#queer readers

Y'all loved this last year, so I had to do it again for 2026! This time I added an additional sheet for the queer writers along with the queer readers!

For "what counts" under individual prompts, err on the side of personal interpretation. I made some of these vague so people with varying levels of ability and access can do them!

I am looking for some queer/WLW/sapphic readers to read an excerpt for a novel I am potentially working on.

The excerpt is quite short, as I would like to know if I have semblance of skill/knack for writing before I commit further to writing.

The “book” has no title presently

BE AWARE

As it is just an excerpt (488 words) I am not looking for professional beta readers just yet. Just looking for a group of peers in my community to see if they enjoy it! So if you are a professional who charges for your service I thank you for your interest, but my work isn’t near such stages.

Context for story:

Genre: romance and mystery.

Themes: Vampire, gothic, Queer, WLW, Masc MC.

The excerpt you will read is from the POV of Daphne who works for a national trust house as a tour/information guide (those not in the UK, national trust homes are historical houses owned by the trust that are used almost like museums. People can enter these historical homes by buying tickets, look around and learn about the history of the house and those that lived there.)

In the year she has worked there, she has developed an attachment and obsession for a particular portrait in the home.

In this excerpt you will read her describing and seeing the portrait.

If you would be interesting in reading this short excerpt please let me know! I am looking for the following feedback but I also welcome all comments and critiques that you may have.

Let me know:

- Were you able to follow easily what was being described to you and build an image in your head?

- Did you want to read on and learn more by the end of the excerpt?

- Did the sentences flow? Or were you tripping up?

- Was there adequate description OR too much perhaps?

- Was tense and punctuation used well and or incorrectly?

Please message or comment here if you would be interested in reading! I will happily email it over.

And thanks so much in advance.

Hey guys.  Wow.  Its been like two years since anybody posted here and three since I wrote anything of substance?  In my defense I adopted a teen so life got super duper busy around that time, but now that I’ve (mostly) sorted out the day to day parenting stuff, I’m back.  At least for today.  Because whooo boy do I have A LOT thoughts and feelings about the situation with Becky Albertali.  

So let’s jump right in : I don’t feel bad for Becky Albertali .  Not at all.  I think she is wrong and am not moved by her medium post.  I think Gabby Dunn is on the right track to criticize her and I would like do so as well because I think she is wrong.  

What Albertali (and her twitter fans) seem to willfully ignore in her medium piece is that readers don’t side-eye straight authors without good reason.  We do it because over and over and over again, straight authors do a shit job of writing about queer issues, creating realistic queer characters, and discussing queer issues.  How does an author earn the ability to avoid that side-eye? How do they avoid questions, comments, and concerns about their ability to do those things in their writing?  By being an open and proud member of the queer community ie coming out.  Coming out is important and difficult work in a fundamentally heterosexist society, and hence is rewarded as such by our community.   If you don’t do that work, why exactly should I or any other queer person give you that cachet?  

Fundamentally I see Becky Albertali wanting the socio-emotional bennies of queer author status, without doing the work of coming out.  And I’m just not finding much sympathy for that. She is not owed the benefit of the doubt by readers, particularly queer readers.  She has to earn it.  Yes, it probably was difficult for her to be questioned about her orientation while questioning, but those questions are reasonable and legitimate.  

Queer readers don’t just sit around like a dragon hording legitimacy and saying ‘mwhahaha’ to poor little straight authors.  We do this as a self-protection mechanism with good reason. We’ve experienced characters that are just a grab bag of stereotypes.  We’ve been gutted when straight authors we trusted as allies say horribly offensive things.  We’ve read arguments about queer people that bear no resemblance to our real lives and we’ve literally cried ourselves to sleep over disappointing, nasty, rude, offensive, and heartbreaking books (at least I have).  

If Becky Albertali and her defenders want to make life easier on queer authors, then instead of blaming queer readers for asking those questions, they need to interrogate why those questions need to be asked and how to reduce that need.

Instead I see Albertali in her medium piece blaming queer readers for needing to protect themselves, for needing to side-eye, for needing the explicit power of #ownvoices and support of out authors.  I don’t see her piece putting rightful, blame on straight people and straight culture that created these situations in the first place.  Blaming queer readers for daring to question her is a pernicious type of victim blaming, and I have no time or patience for that.  We erect these walls to protect our own hearts and souls, not because we’re big meanies.  If you don’t want to be on the wrong side of the wall, then help dismantle the need for it.  Don’t blame us for its existence. 

I’ve seen some people on twitter say this is somehow gatekeeping or cutting people off from exploring/discovering their queerness in art.  And I think that argument is off base.  No one was preventing Alberteli from making her art.  She could have written in a notebook or on Smashwords for all the days of her life.  People can make a dozen deviantart accounts or twitter accounts or AO3 accounts or tumblr accounts or discord servers and post their queer art creations all over the internet while they work out their queer feelings.  It is easy and free and no one is stopping anyone else from doing so. 

However I think when you cross the line from creating your queer art to profiting off your queer art, something fundamentally changes.  The stakes go up.  Queer readers need to know so they can decide who to trust with their hard earned cash.  We live in capitalism, man.  If you think that sucks, help dismantle that too. 

Albertali looked back in her piece, so I also want to cast back to early 2015, when Albertali first published Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda.  Bi YA author Corrine Duyvis woudn’t coin the term/hastag #ownvoices until September of that year.  And it was A LOT easier to get a YA book with LGBTQ characters published if you were straight.  How do I know that?  Because it was like pulling teeth to find queer authors writing queer characters outside of small queer presses.  I was hardcore book blogging at that time.  The mainstream publishing industry side-eyed YA/kidlit queer authors, especially those who were less polished due to poverty/educational attainment/systemic racism/disability, to favor straight white authors with post-graduate degrees along with a handful of token queer authors that were already a part of the publishing industry.  This was slowly changing but it hadn’t changed that much.  It was still easier to get a queer YA published as a straight person.

And Albertali knowingly entered into and profited off that system.   

She literally has cash in the bank off the publication of the book Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda, the subsequent film that became Love Simon, the subsequent book reprints and merchandise under the name Love Simon and the subsequent Love Victor show on Hulu.  They sold Love Simon shirts at Hot Topic for $20 for crying out loud.  She was able to obtain that money, prominence, and influence because she presented herself as a straight woman.

There is no comparable story in queer authorland because queer authors are simply not given the opportunity to turn their queer novels into multimedia cash cow franchises.  The closest thing I can think of is Armistand Maupin’s ‘Tales of the City‘ and that took 20 years to be made into a tv miniseries with subsequent books.  That was 27 years ago and to my knowledge, no one sold shirts.  So for most of my/ Albertali’s lifetime, there has been no viable path to create a queer media empire as a queer author.  None. 

Until Albertali did it while pretending to be a straight girl.  

She says that she legitimately did not know she was queer when Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda was published or when Leah on the Offbeat was written.  It does suck that she had to figure that out while living such a public life and I feel bad that it was hard.  But honestly it sucks for everyone to figure that out.  It sucks to figure that out as an isolated teen or a professional adult.  Its just an emotionally grueling process.  Wanna make it better for future people?  Again work to disable heterosexism and heterocentrism in wider society.  Blaming queer people for that heterosexism and heterocentrism, and chiding them for not giving you unearned benefits of the doubt doesn’t do anything to disable those systems.  No one forced you to sign a movie deal or do a ton of interviews, you did that all on your own.  Ignorance of the consequences of your own actions doesn’t exempt you from having to deal with them.  

Only very very recently has the publishing landscape shifted so #ownvoices is a selling point instead of a liability.  Only very very recently (and I would argue very minimally) has the publishing industry valued #ownvoices authors enough to nurture and polish their skills with open submissions and contests for people who don’t have grad degree levels of writing skills.  And Albertali is upset at being excluded from this?  When she literally has the educational privileges of a doctorate and significantly more money than the average queer author has made in my lifetime?  

The closet sucks but no one forced Albertali to stay in it and queer people didn’t create it.  She chose to publish and license her work to reap the benefits, and as such also reaps the consequences.  Apparently one such consequence was that it was personally difficult for her to understand her sexuality and her mental health was poor.  Well.... until we can disassemble heteropatriarchy that is the world we live in.  Get your queer house in order before you go pro and open yourself up to real reactions from queer readers.  But if like Albertali, you don’t do that while choosing more and more publicity and raking in wheelbarrows full of cash, well, don’t expect much sympathy from me.  

Hey everyone! Part of our ability to publish relies heavily on fans who are interested in reading and helping us hone our earlier drafts. Anyone with serious editing experience should also consider joining our staff! We would like to aim to publish our next book sometime a year from this fall so we have enough time for proper preparation and draft editing!