Hello hello!
In order below, we’ve got an announcement for a new publication from A Coup of Owls; a charity drive for the Black Trans Travel Fund; Monstrous May and a new work published; some chatter about TV and film this week; and finally, a write-up of the Flamingos Open Mic earlier this week and all the excellent artists there, as well as a video of me reading one of my short stories.
Firstly, a new set of dates for the schedule – my fantasy romance novelette, Eyes of Magic, is going to be published by A Coup of Owls alongside a fantasy romance work by Cinnamaldeide! A Kickstarter will be launched in June 2025 allowing you to preorder this fantasy romance collection and another horror romance collection; the latter will be published in October 2025, and ours will come out December 2025.
Secondly, the MM_Romancebooks subreddit is running an excellent initiative – a charity drive for the Black Trans Travel Fund!
All you need to do is donate at least $5 to the Black Trans Travel Fund, then send a screenshot of your receipt via this donation form, and you can pick from a variety of eBooks donated by queer authors as rewards to receive as thanks for your donation, including 5 of mine – Powder and Feathers, Heart of Stone, Strange Liberty, Divine Bodies, or Touch-Starved.
Want more info about the drive? Click here to read the post on Reddit in full.
As it’s now the 1st of May, of course, it’s time for the Monstrous May Challenge! Feel free to tag me in any and all new works, as I’m desperately excited for them – in the meantime, here’s a new work from me.
Erotic Short: Strange Water
Day 1 of Monstrous May 2025: Tentacles.
Rating E, trans M/M, 2.2k. Doctor Avex Neres is playing with Pel once again — with some tentacles this time. Multiple penetration, implied overstim, some strange alien mimicry, lots of fun and exploration.
From my website / / From Medium / / From Patreon
The website is coming along an absolute treat – my Directory of Work is now filled out and will be updated regularly; all of my short stories and essays have now been back-tagged in accordance with my robust new tagging system; I’ve added some new works to my gallery, a bit to my about section, and most importantly, I’ve got a new recommendations page linking to a bunch of new authors.
Here’s a new picture of TomTom looking dapper in his cute little necktie:
In terms of TV, I had been watching The Resident and Grantchester, but I’ve unfortunately reached the point with the former where it ceases being about exciting medical cases and horrible accidents and is instead about the various marriages and pregnancies of the cast; as for Grantchester, I’m just after starting S5, and I’m not super keen on the drama of the inheritance and such, it’s just not particularly compelling to me.
I have watched The Pitt all the way through, and I must say, it is one of the most sublime pieces of television I’ve seen – much like Interview with the Vampire, I would say it is some of the best television of the century so far. It’s so well-written, well-acted, gripping, human, has a great cast of characters and a really enthralling setting, and it has some excellent Jewish and autistic representation as a bonus. I’m very excited indeed for the second season, and in the meantime, I can’t recommend the first enough.
Lorenzo and I, aside from working to S7 of The Good Wife, which is so much better than S6, have been watching the new sitcom with Nathan Lane, Nathan Lee Graham, and Matt Bomer, and it’s genuinely very cute – Mid-Century Modern is these three middle-aged gay guys living together in Florida, I believe shot on the same set they shot Two and a Half Men, and it’s basically the same style of sitcom but instead of the jokes being hetero misery and misogyny and such, it’s just these terrible catty guys getting on with each other.
It’s definitely a bit wooden in places – you can tell that Matt Bomer is channelling Betty White in Golden Girls strongly, and because it’s basic sitcom in front of a live studio audience, it does feel a bit dated in places… But I think that’s what makes it nice? Comforting?
It’s a really pleasant, easy watch, and the fact that it’s so absurdly simple but so tremendously queer and Jewish is really nice. I’m so used to the Chuck Lorre sitcoms where being gay or Jewish or a woman is exclusively as the butt of a joke, and this is a nice departure from that.
I’ve also been watching a lot of movies this week, including:
- Temple Grandin (2010) – This was a great film, a biopic all about autism and cattle, two excellent things. Really funny, super relatable, just excellent all around.
- The Court Jester (1955) – I loved this, I didn’t realise at first it was a musical, so I was delighted when it opened with a song. It’s camp, it’s silly, it’s so well-written, the costumes are spectacular, the music is fun! And Basil Rathbone is hot. I wasn’t as fond of The Mark of Zorro (1940) but Basil Rathbone was also very hot in that.
- A Real Pain (2024) – This is very new, I’d seen a bunch of Jesse Eisenberg’s interviews about it, and it wasn’t quite what I expected – I thought it would be less character study and slice-of-life, and more hijinks, but I enjoyed it all the better for that!
- The HMS Defiant (1962) was an alright flick, I was very compelled by Scott-Padget’s cruelty and political scheming, but it was nothing compared to Billy Budd (1962), which was a gloriously homoerotic film. A young twink is forced into naval service and is basically immediately the object of fascination from every member of crew aboard, including the cruel and sadistic Claggart, who Budd repeatedly attempts to connect with and understand, certain he can’t truly be so cruel as he seems. Great flick, lots of gay shit going on, very messed up.
Flamingos Coffee House Open Mic
Lorenzo and I went along to Flamingos in Leeds for their open mic on April 25th, and it was a splendid evening! I read aloud from my anti-monarchist fantasy short, An Injured King, and also from my slice-of-life Age of Sail short, Two of a Kind, with a video of my reading the latter here:
It’s also on YouTube & Instagram.
Flamingos Coffee House have recently changed hands, and they’re planning out a robust schedule of regular events going forward – apart from the Queer Open Mic being a regular event, they’re going to be running some regular comedy nights, and they’re also running various workshops and other events! You can check out their calendar here.
Apart from myself, there were a variety of other performers – it was the poet sage’s début performing some of their work, especially a great deal of romance poetry with several lunar allegories and a lot of heartfelt affection; and a young woman named Amelia read from a very emotive speech in response to recent court rulings – one line particularly stuck with me: “Violence is when your life is diminished by someone else.”
Noah_sumptions is a regular around the Yorkshire poetry and spoken word scene, and they had a few humorous – and appropriately angry – poems about fragile cis masculinity and the potential of automating transphobic bullshit. Noah and another local spoken word artist, Eeade, are about to embark on a new queer open mic for WINT (Women, Intersex, Nonbinary, and Trans) performers at the Adelphi in Leeds: Simply the Zest’s first night is going to be June 4th!
GoodnightTheSkye performed a few sadder pieces of poetry, musing on the difficulties of familial relationships tainted by transphobia and the distance it creates, the pain of not understanding or being understood by those who are meant to want to love and keep you safe, as well as some funnier – though admittedly, not entirely less sad – parallels between things they’ve said in therapy and at the tabletop RPG table.
Their poetry collection, New Fables for Transformation, is currently available in paperback from Written Off Publishing for £10, and he also has some poetry zines available on Ko-Fi.
And as well as the poets, we had two incredibly talented musicians!
Mallory Knell was the first musician up, and her songs were gripping – they have a really ethereal quality to their voice, and she had some incredible strength of sound even on very high notes, so wonderful to listen to! Some of their original songs are up on her YouTube, such as this live performance of falter.
King Ochre had some phenomenal original music with a particularly excellent song about wanting to kill yourself – “It’s about wanting to kill yourself, but it’s hap… it’s happy!” and then she did tiny jazz hands. They were very nervous about performing, but that by no means took away from the strength of their singing – King Ochre has a preponderance of vocal control and their music has a grounded and strikingly emotional impact, it hits you right in the chest. You can check out their song, Fairy Lights, on Spotify.
Flamingos Coffee House is a small venue, but they did a really great job of making a cosy but accessible room for the mic, and I’m definitely excited to go back for other evening events!
Leave a Reply