Lauren Taylor Bak
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laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
Lauren Taylor Bak
@laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
170 followers 260 following 400 posts
Speculative smut. 👉👈 Reader, writer, peddler.
https://laurentaylorbak.wordpress.com/ ♥ https://buymeacoffee.com/laurentaylorbak
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laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
Deal alert! Get $8 paperbacks or 60% off eBooks at JMS books through Sunday for #BlackFriday! That includes my #sapphic monster novelette, Blood from Stone (just $1 until Sunday!!). www.jms-books.com/lauren-taylo...

Load up your eReader before the holidays, and remember:
Books make great gifts!
November 27, 2025 at 6:29 PM
laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
EXCUSE ME, @microsoft.com? WTF IS THIS?

Unless God himself is speaking, the pronoun "he" doesn't need to be capitalized. And correcting to no space after closing quotation marks? Diabolical!

Why is everything being so thoroughly enshittified? STOP BREAKING USEFUL FEATURES. #writing
Autocorrect in MS Word mistakenly correcting "...I'd tell you," he answered..." to "...I'd tell you,"He answered..." to "...I'd tell you, He answered..."
November 12, 2025 at 3:26 PM
laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
Great minds parody Jane Austen alike!
Screenshot of the opening line of a WIP, reading: "It is a truth not universally acknowledged, but most thoroughly demonstrated in the annals of interstellar diplomacy, that any senior officer in command of a starship must be in want of one goddamn moment’s peace and quiet after a particularly fatiguing interspecies treaty negotiation."
November 11, 2025 at 1:32 PM
laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
Happy HalloWeek from all of us at @jms-books.com! In the mood for something creepy and queer? Make sure you pick up my spicy Sapphic monster romance novelette Blood from Stone while it's 45% off (deal going thru Saturday Nov 1): www.jms-books.com/lauren-taylo...
JMS Books sale banner depicting a woman holding a jack-o'-lantern. Text reads: TRICK OR TREAT ALL EBOOKS 45% OFF SUNDAY THRU SATURDAY.
October 28, 2025 at 2:19 PM
laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
Found a clean snippet to share! Most of my uses of "care" are attached to "after" 😏 #WIPSnips #Writesky #WritingCommunity
She left the house and ventured into blackness. No bra. Just the hoodie she had slept in, sweatpants, boots without socks. The parking lot was empty. The aquarium building loomed like a shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean; with all the floodlights turned off, the red glow of the emergency EXIT signs blinked like eyes. She shouldn’t be here. The thought crossed her mind, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.
October 15, 2025 at 9:43 AM
laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
Today is my book birthday!! Contemporary F/F dark/monster romance novelette with JMS Books, Blood from Stone. www.jms-books.com/lauren-taylo...

#SpoonieAuthChat
October 11, 2025 at 12:56 PM
laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
Bluesky's auto-censoring of content is so bad, it just censored a book cover with no nudity, no sexual words, no innuendo, nothing: just a woman in a bralette. Literally more covered than a swimsuit. I'm appealing but come ON. And they think they can ban CNC and noncon effectively??
Bluesky's censorship of the above post: "1 label has been placed on this content: Adult Content"
September 30, 2025 at 3:40 PM
laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
My forthcoming novelette from JMS Books has a cover and a preorder link! Get it for 25% off before its release date, October 11: it’s less than $2! www.jms-books.com/lauren-taylo...
September 30, 2025 at 3:31 PM
laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
I've got a novellette forthcoming with JMS Books! Cover reveal sometime next week, probably.
September 26, 2025 at 4:18 PM
laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
I'm on the proofs stage of this forthcoming gothic Sapphic novella! #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity
She returned on the evening of the fourth day, hoping to get some work done without Eury looking over her shoulder. She got to work on the throat, smoothing the line of the trapezius muscle. Absorbed in the task, in the rasp of the file, she did not hear the door open and close softly. “You’re working late,” Eury said. Cass froze, her hand hovering just above the unfinished shoulder. She didn’t turn. “I thought you didn’t come in at night.” “I don’t.” Eury paused. Cass could hear her moving about the space, her fingers trailing over the back of the chaise, the edge of the workbench. “But I missed you.”
September 25, 2025 at 8:07 AM
laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
Are you ready for it?
September 24, 2025 at 12:03 PM
laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
For fans of cozy fantasy like "Legends & Lattes" (& Star Trek slash...), @ashthestampede.bsky.social's queer erotic romantasy novella will definitely hit all the right notes. www.instagram.com/p/DOveFSRCBv0
September 18, 2025 at 11:27 AM
laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
Happy #StarTrek Day! Today would be a great day to order Tales of Galactic Pest Control, a sci-fi anthology edited by the screenwriter who brought you TOS: "The Trouble with Tribbles" (David Gerrold). books2read.com/u/mgdDMx

#scifi #booksky 📚🪐
September 8, 2025 at 3:09 PM
laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
Was it Carl Sagan who said we're all made of stardust? I can't remember. Anyway, enjoy this SFW #WIPSnips from a space opera-meets-Jane-Austen erotica I'm working on. #WriteSky
[...] observation bay, hands clasped behind her back. Her spine was as rigid as a docking strut, so perfectly erect as to give an observer a sympatric twinge of back pain merely to behold: a posture born of academy drill and held together by sheer stubbornness. The commander regarded the stars and the moons and the dust clouds without romantic indulgence or sky-eyed optimism. Rather, she stared past each distant glimmer with the same penetrating attention she would pay to military targets, her restless paranoia unable to stop scanning for threats even in the quietest moments. It was in the midst of such vigilance that she became aware of someone approaching. From behind her starboard side, footsteps. Heavy, padded footsteps with a familiar weight and cadence, as unmistakable as a fingerprint. “Ensign,” she said, not turning. “Commander,” came the warm purr of reply.
September 6, 2025 at 12:20 PM
laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
Couldn't find the word event, but here's a #WIPSnip *about* an event:

#WriteSky #WritingCommunity
Madison laughed genuinely at one story about a runaway goat disrupting the annual wreath-making contest. Afterward, they walked two blocks community center, which had been converted into a battleground. “Come on,” Jack said. “You haven’t really been to Sneehaven until you’ve suffered through the GCD.” Sneehaven’s annual “Great Cocoa Debate,” Madison quickly learned, was a tradition in which locals blind-tasted dozens of hot chocolate recipes and then accused each other of sabotage. By the fifth sample, Madison’s tongue had gone numb. By the tenth, she could taste colors.
September 5, 2025 at 10:27 AM
laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
The Grinder is the best for tracking your subs too! My goal for the last two years was to hit 100 rejections and I'm nearly there already for 2025 already. (I've got ~$600 in accepted work pending that should hit by the end of this year.)
Stats bar from Submission Grinder showing an author's submissions/acceptances/rejections/income for 2023-2025.
August 28, 2025 at 9:35 AM
laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
That looks delicious. Gah, I miss root beer and root beer floats *so bad*. Moved to Europe and they think root beer tastes like medicine so you can't find it anywhere and all they have is this:
Can of A&W brand cream soda Cans of Barq's brand creme soda: french vanilla
August 26, 2025 at 10:48 AM
laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
And one more for the road:
I am extremely disappointed by the timing of these guideline changes. It is not a good look for Bluesky to appear to be adding vague guideline changes that may be used to ban legal adult content and LGBT, BDSM, fetish content at a time when these groups are being censored by major payment processors and government lobbyists. Your user base do not appreciate this slide into fascism, and are not invested enough in this relatively new platform to continue using it after clear enshittification.
August 15, 2025 at 12:24 PM
laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
Giving them a piece of my mind! (alt text in two parts)
Paragraph 1: I think these guidelines appear to target lawful adult content, at a time when censorship (see: Steam, Itch.io vs. Visa, Mastercard, Stripe) is on the rise and being primarily fought on Bluesky. I think it is a huge red flag that these changes are being made amidst this controversy, and appear to be preemptively bowing to unlawful and unconstitutional lobbying in the UK and US governments to prohibit the lawful sale and exchange of adult content, including consensual BDSM, furries, and fantasy roleplay; LGBT content, both SFW and NSFW; and information in general, especially in the political sphere. These movements pose serious threats to free speech globally, and to the safety of LGBT people, sex workers, artists, writers, and academia. This messaging from Bluesky comes at a fraught time and will be interpreted as targeting these groups as a reactionary or precautionary leg-jerk to save itself at the expense of its users. Many NSFW creators and sex workers' livelihoods depend on social media; Bluesky has promoted itself as a user-oriented alternative to more popular social media sites and have encouraged NSFW content creators and sex workers to form an integral part of that ecosystem. Moreover, banning NSFW content disproportionately impacts LGBT/queer creators and their content, as censorship groups such as Collective Shout frequently target LGBT content as being "adult" for being queer. The vagueness of language ("promotes", "depicts", "simulates", "real", "synthetic") and lack of definitions in these new guidelines directly cause harm and confusion to continued use of the platform by LGBT users, sex workers, furries, and erotica writers like myself. Paragraph 2: Another huge omission is the lack of commentary on AI. AI-generated content is only mentioned peripherally under other categories, and has no specific guidelines. This community is largely anti-AI and would appreciate an effort to moderate the use of LLMs and AI "art", and help stem the flow of misinformation. For example, requiring AI content to be tagged like adult content requires a tag. But instead of targeting the actual problems with the platform, these guidelines provide bigots with avenues to ban legal content and censor marginalized communities -- at a time when Bluesky users are using the platform to mobilize against the censorship efforts of governments, lobbyists, and payment processors!
August 15, 2025 at 12:20 PM
laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
He said something similar, for sure! "If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write."
“You have to read widely, constantly refining (and redefining) your own work as you do so. It’s hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written, but I know it’s true. If I had a nickel for every person who ever told me he/she wanted to become a writer but “didn’t have time to read,” I could buy myself a pretty good steak dinner. Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that. Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life. I take a book with me everywhere I go, and find there are all sorts of opportunities to dip in … Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered anyway.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
August 9, 2025 at 4:27 PM
laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
The least-explicit use of the word "brush" in my WIP vampire/succubus novella.🫣 (The boy in question is 21! But also dead.)
#WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompt #SmutSky
[...]whole, and he would die inside her. But then it stopped. She collapsed onto the bed, boneless and spent, a halo of blonde hair cascading across the pillow. Lucian followed, his face pressed to the curve of her back, breath catching in his throat as the last tremors rolled through him. They lay still in the aftermath, the boy’s corpse cooling beside them like an afterthought. His face was slack, eyes open, lips parted in an echo of ecstasy. Sophia sighed, her fingers reaching out to brush the curve of his mouth. “He was sweet.” Lucian kissed her shoulder, trembling. “He was ours.”
August 9, 2025 at 3:34 PM
laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
What a great review! I really appreciate this summary of my story:
‘Monkey See’ by Lauren Taylor Bak. A plane crash strands a newly divorced woman in the jungle with few supplies and three single men. While readers are likely to correctly guess where the overall story is going to go, Taylor Bak does not simply elide the challenges of being stranded in the jungle; thus, this story is an adventure story featuring explicit sexual thoughts and deeds rather than porn with veneer of setting and character.
August 8, 2025 at 3:20 PM
laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
Working on a cyberpunk thing
#WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts
WIP snippet: Her own face stared back at her, distorted by beauty filters she didn’t own: skin blurred baby-doll smooth, black-mirrored eyes reflecting back an endless loop of ads, ads, ads. ENHANCE YOUR LOOK ⚥ LIMITED TIME OFFER! scrolled across her face, blinding white. CLICK HERE CLICK HERE CLICK— Doe Eyes angled her head down shyly, pretending to fuss with her chemise, and tried to discreetly coax the popups out of her direct line of sight. Her augment hiccupped, cycling through random overlays. UPDATE NOW! Chatroom windows, stock tickers, cam girls, game feeds, LIMITED TIME ONLY! They piled into each other and jittered in place. The malware riding her augment was so old it wasn’t even on patch schedules anymore.
August 8, 2025 at 2:37 PM
laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
Hi Christina! Not sure if you're also reviewing anthologies, but Tales of Galactic Pest Control edited by science-fiction legends David Gerrold (The Trouble with Tribbles) & Tom Easton (Analog) launched just last week. It features 34 original stories (including one of mine!). books2read.com/u/mgdDMx
August 2, 2025 at 10:40 AM
laurentaylorbak.bsky.social
I'm reporting Visa to the Better Business Bureau. Alt text for anyone who wants to borrow my wording for their emails/complaints.
Content legally purchased on Steam and itch.io, video game online retailers, is no longer accessible to consumers who have paid for them due to Visa's recent discriminatory and unethical business practices. Demanding these companies remove "NSFW" (not safe for work, i.e., adult/18+ content) from their platforms has resulted in harm to both consumers and creators. Over the past several weeks, Visa has pressured digital distribution platforms such as Steam and Itch.io to remove or restrict access to legal, adult-oriented content (including LGBTQ+ video games and stories) under the guise of morality enforcement. These actions appear to be the result of lobbying by ideologically motivated third parties, including an Australian conservative advocacy group, Collective Shout, which has a documented history of anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+, and religious fundamentalist positions. As a result of Visa’s actions: 1. Thousands of independent creators have had their legal digital works deindexed or removed entirely from platforms like Itch.io, resulting in a loss of revenue. 2. Creators have been denied payment for work that was sold prior to these abrupt policy changes. 3. Consumers have lost access to content they paid for, without refund or notice. 4. No appeals process has been offered to affected parties. There is growing evidence of discriminatory enforcement, with LGBTQ+ and transgender content disproportionately targeted. These actions violate basic principles of fair commerce, digital ownership, and creative freedom. Visa, a private financial institution, is interfering in legal business transactions and setting ideological standards that affect entire markets. I respectfully urge the Better Business Bureau to take this matter seriously and investigate Visa’s overreach into digital markets and freedom of expression. A formal investigation into Visa’s influence over digital storefronts and content moderation practices is warranted.
July 28, 2025 at 11:43 AM