I am finally reading AK Larkwood's Serpent Gates series and so far I'm enjoying it ! Took some time to adjust to the way the pacing is but it has shades of Tombs of Atuan (like, obviously) & Locked Tomb which is fun... To me it is so real that (bitchy gay boy rival/best character) Tal has a devastating crush on his wizard boss/daddy. Very authentic gay experience imo... like who wouldn't

Anyway. I was trying to think of books that actually do something interesting with gender + sexuality without just transplanting our exact system into another world and the first thing that came to mind was Samuel Delany's Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand. But I'm realizing that I remember literally nothing about that book except vibes. I want to say that "she" was the default pronoun and "he" was only used for people the speaker was sexually attracted to but don't quote me on that lol

I've seen some discourse recently about using modern-day, English-language LGBT terminology in SFF settings and like... I think a lot of people are speaking to a broader frustration of how little critical thought is put into exploring gender/queerness/transness/whatever in second worlds and turning it into an argument over semantics. I do honestly feel like the lines people draw around what degree they'll accept "modernity" (or the conceit that SFF works are being "translated" into more familiar language and concepts) are always going to be subjective...

But more importantly: what are you all even talking about?? I literally don't think I've ever seen this phenomenon before & I am obviously much more familiar with queer SFF than your average. What books are you people even reading??

Officially seeking a Real Job so I can stop doing all this freelance ghostwriting & editing work, which will then hopefully allow me to start writing for myself again...!

My impulse at this point is to come back from this extended hiatus with a completely new pen name & approach to self publishing like, B. Pigeon who?? I feel like I've learned so much about writing and publishing through years of trial and error + all this freelance bullshit, and it's so tempting to just start over entirely with a stronger sense of what I'm trying to do and how to achieve that... idk. We'll see!

Tbh, I think a lot of discourse around authors/publishing/money is kind of out of touch with the reality of the situation. The vast majority of people are not making actual money off of writing in trad or indie pub. Basically every author in current year either has a day job or preexisting wealth.

Sometimes there's discourse like "should authors make money?" & then everyone just talks past each other because approximately half the participants have inserted a silent "under communism" or whatever into the question

Edit: This is a post about how people on this website are bad at communicating outside of their in-groups and not a post about whether or not authors make money. In general I think this argument is not worth having because the overwhelming majority of authors are not making enough money to live on, anyway.

There are so many Hierarchy of the Unseen Father's Day jokes I could make but all of them would be spoilers </3

I realized I have not posted about the Taker of the Third Path Kickstarter since both of the sticker reveals, but like... look at them 🖤 Aren't they beautiful??

I'll probably post about each of these individually later, but I wanted to summarize the sales/promos Fell & I have going right now!

The Kickstarter has been the focus so far this month, but we always try to have a lot going on for Pride 🖤 Check these out if you want to support queer & trans indie authors and read some queer & trans fantasy this month!

✨Taker of the Third Path is now on Kickstarter! ✨

Fell A. Marsh (@fellamarsh) is raising funds to publish their upcoming queer fantasy romance novel! Check it out on Kickstarter to download a free four-chapter preview, learn more about the book, and read about the fun exclusive rewards you can get for supporting it 🖤

Sort of relatedly, outside of historical or "hard" fantasy, I'm not sure why realism or historical accuracy should be the standards. I think books are art or whatever & should be allowed to include elements that are symbolic and not meant to be taken at face value... I think treating fantasy world building as a competition to see who can more accurately capture medieval Europe probably precludes some potentially interesting storytelling...