J. S. Kuiken
@jskuiken.com
660 followers 270 following 2K posts
Writer. I write about loss, trauma, and queer lives and experiences. Short fiction in Nightscript, Foglifter, Bosie Magazine, others. UEA alumnus and Lambda Literary Fellow. He/his. https://jskuiken.com/links/
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Reintroducing myself for new BlueSky neighbors: Hi, I'm Jesse 👋. I've published some short fiction, and am currently querying my first novel while writing the second. I enjoy tea 🍵 and watching 👀 copious amounts of TV and film. Formerly from the US 🇺🇸, currently living in Thailand 🇹🇭.
#LGBTQWriteAThon October 16:

My MC's don't have fave songs so much as songs about them.

Sydan: Blood and Fire, The Indigo Girls
Sivas: A Million on My Soul, Alexiane
Rigan: Woman King, Iron and Wine
Pul'me: Fingers, Great Northern
#LGBTQWriteAThon October 16:

What's your MC's favorite mash? (song)

#writesky #queerwriters #writers #lgbtqwriters
Image: a burnt orange background with two jack o' lanterns. Text: #LGBTQWriteAThon Use the tag and follow the feed on BlueSky! Tag @LGBTQWriteAThon in photos on Instagram! October 15: What's your MC's favorite mash? (song). BlueSky: @amaralynn @rebeccafrostwrites.com Instagram: @LGBTQWriteAThon @amarajlynn @krakengoddess
#LGBTQWriteAThon October 15:

My four MC's favorite treats, in no particular order:

Sydan: mead with berries
Sivas: 🍆
Rigan: beer
Pul'me: honeysuckle

#writesky #queerwriters #writers #lgbtqwriters
#LGBTQWriteAThon October 15:

What's your MC's favorite treat?

#writesky #queerwriters #writers #lgbtqwriters
Image: a burnt orange background with two jack o' lanterns. Text: #LGBTQWriteAThon Use the tag and follow the feed on BlueSky! Tag @LGBTQWriteAThon in photos on Instagram! October 15: What's your MC's favorite treat? BlueSky: @amaralynn @rebeccafrostwrites.com Instagram: @LGBTQWriteAThon @amarajlynn @krakengoddess
DANCING UNDERNEATH YOU, my WIP, would smell like smoked salmon, mead, and juicy raspberries. THE WEIGHT OF THE IMPOSSIBLE, the novel I'm querying, would smell like an ice rink: an incredible cold that sucks the scent clean out of the air.
What would *your* book smell like if you engaged in a mega weirdo scented pages promotional campaign?
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We don't tell young writers "You gotta be a huge freakin' weirdo!" often enough.

It's an asset!
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You can nurture your darlings.
Tell me your most life-affirming literary opinion.
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look: the industry is rigged against you from top to bottom. BUT there have never been more tools for you to share your work with people, from self-pub to Patreon to the AO3's original fiction section. do what you have to do. (then yell at me to take my own advice.)
Tell me your most life-affirming literary opinion.
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(2/2) ... Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important."
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From James Baldwin: "You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discover that it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone. This is why art is important. ... (1/2)
Tell me your most life-affirming literary opinion.
#LGBTQWriteAThon Oct 14: I have 4 MCs in my current WIP. Here's the blurb I have on them and the book on my website's WIP page:

#writersky #queerwriters
Dancing Underneath You

Novel. In an ancient world, Sivas will do anything to save his sick son, Enaid. His loyal friend, Rigan, will follow him to the very ends of the earth, even if it means forsaking her own people. The mercurial and powerful shaman, Sydan, is haunted by a great and terrible loss which threatens to take everything from him. His apprentice, Pul’me, is uncertain about her place while she comes into her power as a woman and a shaman. The lives of these people intersect, criss-crossing through the past and the present in a tale about love, choice . . . and magic.
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Tell me your most life-affirming literary opinion.
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Look you just have to make the cool weird shit that excites you. You must. In this world besieged by bland, scrubbed boring, computer slop, you must. Make the thing you’re embarrassed to make, the thing that feels “too much” because otherwise we get drowned in a sea of cowardly work made by a button
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The greatest thing you'll ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return

Marker, colored pencil, and ink pen.
11 x 14in
Illustration of a green deer hugging a hare, with the hare is hugging a mouse. All three animals hugging form the silhouette outline of the deer.
But don't you see Anita? You can totally pay your rent with exposure bucks! 🫠
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"achillean" always amuses me as a descriptor because does it mean books about gay men being gay or does it mean more like oh you shot me in the leg you shot me in the fucking leg you fuck why would you do that, that's my goddamn ankle, my one weak spot, now I'm going to die you asshole
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It has to be said, I’m struggling. I am still in over draft after paying my bills. If you’ve ever enjoyed what I do here, be it writing, curating the Palestinian Speculative Fiction reading list, or just my vibe, please consider using my tip jar: ko-fi.com/soniasulaiman
Buy SoniaSulaiman a Coffee
Sonia is writing speculative fiction inspired by Palestinian folklore. Leave her a tip to support her work!
ko-fi.com
Reposted by J. S. Kuiken
#LGBTQWriteAThon October 12:

For today's theme, weather, a snippet from my WIP novel, DANCING UNDERNEATH YOU.
Rain begins in the afternoon, warm and seeping through our woolen korda colors. Warm and wet and slick. He's hot beneath me, on top of me, pulsing inside me. His hands are like fire on my skin. Each touch a burning wound. Yet his drowsy, blue-eyed gaze kisses and kisses me. He looks at me; he sees me. 
	
But he's gone now. The warm rain drips against my skin and it's just that. Rain.
#LGBTQWriteAThon October 11:

I had a great week. I did some research, outlined the next chapter of my WIP, and wrote nearly 2k words. Hopefully I can keep up the momentum. 🤞
#LGBTQWriteAThon October 11:

Check in day! How was your week?

#writesky #queerwriters #writers #lgbtqwriters
Image: a burnt orange background with two jack o' lanterns. Text: #LGBTQWriteAThon Use the tag and follow the feed on BlueSky! Tag @LGBTQWriteAThon in photos on Instagram! October 11: Check in day.
BlueSky: @amaralynn @rebeccafrostwrites.com Instagram: @LGBTQWriteAThon @amarajlynn @krakengoddess
Reposted by J. S. Kuiken
Anyone who tells us that arts and humanities are frivolous wants to control our stories. It's as simple as that.
Curse the deliciousness of Turkish Delight.
Ok, did not expect “The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe” to feel quite so relevant to this moment.

Here’s Edmund, deciding to side with the leader who he’s been told disappears people.
He did want Turkish Delight and to be a prince (and later a king) and to pay Peter out for calling him a beast. As for what the Witch would do with the others, he didn't want her to be particularly nice to them - certainly not to put them on the same level as himself; but he managed to believe, or to pretend he believed, that she wouldn't do anything very bad to them, 'Because,' he said to himself, 'all these people who say nasty things about her are her enemies and probably half of it isn't true. She was jolly nice to me, anyway, much nicer than they are. I expect she is the rightful Queen really. Anyway, she'll be better than that awful Aslan!' At least, that was the excuse he made in his own mind for what he was doing. It wasn't a very good excuse, however, for deep down inside him he really knew that the White Witch was bad and cruel.
17 or 18. I can't remember if I've visited Boston. 🤔
I’ve been to 14 of them, and I’m Canadian so not sure how that affects it lol

You?