#i'm not even publishing it right now

[not-poignant]

Hi Pia

Feel free to ignore if this is unwelcome, but have you ever thought about publishing traditionally to sublimate your income and draw in new readers? I know you've self published two books already and that you didn't feel like they did very well, but maybe the experience would be different if someone else was in charge of marketing and all the other business stuff?

Obviously everyone's experience is different but as an author myself who's published both trad and self, traditional publishing has been a completely different experience and has allowed me to focus more on writing because I'm not the one responsible for advertising/marketing/financing anymore.

There are a ton of literary agents nowadays that want to represent diverse and lgbtqia+ fiction, some of them even in Australia.

Websites like Reedsy, AgentQuery and Jerichowriters have extensive directories to find literary agents.

(This is lengthy folks so I'm putting the other two parts (and my response) under a read more! Also putting it under a read more so the anon can skip my response since it's very 'here's all the reasons I can't do this' and they just might not want to read that, lmao)

(continued -> )

Trad publishing houses have better resources for marketing and helping authors get more attention than any self publishing website could.

Obviously most authors, unless they're really prolific, don't get a huge advance (the average is between $1000 - $5000) but getting your foot in the door or on the traditional publishing "ladder' so to speak can have a huge benefit for your serials. Because it gives you more exposure. Plus it's in the agent's best interest to find a publishing house that accepts stories that contain darker themes and negotiate the best deal for you.

For some reason places like Amazon and the like accept and keep up more "dark" books that are traditionally published than they do with self pub ones. Maybe because they have more respect or leniency for publishing houses? I have no idea. But you could use this to your advantage. I think I remember you mentioning that writing novels felt quite isolating to you? But you already have 2 completed novels (3 if you count the fae one) that you could potentially revisit or rewrite to your liking and get them represented by agents.

You already have a loyal readership and that's very attractive to trad pub houses and agents.

As well as trad publishing, you could also make s simple website that doesn't require much maintenance. It could be just a landing page that says something about you and then has links to your tumblr and patreon where you're more active. That way you increase the chances of getting your serials found by additional readers and also come across looking more "professional". Not that you're not professional now. You are and I admire you greatly, but the unfortunate reality is a lot of people still judge by appearances and some will be more drawn to an author's website than a tumblr page, at least at first. So I think having a simple landing page would open up another door for you to benefit from.

Trad publishing is work but definitely not as much as self publishing, and you can continue on with your serials. Getting an agent can be time consuming but I personally believe the pros outweigh the cons and I also believe that your stories would be a huge treasure to the growing lgbtqia+ market. Seriously there needs to be more!

These are just suggestions and thoughts and like I said before, feel free to ignore. But I know you've mentioned wanting to grow your career in the past and I genuinely believe you can do so with some of these pathways.

~

Okay, my response. Posting this because firstly I think the suggestions could work very well for other authors reading this! And I hope they take the advice to note, and secondly because I haven't talked about this for a hot minute so let's talk about it again.

So the TL;DR is yes I have considered traditional publishing. I have actually been traditionally published in short stories, poetry, and also had my art published on covers and re: interior illustrations. But my Fae Tales works got soundly rejected when I sent them to publishing houses that were doing open calls for that sort of material. I've never heard back from an agent and I never expect to, heh.

~

Now for a bit more detail

I have been traditionally published before (it's how I got my writing out there long before I ever wrote serials), and yes, I have approached publishers with my writing since then. In fact Tradewinds was written for the traditional publishing market, and it got soundly rejected, and then shelved. The reasons it was rejected ran the gamut from 'I don't like that these fae eat humans no one is going to relate to these people' (while the editor then went on to publish vampire books idk) to 'There's too much worldbuilding you can't expect readers to keep up with this' to 'Your stories are too long, no one wants to read characters talking all the time.'

Meanwhile in my online serials I was getting feedback like 'my favourite chapters are the ones where the characters just sit in a room and talk' lol.

The traditional publishing world is also not quite as utopian for most authors as you make it seem. I'm friends with a lot of authors who are traditionally published because that's the world I came from, and unless they're solely in KU and doing generic rapid release formula romances, none of them are making that much money. Certainly not enough to live off. It may have been that you were very fortunate, anon, but I know hundreds more traditionally published authors that left trad pub to make money, and I know about 5 in trad pub personally who are making enough to live off of.

Only one of those is really writing what she truly loves to write, and even then, publishing houses have refused to commit to her entire fantasy series (and she's regularly in 'Top 10/20 Women Fantasy Authors in the World' lists) and forced her to finish the series prematurely. Something I never ever have to worry about in self pub.

The reality is that in trad pub these days, you're still in charge of most of your marketing unless you're one of the big earners for the publishing house. In fact I'd be expected to keep even more of a social media and marketing presence than I do now. I don't do almost any of the things you're supposed to do as an author in marketing to be appealing. I don't have a Facebook author account. I don't have an Instagram author account. I don't maintain or regularly send out newsletters (which automatically puts me in the like 0.05% of authors who make money doing this lmao).

I don't know if you ever have looked that closely into what m/m publishing houses expect from most of their authors, but the newsletter swaps, cover releases, review circuits, interview circuits and more are fucking grueling. We're expected to be responsible for our advertising and our marketing to a fairly massive degree. Some traditionally published in m/m still have to pay for their release blitzes out of pocket. These publishing houses, by and large, do not offer advances. You say most authors don't get large advances. I don't think most authors in this arena get offered advances at all unless they're somehow miraculously acquired by a Big 4.

We're expected to have an already established social media presence because of that (that's why it's so appealing to publishers that we have social media presences already, anon, so we can market, they can save money, and we still see only a minimal cut from the royalties).

And you still have to focus on your finances, because publishing houses like Dreamspinner straight up didn't pay a whole bunch of authors for so long they destroyed careers. They still haven't paid some of their authors. And they're still running a business and people still buy their books.

Trad publishing houses have better resources for marketing and helping authors get more attention than any self publishing website could.

This is true if a) they're a big publishing house and not an indie publisher of which most LGBTQIA+ publishing houses are and b) they're willing to use them on you.

The authors that make the most money get the most resources. If they believe you're going to earn back your advance and move thousands or tens of thousands of units per book, then yes, you will get those resources.

I have been told so many times now - even from friends who run publishing houses, including one who works at HarperCollins - that my work will never be mainstream enough to have broad appeal. They literally told me not to keep trying re: trad pub, because that was my dream for a long time. These folks have given me rock solid advice in the past, it's one of the reasons I'm doing so well now via Patreon + Ream. But they were like (paraphrasing) 'you don't write 60-80k romances and you don't want to and that's not your strength anyway, you're multi-genre which makes you hard to market, you write psychological and literary trauma recovery which is hard to market, you write character studies which are hard to market, publishing houses often don't commit to series anymore if the first two don't move units and if they pulled the plug you'd be contractually obliged to never finish that series until your contract was up.' I could go on, but it was like yeah...actually. Fair.

For some reason places like Amazon and the like accept and keep up more "dark" books that are traditionally published than they do with self pub ones. Maybe because they have more respect or leniency for publishing houses?

They do, but most publishing houses want very formulaic dark romance which is not what I write.

I have a 300k omegaverse slowburn that still hasn't had any penetrative sex in it, anon. Publishing houses don't want that. They don't expect anyone will wait 4 full length novels to get to literally a single penetrative sex scene.

But you already have 2 completed novels (3 if you count the fae one) that you could potentially revisit or rewrite to your liking and get them represented by agents.

If I rewrote them to my liking, trad pub wouldn't want them. They'd be too long! I think agents etc. take one look at me and go 'oh god, no thank you!' I'm not an easy sell, by any means.

Plus I'm very e.e about all of that with the knowledge that they then give me only about 10-15% of the royalties on the sales, vs. self-pub where I get around 70%, or subscription where I around 80% of it. When someone subscribes to me, they don't have to worry about 85-90% of their subscription fee going to a publishing house. I don't have to think about how many thousands and thousands of books I'd have to sell to make the same amount that I do now via subscription.

As well as trad publishing, you could also make s simple website that doesn't require much maintenance.

If it was that simple, I'd be doing it. I don't mean this in a facetious way, I mean it in a: I've made a lot of websites, in fact I run one at the moment not connected to my writing (I've been running it for so long it's now in its 20s and can probably has a driver's license). I find it so tedious that I barely remember to check in on it. But forgetting about it means there's always maintenance to keep up with when I get back to it.

Running websites is simpler than it used to be, but it's still not simple. There's hosting and hosting costs, there's server changes, there's back-end maintenance etc. I'm considering it for down the track, but there's a reason I decided to go the route of Patreon over my own site. There are authors (like Christopher Hopper) who actually do subscription through their own domain, but it's a lot of work.

Even placeholder sites are still work. They need updating, details change, story titles changing etc. Maintaining my Patreon + Ream About pages is enough, they're always both a little out of date, lol.

Not that you're not professional now.

Oh no, I mean from a 'traditional publisher looking at me to see what kind of candidate I am' I'm really not though. Like I said, I don't have the newsletter (100 subscribers who get one newsletter a year is not really a newsletter), I don't have the Facebook/Tiktok/Insta/Twitter/Bluesky/Threads accounts, etc. I write multi-genre across multiple steam levels, and I'm allergic to writing serials shorter than 150k. One of my best performing original serials was an 800k contemporary story with no sex in it but a lot of BDSM. It can't be marketed as clean or sweet, it's not high steam, an entire chapter is 'boy saves snail from rain.' Also he was cruel to animals, so not exactly what I'd call a sympathetic main.

And yet that story did so well for me via Patreon + Ream, because people want the kinds of stories that publishing houses generally don't want and I happen to be writing them.

Trad publishing is work but definitely not as much as self publishing, and you can continue on with your serials. Getting an agent can be time consuming but I personally believe the pros outweigh the cons and I also believe that your stories would be a huge treasure to the growing lgbtqia+ market. Seriously there needs to be more!

Anon I just literally do not believe an agent would want to represent me. I have 0% belief in that. Not from a self-deprecating angle but from a 'I am not a good bet for the trad market' perspective. From a 'I have so many friends who are trad pubbed authors who stare at me like I'm insane for writing serials as long as I do' perspective. From a 'professionals in the industry have told me it's amazing I'm doing so well in serials because there's no way they'd take a risk on what I'm doing' perspective. From a 'just because it's queer and diverse doesn't mean it hits literally any other thing a trad pub is looking for' perspective. I've been doing this for 10 years. There are agents who represent work similar to mine who know what I'm doing and wouldn't touch me with a ten foot pole. They're not missing out on a trick, they know I'm not broad appeal, and they're right.

Also the only way I'd have the energy to manage trad pub is by quitting serials. And honestly, I never found trad pub all that much fun while I was doing it for non-novel stuff. It was fine, and it is nice to have my stuff out there, but it was a ton of admin and a lot of going back and forth between people who really only care about marketing a product, and that's great and what they excel at! But I'm too disabled to turn this job into something crushing just to potentially make more money, I'd rather just quit and go back onto a full Disability Pension. I can't see any way I still get to write the stories I want to write, in the way that I write them, and be remotely appealing to a single reputable trad pub or agent.

Also *gestures to everything in this article*

#asks and answers #pia on writing #pia on publishing #i appreciate your thoughts anon #and i'm so happy it's working out well for you #and that you're able to live off what you're doing #you are one of the rare outliers in the world of publishing #and i truly wish you all the success in the world #i do think a lot of your advice will go to help a lot of writers who sometimes check in #at my tumblr #but yeah no i don't even write that much 'dark' stuff in the classic sense #of what trad pub wants #right now the publishing world that i'm adjacent to #seems to view me as some kind of oddity #'i don't know how he's making an income off all this stuff that we know would never work for us' #'how odd and strange' #'best leave him alone' #most authors are thankfully not doing what i'm doing #in which case yes they should absolutely consider agent representation #and looking into trad pub #unfortunately i'm not like a CS Pacat #even though she's a role model for me #and when i tried to write for the more traditional market #which was perth shifters #i honestly really struggled

[six-of-ravens]

it kinda hit me today that the main reason I'm so done with the "romantasy" and fairy tale retellings trends are that I'm just so tired of the same few plots being recycled over and over. and like, i know a lot of people are still into those and I'm not trying to rain on anybody's parade bc there are definitely plots and tropes I will endlessly shove into my brain!! but it's just wearing on me a lot that the same handful of fairy tales and Greek myths are being spat out again and again, with a different setting and a different romantic lead and hey maybe sometimes it's queer but it's still the same thing. a lot of times especially in YA it's basically a retelling of the fucking Disney movie.

like, unless you've deconstructed a fairy tale and broken it down to it's component parts and researched it heavily and built it back up as something you have to think about for a while to pick the fairy tale out of, I'm not really interested anymore. give me more Jane Yolen Briar Rose, hell even more Pamela Dean Tam Lin even though I was kinda on the fence about that one. I want thinkers, man.

#i am shedding books like a second skin right now yall #also trying to figure out why im not super enthusiastic about A Study in Drowning even though I've loved Reid's other books #terri windling please come out of retirement and save us from this hell. we need real folklore scholars in publishing again #sorry I'm being so hypercritical of books today lmao im Working Some Things Out i think

[johaerys-writes]

When you're watching a film set in the 40s and the characters are reading an Odyssey translation that was only published in the 90s, so you just sit there like 😐

#nothing quite like small details like this to throw me off #i don't even own that particular translation but something about it didn't sound right #i was like wait... this sounds like fagles #but he didn't publish his Homeric translations until the 90s. that can't be right #and i check online and it WAS fagles #and now i'm wondering why movies do that lmao??? it's so easy to find a version of an ancient work #that's contemporary of the ppl you're filming #literally so easy #lots of ppl still read pope's translation for instance and it was published in the freaking 1700s #*sigh* #anyway. i wish my hyperfixations let me enjoy things lmao

[fazedlight]

Me, naively: This will be a simple one-shot

Me, two weeks later: I need to draw up a timeline for season 5 from this particular character's perspective

#I don't even plan to publish this until probably next year #but I'm going full murderboard right now #rao help me #mel stuff

[literalnobody]

Hi can I ask about The Water Dog? When is it going out (no pressure), could you share what it's going to be about, or if it's already out and I missed it could you direct me to it. ❤️❤️❤️

Thank you

Hi there! No worries, The Water Dog is not out yet but it's a pretty major project I plan to develop during the hiatus of my webcomic, and I'm not sure when it'll be out as I'm hoping to pursue getting it published when it's finished ^_^ I can tell you the general premise though!

The story follows a young nurse named Sybil who has to suddenly upend her life to care for her estranged grandfather, who lives on an extremely remote and insulated island off the western coast of Ireland (the story is set in 1930). She arrives amidst the tensions of the islanders and the Irish soldiers who are there to enforce a mandatory evacuation of the entire (very small) population to the mainland in the wake of a series of violent and mysterious deaths. The island has no police force, no fire fighters, one doctor, no social services and a population rapidly aging out of able bodied labour. Are wild dogs to blame for the sudden deaths, or is the ferocious monster that the islanders believe in actually real? 🤔 Ultimately this is a story about community, found family, romance, horror, and most importantly, the dignity and kindness we owe to one another ^_^ I hope you'll consider checking it out when it's finished, which I hope to be in Spring of next year!

#even if i cant get it professionally published I will either self publish or make it available online #just not sure how things will pan out right now. I just gotta write it and hope for the best! #i started developing this story in Easter but once RTR goes on hiatus I'm planning to- #-basically do a nanowrimo type month to get the first draft written #and then i'd like to hire a professional editor because I've been saving #and i'd like this to be my like. published debut if that makes sense #since its tonally more serious than my other work and also much closer to #-my own personal lived experiences #asks #the water dog

[nimue-hidden-lake]

Me just noticing that I literally didn't do anything else but write for the entire day. And I'm still willing to write more... Someone take the keyboard away from me.

#Nimue's Whispers #Like it's really bad. I got a lot to publish sure but... I'm not stopping. I literally cannot stop right now. #I finished the ones I will publish in a bit so no worries. But it's still just... HRRRN #Thoughts go brrr. I have so much brainrot tody it's not even funny anymore.

[katierosefun]

how bizarre is it that, in a haze, i sign up for info sessions to an mfa program

#caroline talks #i'm realistically not going to apply. it's way too late for me in the admissions game to apply right now #but am i still going to attend the info sessions and just wistfully daydream about getting published? yeah. maybe. #i don't think an mfa program will fix me. at all. #but will i still attend these info sessions and just be like. wow. i wish i were there instead of where i am right now. yeah. #peering in through the window like a starving victorian child or whatever. which i am btw. #i even looked at the. frickin. application materials. #and nearly started crying bc it's like. something that i would enjoy writing. #and like. whatever. #mfas are notorious for being like. u pay a lot of money and there is very little promise about it paying off #i get it. i do. #but is there a small part of me that's just so. desperately wanting to just write for the rest of my life. yeah. #what if i just broke down the walls and screamed 'please accept me. i need to write or i will go insane.' will that be good enough.

[marietheran]

aarghh, I made the mistake of looking at beautiful hardcovers and now I want to buy them.

to add insult to injury 3/4 of the books are in public domain and I've got an e-reader. so it would be a double waste of my budget to buy them... but...

#maybe I'll treat myself to something like that for Christmas... #there's this gorgeous polish edition of Anna Karenina... shouldn't be *that* expensive either #compared to english books #(I have War and Peace from the same publisher - I think - and it's the most beautiful book I own) #(Only one volume out of two unfortunately. Someone gifted it to me and thought it was all) #And Tolstoy would be one Russian author I wouldn't feel uncomfortable reading right now #given how he became very opposed to his countries imperialist policies later in his life #(I don't believe one has to boycott Russian literature. And I'm not even doing that. But it *is* uncomfortable) #Therese rambles

[weaselshaped]

This post was going to say "Sorry I have to bookpost here because Twitter is dead and I don't know how discoverability works on Replacement Twitter and authors I like are there and might see me" but a) I'm not sorry, this is my house; b) I never bookposted on Twitter because it felt too public for me to get specific about my book opinions on; c) if authors I like see me making extremely vague posts about not liking some books I read that were by different authors, absolutely nothing will happen; and d) some of those authors are also on Tumblr, which also doesn't matter at all for the same reason as c, that is, they do not know I exist nor care about my opinions of books they did not write (or, for that matter, of books they did write)

#What even is this post. Excuse me #Any time I start to get weird social media anxiety about Cool Authors I Follow Seeing My Posts #I have to tell myself I am basically an ant to them. I don't think this is exactly true either #If I did say to someone that I really enjoyed X work of theirs I'm sure it would be like. Nice to hear #in that it's always nice to know someone liked a thing you did #But obviously no one has any reason to care about my opinion specifically who does not know me personally. #There is a part of me that maintains a silly little fantasy of one or more authors I admire reading and enjoying something I publish someda #However a) this is silly to dwell on b) as previously noted I am not writing anything as interesting as any of them are so this won't happe #and c) even if it does somehow happen one day that bears no relationship to anything that happens right now. Obviously #Anyway I'm so normal. The normallest

[spice-ghouls]

Good evening everyone. I am quite drunk

#My grandma came over for dinner this evening. I'm taking care of the family dog. #My grandma has early stage dementia and can't remember that I'm her grandson and not her granddaughter. #My dog is dying. We've had her since I was 8 and I'm 22 now. She's got something wrong with her bladder and the vet thinks it's cancer. #And I am alone in the house now with that under my skin. So as you may imagine I have consumed a good deal of rum. #And now am reading the new essay ave familyabolosher just published :) I'm a little too drunk to process all of it right now #but the parts I can parse whilst intoxicated are very insightful. #How is everyone else's evening going? Hope you're all well :) #ghoul.txt

[stylinsoncity]

thinking about h/l having a witch son in SEL via a surrogate with harry. and even though the curse is broken, harry has a ton of anxiety when they find out they’re having a boy. and they have to have a lengthy conversation but ultimately harry is soothed and reassured by louis. and when their son is born, nothing else matters because he’s beautiful and worth whatever comes their way. :’)

#sel #it would've been even more compelling if this was prior to h turning 30 #maybe an edit i'll make if/when i publish #i think i'm in my feelings re: sel right now #i do miss them #pls feel free to chat about them w me lol #ty

[kadoodles-on-ao3]

Sickness update: Still coughing, but it's (mostly) dry coughing now, and my headache is gone! But I'm not at 100% back-to-normal mental capacity yet either :(

Writing update: I've been hard at work on my angsty longfic! I was going to work on something lighter (especially with my cold) but all of a sudden more and more ideas to add to my AU kept popping in my head and I just had to jot them down.

Before long I was finally organizing my outline by putting all my previous bullet-point came-to-me-at-random-times-of-the-night-and-put-in-an-equally-random-order concepts into plot-chronological order as they should be, and making headings/sections for the major location changes to find stuff easier, and getting down how exactly series-and-collection-wise I want to go about categorizing the fic and its sequels, and finalizing their titles (which are all names of songs on The Glitch Mob's Drink the Sea album, give it a listen with good headphones if you haven't before, it's great background music!!) and oh yeah I needed to go over the h2hs again better open that doc, and I definitely need to have the game's script and cutscenes on hand for reference as needed (which was very frequently) and now baby I've got a stew going

I'm having so much fun writing characters I haven't gotten to write before, and (minor/vague Xenoblade spoilers) digging into the details of the lore about Face Mechon and expanding on my take of what was happening on the Mechonis before the party got there, and fitting lots of little puzzle pieces that the game gives you but doesn't directly tell you they belong together which is why I love it so much, and getting into such a nice flow state with it all and gjshfhskfh I love Xenoblade 1 so muchhhhhh!!!

So all that is to say I will hopefully be posting the prologue tomorrow or the day after! :) No promises as it's gotten much longer/more-detailed than I planned for (although I really should have expected that, it's always how it goes with me when I'm having fun writing I just can't stop haha) but it is most definitely on the way to being published soon!

#aside #before i get into mild spoilers for my fic (as in no details about the plot itself but i mention #which characters i'm writing in the prologue so if you want to go in completely blind turn back now!) #i will fill space by reiterating that drink the sea is such a good album and you should listen to it #my favorite track is Starve The Ego Feed The Soul :) listening to it with really good headphones and no other background noise is so #mmmmmmm it tickles my brain in the best way #as for the fic though i am having SO. much. fun. writing egil and mumkhar #i don't mention egil much publicly but he's one of my absolute fav characters from xc top 5 for sure #finally getting into his headspace and delving into his subtleties like his arrogance and loss of empathy is very :) #quite different from anything i've written before but in a good way. hope you like it as much as i had fun writing it! #and writing mumkhar's enthusiastic and sarcastic dickishness is a blast lmao #he was only supposed to be a small feature and likely even just an offscreen mention or two from egil #but then i realized how much i had written with zero dialogue (i like to do that especially in the middle of a conversation lol) and #i thought ''hm let's fix that! in fact part of my reason for having mumkhar here is that #he talks way too fucking much and it annoys egil to the point where he literally stitches his mouth shut so yeah having him actually #talk with specific words is important to the point i'm trying to make!'' and then oops my draft is an extra page longer now #but i had fun writing it and if it serves the story and the points i want to get across then i can't find the heart to delete it #and hey it's been so long since i've published anything so more is better anyway right?

[mcalhenwrites]

The sudden surge in kudos/bookmarks/subscriptions for this fic, when I haven't posted a new chapter in a few days, has me thinking either someone recommended it somewhere or the US holidays has given people enough free time to find it or finally check it out... I'm really touched either way, because people are enjoying it. It's such an odd thing to finally be proud of my work. Not that I'm complaining, it's just... very different in terms of how I experience this sort of thing. I'm still full of gratitude that anyone likes my work, but I don't start hesitating that I don't deserve it, that they're giving me attention that ought to belong to someone else, etc. No, I'm just damn proud AND grateful AND happy.

#it took me too many years to reach this point but I'm glad I did #I'm glad I am like 'fuck yes my writing is good' #I worked HARD to get here! #I have no confidence in my writing going anywhere but I know it has value and worth #and that's been just the right thing for me #I'd like to to be more successful in terms of published works ofc #but I'm also certain now that it is worthy of being published #whereas before I was like 'no probably not no way you suck at this so don't even bother'

[noxtivagus]

gna play to the moon later today 🤍

#🌙.rambles #hypothetically. if i were to stream the game #like i'm planning to stream to my friend n w apollo ofc hehe but #HYPOTHETICALLY if i were to stream on maybe priv yt or even twitch idk wld anyone be interested in watching. i wonder #yk last year when apollo was playing p5r i rmb they streamed a lot for it to our friends hehe #i streamed w my first few hours of nier automata too #i'm like.. camera or audience shy or wtvr idk i don't do well w that pressure but it's fun w friends #wait i forgot what i was going to say but #goddamn yk i really value the people in my life n i try to be as fair with my judgement as possible #by that i mean. you know i think it through if i dislike someone #so if i hate you #you really must've done something i hate so so much. #me rn i don't exactly hate this.. other person but man. oh dear. i used to consider them one of my closest friends #like this is different from the previous person in my last few rants #now though i think they're boring. they're just a part of the ocean again. #maybe in their own circle they feel different from the rest n that's valid but from far away here. from a bird's eye view. #nah. #one thing i love about having imagination n.. yk creating stuff. for me one way i express myself is writing #& i really will publish stuff someday. i promise that. #but yk i appreciate the ppl in my life a lot right? so. typically some charas like in. the. original story in my head #they'll reflect on ppl in my life. perhaps a long childhood friend that i barely see that's the daughter of my mom's friend or smth. #or another childhood friend that's like a 'rival' to me. in a friendly way tho n it's kinda one-sided w the rivalry tho #or. yeah my other friends c: esp yk the two ones in my innermost circle that i mostly still regularly keep in contact with #i love how you can like idk make a character reflect on some things abt ppl that i dislike. not themselves wholly but. yeah. you get it #the inspo oh my god #n this isn't related w the previous stuff /gen but i have. inspo n ideas rn hehe #i want to write sm help but i ended up rambling

[lovelyamneris]

writing the most self indulgent oc fic for a movie that nobody cares about and a character in that movie that people care even less about. writing for myself <3

#I mean if I publish it people can read but even if someone is looking for a fic for this movie I doubt #that they'd be looking for one about THIS GUY lmao I'm mental over this one dude #does this make any sense I feel like I'm stringing words together right now unintelligibly

[fayesdiary]

For the emoji meme: 🤡🛒🦅🤲✨️!

Got it!

🤡 What’s a line, scene, or exchange you’ve written that made you laugh?

Arden showing up late at the Barbecue of Belhalla, Delthea calling Luthier stupid in How to Rescue your Nerd Brother, and "I'm sure after we win, Sir Clive will make me a knight of Zofia! (…not sure about Python though)" in Valentian Reports😂

🛒 What are some common things you incorporate in your fics? Themes, feels, scenes, imagery, etc.

Oddly enough, I'm not really sure how to answer this. Mostly because I feel every fic I wrote is pretty different from the other.

I guess there is a trend of swapping roles, reports/journal entries and soulless people though😂

🦅 Do you outline fics or fly by the seat of your pants?

If thinking scenes over and over in my head counts as outlining, then I am! But I'm pretty sure it doesn't, so flying by the seat of my pants it is.

🤲 Would you please share a snippet of a wip?

This is a snippet of a fic where Rinea survives Act 5 and not gonna lie, I've been stuck on it for a while despite how badly I want to write it, so I'm glad to be able share at least some of it.

If someone had told Rinea one day she live in Nuibaba's Abode back in her past life, she would have taken it as a twisted joke, if not an outright threat. And yet here she was now, approaching the entrance to it with a few bags, along with one of her caretakers who was years younger than her. [...] She was slowly gaining more control over the magic handed to her against her will especially compared to the first few days when she was almost always in Vestal state, but accidents where she went berserk still happened from time to time.

Especially when her thoughts dwelled on him for too long.

Sonya and Genny called Rinea holding on to her memories and self a miracle, and her newfound sisters were quite curious of her past life, since they were unable to recall their own.  Rinea herself viewed it as a curse, something that only reminded her how much she lost in that fire.

✨ Give you and your writing a compliment. Go on now. You know you deserve it. 😉

Oh! Well...

I'm proud of having finally finished a multi-chapter fic, and a pretty good one at that if I say so myself! I still can't fathom how I managed to write almost all of Valentian Reports on the phone😂

And I really like how I delved into obscure parts of canon only me and a few other people are likely interested in! I still remember the days where I went feral over Nuibaba having a Risen mask that culminated into writing a whole fic about it very fondly, and Valentian Reports is kinda of a sequel to it where I dived a bit into every character!

I'm especially proud of the Secret Reports since I had the chance to flesh out Mila and Duma more, I really wish there was more discussion about the two but they're sadly glossed over, so I'm glad I could pick up the slack a little bit!

(oh, and speaking of picking up the slack, I'm the first one who wrote a proper Faye/Rinea fic on AO3 and I will keep bragging about that)

#ask replies #iturbide #my rambles #my writings #i'm in a pretty good mood writing-wise right now! #haven't written almost anything after publishing valentian reports but i DO have some plans #like a very early draft for a fic about a certain case #and some things that aren't even fanfics but something much more ambitious #hopefully i can show you some teasers in the future!