National Coming Out Day makes me grateful I get to write openly queer stories for queer readers. Stories where queerness can be ordinary, complicated, joyful, messy, frightening, tender. Everything people are allowed to be. No explanation required. #NationalComingOutDay #QueerBooks

Rabies pack: A dramatic re-enactment of one woman's desire to save a cute bat that ended up costing her thousands. Get it on Ko-fi now for $5+: ko-fi.com/s/a79f0c0fde *Disclaimer: if you think you've been exposed, get the shots. Rabies is 100% fatal once symptoms start!* #Pose #PoseRef

You're using alt text on every post, and that's awesome. Now stop using fake bold and italics. But why? you ask. Because they aren't words anymore, they're strings of special characters. To someone using a screen reader, they often sound like this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip3y...

How special characters often sound when using screen readers

YouTube video by Brian Sinclair

youtube.com

#AwesomeCharacters 🥇 Most Accurate goes to Cassia. Give her a dagger and she knows exactly where it needs to go. Give her a spell to cut apart and she’ll find the important thread. And verbally? She’s not exactly known for wasting words there either.

💀🫜 Charlie (Chelizabeth) Delta 🦊👻@charliedeltawrites.bsky.social · 3d ago

Tell me more about your #AwesomeCharacters Welcome to the Intermittent Character Award Ceremonies!👏 Where you choose: who gets the superlative? Today's award goes to: Most Accurate Gun, knife, cutting barb, who hits their target? Please award them!🥇 #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

#QueerPrompts Absolutely. Positive queer rep has helped my mental health a lot. Seeing queer characters get to be messy, loved, happy, and allowed a future makes the world feel a little less lonely.

🌈CJ Aralore@cjaralore.bsky.social · 3d ago

#QueerPrompts October 10: World Mental Health Day: Has positive queer rep in books helped your mental health?

#OctoberWorldbuilders One of the biggest spectacles is arena fighting. Crowds pack underground arenas to watch fighters compete, cheer for favorites, and wager magic on the outcome. Some enter for fame, but most fight because winning means getting paid enough magic to keep themselves going.

Kira of the Wind (Erika McCorkle)@kiraofthewind.com · 3d ago

Good morning, #OctoberWorldbuilders! What are some of the more competitive sports or games in your fictional world? Are there tournaments? Do people come to watch and cheer for their favorite players? What do you get if you win?

#LGBTQWriteAThon #TheColorsThatHaunt This week was huge because The Colors That Haunt Us released on October 8! Most of my energy went into that, my b-day, and getting used to the book being out in the world. I did some planning too, but “published a book” absolutely counts as this week’s progress.

AmaraJLynn 🦹 drafting Fire & Feathers@amaralynn.bsky.social · 2d ago

#LGBTQWriteAThon October 10: Check in day! How was your week? Share your progress and support others! @rebeccafrostwrites.com #queerwriters #writingcommunity #lgbtqwriters

#WIPSnips Whoa, Aspen, this is green, is that on purpose? Yep. Couldn't keep using the novel I had been doing, it's not a WIP anymore. But this is the color palette for one of my wips.

✨#WIPSnips✨ A Daily Writing Share Tag@wipsnips.bsky.social · 2d ago

The #WIPSnips word for October 10th is "fuzzy" #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

Let Freedom Read Day feels especially important to me as a queer author. Books give people places to recognize themselves, encounter lives unlike their own, and imagine possibilities they may not have been given elsewhere. #BannedBooksWeek #LetFreedomRead

“Yesterday I published a book” is still an extremely strange sentence. This morning I woke up knowing The Colors That Haunt Us is actually in readers’ hands. People are opening it, meeting Clara and Suzette, and entering Rosenfeld Manor. Still doesn’t feel real. #TheColorsThatHaunt

#WIPSnips #TheColorsThatHaunt I always joke that my snips are a stretch, but today it really is. She's searching through records, so one could say she's raiding the library? It's bad, I know.

✨#WIPSnips✨ A Daily Writing Share Tag@wipsnips.bsky.social · 3d ago

The #WIPSnips word for October 9th is "raid" #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

#LGBTQWriteAThon A novel I rarely talk about, Starfire, has some pretty significant skeletons in its closets. Adesina spends most of her early life hiding something even from herself: the "overactive imagination" she experiences around people is actually her seeing possible futures. In a...

AmaraJLynn 🦹 drafting Fire & Feathers@amaralynn.bsky.social · 3d ago

#LGBTQWriteAThon October 10: Today we're talking SKELETONS in the CLOSET! What deep, awful secrets are your characters hiding? @rebeccafrostwrites.com #queerwriters #writingcommunity #lgbtqwriters

#OctoberWorldbuilders There are definitely board games in Gilded Essence, and one of the most popular is a strategy game built around trading, territory, and resource control. Players move carved pieces across a map, claiming routes and exchanging tokens representing stored magic. The goal is...

Kira of the Wind (Erika McCorkle)@kiraofthewind.com · 4d ago

#OctoberWorldbuilders, hello! Let's focus on board games in your setting today: Do any exist in your world? How complex are they? Do they cover specific themes or concepts? How do players win? Is it comparable to any irl board games?

#AwesomeCharacters Elyse isn’t much of a jewelry person, but once the Veylshade amulet is around her neck, it becomes the one piece she keeps wearing. It’s less decoration than connection: a crystal on a silver chain tying her to the grove and everything it expects from her.

💀🫜 Charlie (Chelizabeth) Delta 🦊👻@charliedeltawrites.bsky.social · 4d ago

Tell me about your #AwesomeCharacters Character design question! Does your character wear jewelry or similar decorative items? Do they wear something special all the time, or do they change it up regularly? #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

#LitHodgePodge #TheColorsThatHaunt For The Colors That Haunt Us, I’d pick The Amazing Devil. They already have two songs on the playlist, "Not Yet / Love Run (Reprise)" and "The Rockrose and the Thistle", and their whole sound fits the book almost perfectly: intimate, theatrical, romantic, eerie,...

Pamela Jeong 🎃🫜@pamelajeong.bsky.social · 4d ago

#LitHodgepodge 9 Imagine your book is being adapted for TV/film. Who is your dream musical collaborator to compose the score or record the theme song? Choose based on the right vibes for your WIP, your favorite artist, or whatever criteria tickles your fancy. #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

#FirstDraftFall None of them are exactly thriving at the beginning 😂 In Mercy, Madison thinks she has a good life because she believes in Providence and its church, but there is one part of herself she desperately wants to change: her love for her neighbor. She keeps confessing those feelings...

Weeknight Writers@weeknightwriters.bsky.social · 3d ago

#WeeknightWriters #FirstDraftFall: Is your MC happy with their life at the beginning of the story? If not, how do they want to change it? This question is from one of our members-only worksheets. Join our community today for access to the full worksheet & much more ko-fi.com/weeknightw...

#WeeknightWriters A6: I do! VERY recent actually. My debut book came out today! The Colors That Haunt Us is a sapphic gothic horror novel about an artist who wants to forget about her life falling apart. You can find links to purchase at aspenrayne.com/books as well as at independent bookstores!

Weeknight Writers@weeknightwriters.bsky.social · 4d ago

Q6: Do you have any recent or upcoming publications? Share them here, and be sure to include links if you have them! (No AI, and please add alt text to all images) #WeeknightWriters

#WeeknightWriters A5: The Town of Alderwick doesn’t have a main character per say but the town just wants to be a normal small town with normal issues instead of reality breaking issues

Weeknight Writers@weeknightwriters.bsky.social · 4d ago

Q5: Tell us about your main character. Who are they? What do they want? #WeeknightWriters

#WeeknightWriters A4: physical descriptions lol. I don’t have a mental image so deciding any unimportant physical description is easily the most difficult for me to the point where many characters don’t have official descriptions at all.

Weeknight Writers@weeknightwriters.bsky.social · 4d ago

Q4: What aspects of character development do you find most frustrating? #WeeknightWriters

#WeeknightWriters Q3: I love figuring out their psychology/personality. Who they are, what they want, why they want it, etc

Weeknight Writers@weeknightwriters.bsky.social · 4d ago

Q3: What aspects of character development do you enjoy most? What goes into making a character? #WeeknightWriters

#WeeknightWriters A2: one of my big things is “what do they know” vs “what do they think they know” but that might be specific to the type stories I write

Weeknight Writers@weeknightwriters.bsky.social · 4d ago

Q2: What aspects of character development do you consider most important to your story planning process? #WeeknightWriters

#WeeknightWriters A1: both, sometimes I have a character first sometimes I have an idea and plot first.

Weeknight Writers@weeknightwriters.bsky.social · 4d ago

Q1: Do you typically create characters to match the story you want to tell or build your stories based on character(s) already living in your head? #WeeknightWriters

#WeeknightWriters Hi! I’m Aspen author of The Colors That Haunt Us, and my WIP planning is going okay. I got a lot of work done on The Alderwick Times, but yesterday and today things have been slow as today was my birthday.

Weeknight Writers@weeknightwriters.bsky.social · 4d ago

Hello #WeeknightWriters! Come on in, introduce yourself and your WIP, and let us know how your #FirstDraftFall planning is going!

IT’S OUT!!! The Colors That Haunt Us is officially a real book that people can buy and read and have opinions about. And, because apparently one major life event at a time wasn’t enough, today is also my birthday. Happy book birthday to both of us. #TheColorsThatHaunt #BookSky #QueerBooks

If you like queer gothic fiction that is haunted, intimate, obsessive, and a little dangerous, The Colors That Haunt Us may be for you. It’s a story of haunted art, impossible sapphic longing, grief, obsession, and a house that does not know when to let go. Out Tomorrow. #TheColorsThatHaunt #BookSky

#WriterShareWednesday #TheColorsThatHaunt Coming out tomorrow is my first book The Colors That Haunt Us! The Colors That Haunt Us is a queer gothic story of haunted art, impossible sapphic longing, grief, obsession, and a house that does not know how to let go.

Weeknight Writers@weeknightwriters.bsky.social · 5d ago

It's #WriterShareWednesday! Share a pitch for your WIP or something you've recently published and we'll give it a boost! Make sure to include links if you have them & include alt text on any images

A little warning from Suzette as we get closer to release: “Once you start feeling safe somewhere, it can be very easy to stop asking whether you actually are.” The Colors That Haunt Us — October 8. #TheColorsThatHaunt #BookSky #QueerBooks

#FirstDraftFall Gilded Essence: Rehn, a failed adventurer who just wants to survive each day. The Alderwick Times (the town has a name now!): No real main character, but Maggie is the editor in chief of the newspaper Mercy: Mercy (a demon) and Madison (her chosen host)

Weeknight Writers@weeknightwriters.bsky.social · 6d ago

#WeeknightWriters #FirstDraftFall Who's the main character of your #FirstDraftFall story? These questions are from our First Draft Fall worksheets! For the full worksheets, join our membership program at ko-fi.com/weeknightw...

#LitHodgePodge Rehn in Gilded Essence fits the Fallen Hero archetype. Xe starts as the prophesied adventurer who believes xe is meant to change the world. Then the prophecy is manipulated, xir team is destroyed, and xe becomes a public failure instead of a legend. I use the archetype to ask what...

Pamela Jeong 🎃🫜@pamelajeong.bsky.social · 7d ago

#LitHodgepodge 6 Tropes and the archetypes they're built around help us understand reader expectations. If you know what’s expected, you can lean into that familiarity, or subvert it. Identify a character archetype in your WIP. Who are they? How do you use them? #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

#QueerPrompts Only if you consider a best friend that is called once in the entire novel, a coach.

🌈CJ Aralore@cjaralore.bsky.social · 7d ago

#QueerPrompts October 6: National Coaches Day: Any coaches in your story? (fitness, life coach, etc.)