Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️
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alienwrites.bsky.social
Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️
@alienwrites.bsky.social
49 followers 56 following 130 posts
Querying adult secondary-world fantasy with horror elements, coming up with terrible jokes || Chaotic, queer, chronically ill || The cat's names are Warden and Dulcie || https://alienwrites.com
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alienwrites.bsky.social
I feel you, she’s too cute for me to try to steal my pajama pants away from her 🤣
October 1, 2026 at 3:19 AM
alienwrites.bsky.social
My cats make up their mind where the ROACH IS, challenge level impossible
September 24, 2026 at 2:59 AM
alienwrites.bsky.social
THE RED SCHOLAR'S WAKE x THIS GILDED ABYSS x SILKSONG

A woman wakes from a decade-long cursed sleep to find a dying kingdom, one surviving swordswoman, and the unbearable possibility that her own people left her there on purpose.

#QuestPit #A #F #W #AgentsGuide
An agent's guide cover slide for Child of Silk and Shield, a 90,000-word adult fantasy with horror elements querying June 2026. Black background with bold orange distressed typography on the left and three diagonal image strips on the right showing close-ups of two women's faces and a ghostly silk-wrapped figure. Pitch slide for Child of Silk and Shield. Orange italic tagline reads: Survive the madness. Preserve the kingdom. Salvage your savior's sanity. Three paragraphs of white pitch copy describe protagonist Lora awakening from a decade-long cursed sleep in a dying kingdom, making a vow with a maddened swordswoman named Yaira, and confronting the possibility her own people are responsible for the destruction. Three diagonal atmospheric strips on the right show a ruined castle, a crumbling stone mask, and a spiral stone staircase descending into darkness. Comps slide with a dark textured silk background. Large orange distressed header reads FOR FANS OF. Three comp images are displayed side by side: The Red Scholar's Wake by Aliette de Bodard, captioned WLW main pairing, forced partnership that evolves into romance; Hollow Knight: Silksong, captioned haunted world, sword-and-shield battles, learning about the world as the protagonist does; and This Gilded Abyss by Rebecca Thorne, captioned haunting and possession as suspense and danger mechanisms. Excerpt slide for Child of Silk and Shield. Large orange distressed header reads EXCERPT. White and orange body text presents a passage from Chapter One in which Lora, newly awakened, assesses the armed and grinning swordswoman crouching over her and concludes that madness can sustain someone in a way no training can match. Three diagonal image strips on the right show a close-up of a woman's silver eyes, a swirl of white silk threads, and a second woman's face partially obscured by windswept hair.
April 30, 2026 at 1:00 AM
alienwrites.bsky.social
THE RED SCHOLAR'S WAKE x THIS GILDED ABYSS

A cursed sleeper. A swordswoman losing herself to madness. A vow that may cost them both everything.

(Adult fantasy with horror elements, 90k words, querying June 2026.)

#QuestPit #A #F #W
A five-image gothic fantasy moodboard for Child of Silk and Shield. A large black and white photograph of a spiral stone staircase descending into darkness anchors the left side. On the upper right, a close-up of hands pulling apart translucent silk or web-like threads. In the middle right, a pale figure in white lies unconscious in dark grass, hands reaching toward her from the shadows. On the lower left, two hands clasping gently, one in a white lace-cuffed sleeve and one in dark fabric against a green background. On the lower right, a pair of ballet feet in pointe shoes standing in dark reflective water, with black liquid trailing down the skin.
April 29, 2026 at 5:15 PM
alienwrites.bsky.social
What if the girl who woke you from a cursed slumber not only tasks you with saving the kingdom's sanity...but also wields madness as a love language?

CHILD OF SILK AND SHIELD, adult fantasy with horror elements. 90k words, querying summer 2026. Get ready!

#QuestPit #A #F #W
A square excerpt card for Child of Silk and Shield against a dark textured background showing faint silk threads. In orange text, the opening line reads: "I calm the madness when I touch you." Below in white body text: It's not what Lora means to say, but she never says what she means to when it comes to this woman. Instead, she does things like kneel in half-dead grass with her blood under her nails. She's still holding Yaira's hand. Her skin shivers at the closeness. At the bottom left in orange distressed display font: CHILD OF SILK AND SHIELD. At the bottom right in the same font: QUERYING SUMMER 2026.
April 29, 2026 at 1:10 PM
alienwrites.bsky.social
Presenting my #agentsguide to CHILD OF SILK AND SHIELD, featuring:

🩸 a madness tied to blood
🕸️ adventures through the remnants of a ruined kingdom
🗡️ tenuous partnerships born of survival and sarcasm

+ my personal fave:
🏳️‍🌈 reluctant-allies-to-lovers yuri!

#QuestPit #W #A #F
An agent's guide cover slide for Child of Silk and Shield, a 90,000-word adult fantasy with horror elements querying June 2026. Black background with bold orange distressed typography on the left and three diagonal image strips on the right showing close-ups of two women's faces and a ghostly silk-wrapped figure. Pitch slide for Child of Silk and Shield. Orange italic tagline reads: Survive the madness. Preserve the kingdom. Salvage your savior's sanity. Three paragraphs of white pitch copy describe protagonist Lora awakening from a decade-long cursed sleep abandoned in a dying kingdom, making a vow with a self-described mad swordswoman named Yaira, and reckoning with the unbearable possibility that her own people unleashed the possessing madness and left her behind by design. Three diagonal atmospheric strips on the right show a ruined castle shrouded in fog, a crumbling stone mask, and a spiral stone staircase descending into darkness. Comps slide with a dark textured silk background. Large orange distressed header reads FOR FANS OF. Three comp images are displayed side by side: The Red Scholar's Wake by Aliette de Bodard, captioned WLW main pairing, forced partnership that evolves into romance; Hollow Knight: Silksong, captioned haunted world, sword-and-shield battles, learning about the world as the protagonist does; and This Gilded Abyss by Rebecca Thorne, captioned haunting and possession as suspense and danger mechanisms. Excerpt slide for Child of Silk and Shield. Large orange distressed header reads EXCERPT. White and orange body text presents a passage from Chapter One in which Lora, newly awakened, assesses the armed and grinning swordswoman crouching over her and concludes that madness can sustain someone in a way no training can match. Three diagonal image strips on the right show a close-up of a woman's silver eyes, a swirl of white silk threads, and a second woman's face partially obscured by windswept hair.
April 29, 2026 at 4:08 AM
alienwrites.bsky.social
🕸️ remnants of a ruined kingdom
🗡️ partnership born of survival
🏳️‍🌈 reluctant-allies-to-lovers yuri
🩸 a madness tied to blood
💀 the enemy is home
#PosterPit #F #A #W
Movie-poster-style pitch image for the fantasy horror manuscript CHILD OF SILK AND SHIELD. The poster has a black background with bold orange typography. The tagline reads: "Survive the madness. Preserve the kingdom. Salvage your savior's sanity." Three horizontal bands of photography are layered across the center: the first shows a close-up of a woman's eye with dramatic liner, the second shows pale spectral hands wrapped in cobweb-like threads, and the third shows a woman's jaw and mouth partially obscured by wispy hair. Comp titles at the bottom read: THE RED SCHOLAR'S WAKE by Aliette de Bodard, THIS GILDED ABYSS by Rebecca Thorne, and Hollow Knight: Silksong.
April 18, 2026 at 9:29 PM
alienwrites.bsky.social
Woken from a decade-long enchanted sleep, Lora finds a kingdom drowning in madness and a warrior losing her mind to it, who says Lora is the only one who can save her. Lora doesn't know this (absolutely infuriating) stranger. She makes a fatal promise anyway. #PosterPit #F #A #W
Movie-poster-style pitch image for the fantasy horror manuscript CHILD OF SILK AND SHIELD. The poster has a black background with bold orange typography. The tagline reads: "Survive the madness. Preserve the kingdom. Salvage your savior's sanity." Three horizontal bands of photography are layered across the center: the first shows a close-up of a woman's eye with dramatic liner, the second shows pale spectral hands wrapped in cobweb-like threads, and the third shows a woman's jaw and mouth partially obscured by wispy hair. Comp titles at the bottom read: THE RED SCHOLAR'S WAKE by Aliette de Bodard, THIS GILDED ABYSS by Rebecca Thorne, and Hollow Knight: Silksong.
April 18, 2026 at 6:53 PM
alienwrites.bsky.social
Lora has been trapped in a dying kingdom, bound by promise to a warrior losing her mind to a madness Lora's own people unleashed. She woke to find her way home. She'll stay because the kingdom needs her...and because Yaira is still fighting to remain herself. #PosterPit #F #A #W
Movie-poster-style pitch image for the fantasy horror manuscript CHILD OF SILK AND SHIELD. The poster has a black background with bold orange typography. The tagline reads: “Survive the madness. Preserve the kingdom. Salvage your savior’s sanity.” Three horizontal bands of photography are layered across the center: the first shows a close-up of a woman’s eye with dramatic liner, the second shows pale spectral hands wrapped in cobweb-like threads, and the third shows a woman’s jaw and mouth partially obscured by wispy hair. Comp titles at the bottom read: THE RED SCHOLAR’S WAKE by Aliette de Bodard, THIS GILDED ABYSS by Rebecca Thorne, and Hollow Knight: Silksong.
April 18, 2026 at 2:18 PM
alienwrites.bsky.social
#WIPWednesday – aka how I remember what day of the week it is. Love writing little snippets that make me scream GAY GAY HOMOSEXUAL GAY at the characters I created.
Yaira raises her blade. The cleric nearest them in their slow advancement raises theirs in reply. Before Lora can find a voice to say anything – perhaps “what are you doing?” or “you cannot beat them!” – Yaira is sprinting forward, darting with an almost-ungodly speed, slashing and shouting wordlessly as one shadow after another falls. She’s…skilled. That feels almost disrespectfully vague. Yaira isn’t just skilled, she’s well-trained, almost perfect in the blurry footwork Lora can make out as she moves. She’s brilliantly lethal. She’s… Perfect. Ugh.
March 4, 2026 at 3:10 PM
alienwrites.bsky.social
AND HE LOVES YOU
A photo taken from above of a Siamese cat with a brown face, tan chest and blue eyes.
March 3, 2026 at 12:41 AM
alienwrites.bsky.social
His name is Warden! He’s a four-year-old Balinese shorthair! This is him as a tiny baby (4 months, ALL EARS)
March 2, 2026 at 7:00 PM
alienwrites.bsky.social
Oh my goodness she looks a little like my boy!
March 2, 2026 at 6:29 PM
alienwrites.bsky.social
Warden and Dulcie don’t know what Mondays are…which sounds so nice…
Two brown and tan cats sit on a pink blanket. There’s a yellow and white flowered comforter beneath the blanket.
March 2, 2026 at 6:28 PM
alienwrites.bsky.social
The rules of food in my house are the same as the rules in SilkWIP: have food, will share.

...Even if the Tagalongs I'm eating now sound a lot better than the food they're eating.

#QueerWriters
A screenshot from Scrivener. The full text reads: “Is this enough to eat?” Yaira holds up small fabric-wrapped squares. Lora stares at them, uncomprehendingly, and Yaira sighs. “I will say that’s a yes.” She tosses one to Lora, who catches it on reflex. Yaira makes a little whistling sound that’s likely meant to be appreciative. “You didn’t have to–” “It’s bad luck to have food and not share.” Yaira takes a bite of her own square. “Eat. The food inside the packet in Lora’s hands appears to be some sort of bread-like wafer. She touches the tip of her tongue to the corner and Yaira laughs. “It’s not poisoned,” she says. “Just bland.”
March 1, 2026 at 11:24 PM
alienwrites.bsky.social
Preliminary reader reviews are in! Read CHILD OF SILK AND SHIELD! Who could turn it down after reading these endorsements??

Not pictured:
"Tell me you're comping this to Aliette de Bodard" (I am)
"Amanda wtf is wrong with you" (so much, narrow it down)

#UnhingedPit #F #H #LGBTQ #WIP
A screenshot of a discord message sent by user alienwrites containing the text: "I simply love repressed yeeting YEARNING." A screenshot of a Discord message reading "this is so tlt coded oh my lord" A screenshot of a Google Doc comment reading "we're two chapters in we can't be doing the six of crows glove scene this early this mens you have to find a way to go harder down the line" A screenshot of a Discord message reading "loving silksong tier dykery"
February 28, 2026 at 9:37 PM
alienwrites.bsky.social
"What'cha working on?" uhhhh THE GOBLIN EMPEROR meets TIGANA meets...well, see the image for more.

#UnhingedPit #A #F #H #LGBTQ #WIP
A hand-drawn cartoon silhouette of a face in profile with a speech bubble reading: "Oh, you know… It's a queer fantasy/horror manuscript." To the right of the face are three stacked meme images visually describing the manuscript's genre and themes. The first is a screenshot from the animated show Adventure Time, showing the character Finn pushing two other characters together, captioned "NOW KISS." The second is the word "YURI" in large, bold stylized text on a bright blue background. The third is a dark, atmospheric horror meme showing a shadowy staircase, captioned: "MAYBE IT'S NOT THE HOUSE THAT'S HAUNTED. SOMETIMES IT'S THE PERSON."
February 28, 2026 at 6:29 PM
alienwrites.bsky.social
TFW you’re so irritated with your hot traveling companion that you have to crowdsource the gay crashout.

Think Hollow Knight: Silksong but with way more yuri.

#UnhingedPit #A #F #H #LGBTQ #WIP
"We've known each other for about 5 days but I've (26F) been watching her (25F) sleep for a good decade. NOT LIKE THAT, she was just trapped in a silkskein cocoon at the end of a cave and I was finally able to forge a weapon strong enough to break her free. She doesn't know this, though, mostly because when I try to tell her, she starts rolling her eyes and muttering about how I'm dramatic and/or insane. When the madness she brought with her infected my town and drove everyone to insanity or death, I went to visit her and thought about breaking her out so I could kill her. Now, the madness takes hold of me occasionally and I do actually try to kill her. Last night, that happened, and I came to just as she was about to kill me...or so I thought. I told her to do it, that I dared her to try, and she said she wasn't going to take my life before at least trying to save it. I bit her on the arm. I don't know why, so don't ask. Cuteness aggression? Anger? idk. Was I overreacting? AITA for trying to go home I (25F) come from a small country that forges weapons and shields as a main export. Somehow, an ancient madness was imbued in those exports, and now I'm trapped in another kingdom that has fallen almost completely to ruin.Apparently, I was kidnapped and held as the madness's ransom by way of being chained up at the end of a cave for a decade. A mad fencer (26F) woke me up, and now she's insisting she will help me get home if I free what's left of the kingdom from the madness.Great, okay, fine. Except I now know how to get home on my own power, so I don't need her help. She also annoys me, and keeps trying to kill me. And also bit me, then licked at the blood running down my arm???AITA for just bagging it and going home? I should probably be a good person and fix the problem I caused but also I'm tired of being threatened, almost stabbed, and now apparently bitten???? Hello??? EDIT: STOP ASKING ME IF SHE'S HOT. WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING??
February 28, 2026 at 1:15 PM
alienwrites.bsky.social
Wanted to bring my EAT OUR DUST #AgentsGuide over from the 🐦 site!

Agents, this 96k-word MS is for you if you want:

⚡Queer, non-binary & (ownvoices) chronic illness rep
⚡FAFO-style mentorship
⚡Car chases as a metaphor for power struggles w/the govt
⚡Big 5 editor interest

#agentguide #amquerying
Background image of a red car parked in an orange field. The white text overlaid on the image reads "An Agent's Guide to EAT OUR DUST by @AlienWrites." A pitch document for an adult action-adventure sci-fi story over a textured gray-blue rock formation background. The left side shows the pitch headline and synopsis in white and orange text, describing a chronically ill 20-something named Jess Paley and her mentor on a cross-country road trip to stop the apocalypse. The right side displays "COMPS" with three book covers: "A Beginning at the End" by Mike Chen, "Station Eleven" by Emily St. John Mandel, and "Mad Max: Fury Road" movie poster. A mood board layout over the same rock formation background, featuring nine images in a grid. Images include desert landscapes, abandoned cityscapes, a vintage compass on old maps, worn leather bags, a person in a gas mask on an empty road, boots on cracked earth, and silhouettes against an orange sky. Text on the left lists story elements: the accidental hero, FAFO-style mentorship, and car chases as metaphor for power struggles. Text on the right lists: the stoppable climate apocalypse, invisible illness rep, and queer rep. A snippet of dialogue on a dark brown background with orange-tinted vegetation visible at the edges. White text shows a conversation between characters about leaked research results called "the dirt study," with Ricky offering Jess car keys to drive and expose world-ending secrets. The final line "That's the spirit!" appears in orange text.
October 1, 2025 at 9:11 PM
alienwrites.bsky.social
if you see this picture post a random image from your device

....I have no explanation tbh
September 29, 2025 at 7:35 PM
alienwrites.bsky.social
Perks of being a marketer + project manager: you can build free trackers for your editing and drafting workflows. Motivation is stored in the completion progress bar!
September 27, 2025 at 11:36 PM