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Lawrence Harding (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️

@lhardingwrites.bsky.social

1.7K followers 440 following 5.8K posts

Mum friend transitioning to mum. Recovering medievalist. Writer of gothic, fantasy and horror. Displaced northener. True foodie. Culinary Cenobite. Pigeon möther. Synth/BM gremlin. Writing at patreon.com/lhardingwrites and https://ko-fi.com/lawrenceharding

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Lawrence Harding (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️ @lhardingwrites.bsky.social · Sep 2

Did you know that I have a Ko-Fi Shop? Where you can buy all my self-published collections, novelettes and novellas?

Well, now you do!

Horror short stories, dark fantasies, medieval shenanigans and more!

#booksky 📚💙

Visit Lawrence Harding's Shop!

I've opened a shop. Come take a look!

ko-fi.com

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Lawrence Harding (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️ @lhardingwrites.bsky.social · 18m

👀👀

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April Wolfe @aprilwolfe.bsky.social · 13h

Short story collections should be way more popular and marketed better for the short-attention present.

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 22h

Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat

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Uncharismatic Megafauna @liminalitea.bsky.social · 16h

It honestly feels so rare to get a book where you go "Ooh, the editing!" but it felt like a lovingly arranged tracklist, where the editors wanted to bring the best out of the great writing. Absolutely recommend tracking it down, it has everything from anime homages to dream-visions.

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Reposted by Lawrence Harding (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️

Uncharismatic Megafauna @liminalitea.bsky.social · 16h

Just finished the Blaft Book of Anti-Caste SF and it is probably one of the best collections I've ever read. The stories and comics are all fantastic, and it was edited like a great compilation album - everything flowed, everything worked together, it all just *worked*.

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Lawrence Harding (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️ @lhardingwrites.bsky.social · 13h

Queer representation deserves more than to be reduced to just marketing tropes.

And lesbians deserve to have something more than a sword. Give the Sapphics crossbows, they can handle it.

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 22h

Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat

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Lawrence Harding (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️ @lhardingwrites.bsky.social · 13h

Lavender Town improved this by looming ominously into the heavens instead.

Cherub @polygoncherub.bsky.social · 1d

This is the hill that I stand my ground on.

Best game design:

Reposted by Lawrence Harding (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️

Ampwall @ampwall.com · 19h

More @gonemage.bsky.social so soon— this time with @lammoth.bsky.social!

ICYMI, Gonemage released brand new full-length, Coldest Keep in Bitter Heavens on Friday!

Check it out and buy it here ⬇️

gonemage.ampwall.com/album/coldes...

Check out Lammoth's hobbit black metal ⬇️

lammoth.ampwall.com

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Reposted by Lawrence Harding (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️

MariEsposeets @mariesposeets.bsky.social · Aug 23

Red-breasted merganser watercolor comic, sorry had to after seeing bsky.app/profile/hibb...

Watercolor sketch: a male red-breasted merganser does the courtship dance of sticking his butt out of the water and looking weird (see real-life red-breasted merganser mating dance). Says: Huhhhughhuh s'up ladies, huhuhuh.
A group of female mergansers on rocks are watching. First one: Ugh. Second one: Creep.
Third one is gawking in delight and her tail feathers are fanning like crazy trying to cool her down.

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Lawrence Harding (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️ @lhardingwrites.bsky.social · 17h

Oh no, I'm into this. I will always have a soft spot for Inhuman Rampage. Despite my better instincts.

Lawrence Harding (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️ @lhardingwrites.bsky.social · 17h

Oh.

Oh no.

Lawrence Harding (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️ @lhardingwrites.bsky.social · 18h

They are all so precious but I relate strongly to the floral-patterned one, bottom right in picture one.

Reposted by Lawrence Harding (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️

Holly @pterosaur.bsky.social · 1d

tea kettle guys

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Lawrence Harding (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️ @lhardingwrites.bsky.social · 18h

Was this novella about me wrestling with being trans before I'd realised I was? Almost definitely.

Does it also contain a werewolf priest side-kick and unfortunate rumours about a light-sensitive child? Absolutely, yes.

Lawrence Harding (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️ @lhardingwrites.bsky.social · 18h

My vampire is Fr Marcellus - vampire turned vampire Catholic priest, seeking light even in his own darkness.

And somehow managing to get through Mass without catching fire.

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Lawrence Harding (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️ @lhardingwrites.bsky.social · 22h

It feels like quite a Monastic Mon(k)day, so the perfect day to tell you all about Striving Against Shadow, a cloister-based fantasy collection and by-blow of my PhD

Several tales of annoying guardian angels, over-helpful psychopomps, zombie-fighting clerics, and more

#booksky 📚💙

Striving Against Shadow - Lawrence Harding's Ko-fi Shop

A novice and a Guardian Angel with much to learn. An abbey plagued by the undead. A healer with a special relationship with death. A librarian haunted...

ko-fi.com

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Premee Mohamed @premeemohamed.com · 19h

Anyway I keep forgetting to yell about this book when it is 🍂seasonal 🍂 but THE APPLE-TREE THRONE (a little vanity project I self-pubbed in 2018) is also available on Kobo and in audio!

A young soldier returned from war is haunted by the ghost of his commanding officer (a posh git)

The Apple-Tree Throne

Buy The Apple-Tree Throne: Read Kindle Store Reviews - Amazon.com

www.amazon.com

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Lawrence Harding (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️ @lhardingwrites.bsky.social · 19h

In hindsight, Motherthing made me feel hungry. Upsettingly so.

Lawrence Harding (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️ @lhardingwrites.bsky.social · 21h

Honestly I wish more SFF made me hungry. So many of the characters I write are food motivated. I think I read too much Redwall as a kid and got spoilt on the Food in Fantasy front.

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Lawrence Harding (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️ @lhardingwrites.bsky.social · 22h

Awakening

As an atheist revolution has overthrown a corrupt church, an interrogation reveals too late that the clerics and the revolutionaries may have had a shared goal, after all...

#booksky 📚💙

A promo image for Striving Against Shadow, featuring the cover (a monk with a club fighting a demon attacking someone) and text from Awakening:

"You think we love the gods? You think we simply serve them out of misguided adoration?" She leaned forwards and smiled slyly. "There's a reason we call ourselves god-fearing."

Lawrence Harding (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️ @lhardingwrites.bsky.social · 22h

The Saintstones of Strawbeck

As a medium, Brother Cleopas is perfectly placed to verify miracles. When a village boasts of an unusual number of healings, Cleopas uncovers something not the work of the Parents, but something far darker. Pilgrims, however, are unwilling not to believe.

#booksky 📚💙

A promo image for Striving Against Shadow, with the cover (a monk with a club fighting a demon eating someone) and text from The Saint-Stones of Strawbeck:

"Worse than demons? Brother Cleopas, surely there is no such thing worse than-"
Cleopas' hand shot up and grasped the Archabbot's shoulder.
"Father, please listen to me. Strawbeck needs an exorcism - now."

Lawrence Harding (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️ @lhardingwrites.bsky.social · 22h

The Annals of Calathness

The mild-mannered Br Gildas looks after the House of Calathness' most precious treasure, the secret to its success, a miracle and curse combined. But are his brethren more interested in using it for God's glory, or their own?

#booksky 📚💙

A promo image for Striving Against Shadow, featuring the cover (a monk with a club besetting a demon that is biting a man) and text from The Annals of Calathness:

Brother Gildas put pen to parchment and hated every moment of it.
He strove to bury his revulsion, but he just couldn't. Books were his vocation; the meaning in his life. He had been put on this earth to tend to books. He should not hate them.
But he hated this book. This most precious of books.

Lawrence Harding (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️ @lhardingwrites.bsky.social · 22h

The Monk Who Walked With Death

Ever since he scrabbled about scavenging battlefields as a child, Adelan has been personally acquainted with death. This has its uses in his later vocation as a healer - but can his psychopomp friend protect him from accusations of heresy?

#booksky 📚💙

A promo image for Striving Against Shadow, featuring the cover (a monk fighting a demon that is attacking a man) and with text from The Monk Who Walked With Death:

We are not so very different.
Adelan only raised an eyebrow in reply.
The true healer does not turn away the sick; whoever they are, they remove their pain. In the same way, I take the pain of all who come to me.
It placed the idea of a hand on Adelan's shoulder.

Lawrence Harding (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️ @lhardingwrites.bsky.social · 22h

Atonement at Nerajou

A noble discovers that using necromancy to win a. War can't be atoned for just by building a monastery to house the revenants he created.

The clerics who tend to them, however, are more than happy to remind him, for many were soldiers themselves that day.

#booksky 📚💙

A promo image for Striving Against Shadow featuring the cover (a manuscript image of a monk fighting a demon who is eating a man), featuring text from Atonement at Nerajou:

"When I looked on that creature, the terrible fire in it's eyes..."
"No." Laslo's voice cut sharply through the close air of the carriage. "Not it. Never it. They were people once - your people. Do not deny them that. Not after all they have suffered."

Lawrence Harding (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️ @lhardingwrites.bsky.social · 22h

Novice Guardian

If an incompetent talking raven claimed to be your Guardian Angel, would *you* believe them? Krumi has to convince Jadoc she is, for much is at stake if she doesn't.

(Sort of based on a real Norse Saint's Saga. Yes, they had those.)

#booksky 📚💙

A promo image for Striving Against Shadow, with the cover (a manuscript image of a demon eating a man being clubbed by a monk) and text from Novice Guardian:

"I'm a Guardian Angel," announced the raven proudly, "And I'm guarding."

Lawrence Harding (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️ @lhardingwrites.bsky.social · 22h

Striving Against Shadow - Lawrence Harding's Ko-fi Shop

A novice and a Guardian Angel with much to learn. An abbey plagued by the undead. A healer with a special relationship with death. A librarian haunted...

ko-fi.com

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