words even though you will have long since died in my heart.
You look at me when you think I don’t see you.
Will you be able to handle it when I decide to meet your gaze?
Reintro!
I've been on writeblr four years, I figured it's time for a reintro! a lot of the folks who were here when I first came to this wonderful community aren't here anymore, and it's time to meet some new lovely people!
I'm Lila, she/her, and I am a queer fantasy romance author! I'm an indie author with three books currently out! they are:
All of those are available here! This is my author website, and my author instagram!
I also have an author newsletter, which gives a monthly update on what i'm working on, as well as first looks and sneak peeks!
This is my Kofi, where I post novelettes/short stories. I'm working on a membership system for serial short stories.
I have a general taglist that i use semi-often, so please let me know if you'd like to be added to that! you can find more details about my finished/unfinished works here!
I'm also a frequent fanfic writer, so dm me if you want my ao3 or my fandom blog.
I am always looking for new writeblrs to follow and wips to track! please especially reblog if you're a writer who fits any of these:
is an indie author (ALWAYS looking to support more indie authors)
writes mostly fantasy
writes queer romance
is active and posts about their wips often
but of course, all writers are welcome, even if you don't fit those points! boosts are encouraged!
i wrote a novelette!
Lord Serian of Blackwood Hall is a healer of fame and legend. In his hidden home, he heals the sick and injured and asks for nothing in return except that they keep the location of the Hall a secret. After they've healed, they leave, and Serian passes quiet days with just his staff for company. such has been his life for years. When a stranger shows up half dead at Blackwood Hall one stormy night, Serian is instantly intrigued. As the stranger Adar recovers, Serian learns of his kindness and wandering ways, though Adar remains cagey about what led him to Blackwood Hall. As they grow closer, and Serian forms a growing attachment to his mysterious stranger, he's forced to confront the reminder that Adar will have to leave just as every patient does.
does this sound intriguing to you? stay tuned, it'll be available soon!
the intro to this story is available to read for FREE now here on my kofi, or on substack!
you can purchase it for only $2.99 and gain yourself a little story about a gay healer falling in love with the man who showed up half dead on his doorstep <3 it's a great way to support me!
this poem is about being nonbinary.
the issue with this poem is that nonbinary people are harmless whereas werewolves traditionally mangle and kill people. I don’t think the right analogy has been used here
First off, you are allowed to have an opinion about poetry, but I'm going to point out what you appear to have missed. Secondly, I am nonbinary and this is my poem. I wrote it to represent how it sometimes feels being nonbinary in a hostile environment. I don't appreciate being told there's an issue with how things resonate with me or the others who have shared this post. In future, I would recommend you be kinder in your phrasing.
The werewolf has not harmed anyone. The werewolf's apparent only crime is living in the town. There is no evidence or past experience that any werewolves - or the men and wolves in the town - have ever actually hurt anyone. No mangling or killing, and no intention to do so. He just lives there, and apparently has for some time without issue. The townsperson who has approached the speaker refuses to admit this in as many words, but that is literally the text. If there was evidence of harm, it would have been provided when the speaker asked, "has he actually done anything wrong?"
I am a trans person living in the UK. The media and transphobes treat trans people of all kinds like they are predators ready to mutilate and defile children as though there is any evidence of it, when in fact there is absolutely none. And a significant portion of the public, who perhaps don't consider themselves to be transphobic - or at least, would never admit it - believe what they are being told. That is the analogy.
The werewolf isn't the issue here.
you spoke in a language i didn’t understand but we found common ground under the moon both of us looking up at her saying how beautiful she was in our native tongues.
yours was always more romantic than mine
So, there's a dirty little secret in indie publishing a lot of people won't tell you, and if you aren't aware of it, self-publishing feels even scarier than it actually is.
There's a subset of self-published indie authors who write a ludicrous number of books a year, we're talking double digit releases of full novels, and these folks make a lot of money telling you how you can do the same thing. A lot of them feature in breathless puff pieces about how "competitive" self-publishing is as an industry now.
A lot of these authors aren't being completely honest with you, though. They'll give you secrets for time management and plotting and outlining and marketing and what have you. But the way they're able to write, edit, and publish 10+ books a year, by and large, is that they're hiring ghostwriters.
They're using upwork or fiverr to find people to outline, draft, edit, and market their books. Most of them, presumably, do write some of their own stuff! But many "prolific" indie writers are absolutely using ghostwriters to speed up their process, get higher Amazon best-seller ratings, and, bluntly, make more money faster.
When you see some godawful puff piece floating around about how some indie writer is thinking about having to start using AI to "stay competitive in self-publishing", the part the journalist isn't telling you is that the 'indie writer' in question is planning to use AI instead of paying some guy on Upwork to do the drafting.
If you are writing your books the old fashioned way and are trying to build a readerbase who cares about your work, you don't need to use AI to 'stay competitive', because you're not competing with these people. You're playing an entirely different game.
I've been mulling this post over since I reblogged it this morning, and if Malcolm doesn't mind, I'm going to clarify for a few people who might be wondering: If these people aren't playing the same game as us other indie authors, what game are they playing?
The answer is that they're playing the algorithm.
It'd be so easy to drop this at Amazon's door, but quite frankly, all book retailers reward this behavior. If you are pumping out work regularly, the sales algorithm will reward you because it keeps you relevant. I'm not talking about authors who produce one book a year or even two or the few people who are genuinely that prolific.
I'm talking about the above people, who, let's face it, treat indie publishing as a form of content farming.
I have zero issues with authors who use ghostwriters, especially when they're honest about it. (James Patterson is a notable example.)
But the people who hide it or attribute it to their "hustle game" while claiming we're all in competition with each other are not competing with writers; they're competing with other Algorithm Gamers because they've realized that no matter the quality of their work, as long as they have something in the New Release category, they're making money.
They're competing to stay relevant in terms of quantity, not quality because they don't actually have anything to say.
It's all just clicks to them -- and I'm willing to bet they make more money from getting people to click their (usually undisclosed) affiliate links than they do their actual books.
So take heart, dear writer. You are not competing with these people.
The vast majority of us don't view the rest of our community as competition. We're just trying to get our own work out the door while also supporting our friends as best we can.
Work at your own pace. Make the art you want. Support other writers. It'll be worth it. I promise.
As a reader, how can we identify this mass-produced word-slurry and filter it out of our searches? It has been increasingly difficult to find the needles of well-crafted fiction within the haystack of self-published work that barely rivals the schmutz turned out by Kevin J. Anderson. And now with these "prolific writers" churning out "content" by the fastest means possible, the haystack is getting bigger.
What can readers do to support authors writing "the old fashioned way?"
How can we more easily FIND well-crafted work?
Talk to your writer friends.
Indie writers tend to be friends with indie writers. Most indie writers are itching for a chance to promote, not only their own new stuff, but also the stuff their friends write. If you're looking for new work, and you've read all your writer friends' stuff, ask them if they have any friends whose work they think you'd like.
If you don't have writer friends, depending on what you're looking for, cruising hashtags on social media that writers use tends to turn up things Written By Humans.
On tumblr specifically, I'd recommend #ownvoices and #book recs as tags that aren't over-saturated with botshit and 3deep5me 'quotations'. #writeblr , #writers on tumblr, and #writing community are occasionally also good places to look, but they can be overrun with botshit very easily. In general, on tumblr, you want to avoid any tag that people also use on instagram or xitter-- people who use something like postybirb to post their botshit to a lot of websites at once will use those tags, and so you get botshit in them on Tumblr too.
I'd also recommend following indie writers on social media- @thebibliosphere , @natalieironside, @renthony , and of course @drchucktingle are all very popular round these parts for a reason.
I'd also recommend @caffeinewitchcraft, @dycefic, @focsle , @fierceawakening , @whatmannerofman , @thesylverlining , and of course me @malcolmschmitz ;)
The algorithm is going to feed you botshit, because botshit is designed to be tasty to the algorithm. If you want things written for and by humans, you're going to have to ask humans.
As someone who reads like a LOT of dumb romance books, one thing that ticks me off is that the authors always strive so hard for body diversity when it comes to ladies, but that courtesy is never given to the guys. All dudes are always described to be square jawed and muscled and very tall and like… its boring lol.
Its not woke or special to go out of your way to diversify women’s bodies and describe them to be different and then write 1018301 books with the same muscled beefcake abs upon abs motherfucker but like with different hair colors or something. Such emphasis on the lovely softness of plus size women, but then clear disgust for fat or softness when it comes to a guy. Sure. Alright. I hate it.
I think more creators should openly tell their fans to fuck off and stop being weird
We can’t. If you seem a bit mean to someone then somebody lies that you’re a pedophile in a callout post and you start getting death threats everywhere.
dude, this happens anyway. you might as well tell people to fuck off while you’re at it
Part of the issue is that it’s not just callout posts, though.
Ages ago now, I had someone ask me a question about a character death, and the only accurate answer I could come up with was stolen from Stephen King–“I didn’t kill her. She just died.” This had the benefit of being 100% true! I didn’t kill that character out of malice or to be hurtful. The story, which had me so tightly by the time she died, told me she died, and so I dutifully wrote it down.
The person I answered did not like this. And after calling me a flippant cunt whore and various other nasty things which hurt my feelings but did no damage, went around one-starring all my books, claiming that they contained things they didn’t.
This hurt my overall ranking, and may very well have cost me readers. And that was one person, who decided I was being disrespectful, not even mean!
Quite frankly, neither my career nor my constitution can handle the consequences of being sincerely mean.
A guy turned his five-star glowing review into a one-star because I would not literally meet him in person and suck his dick in return for the five stars. Again, I do mean that “literally.” He actually expected fellatio from a stranger in exchange for a good review on a $.99 story. Do his other reviews mention his wife? Yes.
Does Amazon care even a little that I reported it? Not in the slightest.
So you want to Support a Black Indie Author on their Birthday Month...
It's Black History Month! And it is also the month of my birth (23 Feb).
If you want to get me a gift consider:
1. Buying an item from my shop
2. Buying one of my books (links below)
3. (Steps 1 and 2 already complete) saying nice things about one of my books on your socials
WHEN THE STARS ALIGHT is the first instalment to an Epic Love Story™️ where two star-crossed lovers turn to enemies due to a decades-long power struggle between their immortal races.
Its sequel WE WILL DEVOUR THE NIGHT releases September 2024 and can be added on Goodreads!
Like extras entries to your fantasy series? Then you can also read a companion novelette which expands on some of the lore and history of an important minor character.
THE SANGUINE SORCERESS is a grimdark novelette set in the same universe and tells a tale of female rage and revenge…
I do like characters who do not exhibit any hint of sexuality in any way because they’re too busy being tormented by the narrative. like “yea I might be gay or whatever but the labyrinth is growing so I can’t worry about that shit rn”
made this sickass banner for my twitter header and it doesn't even FIT RIGHT so i'm putting it here for you all instead
i keep forgetting to add pre-order links when i'm posting about this book whoopsie
OH ALSO IT'S ON GOODREADS IF U WANNA ADD IT EVEN IF YOU DON'T RLLY USE IT I'D LOVE U FOREVER
hey you all are amazing? the number of people who shelved dead girls as to-read on goodreads literally DOUBLED in the last day. thank you!!
what if... we could get it to 1000 adds before it comes out on tuesday? we're at 823 today i feel like it's So doable
phone notes /1 The traits of my mother come to haunt me I see every pore on my face And my misplaced grace Every stray hair unplucked And how my beauty is fucked [written] 12/9/22 - [inked] 03/22/23
why have you carved me out of flesh?
[ID: It Writes Back - Hritvika Lakhera
Lord above you have carved me/ out of flesh;/ will you return/ to stem the bleeding?/ You have left me rotting,/ repulsive,/ hard to breathe around./ Blood left on the sheets/ is harder to scrub out;/ blood left on the floor/ wafts of rot instead of iron;/ you are my butcher/ casting me into offal.
I am immortality./ I am the shifting darkness,/ the echoing cliff –/ why/ have you made me/ out of bleeding,/ rotting/ flesh?
/end ID]
some very, very exciting news to come within the week :)
While I understand that shitpost-y footnotes about titty pills are bound to have more notes than telling people about my book, it’s still a bit sad when the former gets 150k notes and the latter gets like 900. 😫
Link to get said book in the USA.
Link get said book elsewhere.
And here’s a picture of the book and its back cover text:
