Hello, I am Nanda. This is my blog to share my writing - both fanfic and original - and to talk about my OCs. If you wanna chat or have a story request, send an ask!
Hello! My name is Nanda and I’m writer and translator of fanfiction and original fiction. My preferred genres are Fantasy and Urban Fantasy/Magical Realism. I mainly write short stories, but plan on publishing my own books someday.
I’ve created this blog to have a space dedicated only to writing, so I can centralise my fanfics, start sharing my original writing and OCs on Tumblr, gather writing tips and also interact with Writeblr better. However, this is a sideblog, so any follows will come through my main @nandalikesstuff.
You can find my general writing tag here. If you are only interested in my fanfiction, they are here. If you’d like to check out my original writing, it’s here. I’ll gather writing tips here and share cool stories from others here.
I’m open to writing and translation (ENG<>PTBR) commissions! If you are interested, just send me an ask!
IMPORTANT
I do NOT give permission for any of my writing to be used to feed any kid of AI model, ever. My AO3 account is currently LOCKED to users only to prevent scrapping from third party AIs or bots.
Always feel free to: make podfics, translations or fanart of my fics or writing, just please use the inspired by feature on AO3 or tag me on Tumblr so I can see it! Also always feel free to come chat to me about any of the fandoms you see me posting about at any time or to send prompts for fics or aesthetics!
Rules: make a soundtrack for your OC/WIP based on the following prompts: Event that defined your character’s past How your character sees themself How others view them Their closest relationship A major fight scene End credit scene
I’m crawling through the doggy door My key don’t fit my lock no more I’ll change the drapes I’ll break the plates I’ll find a new place Burn this fucker down
How your character sees themself
Emperor’s New Clothes - P!atd
I’m taking back the crown I’m all dressed up and naked I see what’s mine and take it (Finders keepers, losers weepers), oh yeah The crown, so close, I can taste it I see what’s mine and take it (Finders keepers, losers weepers), oh yeah
How others view them
Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing - Set It Off
Aware, aware, you stalk your prey With criminal mentality You sink your teeth into the people you depend on Infecting everyone, you’re quite the problem […] So could you Tell me how you’re sleepin’ easy How you’re only thinking of yourself Show me how you justify Tellin’ all your lies like second nature Listen, mark my words, one day (One day) You will pay, you will pay Karma’s gonna come collect your debt
Their closest relationship (This is more from his partner’s POV towards him but it works both ways)
Monsters - All Time Low
I’m wondering, why do all the monsters come out at night? Why do we sleep where we want to hide? Why do I run back to you, like I don’t mind if you fuck up my life? Why am I a sucker for all your lies? Strung out like laundry on every line Why do I come back to you, like I don’t mind if you fuck up my life?
A major fight scene
Ruder - The Gazette (More for the melody and vibes, but the lyrics are good too)
I am ruder!? I am ruder! You can laugh until you die I am ruder!? I am ruder! Do you have any complaints against silly me? There is no rule. I am ruder!? I am ruder! Heresy is the best! Fuck off hypocrites I am ruder!? I am ruder!
End credit scene
Let’s Kill Tonight - P!atd
May your feet serve you well And the rest be sent to hell Where they always have belonged Cold hearts brew colder songs Fate will play us out With a song of pure romance So, stomp your feet and clap your hands Let’s kill tonight! Kill tonight! Show them all you’re not the ordinary type
I was tagged by @hauntedcoyote on the right day, but only managed to get around to it now. Thanks for the tag!
“Do you really think any of my clothes will fit you?” Adonis was going to argue, but he had a very vivid thought of tearing one of Leo’s favourite shirts by accident, so instead he just sighed. “Guess not…” “So it’s settled. I’ll prep things for you!” Leo seemed way too happy about it, and Adonis had half a suspicion he could have done that on purpose, but, oh well, it wasn’t like he was going to complain about spending the night at his boyfriend’s house either. He wasn’t expecting the news to spark another fight between the siblings so soon, though.
This is late, but anyone that sees this can still do it if you want!
How Traditional Publishing Works for Short Stories
You’ve written a short story and want it to reach readers, but you’re tired of combing through contests. Don’t worry—there’s a path to traditional publishing for short stories and you can follow it to build your writing resume with these steps.
1. Polish Your Work
Reviewing your story before submitting it is crucial. One or two typos may not disqualify you from getting accepted for publishing, but it could make the publisher pause.
Read through your work out loud to catch the tiny line edits that our eyes often skip over.
Ask a friend or family member to read it. A fresh pair of eyes on your work is priceless!
Use a text-to-speech reader to catch typos. You may hear the spelling errors more clearly, so try a site like this one: https://www.naturalreaders.com/online/
You can also use the spell check within your preferred writing software. It may not catch every spelling or tense-usage error, but it’s still helpful.
2. Research Publications
Longer manuscripts would normally look for publishing houses or imprints, but short stories just need publications.
Imagine the publishing world as an umbrella. Publishing houses are the fabric of the umbrella and imprints are the metal arms making the fabric extend. Imprints are subsections of publishing houses. Publications are like the stem and handle of an umbrella. They’re mostly independently owned, so that’s where you’ll find things like:
Literary magazines
Literary Journals
Ezines
Some are run by small groups of people who love making things like short-story anthologies and others will be professionally run magazines or journals with wide distribution. Your work may qualify for all of these publications depending on the length, topic, and what each publication is looking for.
3. Submit Your Work
Personally, I think finding the right places to submit your work is the most challenging part of publishing any story. There are an overwhelming number of places to consider. You might never learn about all of them!
Luckily, I’ve found a few tools to streamline the process.
Chill Subs is my current favorite site to find publications seeking short stories. You can find their site here: https://chillsubs.com/
This is what their homepage looks like—I’m breathing a sigh of relief just seeing it that encouraging welcome!
Once you make your free account (which is what allows you to track your submissions, results, etc.), you’ll find this page when you’re ready to start browsing:
It may seem like a lot, but selecting publication types and finding places that specifically want things like a spooky vibe or a quick response time makes submitting your work so much faster.
Just below this browsing section, you’ll find a list of publications if you just want to select a few without the filters. Here’s a screenshot of the first one I found:
There’s a great summary of the magazine and everything you need to know, like the facts that they have a super fast response time, don’t require a submission fee, and even their acceptance rate!
If you scroll further down under a publisher, you’ll find other invaluable information like:
Normally, you’d have to find all of these things by searching a publication’s website and recent published work. It would take much more time and you might not find what you’re looking for (I struggle when I’m too tired or distracted). Chill Subs will connect you to publications super quickly and easily, without charging a dime!
This site is better for people who are more data driven! Right beneath the top of their homepage, you can automatically see the stats for The Grinder users who recently got accepted or rejected. At the time that I wrote this post, the people in the screenshot below had numerous rejections. I find it encouraging to see stuff like this because it’s a reminder that rejections happen to everyone. It’s just a matter of finding the right place for your work!
If you select “Search” on the top of the homepage, you’ll get a dropdown menu for things like searching for fiction or poetry submissions, plus publishers listed in alphabetical order.
For the purpose of this post, I’ve selected “Historical” as my imaginary story I’d like to submit. There are many other genres in the box if you keep scrolling. Here’s what the start of this process looks like:
Hit “Search” and this comes up:
Right away you’ll see what each place pays, which genres and lengths they accept and their response time. I’ve clicked on the first publisher and found this data:
Enjoy using the charts and data to gauge where your stories should go! There are many publications working with The Grinder, so there’s tons to search through as you get a feel for what’s out there.
Other potential places to submit your work:
Submittable: https://manager.submittable.com/opportunities/discover (You’ll need to have submitted to a contest that uses Submittable to make an account, but the Discover tab has many publications organized by closest deadlines.)
Your university literary journals (if you’re a university student—most only accept work from students enrolled in that school, but it’s a major perk if you’re paying tuition because you won’t have to pay to send your work off!)
Local literary journals (many only accept work from writers who live nearby, which narrows down your competition).
4. Keep Track of Your Submissions
If you’re submitting more than one or two stories at a time, it’s best to keep a spreadsheet that tracks your submissions. As your writing career continues, you’ll always be able to reflect on which stories you submitted and where they went. It’s a great way to see how your writing has grown and note which publications you liked the most/had the most success with.
My submissions spreadsheet contains labeled columns for things like:
Date of submission
The story’s title
The page length/word count
The genre
The publication mae
The publication type
URL of publication if applicable
Final date of submissions
Date of notice if one is given
Potential prize money if applicable
Rejection or acceptance when notified
Some places only want unpublished writers, but most only want stories that haven’t been previously published or placed in contest results. Keeping track of which stories receive prizes/publications makes it much easier to submit qualifying works in the future.
5. Evaluate Your Publishing Contract
Many publishers require writers to sign a contract so the legal reality of the transaction is clear to both parties. This happens for both short stories and long form work. You’ll have to review things like:
Allowing them to have print rights (typically worldwide because things are published online)
Allowing them to publish your picture and bio that is usually included in the submission form
Allowing them exclusivity (you may need to wait a specific time period before submitting the same story to other publishers/contests or selling it on your website)
Agreeing to author’s warranties (this means you agree that you wrote the story, it isn’t plagiarized, it isn’t libelous, and you don’t want it to be public domain)
Agreeing to a termination clause (the publisher typically reserves the right to terminate your publication contract for things like discovering plagiarism, getting sued for libel, if you sell the story to another publication within their exclusive time frame, etc.)
Agreeing to a reversion of rights clause (you’ll get all of the above rights to sell/submit the story if the publisher doesn’t get your story published by the deadline included in your contract)
Agreeing to payment terms (if you’ll be paid based on how many magazine copies are sold, based on your word/page count, or if you’ll get a flat fee). Also, how you’ll get paid (in installments, within a time frame after publication, via direct deposit or check).
A big thing to note—if a publisher doesn’t include a reversion of rights clause, they essentially want to lock your story within their publishing company permanently. You’ll never get the rights back for submitting or publishing it elsewhere. That includes if you write a collection of short stories and want to publish an anthology—you wouldn’t get to include the story taken by the original publisher.
It’s very important to know your rights as a writer before submitting.
And you can always look through Writer Beware, which tracks scams and legitimate publication opportunities.
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Hopefully this helps you get started with your next venture in getting published! The process doesn’t have to feel as confusing as it often does. Best of luck! 💛
heya, happy storyteller saturday! would you like to rant about Empire of the Sun?
Hiii, sorry I am a week late but thank you so much for the ask! I am always happy to rant about EOTS!
Actually, the idea for the story is @cultoficarus, he let me add my asshole vampire Heinrich to it on the beginning of the idea and things just snowballed from there. So he can correct me if I say anything wrong.
EOTS is the story of a kingdom of vampires led by a mad king. Or, more accurately, it’s the story of what happens with the kingdom after the mad king (Lucien) is assassinated and his adopted daughter and chosen heir (chosen both by the king and the goddess that blesses their kingdom), Karina, has to take over for him.
There are, however, 2 major problems with that:
1 - It was the influence of the goddess that made Lucien mad in the first place, and now that same goddess chose Karina as her next vessel.
2 - Both the new Queen, Karina, and the King’s former… something indefinable, my Heinrich, were only barely held back and held together by Lucien’s presence, so now Heinrich is in a quest for revenge and Karina is both in a quest for revenge and spiralling rapidly as the new Queen.
The “main story” is very much still in development, but that’s why I like to play around with and write about the time(s) before and around that. Lucien and Heinrich’s relationship specially is very near and dear to me. It’s sexy, it’s unhealthy, it’s the closest thing to love either of them have ever had or will ever have, it’s absolutely insane, it’s doomed from the start, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, it’s full of devotion and betrayal and rage and need and repulse.
They make me insane, for real, and I’d love if other people started finding them and this story interesting, too.
Welcome to a new round of The Drabble Challenge, writers! If you’ve participated before, welcome back! If you’re new, we’re excited to have you!
As a reminder, here are the rules:
There are only two updates - if you’re doing a NSFW fic or a suggestive one, please make sure to label accordingly and mark your post as ‘Mature’ to make sure you don’t get dinged!
Second is that we are using a new hashtag! If you are participating in May’s challenge, please use #drabblechallengemay2025 so that we can quickly find all of them!
We will be reposting all of them on our page as well!
Last, but not lease, what you’ve all been waiting for…..THE PROMPT LIST!!!
We had a lot of writers last time ask for ample prep time, so we are doing our best to give you a few weeks before we kick off!
We will be reblogging this post a few times this month, so don’t forget to share with people who may want to join.
Rarepair refers to a rare pairing inside a fandom. This means that a pairing that someone ships does not have a lot of fanart or fanfiction about them or anything at all.
While crackships are always rarepairs, these rare pairings can make a lot of sense in canon, but they are just not that popular. But they often also refer to shipping characters that do not interact in canon at all, maybe not even know each other in the source material.
There are no exact numbers on when a pairing is considered a rarepair but some characteristics are that the tag on AO3 does not have a lot of hits and that most of the entries were written by the same person.
Shipping a rarepair can be frustrating, when you feel like you are alone in your love for a pairing, but it can also be fun to be able to shape the pairing together with two, three other shippers however you want them, because you basically own the ship by solely contributing to it.
Once again here to bring you stupid memes to illustrate my point.
Tell me about your rarepair. You’re also welcome to illustrate your point.
Have to add this cause I feel this in my soul lmao
He might have been easy on the eyes, had it not been for the distinctive scar over his right eye. He made no attempt to hide it, almost like he had no idea it was even there. A show of bravado, to be sure. His shoulder length hair was parted to show it off, but he otherwise took great pains to appear inoffensive. His low voice was gentle, and his smile was only slight, careful to conceal the sharp fangs underneath. Even as he looked down on the man he shackled to the dank and musty walls of a dungeon foreign even to himself, walking around like he had the most right to be there out of anyone, he was wearing elaborately embroidered white clothes. Insufferable prick.
posted on April 5, 2025 with 5 notes via cultoficarus
Another prompt for @flashfictionfridayofficial, another peak at the world of EOTS. This time from the POV of Heinrich’s younger brother, Ulrich, giving a new perspective on their family’s story.
Warning for mentions of childhood abuse in the paragraph just below the cut.
Ulrich Richter didn’t have a brother anymore. Sometimes, he wasn’t really sure if he had ever had one at all.
The memories from his childhood were vague, sparse and dissonant, his young mind struggling to comprehend the two sides of his parents he somewhat saw?
