[Image Description: digital illustration looking down at two figures. The left is a tall, skinny, androgynous white person with stark white hair and clothes like a romance novel hero. The figure on the right is a light-skinned Black woman dressed like a plague doctor. The two stand on a mystically glowing green and purple circle.]
Stories about fandom romance: Characters can be members of fandom, discovering fandom, or meeting through fandom. Think fanfic authors, cosplayers, artists, bloggers, etc.! Do your characters meet online? At a con? Randomly somehow at the grocery store? The options are endless, and we want to read them all!
-OR-
Stories featuring a relationship involving at least one character who is genderfluid, and at least one character who is a paranormal/magical/mythical creature such as: shapeshifters, were-creatures, fae, banshees, incubi/succubi, ghosts, etc. We are looking for paranormal genderfluid romance. The genderfluid character does NOT have to also be the magical/mythical character, but certainly CAN be! It’s up to you! We are particularly interested in #ownvoices stories for this category.
Submissionsmustmeet the above criteria AND fall into one of the above categories, but if your story falls into both categories that is really awesome, please note that in the summary field of your submission!
The following elements are always welcome:
Erotica
Representation of characters from a variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds
Characters with disabilities
Trans characters
Non-binary/genderfluid/gender nonconforming characters (for both categories!)
Any genre, as long as the story is primarily a romance
EDIT: This deadline has been extended through January 30, 2020!
We will do our best to respond to all submissions. Please do not send inquiries about your submission. If your story is accepted, we will contact you via email.
AND MORE (See the campaign page for a full list of authors!)
The stories range in heat level, genre, length, and tone. All take place in the Victorian era and explore a queer Holmes!
Cover art for this book will be by the wonderfully talented Max Kennedy ( aka @maxkennedy24). We will post art previews here and on the indiegogo campaign page, so check those spaces out in the coming weeks!
Thecampaign is set to run for 45 days. We are already, only 24 hours since we went live on indiegogo, almost halfway to our minimum goal! We’re SO EXCITED and we hope more folks will claim the awesome perks we have available.
They include:
$5 ebook only
$10 paperback only
$18 ebook + paperback combo with a small cover art postcard
$28 ebook + hardcover combo with a large cover art postcard plus your name on the acknowledgments page.
$45 limited edition dust jacket hardcover with a large cover art postcard and a small cover art poster, plus your name on the acknowledgments page.
$70 SUPER supporter tier with everything included in the $45 level, but with a large cover art poster and your name in a Special Thanks section inside the book.
Not able to contribute right now? The book will be made available in ebook and potentially also in paperback format through Amazon in Spring 2020, and you will be able to snag a copy then. However, copies for sale through indiegogo are significantly discounted, so keep that in mind!
FAQs:
Is the thumbprint graphic the cover art? Nope! This is just a temporary image we are using for this project.
Are the authors getting paid? Absolutely. All the authors signed a contract which entitles them to payment through royalties up to a certain amount. Authors will receive royalties from books sold via the campaign as well.
Is the artist getting paid? Yes, of course! Everyone working on this book is getting PAID!
Why are you crowdfunding this project? This was a somewhat big project for us and one that is very near and dear to our hearts. We exist as a company because of two things: Sherlock Holmes fandom and fan fiction authors. We wanted to make this project, which combines these two things we care about SO much, a bit special with more options than our current model would allow (things like hardcovers and bonus art!). In order to do that, we realized we needed to think outside the box. That’s how we decided to go this route.
Will you crowdfund all your books now? Nah, we won’t be doing that. We might crowdfunding some larger projects in the future, but definitely no plans to do this for every title!
You are a supervillain who has just captured your rival’s child. Rather than being afraid, they’re begging you to let them stay.
Frankly, you’d known those idiots had had a kid for years now. You’d pretended not to, because while you’d committed a lot of atrocities in your life, you weren’t willing to face the moral quandary of whether you would knowingly kill a child just to spite its parents.
They probably thought they were being clever though, what with the blaming you for an injury you knew damn well you’d never given keeping one of them out of commission for a few months, then references to what they would ‘leave behind’ or ‘could not follow’ when in the latest death trap. One of them had accidentally pulled a pacifier out of their utility belt once, and tried to pass it off as being prepared for any young children they came across while rescuing.
Idiots.
Still, you had standards. Standards that fell somewhere past war crimes and before common decency, but they were standards.
Sneak peak of a sketch I’ve been meaning to finish for four weeks now but I had to prioritize writing for mental health reasons so I gave up that dream. I will finish it eventually! I want to have at least one finished sketch of all of the band members together, The Cliche’s and Hezekiah, and Willamina Beatriz and Anna.
Something I’ve been wanting to draw for a while now. Cynthis is one of my favorite characters and I love him very much. He has a lot of self-esteem and self-image issues, and struggles with dysphoria, but slowly grows and learns to better care for himself and be proud of who he is.
(I will be hosting a DTIYS challenge on my instagram using this drawing soon )
What I can tell you as a transgender woman is that occasionally I will read trans woman characters written by cisgender authors. And I can pretty much always tell when the author is cis, even if the character is portrayed respectfully, because they get some details wrong or something. But I certainly don’t think that they shouldn’t be allowed to take a stab at it, and I actually appreciate any representation that isn’t egregiously harmful. And I certainly don’t think that only transgender women should be allowed to write transgender women because then it falls on me,and that’s rather tokenizing, isn’t it?
Also it seems like demanding that only#OwnVoices authors should be allowed to write certain characters is an excellent way to enforce a situation where most books are about cishet white people.
And no: you probably won’t get all of the specific details of someone else’s lived experience correct, in much the same way that most authors don’t get all of the specific details about how, say, nuclear reactorsorspacework. But so long as your character passes as realistically humanand not a one-dimensional caricature of what you think that other types of people are like, then I think that that’s reasonable.
