Hello World!
My name is Aria Cš I'm an indie author from Australia that writes queer fantasy (YA, contemporary, historical gothic), speculative, horror, and just whatever comes to me! If you like these things in books, I think mine would be right up your alley!
Hurt/Comfort
Found Family
Slow burn romance
Morally grey characters
No-mild range spice (ace author hereš)
Ace spectrum rep
Neurodivergence rep
Plenty of queer rep
These are my favourite things to see in novels tooš and I'm exploring even more ideas in my (frankly too many) future projects, such as enemies-to-lovers rivalry, reincarnation/fated love, disability rep...
I'd love to have a community that I can learn from and write better for. I am still fairly young (just started my twenties...) and so I am excited to grow my knowledge along with my writing skills. At least, I hope that I can bring some of the same joy I experience from loving books to someone else. I've seen how books can bring people together and being part of these fan spaces where people are inspired to talk about the stories and what they mean to them has been one of the best experiences of my life. That simple thing is what my dream as an author boils down to: people talking about how my writing makes them feel, discussing the thousands of intentional details... (and discovering neat details I somehow put in without realising - my bff has caught me out on this too many times...)
If you've stayed this long, thank youā¤ļø I will now put a description of what my currently published books are about and a bit about my WIPs, though I will probably be speaking in more detail about them at some point in the future. And of course I would answer questions about them gladlyš
The Cursed Series: a group of misfit teens find themselves cursed with strange abilities after a mysterious comet passes over their small country town. One day, these curses start to malfunction, and when they search for the cause, they uncover a near thousand-year secret history of an order of knights and the necromancer cult they battled back in the Middle Ages... who are now stirring up danger in their quiet town once more.
The Mage's Diary: a tale told in retrospective by an ambitious young mage from 19th century France who joined a hidden society of sorcerers in Paris and found himself caught up in world-altering events, whilst nursing a toxic bond with a reclusive vampire and dealing with a stalker in the night. If you enjoy the gothic tone of something like Interview With The Vampire, I'd say you'd enjoy it, especially because that series was my inspirationāŗļø
The Snapshot Series: Inspired by Death Note, it's the darkest and heaviest of my novels, in which a camera that can produce 'voodoo doll-like' polaroids of people binds itself to a kind but severely bullied boy in the 1980s, and preys on his resentment. This is my earliest published work, from when I was 17/18, and I had a lot of anxiety about releasing it at the time, but I decided that it was worth the possibility that someone might like it. If I get a say on it, I'd like to ask that you remember it's an earlier quality of my writing and while I believe it's still worth reading, please be kind :)
WIPs
Foxglove: A boy named Felix lives in a crumbling Victorian mansion with a chronic illness and only his mother and uncle to care for him. One day he overhears an argument about somebody named 'Montgomery' and starts to remember a forgotten childhood friend. He then discovers that the wallpaper in his room opens up to different timelines, and in one of them, he finds Montgomery, but he has his own family, is just as old as Felix, and doesn't know who Felix is. Then the worst part comes: Felix has a premonition that Montgomery is going to be murdered. *This one is actually complete, but I am querying atm based on some feedback I received. That may take a while, and while I am antsy to get this story read, I believe it is absolutely worth traditional publishing and that will not stop me from teasing snippets along the road, however things go :)
Hallow Falls: The small town where Micah lives is unremarkable, except for the monsters that only he can see. He has been told all his life that they are only in his head, but he begins to question otherwise when a girl goes missing in the woods and he decides to look for her with his toxic friends and the girl's charming ex-boyfriend. They cannot explain what they find, and from there, reality only begins to dissolve even further as Micah's monsters slip through the veil.
Edling Harbor: This port town in 1920s Louisiana has a strange superstition - that during the season of high tide, people die if they're caught outside their homes at night. Leo, the son of a retired captain whose ship sunk under strange circumstances the year of his birth, has never believed this. Until one of his closest friends turns up dead after the first night of high tide, when he shouldn't have been anywhere near the beach. With the siren song floating on the wind close to shore and the strange gold patterns turning up on the sea's refuse, he begins to wonder if there is some truth to a monster haunting the town's bay.
Fun fact... these past three WIPs share a universe ;)
The rest of my WIPs are true standalones:
Tale: all I can say about this one is what the narrator wants you to know - that it's a totally fictional light-hearted fairytale where a cast of very silly and not-real characters go on a quest to find a mad wizard in order to save their queernormative medieval kingdom.
The Old Sagusvale Project: After an accident that leaves Sylas Altergott with fragile mental health, his father moves them to a quiet country town to undertake the calming restoration of the old inn. However, the more Sylas interacts with the townspeople, the more things start to feel inexplicably off, and he can't shake the sense that he has been there before. Then he meets Aryan, a boy that comes to work at the inn, who somehow knows about future events and things about Sylas that he doesn't even know about himself, which everybody else seems hell-bent on keeping from him. And as his mental health declines, he realises that there may be more to his hallucinations and his shrouded past than he's been told.
Magdalena Peak: Everybody at this isolated magical boarding school knows that Connor and Jude hate each other, and will go to hell and back to graduate with more points than the other. However, these plans are interrupted when a crisis hits the school during its busiest season, as students get attacked by wraiths and snatched in the night, only to return with no memory of where they've been. Even worse, they're now sporting a lethal rot that will wipe out not only the school but any life beyond if it escapes. Connor realises that Jude's family, the proud headmasters of Magdalena Peak, may have more to do with the terrible events than they both thought, and that instead of focusing on crushing each other during their final exams, they might have to put aside their rivalry and discover how powerful they could be together.
WHEW that was a lotš I intended this to be a quick introduction but it just kind of spiralled... extra thank you if you stayed this long!! And if you are interested in checking out any of the currently published books, you can find all the information on my websiteš (do let me know if anyone has trouble with the website... it has been a bit buggy when I've tested it myself. And in general if you have questions, comments etc. my ask box is always openāŗļø)
And finally, if you want to keep updated about my projects, or just keep seeing my posts (I promise I'll try not to write too much all the time but it's a persistent habit), you can follow this page and my Instagram through my bio too. I don't think I'll be online toooo much because I do want to preserve my sanity, but I guess I'll see how it goes. I think I'd be active here most often, because I think I'd find it easiest and most enjoyable to interact with people here vs instagram etc. It took me years to work up the courage to come online but I am here to stay!
Thank you so much for your attention again and I'm excited to get to know you allš
~ Aria C
