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Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨

@lukebelcourt.com

630 followers 140 following 1.4K posts

Adventure LGBT fantasy writer✨🔮 WITCHES OF MERCHANT CITY available now! he/him | bi | witch | 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 BEGONE TERFS https://lukebelcourt.com

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Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨ @lukebelcourt.com · 8d

COVER REVEAL! 🎉

After what feels like a lifetime, I finally get to show you what I've been working on the last few years! The long-awaited sequel, VAMPIRES IN PARK CIRCUS!

Coming Halloween 2025!

You can pre-order here! lukebelcourt.com/witches/two....

A photograph of the cover for Vampires in Park Circus. It is drawn in the same style as the 2025 Witches cover -- fine black lineart, but the colour scheme is red rather than teal.
A woman with long flowing black hair in a Kate Bush-esque gown runs towards the viewer. She looks behind her, afraid. Park Church Tower, a notable landmark in the centre of Park Circus, looms behind her. The same golden magic from the first book explodes from her head like psychic power.
The photograph is taken in a park, with tree cover behind it.

The epigraph to the book:

"A vampire moves to Scotland and makes friends with a local human at a bar.
'It's hard, not being able to go out in direct sunlight,' the vampire says.
'How long has it been since you've seen the sun?' the local asks.
'Since I died, nine years ago,' the vampire says. 'You?'
The local finishes his drink. 'Fifteen long years. I remember it like it was yesterday.'
- Anonymous

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Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨ @lukebelcourt.com · 12h

October chilling is the best chilling

The creative world feels open 💕

Reposted by Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨

Dr Kat Day (she/her) @chronicleflask.katday.com · 23h

Great piece: "Anything can be rejected, and for any reason, and there is pretty much nothing you can do about it. Certain rationales for rejection are forever beyond your control."

Yes! I have to send out a lot of rejections and there are So Many reasons, and none of them are personal. Keep going!

The Guardian @theguardian.com · 23h

‘Stay true to yourself – and fly closer to the sun’: what I’ve learned from 50 years of rejection

As a writer, I have been rejected thousands of times, and it initially led to shock, denial and anger. Then I accepted it. Here’s what you can gain from doing so too

www.theguardian.com

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Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨ @lukebelcourt.com · 1d

H O T TO GO, snap and clap and touch your toes

a cartoon character with a mask and a headband with the letter g on it

Alt: Kakashi doing hand signs

media.tenor.com

Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨ @lukebelcourt.com · 1d

AAAAA I feel so, fuckin VALIDATED RIGHT NOWWWW

I knew it!!! I fuckin smelt it in the water!!!

Thank you senpai 🙏🏽

The Wikipedia entry for the Apologetic Apostrophe

Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨ @lukebelcourt.com · 1d

That’s a good name for it!

I’d been callin it “Hagrid Syndrome” in my head because Ms. Black Mold does them for every dialect more than 20 miles out of Kent, but don’t really wanna reference That Series in 2025 😂

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Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨ @lukebelcourt.com · 1d

Oh my god you’re right O_O How’d I miss that

Honour restored!!! (Ko)

Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨ @lukebelcourt.com · 1d

(See related hill: I used the word ‘ramen’ as an example because it sounds suitably ridiculous to exoticise. But I feel as strongly about most italicisation used for loan words, or for sprinklings of a language the writer doesn’t speak — especially for minority languages. It just feels weird to me!)

Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨ @lukebelcourt.com · 1d

Anyway all of this is to say there’s a single instance in Vampires where a character says the word “greetin’” (ie. with apostrophe) and it literally still hangs over me that it didn’t read right without the apostrophe 😂

So, sorry in advance about this sin which only I actually care about

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Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨ @lukebelcourt.com · 1d

I received a bunch of compliments for Witches saying ‘your characters sound like real people’ and while I would love to take credit for it, I can’t.

99% of it is knowing I can write a verb without swapping the trailing ‘g’ for an apostrophe, and if I did my job right, you’ll hear it without the ‘g’

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Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨ @lukebelcourt.com · 1d

And for what? To make sure English people know we’re self-aware that our grammar is different, that we say “no” when we mean “not”?

The ‘t’ isn’t missing, it just doesn’t exist lmao

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Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨ @lukebelcourt.com · 1d

As an affect, it’s unsustainable unless you’re writing that Side Character Flavour

If you’ve ever had to write an entire book where everyone is Scottish (cough cough) and you decide to lovingly render every apostrophe the style guide would demand, the page ends up more apostrophes than words

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Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨ @lukebelcourt.com · 1d

Ofc this doesn’t really apply to Scots where that is the accepted historical spelling. And obv there are words in Scottish English which have apostrophes for the same reason English words do — ‘em’dy’ for example is literally just a contraction the same way ‘can’t’ or ‘wouldn’t’ is

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Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨ @lukebelcourt.com · 1d

The tiny hill I will die on is that I think cramming a bunch of apostrophes into Scottish dialects in published work looks like putting italics around the word ‘ramen’.

I’m not gonna be weird about it when I come across it, and people are allowed to disagree. But I think it’s just othering.

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Reposted by Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨

Glasgow SF Writers' Circle @gsfwc.bsky.social · 1d

It's October, so it must be Gothic season! Check out this splendid new queer horror romance from our Heather Valentine, only available on The Pink Hydra.

@thepinkhydra.com @hexthervvv.bsky.social

www.thepinkhydra.com/issues/02022...

The Pink Hydra | Four Flowers in Formaldehyde - Heather Valentine

Four Flowers in Formaldehyde by Heather Valentine

www.thepinkhydra.com

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Reposted by Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨

John Rogers @johnrogers.bsky.social · 1d

Some folks may need this lovely bit of writing, so here it is.

🦇 Killy Witches 🎃👻 @tillybridges.bsky.social · 1d

Welcome to #TransTuesday!

National Coming Out Day is Oct 11, so let’s get into what can be a difficult and complicated issue for so many of us: COMING OUT AS TRANS.

And for the first time since Trans Tuesdays started, I reprint my own coming out thread!

www.tillystranstuesdays.com/2025/10/07/c...

COMING OUT AS TRANS - Tilly's Trans Tuesdays

Welcome to Trans Tuesday! National Coming Out Day is approaching, so let’s get into what can be a difficult and complicated issue for so many of us: COMING OUT AS TRANS. When people hear the words “co...

www.tillystranstuesdays.com

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Reposted by Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 1d

The Glasgow @womenslibrary.bsky.social’s Maud Sulter Annual Lecture
31 Oct @glasgowschoolofart.bsky.social – free

@pratibha.bsky.social will discuss the vibrant Black women’s arts movement of the 1980s in dialogue with Sulter’s work & their reverberations today
womenslibrary.org.uk/event/the-ma...

The Maud Sulter Annual Lecture with Pratibha Parmar | Glasgow Women's Library

Parmar will talk about foundational moments in dialogue with Maud Sulter’s work and their reverberations today.

womenslibrary.org.uk

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Reposted by Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨

Lindz McLeod - THE UNLIKELY PURSUIT OF MARY BENNET is out now! @lindzmcleod.bsky.social · 2d

"When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground."

It's never too late to learn new things. Fill up those books inside your head, and pass them on.

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Reposted by Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨

Sam @sammetcalf.bsky.social · 1d

Fella next to me on the train has just sent some poor bugger a work-based 15-minute voice message.

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Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨ @lukebelcourt.com · 1d

I live in hope it'll get sorted in time for the actual release day! But yeah, every step of this has been a kick in the teeth 😂

Tbf maybe it has been my fault for finishing every step and thinking "Finally, the hardest part is over" 😆 I keep setting up the petards and the universe keeps hoistin

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Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨ @lukebelcourt.com · 1d

Yes, laws can change. In recent years they have cracked down even more, specifically because of this feedback loop 🫥

You can't argue with people who shrug off reality and think brown people are the problem, despite being 4% of the Scottish population lmao

Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨ @lukebelcourt.com · 1d

Thank you for your kind words tho 🙏🏽 It's nice to hear a viewpoint that isn't my own anxiety rattling around lol

Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨ @lukebelcourt.com · 1d

I hope so :( Just once I was hoping I'd be able to use pre-orders as a revv for early sales by getting day 1 boosts on The Algorithms 😂

But between all THIS pish and the sales getting split between different marketplaces, I think at this point I should just be happy if it's in people's hands

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Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨ @lukebelcourt.com · 1d

Thank you 😭 Honestly I waited until I wasn't angry anymore to talk about it

I just have to "Jesus take the wheel" the situation, and hope against hope people buy the ebook instead, or that it magically resolves itself before the book actually releases

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Reposted by Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨

Aieee-Iain Clark @iainjclarkart.com · 1d

Part of Russell T Davies' speech on being awarded Outstanding Contribution to Television at the Bafta Cymru awards. (via www.instagram.com/baftacymru)

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Reposted by Luke SPELLcourt 🧙🏼‍♀️🦇✨

Oisín McGann @oisinmcgann.bsky.social · 1d

It’s really hard to describe to people who are not artists how survival mode does *not* inspire creativity, as the myth would have us believe. It suppresses creativity as you try to limit every possible risk – and the opportunities that come with them.

Aliette de Bodard @aliettedebodard.com · 1d

It turns out building habits and stuff actually requires not being in survival mode, who knew?!
(Yeah yeah I did)

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