I love you all but you are incredibly (understandably) reactive. It’s making you SO easily manipulated by rage baiters. When you see something without context, a headline or a snippet of a quote, take a deep breath and look into it to see if you really should be upset. Please protect your hearts.
Vyvre Argent, epic fantasy with 🌈 characters
@vyvre-argent.bsky.social
Buy SKULLRUNNER (my sapphic pirates book) now!👩❤️💋👩🏴☠️💜 My newsletter: https://dashboard.mailerlite.com/forms/1094937/131954770886789103/share?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAabn_FxvHQLk53aS7DlFzHskYAo0INJW2avtrShYpT7gxZhXUe8-lIEremw_aem_GPu2ZNYeCSEd4PalW8x_8w
oh boy at LAST…I’m starting in on the final battle scene. This is the last section of the book that is mostly unwritten and I’ve left it for so long because I wanted to know for certain how it would go before I dove into it…and now I do
describing an attractive man from Cevette’s POV and she’s like “well I guess he has eyes and he’s wearing a hat” she’s so gay
Thinking today about a nonbinary shapeshifter who accidentally assumes the identity of a master spy, an archaeologist whose affinity for ancient weapons defies the gender norms of his society, and a transfemme art thief on the run from the law with her newborn son… Book Two first. But then…
I have seen the Odyssey and my hot take is: we as a society are terrified of men in dresses.
Okay so the solution to the conversation Cevette has in C23 feeling hollow isn’t in endlessly reworking C23 it’s going back to C7 and C9 to flesh out the arc of the character she’s talking to so that when he talks to Cevette it really matters
Watching HotD is making me think about how writing fantasy is a craft and how part of it is learning to, in a world where anything can happen, direct reader expectations so that events feel meaningful
if I ever taught film criticism lesson one would be “you being smarter than the movie is not interesting to anyone”
Fantasy makes me think of epic fantasy and all the possibilities in the genre to reflect our own world and history back at us in creative ways
#QueerWritersChat Question Two: What does the word fantasy bring to mind for you? Next question at :25! @amaralynn.bsky.social #QueerWriters #writesky #writers #fantasy
A lot of QTs/replies along the lines of "how can a book with bad prose fetch millions!?" I mean... those are about the only books that get big advances. These are the franchise popcorn blockbuster, Netflix reality show, or TikTok influencer account of books. Quality is rarely the goal.
👀 Fascinated by the "withdrawn by its agents" detail. So the AI use was so blatant that the agents due a huge payday preemptively withdrew the contract?
Anyways, proud today to be writing my own books and doing my own research because it helps me learn and think about the world in new and interesting ways.
I wrote a book for a Big 5 that sold for roughly 1% of this one. Worked on carefully it for years. For marketing, they put it in two email blasts and scheduled one reading at an indie bookstore. I paid for everything else. Then they said I didn’t have the pre-order numbers for another book.
👀 Fascinated by the "withdrawn by its agents" detail. So the AI use was so blatant that the agents due a huge payday preemptively withdrew the contract?
$2.5 million for a debut. Meanwhile, publishers will talk endlessly about unmet expectations, prior sales, and harsh market conditions if you're an established author asking for 3% of that.
👀 Fascinated by the "withdrawn by its agents" detail. So the AI use was so blatant that the agents due a huge payday preemptively withdrew the contract?
I know I should be enraged at the AI angle and I am, but it’s getting eaten head-first by my rage at these dudes shelling out $2.5 mil for a manuscript they couldn’t be arsed to read first.
👀 Fascinated by the "withdrawn by its agents" detail. So the AI use was so blatant that the agents due a huge payday preemptively withdrew the contract?
So...the book was worth $2.5million...but the bidders hadn't actually read the manuscript?? the agents hadn't read it? How tf do you get to a 14-way auction for millions and *then* turn round to say "terrible prose, reads like slop"?
👀 Fascinated by the "withdrawn by its agents" detail. So the AI use was so blatant that the agents due a huge payday preemptively withdrew the contract?
The "flat prose" bit is the cherry on top. "We were bidding millions of dollars on a book and then realized the writing sucks" is silly, LLM or not.
👀 Fascinated by the "withdrawn by its agents" detail. So the AI use was so blatant that the agents due a huge payday preemptively withdrew the contract?
It’s fun to write Cevette with more power and less restraint. Eva may be a warrior with death magic, but she thinks way more about the ethics of force than Cevette. If Cevette decides something is necessary to protect the people she cares about, she will do it without blinking and without regret
😂honestly it’s mostly because Cevette has issues she needs to confront and needs some prodding to deal with them instead of just staying where she’s comfortable
damn Cevette is SAD in the first chapter 😭😭😭I was so mean to her at the end of book one!
The Avatar movie was a lot of fun and I liked it! Would love to see more of the supporting characters but it was nice to see them flesh out how Aang feels about being a survivor of genocide and working out what path to take to preserve his culture
Honestly one of my biggest creative regrets was cutting buckets of necessary material out of my fantasy debut because I kept seeing agents post that fantasy had to be under 120k words. Some fantasy books just need to be longer!
I’ve had this “transfemme art thief” plot bunny rolling around my head for a while now…
Literally what fandom discourse has turned into I fear.
Book Two progress: with luck, today I hit the end of C21, which will give me roughly 10 chapters and an epilogue to go!
Word of mouth, personal recommendation, was the first and remains the best way for authors to reach new readers long-term. New readers helps us carry on writing new books for everyone.
It was a Tweet of Mr Tchaikovsky that introduced me to Mr Powell, who has become a firm favourite and a must buy author for me. Mr Powell introduced me to Ms Newman and on the SM recs go.
Everyone will know I was a Tamora Pierce kid after all the fabric and clothing description in this book, so help me God—
come for the lesbian pirates stay for the thinly veiled tirade on 19th century property law—
Absolutely delighted to have been given the opportunity to blurb such a wonderful book! 🥰🚀
I'm delighted to be able to share another blurb for THE LAST INFINITY, this time from author and editor @faerywhimsy.bsky.social ! You can pre-order my book about time traveling disaster gays here: books2read.com/u/bwMZ99.
I think Elliot Page should do a sequel to Juno about a trans man trying to start a family with his partner whose life is upended when the kid he gave up for adoption in high school comes back into his life.