Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄

@nat-lawless.bsky.social

1.3K followers 960 following 1.8K posts

Queer ND writer, reader, muso, academic, critic. Different hats, different names. Queer fantasy/romantasy/historical romance/sci-fi. Ask my characters about my gender. No DMs. No AI. https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nat_Lawless/pseuds/Nat_Lawless

archiveofourown.org

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 10h

🌈📚💙 🪐📚 🌈🚀💫 🌈✒️
#booksky #fantasy #authorsky #wip #amwriting #queerwriters #writerscommunity #WiPSnips

Lights still burned in a few windows, but the courtyard was deserted and it was as good a time as any to make for the dungeons.

You need to eat something, Rathaliel said in Elyan's mind.

His stomach rebelled. Later.

I’m not suggesting a three-course banquet, but you haven’t eaten since breakfast, have you. It wasn’t a question.

He sighed. There were a few packets of food in his bag; rifling through, he found one with nuts, seeds and dried fruit that he might be able to stomach a little of.

When he’d licked the last crumbs off his fingers, he demolished the cheese.

Rathaliel radiated smugness.

Oh fuck off, he said.

1 11

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 16h

What a cracking conclusion to @jordanlhawk.bsky.social’s Whyborne & Griffin series! The final battle for Widdershins and the world might be the best of the 11 books.

🌈📚💙 🪐📚 🌈🚀💫 🌈💜 📚🌶️
#booksky #fantasy
#romancebook #romantasy #romancem/m

A book. Jordan L Hawk. Deosil. A Whyborne and Griffin novel. Two men in grey 19th century style coats and waistcoats stare at the camera with serious expressions. One has both fists clenched; the other holds a book in one hand. Blue lightning fills the sky behind them.

1 4 12

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 1d

🌈📚💙 🪐📚 🌈🚀💫 🌈✒️
#booksky #fantasy #authorsky #wip #amwriting #queerwriters #writerscommunity #WiPSnips

As Elyan hailed one of the many unmarked carriages that were for hire in the city, he brushed the tip of his ear absently. He settled back, legs crossed, twitching idly at the gauzy semi-opaque curtains that somehow allowed a more or less perfectly clear view of the street outside while remaining safely hidden from view himself.

Still, he saw very little, his mind galloping in all directions like a herd of spooked horses. Shit-fucking star-cursed godsdamn fucking fool. He couldn’t have fucked this up harder if he’d been trying, for fuck’s sake.

2 22

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 1d

There are stories of monsters that lurk in the bush to snare unwary travellers who stray from the roads, though most people don’t really believe they exist. Or do they…

#FantasyIndiesSpooktober 🌈📚💙 🪐📚 🌈🚀💫 🌈✒️
#booksky #fantasy #authorsky #wip #amwriting #queerwriters #writerscommunity

#FantasyIndiesSpooktober infographic. 6. Monsters in WIP.

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 2d

🌈📚💙 🪐📚 🌈🚀💫 🌈✒️
#booksky #fantasy #authorsky #wip #amwriting #queerwriters #writerscommunity #WiPSnips

Daem’s mouth twitched; Elyan wondered if he’d ever seen Daem actually smile. ‘I think we’ve got a fair chance. And if it all goes to shit, Rathi can throw fireballs at the arseholes and we run like the hells are opening up behind us.’

Rathaliel rolled her eyes. ‘Do we get story armour and all the other benefits of being in a historic romance, too? Whatever our enemies fire at us inexplicably misses, while we cast randomly behind us and incinerate them all at once?’

2 20

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 3d

🌈📚💙 🪐📚 🌈🚀💫 🌈✒️
#booksky #fantasy #authorsky #wip #amwriting #queerwriters #writerscommunity #WiPSnips

Niv hadn’t spoken to anyone from the Academy since she’d packed up her things for the last time and returned a failure to her parents’ bookshop, even when her mother died shortly after. It was as if all the years of friendship had meant nothing. Perhaps they hadn’t meant anything to anyone but Niv.

1 22

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 3d

1. Everyone is at least one of bi/pan/lesbian/aro/NB/trans
2. Fucking starshitting balls there’s a lot of swearing
3. Socialist utopia where housing is all public & 💵 doesn’t exist
4. 6 genders
🌈📚💙 🪐📚 🌈🚀💫 🌈✒️
#booksky #fantasy #authorsky #wip #amwriting #queerwriters #writerscommunity #queerprompts

🌈CJ Aralore @cjaralore.bsky.social · 3d

#QueerPrompts October 5: Banned Books Week Begins: What might someone try to ban your story for having?

Graphics: The background is pumpkins surrounding a stack of books. The border has broken chains saying "BANNED", a rainbow saying LGBTQ History, books wrapped in tape or chains, pride flags, and cute Halloween characters.
Text: "October 2025" on top and "#QueerPrompts" and "Host: @CJAralore" on the bottom, all in a rainbow font.
Center text is:
#QueerPrompts October 5: Banned Books Week Begins: What might someone try to ban your story for having?

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 3d

Elyan’s afraid of healers, mental and physical (or really it’s the healing), and abandonment, all from childhood trauma.

🌈📚💙 🪐📚 🌈🚀💫 🌈✒️
#booksky #fantasy #authorsky #wip #amwriting #queerwriters #writerscommunity #FantasyIndiesSpooktober

Infographic. #FantasyIndiesSpooktober. 5. What are your characters afraid of?

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 3d

I wrote them a bad review and explained why!

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 3d

When you find out after you read the book with your eyes that the author uses AI for the audio…

1 1

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 4d

🌈📚💙 🪐📚 🌈🚀💫 🌈✒️
#booksky #fantasy #authorsky #wip #amwriting #queerwriters #writerscommunity #WiPSnips

Elyan was in the same chair in the same fluffy black robe, his expression hunted, the dark circles under his eyes even more pronounced than the previous day. He hardly glanced up when they came in. He was so tightly barriered Rathaliel couldn’t get even a hint of his emotions. Still, it was uncomfortable, knowing so much of what another person really feared.

2 19

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 4d

Nope. All my characters are too fucked up, spiky and neurospicy for that!

🌈📚💙 🪐📚 🌈🚀💫 🌈✒️
#booksky #fantasy #authorsky #wip #amwriting #queerwriters #writerscommunity #queerprompts

🌈CJ Aralore @cjaralore.bsky.social · 4d

#QueerPrompts October 4: National Cinnamon Roll Day: Any cinnamon roll character?

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 5d

My characters don’t hibernate, but Elyan thinks about sleep an awful lot!

🌈📚💙 🪐📚 🌈🚀💫 🌈✒️
#booksky #fantasy #authorsky #wip #amwriting #queerwriters #writerscommunity #WiPSnips

It wasn’t long after Rathaliel banished the magelight that the breathing from the two in the bed took on the even rhythms of sleep. Wouldn’t that be nice. Elyan’s eyes flicked open, staring into the darkness, his thoughts a tangle of sluggish but insistent snakes.

1 21

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 5d

I do! I’m working on building in more of Elyan’s fidgets, though they’re often not obvious and he only becomes aware of them once he’s been doing it for a while, then consciously stops.

🌈📚💙 🪐📚 🌈🚀💫 🌈✒️
#booksky #fantasy #authorsky #wip #amwriting #queerwriters #writerscommunity #queerprompts

🌈CJ Aralore @cjaralore.bsky.social · 5d

#QueerPrompts October 3: Free Friday or National Body Language Day: Do you add body language when writing conversations between characters?

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 6d

Rathaliel has a remarkable facility for languages, but still gets tripped up by idioms every now and again.

🌈📚💙 🪐📚 🌈🚀💫 🌈✒️
#booksky #fantasy #authorsky #wip #amwriting #queerwriters #writerscommunity #WiPSnips

Daem turned to face her, leaning on one elbow. ‘You really think Elyan's going to help you find your brother?’

‘He might. If we can teach him something as well, it might convince him. Catch two fish with one line.’ Daem raised an amused eyebrow. Oh. What was the Lokhan equivalent? ‘Catch two birds with one lure?’

‘Draw two birds,’ Daem corrected.

‘Ideally it would be three birds.’ She ticked them off on her fingers. ‘Learn glamours and other magic, teach El something, recruit him to find Oren.’

2 23

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 6d

‘Straight’, you say … 🤔

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 6d

They must be Reviewer 2 the anonymous peer reviewer who always says you should have written a different article.

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 7d

🌈📚💙 🪐📚 🌈🚀💫 🌈✒️
#booksky #fantasy #authorsky #wip #amwriting #queerwriters #writerscommunity #WiPSnips

Rathaliel leaned on the cool metal railings at the front of the boat, Daem beside her, as the city she’d once called home loomed larger. Sathe. Having forgotten to bring a hat, Elyan had taken refuge in the shade, though most of the passengers had been crammed into the narrow space around Rathaliel and Daem for the past hour, eagerly watching the city grow from a smudge on the horizon to the clutter of docks, warehouses, cheap taverns and pleasure houses that made up the Rivertrade quarter, and the arching bridge behind it all that marked the beginning of the high city.

1 22

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 7d

✒️ wrote ~9000 words of a romance short story
✒️added to main WiP at least 5/7 days a week
✒️ mapped out the next main scene in main WiP
📚read 31 books including 7 sapphic

🌈📚💙 🪐📚 🌈🚀💫 🌈✒️ 🌈💜 📚🌶️
#booksky #fantasy #authorsky #wip #amwriting #queerwriters #writerscommunity #WiPSnips#queerprompts

🌈CJ Aralore @cjaralore.bsky.social · 8d

#QueerPrompts September 30: Monthly Wrap-Up

Graphics: The background is a cat wearing glasses reading a book. The border has books in the colors of the pride flags.
Text: "September 2025" on top and "#QueerPrompts" and "Host: @CJAralore" on the bottom, all in a rainbow font.
Center text is:
#QueerPrompts September 30: Monthly Wrap-Up

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 7d

Seven books for sapphic September! Amelia, If Only and A Memory Called Empire were my favourites of those.

🌈📚💙 🪐📚 🌈🚀💫 🌈💜 📚🌶️
#booksky #fantasy
#romancebook #romantasy #sapphicSeptember

A collage of book covers, mostly queer romance and/or fantasy. Some are circled in blue.

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 8d

Just finished reading a library copy of 84 Charing Cross Road + The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street - how fitting to find the annotations of a reader past in a book whose author values the signs of a book being loved! I was tempted to add my own commentary but didn’t have a pencil!
📚💙 #nonfiction

A book. 84 Charing Cross Road. Helene Hanff. Introduced by Juliet Stevenson.

A page of a book with pencil annotations. ‘Good lord’. ‘Back to where you started!’

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 9d

The leyveins are so cool!

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 9d

🌈📚💙 🪐📚 🌈🚀💫 🌈✒️
#booksky #fantasy #authorsky #wip #amwriting #queerwriters #writerscommunity #WiPSnips

Rathaliel organised the groups with brisk efficiency, and with no more than an admonition to stick close to their shield bearer like their underwear, they were moving, Elyan’s clutch in the lead. They were starting down one of the many, twisting streets that led to the north wall, when the sound of heavy boots on cobbles reached him. Oh shitfuck.

1 18

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 10d

My characters are all inked!

🌈📚💙 🪐📚 🌈🚀💫 🌈✒️
#booksky #fantasy #authorsky #wip #amwriting #queerwriters #writerscommunity #WiPSnips

Elyan tucked one foot under him. ‘It’s not terribly complicated.’ He gave a self-deprecating half-smile. ‘It can’t be, if I can do it. Like any glamour, I suppose.’ He gestured to the black rose tattooed on his hand and pulled back his sleeve to reveal a thorn-covered stem extending halfway down his forearm. His skin was so pale, the veins stood out blue on his wrist. His fingers flickered and the rose became a key, then a tree, then back to the rose.

‘You glamour tattoos?’ Rathaliel asked incredulously.

‘Oh, the rose is real.’ He rubbed a forefinger across the scarlet drop of blood on one of the thorns, as if it had pierced his skin, and she wondered what painful memory it commemorated.

1 23

Nat Lawless 🌈🦄 @nat-lawless.bsky.social · 10d

Elyan would, as school was a trial that constantly made him feel stupid (though metaphorically as in Anathlenor it doesn’t take place in specific buildings or with the same structures we have).
🌈📚💙 🪐📚 🌈🚀💫 🌈✒️
#booksky #fantasy #authorsky #wip #amwriting #queerwriters #writerscommunity #queerprompts

🌈CJ Aralore @cjaralore.bsky.social · 10d

#QueerPrompts September 28: Who would burn their school down?