Amalia Zeichnerin

Foto: © Marco Ansing (German text below the cut "Keep reading") 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 Hey there, Tumblr. 😊 I am queer 🏳️‍🌈, have a chronic mental illness and a disability. I work as an author and editor (in German), have been a pagan polytheist for several years and live in Hamburg. I am a vegan.🌿 Several activist topics are close to my heart (e.g. climate/environmental protection, social justice) but I only have a few spoons due to my illness or neurodivergence.

I am a pagan and a Goth. I also like Solarpunk. Portraits, also fanart: https://www.deviantart.com/amalias-dream/gallery/84891131/portraits-of-all-kinds-portraits-aller-art

Fanfiction Sometimes, I write fanfiction on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmaliaZeichnerin/works

Some of my hyperfixations in 2025 and 2026: the actor Dan Stevens, "Murderbot" (the TV show and the books by Martha Wells), Guillermo del Toro's "Frankenstein", "Heated Rivalry", "The Night Manager", the TV series "Interview with the Vampire"/"The Vampire Lestat".

When Twitter was still called Twitter years ago, it was a running gag there that every time you saw a video with Tom Holland's outstanding drag/dancing performance on Lip Sync Battle, you had to share it.

Two days ago, an acquaintance shared the video in an Instagram story. And so I felt obliged to share it again. Tumblr, you know what you have to do. I don't make the rules.

And if you'd like to read a free queer short story (original fiction) of mine which has been inspired by Tom's performance, you can read it here on AO3:

Ich lese aktuell 2 Romane und dieses Sachbuch: "Muss ich das gelesen haben? Was in unseren Bücherregalen und auf Literaturlisten steht – und wie wir das jetzt ändern" von Teresa Reichl (Germanistin und Kabarettistin), aus dem Jahr 2023.

A neverending story... I received an email, certainly mostly AI-generated, in English, praising one of my novels which I have only published in German. I was in the mood to write them back some utter nonsense - simply in order to keep them busy for a minute or two, so that they cannot bother other folks. In fact, I had the idea to write a nonsensical reply which I can copy and paste each time I get another scam email.

Later: I now wrote a reply - not the utter nonsense I originally wanted to write, but at least it'll keep that person busy for a minute or two. At least I hope so. Here is my reply:

Hi Daniel,

your email confused me, to put it quite frankly. Please explain this to me: Why have you read my novel „Hexen in Hamburg: Vergoldet“, which I have only selfpublished in German? Why have you written to me in English, when you are apparently able to read a German novel? I don’t understand. Furthermore, I do not have a literary agent, because I am a selfpublisher. So I hope that you can understand that I have zero interest in a literary agent and also zero interest in a collaboration with anyone who is able to read German novels, but unable to write me an email in German.

But I know the answer to that already. You haven’t read my book at all, but have translated the blurb into English and then you have generated a flowery AI-text about it, to give the impression that you have actually read my novel. I recognize a scam when I see one. Do not contact me again.

With no regards,

Amalia

Later: Okay, now this was unexpected, but not surprising - that person wrote to me again, this time in German. I am pretty sure they used a translation AI to write in German.

They claimed they have translated my German novel with Google Translate in order to read it in English.

Their email in German:

Hallo Amalia,

vielen Dank für Ihre offene Rückmeldung. Ich verstehe, warum meine Nachricht bei Ihnen diesen Eindruck hinterlassen hat, und möchte mich zunächst dafür entschuldigen, dass sie bei Ihnen Verwirrung und Misstrauen ausgelöst hat.

Ich möchte lediglich eine Sache klarstellen: Ich habe Ihren Roman Hexen in Hamburg: Vergoldet tatsächlich gelesen. Da der Roman auf Deutsch veröffentlicht wurde und ich Ihnen auf Englisch geschrieben habe, habe ich Google Translate verwendet, um den Text Kapitel für Kapitel zu übersetzen und lesen zu können. Ich habe dabei nicht lediglich den Klappentext verwendet.

Für meine ursprüngliche Nachricht habe ich außerdem keine KI verwendet, um einen Eindruck zu erwecken, als hätte ich das Buch gelesen. Die Formulierung meiner Nachricht sollte meine persönliche Reaktion auf das Buch wiedergeben, auch wenn ich nachvollziehen kann, dass sie für Sie möglicherweise zu allgemein oder künstlich gewirkt hat.

Ich respektiere selbstverständlich Ihre Entscheidung und werde Ihre Bitte ernst nehmen und Sie nicht weiter kontaktieren. Ich wollte diese eine Klarstellung lediglich noch geben, weil mir wichtig ist, dass kein falscher Eindruck darüber zurückbleibt, wie ich auf Ihr Buch aufmerksam geworden bin.

Ich wünsche Ihnen weiterhin viel Erfolg mit Hexen in Hamburg: Vergoldet und Ihren weiteren Projekten.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Free ebook: You can download an epub ebook or PDF of my novella “A Fundraiser Concert with the Demonettes” for free (only in English).

Lately, I've fallen into a rabbit hole reading-wise and started to read thrillers with social commentary about various topics. And now I learned that this subgenre of thrillers is called "social thriller". In this article from 2025 by the author Lauren Nossett, I found several recommendations for this genre: "20 Pulse-Pounding, Thought-Provoking Social Thrillers From the Past Five Years"

Cover-Release

Die Space-Western-Reihe "Outlaws in Space" durfte ich komplett testlesen und kann ich sehr empfehlen, das ist progressive Phantastik vom Feinsten.

Mir persönlich hat hier das Trope "Found Family", das eine wichtige Rolle spielt, sehr gefallen, ebenso wie die zahlreichen politischen Verwicklungen, die für reichlich Zündstoff sorgen.

Band 3 erscheint am 30. September 2026 im Plan 9 Verlag: https://bedey-thoms.de/pages/plan9-verlag

Please note that this is a very subjective list I put together. I am leaving out very large franchises, such as Marvel, Star Trek and Star Wars.

Interview with the Vampire/The Vampire Lestat (Horror)

Turn - Washington's Spies (Historical Drama)

Midnight Mass (Horror)

The Night Manager (Drama, Crime, Thriller)

Heated Rivalry (MM Romance, Sports Romance)

Heartstopper (MM Romance, Queer, Coming of Age)

Sex Education (Coming of Age, with lots of queerness)

Unbelievable (Crime, based on true events)

The Dropout (Crime, Drama, based on true events)

Dopesick (Crime, Drama, based on true events)

Penny Dreadful (Gothic Horror)

The Terror (historical Drama, Horror)

book review

„The Last Time We Drowned“ by Saratoga Schaefer (thriller)

(blurb in one of the images) After enjoying the reads of „Trad Wife“ and „Serial Killer Support Group“ by Saratoga Schaefer, I was curious about this novel. The premise felt interesting to me – it’s an almost classical set-up: a couple of people trapped in a place with no exit, in this case a luxurious yacht turned into a stationary houseboat which then gets hit by a hurricane.

I have written about this in another review, I am fascinated (and often repulsed) by influencers and my guilty pleasure is to watch internet drama about them, so that aspect of this novel was very interesting for me.

But I didn’t care much about the main character Charlie. I don’t think that she was written intentionally as an unlikeable protagonist (I don’t mind unlikeable protagonists, especially not in thrillers). However, she was complaining so much (in her mind) about her influencer life that I was wondering, why she accepted the job offer by the yacht owner in the first place, to work as an influencer on the boat? But well, okay, people make mistakes or questionable decisions all the time.

All of the other characters were in my eyes unlikeable too more or less. So in this novel, there wasn’t a single character I rooted for. There also were some unnecessary repetitions of points which had already been mentioned.

The suspenseful part of the novel started too late imho. There were a few hints of something bad going on, but they didn’t feel that scary, at least, not to me.

However, all of that being said, I still enjoyed the read because I wanted to know how the events unfolded and the last quarter of the novel was really suspenseful. And I want to read further books by Saratoga Schaefer.

If you are looking for gory and very scary horror like in „Trad Wife“, please note that while this thriller has some scary elements, it’s not really a horror novel.

The booktuber Laura Rae Says (who is not an author, but even she received such scam emails) explains how such scam mails or messages typically look like:

"The Epidemic of Email Author Scams"

Liebe Queers, liebe Allys, bitte zeichnet diese Petition mit und rebloggt. Danke. Hier ein Zitat aus dem Petitionstext: "Der queerfeindliche Anschlag auf den Berliner CSD erschüttert uns. Gleichzeitig war er leider nicht überraschend: Seit Jahren nehmen Hass, Hetze und Angriffe gegen LGBTQIA* massiv zu. Queerfeindliche Hasskriminalität hat sich seit 2010 nahezu verzehnfacht. Rechtsextreme Anti-CSD-Aufmärsche sind Normalität geworden. 

Spätestens jetzt müssen queere Menschen endlich den verfassungsrechtlichen Schutz erhalten, den sie längst verdienen. 

Wir fordern deshalb: Sexuelle Identität als Diskriminierungsmerkmal im Grundgesetz Artikel 3 aufnehmen! Erst dann ist klar geregelt, dass niemand wegen der sexuellen Identität benachteiligt werden darf.

Here are the main points, in several posts and videos:

I know that The Odyssey is fictional, however, several people pointed out historical inaccurancy about the time it is set in: https://www.instagram.com/p/DbGMqz7IFZx/

No Greek actors where hired, Greece itself left out of the press tour despite parts of the film being filmed in Greece: https://www.instagram.com/p/DbTWaLnkupJ/

The colours in the film, including costumes and armoury, mainly look dark, grey and monochrome, despite antiquity being full of vibrant colours: https://www.instagram.com/p/DbO2tzXoMnG/

The depiction of the women in the movie (can’t find the post again) has been heavily criticized for various reasons, for instance that many of the female characters, like Penelope, only seem to exist in relation to the main character or other male characters and basically have no life on their own. Also, most of them have very little screen time.

The Renaissance Nerd has done a review about the movie and elaborates on several issues which make the movie really bad in his eyes, starting from bad acting, too modern language and several other aspects: