Aud Connelly

FF Romance ARCs you'll love

In some decent company here! Not a tonne of ARC spots left, but you can pick one up at booksirens.com/book/B9HCN76...

The cover of Forest of the Morning by Emmylou Kotzé and some tropes/points of interest featured in the book. The cover is art of green leaves with purple flowers and the faces of a man & a woman in white amid the greenery. Text reads: Epic fantasy with (anatomically accurate heart emoji) Multiple POVs Assassins, mercenaries & other ne'er-do-wells Clash of cultures Boys being boys (in the matriarchy) Family of bloodmages Spring/summer (in the southern hemisphere) Friends-to-lovers m/m romance PLUS bittersweet, sensual m/f romance Demi + bisexual MCs (demi pride flag, bi pride flag) books2read.com/forestofthemorning

Hello #AceWeek!

I'm Emmy, a writer from 🇿🇦 I'm demisexual & biromantic, and currently finishing the final volume of my epic fantasy trilogy Forest of the Morning.

To celebrate, Vol. 1 is on sale for $1 until 31 Oct:

books2read.com/forestofthemorning

Discussion of the characters & queer/ace rep 👇

Then there's the "under the porch is the coolest club house ever" phase.

"Goodbye mother. We go to live among the wasps and rusty nails now."

Kids will have you like "is that a normal stage of development or is it pica"

It's like a flip he can switch. I think the kids these days call it locking in. 🤣

6/6 (Stephen's patience in this regard is incredibly mystifying to Wesley but I do think W eventually settles down in this calm predictable environment, which leads to...)

2. He simply likes the comfort and security of not being hurt very badly for small missteps: Love as a repeatable experiment.

5/6
Wesley would rather cause Stephen's initial explosion on purpose than be caught off guard the first time it happens. He wants to know what form the anger takes, how long it will last, how much it will hurt him, and how it can be assuaged.

4/6
Later, working with Stephen, he still slacks off in really blatant and annoying ways. If you asked Wesley why, he wouldn't be able to say. But it's:

1. Testing boundaries. Wesley wants to know all the rules before he begins anything and if no one tells him what they are, he'll find out.

3/6 Wesley is more psychologically complex.

He compulsively half asses jobs and complies maliciously to piss off his master (the first Donovan: Grady; and today the heir: Rowan) no matter the consequences.

A pattern of disobedience and action-overreaction that became a trauma bond.

2/6 Second half of the prompt: Kenzie is methodical and efficient.

Rowan cares very much about quality of his work but he is unorganized and anxious by nature, prone to error.

Owen has that small spark of neurotic genius that occasionally shows itself in his work and makes employers tolerate him.

she has enough rules that if she was your coworker you'd never guess she would Do That to a man

Punctuality falls under the key "normal" traits to which Kenzie strictly adheres: her Rules To Not Attract Attention.

Wesley is capable of military precision if his heart is in it.

Rowan's always rushing but rarely late.

Owen can't read analog clocks. What day is it. What country is he in.

No it's me too I just missed it the first go 😆

”Grumpy x grumpy” isn’t enough, I need “fairly serious untreated psychological problems x 2” as a romance book trope

At/around 11.1k in #dogwood2 rewrites as of today

#dogwood2 fueled by that rage you feel when they cut down a beautiful stretch of trees on a road you drive every day and put a dollar general there.

“Mine,” Florian growls. He brings his legs up to the edge of the slab, and then, propelling himself forward into a forceful leap, brings his new arms unraveling outward to seize his mentor by the wrists, raising them overhead and squeezing them to the banisters at the landing between their little haven and the lounge. Florian’s body impacts next, legs splayed to wrap around Locust’s hips. He starts to rub, exhaling tepid breath over a fresh bitemark before settling his incisors back into their matching imprint. Locust might have drawn a sharp breath if his lungs hadn’t shriveled at the ripping open of his ribcage. He’ll need to look into getting them their own barostatics independent of the greater chest cavity, but his mind cannot wander far as long as the pain grounds him here. His student will drink his fill. It bubbles out of him, slow and tacky and metallic for the rabbit to greedily lap up, but it’s a relaxed trickle at best, as it ever is. Florian needs more. He draws back momentarily, and unzips to give himself full contact with his mentor. Lengths rub against one another even as he marks a foaming black dot in the vulture’s clavicle and unzips that too, a carbonated black line flanked by two others to pull open his chest, bones and all. Locust was right, Florian’s old hands would still have a fine use. The rabbit reaches in, fingers locking around Locust’s heart and taking a moment, just to feel it beat by virtue of its own electricity and light-to-moderate machine assistance. But then the moment passes, and he begins squeezing.

#Kinktober #IndieKinktober Coda 1

This one speaks for itself, I think. Mind the tags.

AO3 archiveofourown.org/works/716891...
FA www.furaffinity.net/view/62707155/

🏷️ #furry #gay #undead #ghoulfucker #blood #gore #bodyhorror #cardiophilia #master_student #role_reversal

Yes there was a previous version of this post where I pontificated on paper bag shorts for Kenzie but she came to my house and corrected me.

I'll put Wesley in brown corduroys. That will fix this plot.

Digital drawing of my OC Narok and Kasandra making stank faces at someone off screen.

"My husband and I saw you acting a fool from across the bar, and we think your vibes are RANCID."

[ #OCs | #OCsky | #art ]

me: writing is subjective and once it's out there it belongs to the reader
also me: if someone misunderstands my point in my novel(s) i will end it all

Given a special place among dried flowers and hand-carved talismans is Florian’s heart. His first, anyway; so very long ago, it sat inert in his chest. It was of little detriment to him on its own, but it made finding love difficult. To most, even other undead, a pulse was non-negotiable. At the time, the object of his desire had been an eternal, the typical model of a living person. But, back then, even Locust’s masterful handiwork could not bridge the gap. Beating or not, Florian’s next heart was quickly broken, but to see his original cared for this way still put a stir in his chest, even several replacements later. What a powerful declaration, Florian had mused the first time he laid eyes on it. Locust never made any ceremony of it, at least not to his face. He knew the organ had been retained, but with what importance, he had gone years without knowing. Locust experienced his attachment privately, coveting Florian’s otherwise-discarded pieces but never intruding upon his pursuits. At least, not until the rabbit finally pursued him in kind. Florian mentally reprimands himself for just a moment. He probably should have decided well in advance of becoming intimate with Locust that he wouldn’t also start to enshrine him as something resembling a father figure, but he did. It was an inevitability, he supposes, as in that time Locust had effortlessly demonstrated his wisdom in both worldliness and in the meditations of steel and flesh. But Florian knew neither of his parents, even in the days before communal rearing aboard hidden habitats became the norm, so he makes peace with it, even if a whisper of scandal echoes where he keeps those thoughts.

New kinktober story will be done tonight, I’m *sure* of it

CW body horror, undeath, and not really incest at all but there’s a guy gaslighting himself into feeling like it is anyway

I took away his ability to feel embarrassment 😌

Dumpster quality meme I made today and for which I will not be providing context

#dogwood2 at 9.8k give or take. I'm tired 😪

One struggle writing a 4 book series: coming back to edit an early scene and remembering where characters are in their development.

In book 2, we see Stephen's affection for Wesley as a slap-on-the-back. They don't hug much till book 4.

(Book 3 taught everyone to hold their loved ones close lmao)

Wesley was so big mad. They had a domestic on the lawn.

I had such a great time answering Em's questions and chatting about my worldbuilding, writing a queernormative setting, and the wonderful influence of TTRPGs on storytelling and writing. Definitely give it a listen!

*Stephen does not descend into madness nor does he die. He does have to evacuate briefly when a tree falls on his house (Owen's fault).

Stephen & Wesley have a mentor/father-figure/counselor bond and this is how Wesley grows from someone who habitually chokes people out to a "let's all take a deep breath" voice of reason and forgiveness guy while everyone he loves descends steadily into madness.*