Tessa Gratton
@tessagratton.bsky.social
NYT bestselling queer SFF author. #MXTX trash. STRANGE GRACE, THE QUEENS OF INNIS LEAR, LADY HOTSPUR, NIGHT SHINE, STAR WARS: The High Republic, THE MERCY MAKERS! nonbinary, they/she
'The Shape of Monsters' by @tessagratton.bsky.social , with cover illustration by me and design by Stephanie Hess 🌔
I really enjoyed The Mercy Makers (and its sequel) by @tessagratton.bsky.social if you’re interested in fiction where the main characters all experience multiple-gender attraction — really felt authentic to my lived experience as a bisexual person
working on a newsletter! re: why I wrote The Queens of Innis Lear, which sold 10 years ago (!!!), including me making fun of the play, unending praise of bastards, and the first page of a high school essay I wrote in 1998 about villains. Sign up here: www.tessagratton.com/newsletter
Writing with a Knife — tessagratton dot com
tessagratton.com
Oh fun the latest AI book marketing scam is basically like “why are you such a bitch?”
The number of newsletters by people who are otherwise not terrible that stay on substack and help them pay Nazis is astonishing.
Scott Fitzgerald Gray@scottfgray.bsky.social · 2w agoThe number of people still seemingly unaware that Substack has a Nazi problem means it’s apparently worth mentioning yet again that Substack has a fucking Nazi problem.
Important post from @victoriastrauss regarding the Anthropic Settlement and all the recent issues and attendant questions: writerbeware.blog/2026/09/04/a...
Anthropic Copyright Settlement: Publishers Are Making Incorrect Claims on Authors' Payouts - Writer Beware
This week, many authors who are part of the Anthropic copyright class action settlement began receiving notices like this one: Upon accessing the portal (which doesn’t seem to have a formal name, so I...
writerbeware.blog
"It's given a lot of people permission to be themselves, to not dream it, be it, which is the motto of the movie, really. I would like to be remembered for that." Farewell to Tim Curry (1946-2026) #RIP
Two humans who easily might have been part muppet, and I mean that in the best way.
Rachel Pinnelas 💭@racheaissance.com · 3w agoNOT OKAY
Okay I’m pretty sure that trump or McConnell are doing dark rituals to cheat death and put other folks in line in front of them
Imagine being talented and beautiful and rich and famous and still the most noteworthy thing about you is how good a person you are.
my wife has a friend who sent Dolly Parton a painting she made & a letter explaining how much Dolly's music meant to her while she was transitioning. Dolly responded to it personally & paid for her top surgery. Sounds like an urban legend but it's real. I think we're going to more stories like this.
not sure how to express this without sounding like a chair-turned-around youth pastor, but there's something so radical about having your most well-known lyric be "i will always love you" and then sincerely embodying it whenever possible
When we hate on these disgusting immoral evil billionaires it’s bc just look at everything Dolly did. They could be doing that. They could just be helping people and every day they choose not to help people. They choose to harm. And when they die, we’ll dance and laugh and be thankful they’re gone.
finished a full draft of The Mercy Makers #3, so I invented a cocktail to make myself feel better. Asked Natalie what we should call it and she ROASTED ME: "Overdue Deadline!" "At Least There's a Last Page!" "Wrong Last Line!"
HAPPY ANTHROPIC SETTLEMENT EFFECTIVE DAY FOR ALL WHO CELEBRATE!!!!!
everybody says suddenly enjoying birds is the true sign of being in your 40s but I think it's diligently reading the traffic report newsletter your town puts out every week.
buy books borrow books talk about books you love lend books to friends books are great
Helen Burns is deeply into Speed. And who can blame her, it is a perfect movie.
Jim Henson didn’t muppeteer a tiny green frog that was singing and playing the banjo, with rubber gloves while totally submerged underwater in a airtight aluminum tank just so you could tell me that AI is “inevitable”.
Gwen C. Katz@gwenckatz.bsky.social · 3mo agoThe Wachowski sisters didn't use 120 cameras to film one shot just so you could tell me that AI is "inevitable."
I think one of the big lessons for authors to take away from this Daggermouth mess is to get it in your contracts that no one can feed your work into AI of any kind, even so-called detectors.
Today, August 4, 2026, is the setting of Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” about a fully automated house continuing on after the family who lived there and the world around it died in a nuclear blast.
I wish I could put a content warning at the front of the book just for my dad.
Tessa Gratton@tessagratton.bsky.social · 2mo agoI just wrote a line in The Mercy Makers #3 that is so unhinged re: Iriset and sex that I can't even look at it without giggling hysterically and fighting down a hot flash. SO you all have that to look forward to.
I just wrote a line in The Mercy Makers #3 that is so unhinged re: Iriset and sex that I can't even look at it without giggling hysterically and fighting down a hot flash. SO you all have that to look forward to.
this is a nice comprehensive overview of why substack sucks and some good alternatives.
Sean Killeen@seankilleen.com · 7mo agoThat's 100% why I created leavesubstack.com -- got tired of re-hashing the points; wanted to make a simple 1-pager.