wen-yi lee 🌸 preorder the dark we know!
@wenyilee_
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🇸🇬 she/her | THE DARK WE KNOW (13 Aug 2024) | words also: Uncanny, Strange Horizons etc | Clarion West '22 | rep: @isabeljka
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THE DARK WE KNOW international preorder campaign!!! 🩵
preorder and submit receipts to get:
- 3 overlays ft art by
@joleanart
&
@nicoledealart
- an enamel pin
- a signed bookplate
US:
INTL:
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what's the point of trauma if you can't exploit it for literary value
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this netflix show based on iconic singaporean horror books is out NEXT WEEK & there's been basically no promo?? if you want a YA mystery/horror in SEA ft SEAsians pls pls check Mr. Midnight out, it looks so up my alley & the mc is a malay boy??
netflix promote shows challenge :)
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queer book lists, asian book lists;; for my new year recs, here are some books that are queer *and* asian upcoming in 2024 that i'm excited about! from romance to contemporary to SFF to essays🧵📚
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shoutout to everyone else who sees advice about first drafts not having to be perfect and goes "not me tho"
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my book is being published!!! as
@thegillianflynn
's first YA!!
THE DARK WE KNOW is a (spooky, queer) Pied Piper x Spring Awakening letter to runaways, grief & silence, memory & art, childhood friends touching foreheads & saving each other. I can't wait for you to read in 2024.
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my mom got me a 1920s typewriter 🥲💕 when i deliver my next manuscript on this then what
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@sweater_giraffe
zuko going from villain to tired father of children is my favourite character development😂
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cunty shakespeares acquired!
oh the power of good art macbeth and hamlet are in my cart as we speak
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✨Hello✨ I'm thrilled to say that I'm now represented by
@isabeljka
of
@foxliterary
!! Isabel's enthusiasm & vision for my queer, angry, yearning Spring Awakening-inspired horror blew me away; this book has a lot of hurt & a lot of healing and I'm so happy it found its champion!
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not to be sappy but i used to cowrite books with friends by passing a notebook around
now my little sister is cowriting with her friends on google docs, and it's just nice how tech changes but kids telling stories together stays the same
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I have a lot of feelings about Southeast Asia being underrepresented! I've struggled finding faceclaims for brown SEAsian characters, and when I was querying a SEA high fantasy, finding comps that felt familiar to what I was writing. /1
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THE DARK WE KNOW cover reveal!!!
if you want a strange, dark, tender book about friends who ache for dead childhood & things in the earth that haunt them, TDWK is out august 13 from
@thegillianflynn
@zandoprojects
🩵 you can preorder & also request on netgalley now!
We are ecstatic to reveal the cover for The Dark We Know,
@wenyilee_
's chilling YA horror for fans of The Haunting of Hill House and She Is a Haunting!
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do writers have personal mswls? like elements/tropes/comps you want to write but haven't yet found the right project for??
i want to do bodyguard, star wars, academic rivals, clifi, locked room, chosen one subversion, reincarnation, theatre, fantasy animals, interconnected antho
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Only in a
@camphalfblood
book would you see something like "say hello to Hurricane Derp" and have it make perfect sense
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so extremely humbling to ctrl+f a crutch word in your manuscript and see some number like 250
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both the mcs in THE DARK WE KNOW are haunted by rats and angels and also their bi awakening crushes on their problematically dead best friends
I am kindly asking authors to please mention if their book has a bisexual main character. It certainly helps find interested readers who are looking for books with bisexual main characters
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the sexual tension between me and the 5 wip ideas i can't choose between
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now why is this anthology of asian voices ending with an afterword by a white writer talking about how it resonates from what she observed living in japan for two years
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hello agented authors, would anyone be willing to share their queries or send a link if you've posted it on your own site? I'm compiling an example resource of some successful queries across genres :) comment or dm me please!
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crowdsourcing for an essay!
looking for Flower Girl books written **by & featuring BIPOC** - pref YA but adult fine too. Flower Girl = those speculative books or covers with overgrown girls or that feature plant horror/nature elements & fem MCs
some examples:
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THE DARK WE KNOW is PW official!! that's my little face in the tweet 🥲
and we are ALSO goodreads official so you can add her here:
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cornering the market on angry asian bi girl in haunted house with daddy issues
Honestly, there aren't enough bisexual books with POC
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I got this extremely kind rejection when I was 18, the first time I tried to send out a speculative short story. It encouraged me to keep trying, and today I just got accepted for my first pro-rated SFF fiction sale to a dream journal 😊
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convinced my friend to buy she who became the sun by
@shelleypchan
at an indie today and the guy at the counter was like: oh there's this Scene in that one
me: oh That Scene
guy, to friend: i won't tell you what it is, but i hope you get to it while on a train or something
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new year new attempt to stage my own author pic shoot with a ringlight in my bedroom, a tripod, photoshop & a dream
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my
#pitlight
staple One more time 😶
i'm revising my sapphic historical fantasy set in 70s postcolonial Singapore, ft:
🔥 dark magic in the red light district
🦋 bodies, transformation & being doomed by the narrative
🔥 do i want to worship her or the goddess in her blood?
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this is the essay i've wanted to write for a while: about Lady Macbeth, pontianaks, dark magic as feminist agency and the resonance of the hysterical/haunted/monstrous feminine!! I dedicate this to all the unhinged girlies ✨
"We seem to be amidst a particular reclamation of the monstrous feminine: one in which they are not only deeply sympathetic but—in a coy way—aspirational."
@wenyilee_
on Lady Macbeth, and other ruthless women of literature and folklore:
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singapore is *southeast* asian first and foremost, and we have enough issues tackling our chinese majority and recognising indigeneity as is without publishing labelling us as a place of Eastern Culture :)
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i cannot be on my knees for victor frankenstein and yet
I apologize in advance for the person I am going to become when we start getting content for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein
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“Do you kiss all your friends?” Adeline muttered into the bottle.
Tian’s hand slid over her cheek, coming to cup her face like they’d been created to fit. “Only if they let me.” A beat. A held breath. Tian's mouth curving ever so slightly. "Are you going to let me?"
#fridaykiss
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27 may 2021 vs 27 may 2024✨️
i had a fully formed idea a day after tweeting this, a draft 1 month later, signed with my agent in september, sold the book in 2022 and now it's publishing this august;; write what you want to read!!
i need more media that makes me feel the way spring awakening makes me feel
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making financial decisions as an adult has increasingly been "do i save money and not buy this little treat or do i sustain my will to live"
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Hi
#AMMParty
!
I'm Wen-yi, I'm an R9 YA SFF mentor! The book I'm prepping for sub is a YA horror that's a queerer, spookier, speculative riff on Spring Awakening, and my new WIP is a sapphic historical fantasy set in Singapore!
Bringing back this edit for the vibes ✌
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⭐️THE DARK WE KNOW has its first trade review & it's a star from kirkus!!!
it often feels difficult (& vulnerable🤡) to sell a quieter book that's half about reconciling your own ghosts, so it means a lot to me that the introspection was highlighted twice in this review🥲
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I LOVE THIS GENRE, here are some fave spec fic grief books:
- my debut, the dark we know 🧍🏻♀️
- our wives under the sea
- harrow the ninth
- the astonishing color of after
- monstrilio
- i also love the wayward children series for grief of lost selves/places
sci fi and horror explorations of grief are everything to me... love it when monsters and ghosts and aliens and fantasy universes are all manifestations of loss
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getting back into revisions soon 👀
Sapphic FANG RUNIN x JADE CITY in postcolonial Singapore - a schoolgirl, a gang, and a nation come of age.
#pitlight
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finally started the doc for a ✨secret project✨
title is a work in progress
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this line being the first proper musical clip i've seen from the movie like? the entire marketing strategy is just renee rapp thirst traps
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can't believe the placeholder cover i threw together a year ago is now in a
@_withcindy
vid 💀🥲 i've gotten MAX mileage out of this but real cover reveal so soon i Swear
but tysm cindy, my 13yo sister who also watches your channel finally said i'm cool🫡
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thank you to tatler for giving my parents something to send to our relatives 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼
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(runaway/artist/survivor)
the dizzyingly talented
@nicoledealart
went above and beyond to do this piece of Isa from my Spring Awakening horror THOSE YOU'VE KNOWN and I can't physically put into words how I feel about this because AAHHH
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TDWK is also aching nostalgia, just a lil religious trauma, flower omens, mountain ghosts in strange winds & friends all a bit in love with one another -
can FINALLY share Isa & Mason, my angry art girlie & sad lover boy, by the amazing
@NicoleDealArt
!!!
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tdwk cover reveal in about 24 hours perhaps?⬛️🌊⛰️🦋
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tdwk arcs have dropped!! very blue and very surreal to hold
giveaways incoming 🥰🩵
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- a banh mi for two by
@thetrinitytran
- dear wendy by
@annzhao_
(mcs are aroace, not sapphic)
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literally had to download the trailer bc there wasn't a tweet OR a yt video to share 🤡 i'm so excited about this actually,,, sg & msian actors and they filmed in batam and everything? idc if it's bad i'm watching all of it
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Hi, I'm THRILLED to welcome
@wastyk
's science fantasy THE GREAT DIVIDE to
#AMMR9
!!! It's all my fave dystopian nostalgia, but with magic & a POC, adoptee & casual queer lens, where an adoptee raised in a magitech city joins a desert-sailing crew to find a sister & her roots ✨ 1/
Thank you for your patience! We are pleased to announce the
#AuthorMentorMatch
Round 9 mentee selections:
Congrats to all who were chosen!
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apropos of nothing have a sapphic fantasy dark academia snippet :)
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thinking abt cultural specificities & explaining them in writing; not the material elements (practices/food/language even) but emotions & dynamics from specific experiences, and whether one should actively contextualise them or simply leave it for the people who Get It
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I am in this with a story about post apocalyptic singaporean air stewardesses becoming overgrown 🌱🌱
the cover art is inspired by the story and the details BLOW ME AWAY every time i look at it - the kebaya, CHANGI JEWEL lmfao
kickstarter in lauren's tweet!!
Hello! I'm excited to reveal the cover of my new anthology–– TO ROOT SOMEWHERE BEAUTIFUL: AN ANTHOLOGY OF RECLAMATION! It's full of SFF, speculative, cli-fi wonder and I'm so proud of all of the authors. To order through our Kickstarter, follow the link here or in my bio! 🌿🤍🌿
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not gonna add more of my hot CRA takes but every time southeast asian twitter bands together it's like watching the avengers
I watched Crazy Rich Asians with enjoyment then thought no more of it, but once in a while an American decides it would be woke to say it was racist to cast Henry Goulding because his dad is white and Southeast Asian Twitter rolls up its sleeves
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um. i think. i've finished. this revision???????? i need to do another pass just to tighten but this is the first draft that's complete and that i'm happy with, clocking in perfectly at 120k😭
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thanks to short fiction i have successfully preemptively conquered a milestone and claimed my goodreads author profile with minimal struggle😌
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"gillian flynn read the manuscript and loved it" took me like 5 hours to recover
What’s something that happened on your publishing journey that will always stand out?
For me, it was having
@DeeshaPhilyaw
email me my first blurb and I started crying in the Walmart parking lot.
Walmart staff seemed wholly unbothered by a woman crying in their parking lot too.
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timezones biting me again but I am ✨ officially ✨ going to be in the Clarion West class this summer!!!
despite my already raging imposter syndrome, so so honoured and excited to head up to seattle and meet everyone ❤❤
Announcing our 2022 Clarion West Six-Week Workshop class! We are thrilled to welcome each and every fellow, and for them to study with
@SusanPalwick
,
@pdjeliclark
,
@FondaJLee
,
@tobiasbuckell
,
@RosariumBill
,
@Annaleen
, &
@charliejane
this summer!
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i've been struggling for months to finish any one piece of writing but today i finished ! a new first chapter ! still figuring out where it's going but i made a moodboard to celebrate
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ig will see these eventually bc i lack content but i had an Event in Real Life for the first time in a while today
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I enjoyed my last microfic thread, I have some time, I want to see aesthetics and I reached 900 followers (!) soooo
comment/link your moodboard and I'll write you a tweet microfic inspired by it!
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ButterflyWIP is my sapphic postcolonial fang runin x jade city historical fantasy that's about to go into final edits (!!) so for
#pitlight
here's things my friends sent me when reading it
(gorgeous art
@aliyah_fong
&
@lagunabayfables
, yelling by
@hannansoph
@nvtran
<3)
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HI I'm on this list!! I'm mentoring YA for the next round of
#AMM
! So so excited to be involved, and just saying it now, if anyone has a SEAsian fantasy they want to submit.... 👀
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obligatory THE DARK WE KNOW isadora chang mason kane bi m/f estranged best friends (?) haunted by ghosts, depression, religious trauma & being a bit in love with their whole friend group (the ghosts in question)
i keep reusing this art so extra content to spice it up:
happy pride month 🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈 of you’re a queer writer, I beg of you, show me your queer characters 🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈
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turned 24 today and found some art installations so call this a happy pride month post too 🫶🏼
a lot has changed in the past year and it hasn't always been the easiest but i'm grateful for so much of it
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you thought i was DONE promoting SHE IS A HAUNTING?? noo, here's 2000 more words thanks to
@tordotcom
. i had this idea about the food themes, asian family & diaspora since i read pg1 of
@nvtran
's manuscript, & it's finally here to celebrate SIAH BEING A BESTSELLER. eat & enjoy!!
"I’ve never quite understood fantasy books that don’t care what their people eat. SHE IS A HAUNTING, though, builds itself around its tastes."
@wenyilee_
on food, family, and colonialism in Trang Thanh Tran’s gothic horror novel
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ok i caved, toxic fire girlies from butterflywip, my singaporean historical fantasy
(art by @/ink3rr)
I’m asking politely that you all go make a Barbie poster for your characters because this just turned my Very Bad Mood around
(character art by @/xylicaa!)
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and my debut, the dark we know, out aug 13!
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idk if it will be allowed to make it into the final copy but these are the epigraphs i've been using in drafts of THE DARK WE KNOW, both poems i think about often since i found them :')
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i haven't talked about the fact that we had no good stock image for the hair motif in TDWK until
@tiffanyliux
just whipped out her procreate, and now her drawing is on every chapter
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@heyjomachin
grumpy warrior father who accidentally finds himself guardian of a child is literally my favourite trope ever
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officially in my first local antho!! this is my otter wife/horroresque selkie spin story and I'm so happy to be making my singlit debut with it at the end of the year, with some names I really admire 🤍🦦
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what is your most unhinged writing hack that works bc mine is that when I get stuck I brainstorm + draft on a whiteboard and I can churn out entire chapters in 300-450 word segments
(take this as a THE DARK WE KNOW snippet if you're dedicated i guess)
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advancing my isadora chang mason kane bi x bi bffs fighting ghosts agenda and also asking for recs for more books with platonic m/f please
(art by @/nicoledealart)
I consistently wish there were more portrayals of friendship between men and women rather than close relationships in such cases, where kinship isn’t a factor, having to involve sexual feelings. Really missing this in tv shows, honestly. Books too, of course.
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there comes a time in a girl's life when her book is up for its first b&n preorder sale 👄
if you want the sad bisexual childhood friends reuniting to fight & heal from the trauma manifestation that haunts them from the mountains,
tdwk is 25% off until 19 april!
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and SEA is so INCREDIBLY rich with unique mythology and culture and possible fantasy worlds. But it also feels fairly distant from US/UK consciousness for various reasons, and not as attractive/colloquial as EAsian culture, and thus feels a lot more impenetrable market-wise, /4
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I am doing more things!! so excited to work with the apparition team - send me your creatures, monstrous girls/queers/marginalisations, monster friends, zoology nerd stories, and pls pls send any and all creatures from bipoc mythology and cultures
can't wait to read ❤️❤️
Delighted to announce
@wenyilee_
has agreed to be the Guest Editor for our CREATURE issue!! Polish up those beastly tales because we're opening up to submissions in less than 48 hours!! Check out guidelines here:
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it's official I'm on the cover of uncanny 🥲🥲🥲
Space Unicorns! Behold the Table of Contents and
@galendara
Cover of
@UncannyMagazine
Issue 44!
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i started painting my books because i desperately needed a hands-on creative hobby that didn't add clutter and also didn't feel like a job lol
hi besties... can you tell me about your non-writing hobbies? 👀
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✨️how it started / how it's going✨️
happy debut to first book I ever beta read & the friend that got me on here - it's been a journey of 2+ years and i'm so proud of
@kylazhao_
and THE FRAUD SQUAD 💜 check out the whole SHRINE they built here at home & get your copy now!
Hi world, meet:
✨THE FRAUD SQUAD✨
I'm so excited to share with you the story of:
a working-class woman +
an exiled socialite +
a billionaire heir
teaming up to fool Singapore high society.
I hope you enjoy reading their schemes & scandals as much as I did writing them 🫶
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None of them felt close to the cultural and geographical specificity I was trying to evoke. Even as we get more Asian voices and -inspired SFF, they're still largely East Asian. Books which I love! And I'm ethnically Chinese, so I benefit from that as well /2
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got my final copies and uhh stuff your boxes and be careful with your scissors kids 😃
BUT IT'S ALL GOOD I HAVE SO MANY COPIES just got viscerally humbled for a sec
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I've been trying to design more and I want to hype friends, so starting a thread of concepts inspired by friends' books that I've read!!
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i have a story in this anthology!!
i first wrote "They Will Give Us A Home" at clarion west in 2022 then overhauled the ending, but it's always been campy & murder attempty & asks what if you had to be straight for housing (iykyk)
thank you to
@leemandelo
for giving it a home!
We're excited to help announce Amplitudes: Stories of Queer and Trans Futurity, an anthology of 22 stories of queer hope, joy, and triumph edited by
@leemandelo
!
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from becoming friends through a mentorship to being comentors 😌
@nvtran
and i are teaming up for
@writeteammentor
- send us ur YA and adult horrors & queers & dark speculatives & seasians & weirdness !!
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late to this because✨timezones✨but a
#WIPtree
for butterflywip, the historical fantasy i'm currently revising! uhh gangs gods girls with fire and gays
(wip art by
@ink3rr
)
(also i just got canva+ & having manually done this before, the background remover is. miraculous.)
What if we made family trees for our WIPs of the books/shows/games/music that either inspired it or relate to it? And we tagged them as
#WIPtree
?
And what if I already made one for Vesuvius? What then?
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Anyway, speaking of queer stories in cultures that don't yet have the luxury of casual queerness: read Zen Cho's Black Water Sister!! In which they more readily accept ghosts and gods than gays 😶
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"Laura Lau Will Drain You Dry" is my short-but-not-sweet Jennifer's Body ode with mosquitoes, feral popular teenage girls & shitty boys.
I cracked this story in a seattle sharetea thanks to the clarion west hive mind & my friend's ex bf's bad texts, so this is for them both <3
If you were ever a teen girl, you will appreciate this nasty little tale from
@wenyilee_
.
If you have ever been bitten by a mosquito, this one will make you very itchy!
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while we all wait for lockwood season 2 (pls)
may i offer Another cocky outcast down bad YA boy who sees ghosts, begs to die & desperately needs help from a tough runaway girl to solve a mystery (their dead found family), fight an old evil & forehead touch as he despairs
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cant wait for the YA publishers "books as tracks from the tortured poets department" "dark academia books for tortured poets" social media posts
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@pagesofhayley
that one fanart where everyone was arguing whether it was rhys, dorian or the darkling
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But my experience of being Chinese ie Straits Chinese is also very different from mainland Chinese & Chinese diaspora in Western countries. It's intertwined with regional and other diasporic influences. Zen Cho's Black Water Sister was the most home I've felt in fantasy /3
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otter story is a review opener and got called entrancing in the national newspaper, im 🥲🥲🥲
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we both have debut novels coming out THIS YEAR hire us for all your horror/romance needs but don't ask us to operate a photobooth
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had the honour of receiving the Octavia Butler scholarship at
@clarionwest
this year (along with
@thenaomiday
!) and I wouldn't have been able to do Clarion without it; immensely grateful to the
@carlbrandon
society and to Octavia and her legacy 💗💗
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