How it got published is a story in itself (and one I’ll cover in the next post). But as I prepare to release the sequel, Love Means Nothing, I thought I’d share the query letter I used when I was deep in the query trenches.

Love and Other Scores is available wherever books are sold, including Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

The breakdown

When I queried Love and Other Scores, I received:

• three full requests (including from my publisher)

• two rejections with an invitation to query future works

• eight form rejections.

I queried for approximately six months before signing with my publisher. I didn’t have an agent. In Australia, it is common for authors to pitch directly to publishing houses without an agent.

Besides querying directly, I also:

• Pitched in person via a Virtual Agent session (recommend this!)

• Posted on social media about my book (more on this in the future).

The query letter

A note: some elements of this query letter have been redacted for privacy’s sake.

Dear ABC Literary Agency,

I am thrilled to submit my 85,000-word LGBTQI+ romance novel, Love and Other Scores, for consideration with your agency.

Love and Other Scores is a friends-to-lovers, “I didn’t know he was a celebrity” romance about a breakout tennis star and a bartender set during the Australian Open. It’s got the big-hearted feelings of Heartstopper combined with the celebrity thrill of Red, White and Royal Blue. [Author note: I was querying in 2022, so these were appropriate comp titles.]

Twenty-four-year-old Gabriel Madani eyes his first Grand Slam at the upcoming Australian Open, but the pressure is getting to him. After an intense practice session, Gabriel finds refuge in a bar in South Melbourne and meets a bartender-slash-aspiring-jazz-musician, twenty-year-old Noah Burgess.

Noah offers to show Gabriel around Melbourne; but the more time they spend together—discovering alleyway donut shops and crashing drag shows—the less they can deny their feelings for one another. As Gabriel advances through the Australian Open, his chances of taking home the cup become real. Until a leaked photograph changes everything.

Love and Other Scores was shortlisted for the 2021 Penguin Random House Write It Fellowship.

I’m an LGBTQI+ writer in Australia. I hold a Bachelor of Arts from RMIT University. My short form non-fiction work has appeared in X Y and Z outlets. In 2020, I self-published More, a LGBTQI+ romance novel, and have sold approximately 4,000 copies.

Thank you for taking the time to consider my manuscript. Please reach out should the work appeal.

Kind regards,

Abra Pressler.

What works about this cover letter?

Writing a cover letter is one of my favourite parts of the creative process. It reminds me of what the stakes are, the driving force that keeps the characters together, and the overall “vibes” I’m trying to achieve with the manuscript.

It also reminds me to keep things short — you can see here I only spent TWO PARAGRAPHS describing the book’s plot, ending with a plot twist. 2022 was also a time when trope-focussed marketing was emerging, thus the early focus on the tropes of LAOS, but if I had to write a query letter now, I’d probably shave that down quite a bit. Friends-to-lovers celebrity romance would suffice.

I was very fortunate to be shortlisted for an award, so I included it in this manuscript, as well as details of my previously published novels — I included self-publishing here, so they could see I had a modest track record of writing and selling books.

I altered the query letter according to the recipient. Sometimes, I had a personal connection as I’d met the recipient at a conference or had been referred by a friend. Sometimes they had called out for a specific manuscript and I’d add something like, “as per your post on Twitter” (this was in the Twitter era!). I tried my best, where I could, to make a personal connection.

If I had to write a query letter for Love Means Nothing…

It’d go something like this…

Dear ABC Literary Agency,

I am thrilled to submit my 90,000-word sports romance novel, Love Means Nothing for consideration with your agency.

Perfect for fans of Chelsea Curto and Meg Jones, Love Means Nothing is a friends-to-lovers spicy tennis romance that follows two head-strong tennis stars who reluctantly agree to play mixed doubles, only to fall for each other. It is the standalone sequel to Love and Other Scores (Pan Macmillan, 2023)

Swedish tennis heartthrob Lukas Froebel has won Grand Slams and gold medals, but one achievement eludes him — the triple crown awarded to a player who wins the singles, doubles and mixed doubles titles at a single championship.

Hannah Greer was once America’s darling until her tennis career, and life, completely blew up at the hands of her ex-boyfriend. Despite the odds, she is determined to claw her way back. But returning to top form isn’t easy. So when a star coach offers to help her, Hannah reluctantly agrees. The catch? She’ll have to play mixed doubles with none other than Lukas Froebel, the brother of her biggest rival.

The longer Hannah and Lukas spend on the court, under the sweltering sun of a European summer, the stronger their attraction grows. Until a decades-old secret threatens to ruin everything.

[Here I’d add a few additional things about my career, awards won, Fellowships, etc]

I hope the manuscript appeals, thank you for your time.

Kindly,

Abra Pressler

On to writing news

I’m publishing Love Means Nothing on 15 June 2026!

If you like the sound of Love Means Nothing, make sure you’re following my Instagram for the latest news! I’ll be publishing character art, the [amazing] cover, teasers, and how you can get an ARC. <3

What else have I been working on?

Earlier this year, I finished the first draft in a firefighter romance trilogy. I’m so excited by the potential of this new series, and hope to share more about it with you soon. Think: firefighters, Christmas, kittens, & a whole lotta spice ;).

I want a Labubu.

That weird little dude above is Baba from the Have a Seat Collection (named because all the figurines are sitting down). Three weeks ago, I didn’t know my Love from Hope, my Dadas from my Hehes, or my Lafufus from my Lachuchus.

But all that has changed.

For weeks, I have been scoffing and rolling my eyes at the internet’s latest obsession — a toy keychain based on the Labubu character in “the Monsters” story series, designed by Hong Kong-Belgian artist, Kasing Lung.

To give you a sense of the phenomenon, an authentic Labubu purchased through PopMart will RRP for $32AUD. Resellers, including businesses, will resell sealed or unsealed Labubus for upwards of $100.

Labubus and Lafufus and Lachuchus, oh my!

But the more content I saw of those weird looking guys, the more I was influenced. I’m just a girl, okay! A girl who can be influenced!

And I thought, “okay maybe I’ll get a Lafufu but as a JOKE” and it’ll be like totally ironic. A “Lafufu”, for those not in the know, is what the internet calls a fake Labubu. If the Lafufu is considerably messed up or disturbing, it then becomes a LaChuChu.

Stay with me here.

Despite my best intentions, my fascinations with Labubu persisted. This week, I found myself on PopMart Australia’s website (a registered seller of authentic Labubus), waiting until the 6pm drop of the latest Exciting Macaron Labubu blind boxes.

Blind boxes are all the rage: you purchase one or more blind boxes, with a hope you’ll get the Labubu you really want (hi, Luck or Sea Salt Coconut!). There’s also a chance (1/72) you might get a super rare “secret” Labubu. ID, the “secret” Labubu from the Big Into Energy Series, can fetch upwards of $350 on eBay.

Here’s the thing about Labubu drops: they’re scheduled twice a week, limited to perhaps a few thousand units, and extremely competitive. There are Reddit forums DEDICATED to helping people strategise to purchase a Labubu. So while I didn’t expect to score a Labubu on my first go, I thought I might have a decent shot and maybe get through the payment gateway before the website crashed.

That’s not what happened.

Picture it: Tuesday, 5.58pm. I had a single Labubu in my cart ready to check out. I’d scoured the Reddit forums and knew you needed to have an address loaded into the PopMart profile to ensure the fastest checkout possible. I’d done that. I was ready.

6pm. The countdown timer ended. I clicked “Pay Now” with the Labubu in my cart, only for it to refresh. Suddenly, a pop up appeared: EMPTY CART sign.

No.

He was just there.

In the cart!

But in the space of three seconds, the Labubus were gone.

Do I need to get a grip? Probably.

I told my colleague I was fighting online with internet strangers to buy a $30 polyester toy, and we got in a discussion about the ethics of purchasing a knock-off toy on purpose.

She asked, “okay but how do you tell the difference between an authentic Labubu and a Lafufu?”

“Oh, it’s easy,” I replied. “The ears have to point inwards, and be around the same size. Then there’s the eyes, and the—,”

I stopped. Paused. Since when did I have the knowledge to identify a freakin’ fake Labubu? When was the last time I touched grass? Went outside? Felt the sunshine on my face?

The Labubus had me in their tiny little acrylic paws. Right where they wanted me.

I closed the computer. I went home. I text my family members, my boyfriend. I made dinner.

But later that night, as I scrolled TikToks in bed, I saw an unboxing of several Labubus with what the user described as “factory faults”. Barely a few weeks ago, a twisted limb and or an uneven face was the calling card of a Lafufu.

Now, any fault was evidence, for many commenters, of the slack production quality resulting from the surge in demand for Labubus. The factory was rushing them out to make more money, they said, cashing in on the trend while it lasted. People weren’t happy. They wanted quality, but they also wanted quantity.

No, don’t use Labubus to talk about quality in book publishing, please!

Also this weekend, beloved fantasy author Sarah J Maas announced she’d finished the “first drafts” for her long-awaited ACOTAR 6. By the time it’s out, it’ll have been over five years since A Court of Silver Flames, the fifth book in the series was released.

In between, Maas has also published two additional books in her other ongoing series, Crescent City. While fans were thrilled to see progress on the book, many others criticised the time it took to write the draft, and the stagnant process — “what, just the first draft?” was a common comment.

This is in addition to growing discourse around slipping editorial standards in books more broadly, and readers talk about a sense of “rush” or “churn” to get books out quickly in order capitalise on the trends and momentum, mostly fuelled by TikTok.

To be clear: I’m completely on the side of the author taking as long as they want to write a book. Writing a book is hard, and takes a long time. Health issues, family challenges, financial struggles, creative block — none of it stops just because people are waiting for you to drop the next book.

It’s a balance felt keenly by many authors, specifically predominately Romantasy authors, who grapple with the complexities of building a convincing romantic arc, but also maintaining, or extending a fantastical world and storyline.

Indie authors don’t have it any easier, either. Without the long production of traditional publishing, it feasibly means they can get work out quicker than traditional publishing — but they’re also reminded to “keep publishing, keep writing, or people will forget you”.

The demand to meet consumers is at war with the time it takes to create; a push-and-pull compromise that is further fuelled by the TikTok consumerism machine. Keep making content, make lots of it, or fall into obscurity.

Writing updates

In my the April writing update, I shared I was working on a two-book Romantasy series.

In exciting news, I’ve commissioned the cover for the first book, and the draft is coming along well! The story focuses on Iris, a woman trapped between her past and present lives and between who she wants to be and what her community has made her. There will be a dragon. There will be a love interest with strong Andrew Garfield vibes. There will be death trials.

I’m planning to self-publish both books in 2026. More news soon!

Like every other writer in the world, my books were included in the LibGen database, detailed in a directory published by the Atlantic, and there is very real evidence to suggest that Meta torrented the book database from LibGen, and fed it into their latest AI experiment, Llama 3.

This includes my self-published works, and my latest book with Pan Macmillan Australia, Love and Other Scores.

Do you want to know how much money Meta paid me to use my time, expertise, and intellectual property? Do you know how much of a cut my publishers got from this deal?

Zero. Nada. Not a cent.

Incredibly slow & unreasonably expensive

Court documents in the articles listed above suggest there were internal discussions at Meta HQ on obtaining and licensing a large dataset, but the cost was, apparently, “unreasonably expensive” (yes, dude, it’s like billions of collective hours of people’s creative lives — how cheap did you think it would be?) and “incredibly slow”.

AI companies don’t like “incredibly slow”, nor do they like things that are “unreasonably expensive”. Meta want to remain competitive in this fast-moving AI world; they want to build bigger, better AI machines. And they need a lot of data — the most recent and best data — to do it.

So, as the court documents note, Meta made the decision to download the trove of books on LibGen and cram it into its AI. And they’ll use our collective creative capital to… to make a chatbot. Cool.

Big sigh.

So, why do people pirate?

There are a over a dozen articles out there on the Meta issue, including a statement from Penguin Random House, and I encourage you to read them. But when I thought to approach this issue, I thought “well, let’s talk about why our books are pirated in the first place.”

Fun fact: on the release day of Love and Other Scores, the very first notification I received was… a Google alert that my manuscript had been uploaded to a pirate site. Even before I saw my books on the shelves, you could download the PDF and there was nothing I — nor my publisher — could do about it.

Books — just like music, TV and movies — have been pirated forever. People have different reasons for pirating content, and it’s important to understand the reason why they might choose to pirate books, especially when they know it impacts author’s careers.

Firstly, some people who use pirate sites do it because they genuinely believe in everyone’s right to a free source of global knowledge. They believe Earth’s artistic culture is shared by all, and should be accessible to everyone.

Others pirate while fully knowing they shouldn’t. Often, it begins with pirating books you wouldn’t usually purchase — namely, university textbooks. From there, it’s easy to find and download the latest Ali Hazelwood book onto an iPad, or Kindle compatible file, which you can then email to your kindle address to automatically load onto your device.

And once you have literally every book you could ever want at your fingertips, why pay $24.99?

Blatant theft — but not always black & white

But, there are shades of grey: some readers use pirate sites because there are economic and trade barriers which prevent them from purchasing English-language books in the countries they live. Tariffs charged on imports, plus shipping, and limited booksellers/vendors in some countries means that pirating is often the only other alternative readers have.

Most people in Europe, North America, and Australia can access bookshops, libraries, and online retailers to find the books they’re looking for — we can pick up the books a the shop, or, occasionally, wait for it to arrive via post. This is simply not an option in other countries, especially where English is not an official or national language. Genuinely, these readers may have no other feasible way of accessing a book.

It still doesn’t make it right, but I think it’s always important to understand nuance outside of a my own Western-centric perspective.

The majority of people who choose to pirate because they don’t want to pay money for the thing you made, because why should they?

And you can see the logic. Pull up any Marvel movie and you might think, “well, the franchise alone is worth billions, Chris Evans got paid $300 million to do this, it’s a box office success, the studio won’t miss the $15 movie ticket”. And you’re right. They probably won’t.

But your favourite author isn’t Chris Evans, and Penguin Random House isn’t Marvel. There is a very real chance that unless you pay a couple of measly bucks — or loan the book from a library or other public scheme — the next book in your favourite series may never come out.

Take the very real story of Maggie Stiefvater whose trilogy was almost ruined due to piracy. She traced the drop in her e-book sales to the leaked e-ARCs of her highly anticipated sequel.

Globally, the average author — not SJ Maas or Richard Oseman (though they are both wonderful people, I’m sure) — makes less than $20,000 a year. That figure also includes income from events, workshops, and school visits.

I can confirm in 2024, I made far less than that.

Earlier this year, I received a payment from Kindle Unlimited for $1.10. But who’s bragging?

Taking on the pirates

Anyone who has ever pirated anything ever will tell you that when one pirate site goes down, another will inevitably pop up in it’s place. Pirate sites, after all, are big business. Millions of visitors frequent these websites a month, resulting in big revenue for web advertisers.

Some independent authors diligently send around take-down notices whenever an alert pops up, others add codes to their ARCs to identify and report readers who upload their copies to pirate sites.

In 2013, Katy Guest wrote a brilliant article for The Guardian about the ways companies and the government could come together to ban and remove pirate sites in the UK.

Also in that article, as corroborated with Maggie’s, is an emphasis on the incredible risk piracy holds to series authors — a heavily pirated book two means book three is “dead in the water”.

So in summary, if you support an author, and have the means to: buy their book, or ebook, or listen to the audiobook, on whatever platform you prefer.

If you don’t have the means, loan it through your local library — seriously! we get money for that! — borrow it from a friend (we still get money from that!), get it through a local second hand bookstore (again, we still get money from that!).

And if after all that, you really have to pirate — then at least have the grace to leave a review.

Writing update

I. Submitted. My. Manuscript. To. My. Publisher.

That’s it. That’s the writing update. I did it. After twelve months of blood and sweat and complaining to everyone who would listen, I submitted the Tennis Book 2: Electric Boogaloo to my publisher.

Writing the book was incredibly challenging for many, many reasons I won’t get into but I love this book. It’s spicy and real and hopeful and full of heart.

I truly hope I have the opportunity to share more with you in the near future.

In the mean time —

For the last six-ish months, I’ve been plugging away at a new friends-to-lovers, forced proximity, fake dating manuscript. It is the most ambitious, most challenging, most complex thing I’ve ever written following two university friends and their friendship group over 12 years.

Work on the manuscript was funded by an ArtsACT grant, and I could not be more grateful for the opportunity to be paid to think and write and create art.

I’ve just finished a very rough first draft, and I’m excited to work and develop the book further. But for now, it’s resting. It’s the kind of book that needs a rest, and I’ll come back to it with fresh eyes in June or July.

So, being me, I’ve of course decided to write something else…

Romantasy.

Mild spoilers for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Sometimes, we can build a world so vivid, it takes on a character of its own.

Recently, I’ve found myself stuck in a rut over world building for Tennis Novel 2: Electric Boogaloo [working title]. The first book, Love and Other Scores, was set in the beautiful and sticky city of Melbourne, where I lived, worked and studied as an undergraduate. It was easy to reach into those memories and put parts of my experience on the page.

The second standalone book is based, for the most part, in Miami.

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Dear reader, I think it’s clear to say I have never been to Miami. I chose the setting because many tennis players live in Miami, and I’d made references to it in the first book. So how do you create a sense of place when you have not – or for my fantasy friends, can not – experience(d) the place for yourself? How do you create a sense of the world that feels real to the reader, especially those who may live there?

My first step is to scope out where a character may live using Google Maps, and then what it might look like using real estate websites like Zillow. This both ticks my need to be incredibly nosy, but also sparks questions like":

• how they interact with their city. Can they easily catch public transport, or is it better to Uber?

• If Uber, what’s the traffic like?

• What would the weather be like during the book – is it muggy but warm? How much rain might they get? And, perhaps most pertinent,

• just how often does one see iguanas in real life?

“Not that often… maybe once or twice a year,” said someone who lived in Florida when I asked them. Welp! There goes at least four references to seeing, or hearing, an iguana. Thanks!

Despite all my research into Miami and its lack of iguanas, something still felt off. In the first book, Melbourne felt like such an essential character, something that bound the characters together and enriched their experiences.

In the second book, Miami just feels somewhere my characters live because it makes sense to them; they have no real ties to the area. Without actually realising that is the whole point Abra, they are each other’s home I became so frustrated with the book that I decided to put it aside and picked up the video game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

If you’re unfamiliar, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is like the Godfather of Role-Playing Games (RPGs). The game is incredibly long, detailed, pornographic, morally complex, and at times, brutal.

Released in 2015 [yes, almost ten years ago!], TW3 was the final instalment in a trilogy of games by Polish studio CD Projekt, and adapted from the bestselling The Witcher novels by Andrzej Sapkowski. The name may sound familiar because the books were also adapted into a TV show by Netflix, with Henry Cavill cast as Geralt of Rivia for seasons 1-3, and Liam Hemsworth from seasons 4 – well, that remains to be seen.

The protagonist, Geralt, is a in the most simple terms, a magical monster slayer. He’s canonically around ninety but still smoking hot and has the kind of humour that one develops when they spend a lot of time with only a horse for company.

In TW3, Geralt is looking for his adoptive daughter, Ciri, who he believes is in trouble (spoiler: she is). The search for Ciri takes Geralt across a gorgeous fantasy land based on medieval Poland where war wages between the north and south, and it’s every man or magical creature for themselves.

But finding Ciri isn’t easy – and even the smallest shred of information comes at a price. Each choice you make in the game hurdles you towards one of several scripted endings, and the possible demise of several side characters you come to know and love (or tolerate). Often there are no easy answers. The world is brutal. People die and suffer.

One of the things that makes TW3 so vividly drawn is that almost every character you meet has aspirations, opinions and desires. Early in the game, you meet Phillip Strenger, known as The Bloody Baron. He admits that Ciri stayed at his Keep for a few nights, but in order for him to tell you what happened, you’re first forced to do things for him — namely, find his wife and teenage daughter who have disappeared under suspicious circumstances.

As you investigate the disappearance, you come to realise that the Baron has lied to you — he regularly beat his wife and daughter while drunk, and he knows they fled because of him. Realising he’s gone too far, he wishes to make amends. Very quickly we see two sides of fatherhood; the Baron’s selfishness hinders your own quest to find your own daughter, who he knows is in incredible danger — but busies you by finding his own, who he drove away.

It’s games like TW3 that remind me to think about my side characters, and while they might not be as incredibly awful as the Baron, it’s important to make sure they have clear wants, dreams, and achievements. Do they experience growth by the end of the book? I always tell myself that if I can’t write a book from a character’s point of view, they’re not developed enough.

After all, video games and novels ask the reader for a very similar labour — here’s a world that you don’t know, with a character you don’t know, with a writing style or playing style you’re not used to. Readers and gamers alike make quick judgements on whether something is for them based on the expectations of the genre, and how it’s presented to them.

I think TW3 is a marvellous game, and I’d encourage anyone who is interested to pick it up. But if you’re looking for other recommendations, here are my favourite immersive video games:

1. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey & Origins — if you like Ilona Maher, you’ll love Kassandra Eagle-bearer, who you play as you seek to figure out the origins of your birth in Ancient Greece.
   In Origins, you play as Bayek, an Egyptian Medjay who seeks to avenge the death of his young son. Both are incredible games that, I think, should be played in close succession.

2. Ghost of Tsushima — a truly stunning and, at times, mindful game where you play a Samurai, Jin, who is fighting an invasion on his island home.

3. Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag — aka pirates of the Caribbean but with a lot more violence. And cross-dressing. And death.

4. Red Dead Redemption — the classic cowboy game.

5. Lara Croft: Rise of the Tomb Raider — while not open world, this game won the Writers’ Guild of America Award for achievement in video game writing, and the story is incredibly fun. The setting (Siberia) is incredibly beautiful, the combat is great and is overall more action and less horror than it’s predecessor, Tomb Raider.

Also, in a fun piece of author-royalty gossip: in 2018, author Sapkowski demanded CD Projekt pay approximately 15 million dollars, after having initially accepted a lum sump payment to CD Projekt to license his Intellectual Property (IP) years prior. Sapkowski believed that due to the Witcher’s incredible popularity, he deserved a bigger piece of the pie. CD Projekt said they’d met the obligations of the license which Sapkowski had agreed. Both parties came to an agreement and an undisclosed sum to maintain positive working relationships. Never sell your IP short!

Writing

Writing has been slow. It always is this time of year. Work gets busy and the year catches up with me. Some nights I just get home and it feels like a fog has descended over my brain, and opening my laptop to work on anything feels impossible. It’s like I’ve used up all my brain power tokens throughout the day, and by the time I get home, there are none left.

Tennis Book 2: Electric Boogaloo is almost done. Almost done. So close to being done.

Secret Project #1 is also coming into itself with a first draft well underway.

Secret Project #2 is just a twinkle in my eye at the moment, but I see it as the other side of the coin to SP1 and I’m so excited.

Everything will get done. Just not all at once.

Reading

I only read one book in October. It was Ali Hazelwood’s Bride. In the novel, Misery, a vampire is forced to marry, Lowe, the alpha of a Werewolf pack, to strengthen diplomatic ties. Misery has a great voice, and is incredibly sarcastic which is a lot of fun on the page. Lowe is brooding, mysterious and really really ridiculously good looking with a heart of gold for his young sister, Ana.

It took me all month to read Bride which is more a reflection on me than on Ali, but I thought was an interesting departure from Ali’s contemporary work, which I fully enjoy, and have read most of by now. Bride is a spicy book, and clearly based on Ali’s time in Archive of Our Own forums. I’d love to see Ali write an extended fantasy series; she clearly has the imagination and work ethic for it!

[Girl how do you write so many books, please tell me.]

Events

No more events this year. I’m tired. And staying home for a few months to write more books.

A big thank you to those who invited me along to events this year — Sandie Docker, who launched her new fabulous book in July, the Northern Beaches Readers Festival, as well as Mel and the team at the Riverina Readers Festival in Wagga Wagga.

If you’d like to invite me to speak at an event, workshop or other fun thing you’re doing, feel free to visit my website www.abrapressler.com and fill in the contact form.

Okay love you, bye!

*deadly accidents that occur during translocational travel only happen one in every 100 instances of such travel!

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“It wasn’t a monster come to eat me. It was this monster. Who’s come to eat me out.”

Ruby Dixon, Ice Planet Barbarians.

At the peak of the pandemic, TikTok was the fastest growing social media platform in the world. Book lovers naturally gravitated to #BookTok.

Fuelled by the all-powerful TikTok algorithm, BookTok shared ‘word of mouth’ book recommendations from readers with similar book interests—if you engaged with one video about queer romcoms, for example, you’d have twenty more videos funnelled your way.

As users discovered the power of the algorithm, recommendations narrowed even further: I want a book where characters are forced to share one bed! Enemies-to-lovers! He falls first!

And then, around June 2020, when we were deep in Covid-19 lockdowns, someone mentioned a series of ‘blue alien erotica’ novels and people on TikTok collectively lost. Their. Shit.

Did you say… blue alien erotica?

Yes. The ‘blue alien erotica’ was Ruby Dixon’s 2015 independently published book, Ice Planet Barbarians. The first in a twenty-two-book series, the novel follows alien abductee Georgie, who is dumped on an ice planet by alien captors. There, she meets Vektal, a blue alien ‘barbarian’, and through the trials of surviving in the hostile environment, they fall in love.

In a matter of weeks, the book became a viral sensation with #iceplanetbarbarians accumulating 15M+ views on TikTok. Readers flocked to download it, or read via Kindle Unlimited, Amazon’s book subscription program.

Penguin Random House published a special edition of Ice Planet Barbarians in November 2021, and the series hit shelves globally.

But even before the explosion of Dixon’s work, the sci-fi romance genre (which is the correct term for ‘alien romance’ or ‘alien erotica’ — even though a lot of it is, categorically, not erotica) had been popular among a group of dedicated readers for several years. Dixon had released approximately sixteen books in her Ice Planet Barbarian series before the first book went mega viral—and Goodreads reviews tell us that most who ventured over from TikTok picked up the book to sate a mix of curiosity and horror… but then, surprisingly, they kept reading.

…And reading.

And reading.

Some worked through the entire series, while others read seven or eight books before losing interest [which any publisher will tell you, is a pretty darn good read-through]. In my group of friends, we got to the fourth book before branching off on our own adventures. I kept reading the series and a few more of Dixon’s books. I think, in no uncertain terms, that she is a literary genius who can wield the tools of romance writing so masterfully, it’s practically flawless.  

Okay, so why were people obsessed by blue alien men?

According to one Reddit user, ‘FANCY PEEN’.

Yes, Dixon’s aliens had fancy appendages not found on the mere human male, but it’s bigger than that.

You might read a story about a woman falling for a giant blue alien man and think ‘this tells us nothing about our society’ except it DOES. Books like Ice Planet Barbarians deeply understand the universal fantasies held predominately heterosexual female audience — the desire to find someone who, above everything else, understands them.

Each female character has a backstory and an issue to overcome outside of the romance with the male character — in Barbarian Lover, Kira must find a way to fight off the aliens who want to re-abduct the human women, and destroy the transmitter in her ear that is leading hordes of aliens to their isolated planet. Through these trials. her alien companion, Aehako, learns to see her for the person she is — not the woman he’s simply attracted to (I know, I know, revolutionary. But stay with me!).

Marilyn Fyre’s 1983 publication, The politics of reality: essays in feminist theory, explores the idea that the majority of heterosexual men ‘want devotion, service and sex’ from women, yet overall seek validation, learning, respect and companionship from other men.

While there is an element of the sexual (we’ll get to that later), Dixon is explicit in emphasising how each character benefits the other; there is mutual respect, collaboration, and desire. Women are revered as for their ability to give life, yes, but they’re also highly valued as partners, diplomats, teachers, healers and hunters. They find more meaning on an ice planet than they ever did in their lives on Earth, which are often riddled with the demands of a capitalist society, the patriarchy, bleak discourse on the ‘role of women’ by podcast bros, and shitty ex-boyfriends.

I’m not saying alien romances offer a glimpse of a utopia, but women in these novels are centralised in alien romance [and romance, more generally] in a way that they’re not in real life. More importantly, the male characters are decentralised from the woman’s aspirations, at least at the start of each novel [see Barbarian Lover example above].

Did you really just link to feminist theory in an essay about getting freaky with aliens?

YES.

Also, switch out aliens for faes or vampires. It’s all fundamentally the same! It’s just different world-building and weirder body parts.

It's no coincidence that Dixon’s work resonated (lol) with readers at the height of the pandemic, a time when women were disproportionally affected by lockdowns. Women were first to reduce or leave employment to take care of children, impacting their income, superannuation, and were doing the lion’s share of domestic work.

After all, the characters were literally carted off a shitty planet and dumped on an ice-world where barbarian men were desperate to prove they were worthy of a woman’s time with a fancy peen to match.

Another societal issue explored, albeit briefly, by Dixon is the orgasm gap: the disparity between heterosexual men and women achieving sexual pleasure. Female pleasure and worship are at the centre of all of Dixon’s books. And look, there is a larger conversation to be had about the sex in these books, but this isn’t the place it’s gonna happen.

Sci-fi romance knows what it is, and it doesn’t take itself seriously. It’s supposed to be escapist and fun — but that doesn’t mean it’s not saying something.

Writing

On to the updates. As many of you know, I’ve been hard at work on Tennis Book 2: Electric Boogaloo, which is nearing the end of the first full draft [many edits on particular sections; please no questions on my drafting approach, it is shameful]. It’s been a bit of a mammoth book to write for a lot of reasons.

Mostly, I’ve felt that my draft wasn’t as fun and fresh as the polished, edited and published Tennis Book 1: Love and Other Scores, which I was reading to get back into the feel of the world. I would sit down to start writing, read a bit of my actual published book and feel… overwhelmed by how far I felt TB2 had to go. Which is delulu because LAOS took me two years to write, and had like 5 editors by the time it was published, and I’ve only been writing Tennis Book 2 since May.

Also, the book deals with some pretty big themes outside of tennis [huge surprise I know!] and it’s been a challenge to research and then distill that research into book format that doesn’t feel like getting an info-dump hammer to the head.

Regardless, Tennis Book 2 should be finished by the end of September, and then it’ll be left alone in a quiet dark drawer for a few weeks before I redraft and send onto my publisher for their thoughts. I hope to share actual news about how wonderful and fun and swoony the manuscript actually is — not just how conflicting it feels to write it sometimes.

ALSO! In August, I went to the Romance Writers of Australia conference — you can read my top takeaways of that conference here:

Reading

Recently, I read two very excellent books —

You, Again by Kate Goldbeck was a delightful When Harry Met Sally inspired read set in New York. It’s a slow-burn romance between two enemies-turned-friends-turned-lovers who have spent years in each other’s orbit via New York parties and gallery launches and events hosted by friends-of-friends. I found it delightful and poignant and very modern. I cannot wait for Kate’s next book.

Girl Falling by Hayley Scrivenor was also a great read this month. Set in the Blue Mountains in Australia, it’s Scrivenor’s follow-up to the smash hit Dirt Town, and follows childhood friends Daphne and Finn, who go rock climbing with their new friend Magdu, only for Magdu to slip and fall to her death. Or did she?

You can keep up with what I’m reading on my Instagram.

Listen

Me? Yapping on a podcast? It’s more likely than you think.

I was so thrilled to join the amazing Karina May and Clare Fletcher on The Rom Com Pod to talk all things SPORTS ROMANCE. Yes, the thing I have written 2.5 books on. You can listen to our chat, where we talk about why we love them and give you some absolutely TOP TIER recommendations for sports romances HERE:

Events

On 28 September, I’ll be appearing on a panel called Stories that don’t play by the rules at the Northern Beaches Readers Festival in Avalon, New South Wales. The incredible Clare Fletcher & Justin Smith will also be on the panel. The festival has a great line-up and tickets are available here.

In November, I’m doing a one-night-only event in Wagga Wagga NSW for the Riverina Readers Festival. More on that in my next newsletter.

okay love you bye,

Abra.

Each year, something encourages me to get back on the dating apps. Most people are familiar with the depressing cycle of the dating apps — you join, swipe, chat, sometimes meet, and are mostly unimpressed by the whole process. Yet, you hear couples affirm they met on Tinder or Bumble or Feeld or Hinge or whatever new better app there is, and so you think, well it must work for some people, why not me? It’s enough to keep the hope alive. Maybe you just haven’t met the right one yet. Maybe they’re just a few more swipes away!

My annual attempt to date a man

Normally, I don’t share information about my love life. Mostly because people will realise how much of my own experiences are in my books, but also because they’re real people who I once cared about quite considerably.

After matching with a guy on a dating app earlier this year, there was two months of ‘talking’; a handful of dates, a few instances of telling my friends ‘I kinda like this guy!’ — then suddenly he was gone. Disappeared. Dead.

Much like the characters in Dolly Alderton’s novel, Ghosts, I thought, ‘he’s busy’, then, ‘maybe something happened’, until a full week passed with nothing… and I realised I’d been ghosted.

Of course, my first instinct was to justify his poor behaviour with my own insecurities. I thought, ‘what did I do for him to ghost me?’ Did I come on too strong? Maybe he didn’t like how I always talked about tennis? Maybe he thought I was boring?’

None of those reasons are true. One cannot talk about tennis too much.

No, he ghosted because of the reasons people ghost each other: an inability to communicate in difficult situations, and an avoidance personality. It was a hard conversation he didn’t want to have — and so he didn’t.

Almost everyone I know has been ghosted. These issues are rife in modern dating. Yet ghosting and the miscommunication that comes with it, is so rarely explored in romance fiction — mostly because it is incredibly hard to pull off, and perhaps unsurprisingly, almost universally hated by readers.

‘I hate the miscommunication trope!’

The miscommunication trope can cover a miscommunication, misunderstanding, or sabotage of communication. A classic example is in Romeo & Juliet — Juliet takes the liquid that will put her to sleep, but the friar fails to deliver the message to Romeo and he believes she’s dead, and takes his own life.

Real life is, of course, often not as dire. People misunderstand tone in text messages. People don’t say what they mean, or choose their words poorly. Our expectations and assumptions about people fill in the gaps as we rush to make sense of confusion, and when it involves a person we like — or deeply love — the stakes are high.

But despite poor communication being a leading cause of conflict in a relationship, it struggles to translate onto the page.

My god will you just TALK to each other?!

Critics of the miscommunication trope point out they dislike when all the conflict in the book can be resolved if only the two characters would have a simple conversation.

They far prefer it if there are other factors keeping the love interests apart — and miscommunication amplifies the angst between them.

They also hate when the main characters have overcome other hurdles to get to the point where they see each other as romantic interests only for that trust to fall away for ‘superficial reasons’. Think: ‘seriously, you’re going to throw away all the trust we build up as doubles partners at a tennis grand slam title just because you thought you overhead me say I still love my ex?’ kind of way.

Regardless, my recent ghosting has inspired a new novel I’m working on, which I suppose is making lemonade out of lemons.

Writing

Writing a newsletter about ghosting seemed fitting because, since November, I have very much ghosted you. I’m hoping to make my writing here a more regular occurrence. Speaking of writing…

In March, I delivered another sports romance manuscript to a publisher which I’d promised for over a year; I’m very excited to [hopefully] say more about it in the future.

I’m also working on the next book in the tennis series [please do not get too excited]. It’s still early days. I’m reading a lot about tennis match-fixing [purely for research for a fictional novel, I promise].

In July, I received a grant from ArtsACT [a government arts department] to work on a new manuscript over the next nine months about two long-time best friends who run a [harmless] scam but end up playing themselves.

I did talk with friends about whether a harmless scam can be a romance plot line, because scams do hurt people very badly [identity theft is not a joke, Jim!] but since the scam is almost victimless, the consensus is that it’s okay.

Come say hi — events I’ll be attending…

In August, I’m going to the Romance Writers Australia conference in Adelaide, South Australia.

I’m also thrilled to appear on a panel called Stories that don’t play by the rules at the Northern Beaches Readers Festival in Avalon, New South Wales in late September. The incredible Clare Fletcher & Justin Smith will also be on the panel. The festival has a great line-up and tickets are available here.

That’s all for now. Speak soon!

Those who have followed me for a while will know that I decided to self-publish a novel, More, in 2020. That was followed by two novellas, a Christmas sequel to More, titled More or Less and a standalone novella called The Next Big Thing.

In that time, I’d been working on this book, polishing it and pitching it. An early version of this manuscript was shortlisted for the Penguin RandomHouse Write It Fellowship, and I received really positive feedback on it when I submitted it for a Varuna Fellowship (but just missed out!). In early January 2023, I sent out a tweet about my queer tennis romance while attending the Australian Open and the commissioning editor at Pan Macmillan emailed me - and now we’re here.

So today, I thought I’d share a Q+A about the book, the writing process and what this whole book means to me.

Okay, so what is the book exactly about?

Gabriel Madani is a global tennis superstar and heart-throb. As he eyes his first Grand Slam title at the Australian Open, the pressure is getting to him. After an intense practice session, Gabriel finds refuge in a bar, where he meets Noah.

Oblivious to sports, Noah doesn't recognise Gabriel, but there is an instant connection. The more time they spend together in the blazing heat of a Melbourne summer, the more their feelings and attraction grow.

Both Gabriel and Noah have their reasons for wanting to keep their romance private, but neither can deny their attraction to each other. So, of course, drama ensues!

Can you tell us what tropes we can expect?

You can expect a friends-to-lovers romance with a golden retriever hero and another hero who channels strong 90s Leo DiCaprio vibes (think the floppy hair of the Romeo + Juliet era). It’s a sports romance, so of course it’s got the sports. Found family, high spice (this is an adult book!), let-me-show-you-around-the-city kinda vibe (I don’t know if that’s a trope but if it isn’t, it should be!).

Where did you draw inspiration for the novel?

Tennis, of course. I love tennis and have loved it since my early teens. I once stayed up late on a Sunday night watching one of the early Rafa v Djokovic finals at the AO. My friend, Bec, and I actively track tennis as it moves across the globe, texting each other match updates or reactions to shock exits.

So I wanted this book to pay homage to my love of tennis, to the celebration of a tournament, to the fun and joy and sweat one experiences at the Australian Open especially.

But I also wanted it to examine the realities of queer representation in sport. There has never been an openly gay male tennis player ever, in the history of tennis. There are many openly gay women playing, but most men decide to ‘come out’ after their professional career has ended. So, I wanted to explore what that looked like for Gabriel, how it impacted his identity, and what he’d have to consider if confronted with a public relationship.

Noah’s bar is based on a small cafe I worked in while living in Melbourne. I used to commute from Footscray to Chapel Street via the 222 bus. To anyone who knows Melbourne, yes it was a nightmare.

Who is your favourite character in this book?

I don’t think it comes as any surprise to say, Gabriel Farid Madani. He is perhaps the most complex, genuinely lovely, challenging and delightful character I’ve ever written. I simply adore him and the fact that I no longer get to write him any more is a little sad.

In the book, you’ll also meet Peaches the Drag Queen, who I also really bloody love. She was so much fun to write and came to me completely fully fleshed out and ready to be written into the story. I also adored researching her fashion; drag fashion is so fun to write about - who knew?!

A close third is another supporting character, Lukas who is your typical cocky, attractive tennis player with a heart of gold.

What was the hardest thing about writing the book?

Without a doubt, the tennis matches. Good sports writing is EXTREMELY difficult. Not only do you have to know the game well enough to, essentially, commentate it, but you also have to consider how the character is feeling and how their body moves, and make sure that the pace is fast and interesting, and that each tennis match is different from the next. IT IS HARD! I just hope I did it justice.

What is your favourite scene in the book?

There’s a very extremely brief scene where Gabriel plays tennis with Noah. It’s probably way too short to even qualify to be my favourite scene, but I adore it.

What are some comparison titles?

Okay, so I pitched this book to my publishers as Red White and Royal Blue meets Carrie Soto is Back, and I still think that’s accurate. I’d throw in the spice level of Icebreaker, with the feels of The Charm Offensive.

Love and Other Scores is out from Pan Macmillan Australia from Tuesday 28 November 2023 across Australia.

No spoilers.

A jewel in the crown of Taika Waititi’s off-beat television endeavours, Our Flag Means Death is a largely fictional retelling of the relationship between Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby) and Edward Teach/Blackbeard (Taika Waititi) that has seduced viewers around the world - and it’s not hard to see why.

Set during the 'Golden Age of Piracy’ between 1650-1730, OFMD combines off-beat humour and hilariously hopeless characters navigating a dysfunctional “workplace” that just happens to be a pirate ship, with several on-screen queer relationships. The runaway hit series celebrates quirkiness, the importance of mental health, and, perhaps above all, having the courage to be yourself, no matter what.

It’s a sentiment that resonated with critics and viewers alike.

In 2022, OFMD ranked in the top five most streamed media on HBO Max, received a 'Certified Fresh' approval rating of 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, and perhaps the most indicative metric of success; over ten thousand fanfic entries on Archive of Our Own (AO3).

(If you don’t know what that means, remain innocent my sweet, sweet, child).

Creator and showrunner David Jenkins was compelled to write the series after learning about Stede Bonnet via the Wikipedia page. Jenkin then approached Waititi about his idea. After workshopping the concept, both agreed the Bonnet/Blackbeard romance was the queer pirate representation the world needed, nay, deserved.

The star of OFMD, Rhys Darby, who plays Stede Bonnet, is perhaps the only actor who can make me care for the story of a privileged & rich white man who abandons his wife and young children. A clear fish-out-of-water compared to his grimy, grisly & bloodthirsty crew, Rhys emulates the role of sweet cinnamon roll idiot hero so well, that it’s hard not to feel both enamoured and completely frustrated with him. Known mostly for his work in Flight of the Conchords, Hunt for the Wilderpeople and What We Do In the Shadows as a werewolf (not a swearwolf), Darby is able to sink his teeth into a deeper, more complex leading role while still maintaining the off-beat humour synonymous with his name.

Sadly, Waititi, in comparison, is perhaps the weakest actor in the ensemble cast.

Joke. I could see a photo of Taika Waititi kicking a pigeon tomorrow and think “eh, the bird probably deserved it”. In fact, once I had a dream Taika and I were in love and we could be together once I finished running a marathon, except every time I finished running said marathon, I found out he’d signed me up for another marathon.

His portrayal of Blackbeard is complex and nuanced, chaotic and deeply, deeply emotional. Waititi’s Blackbeard is a man who isn’t always who he seems, who feels deeper than people give him credit for, and who is, quietly, slightly worried he’s losing his touch in a world that’s changing far quicker than he is.

What makes OFMD so loveable isn’t the quirky humour, or the excellent costumes, or the novelty of seeing a “Hollywood famous man” like Waititi play a zany anti-hero.

OFMD achieves what few have managed to do in comedy: explore the space of queer desire & yearning in a world that doesn’t aim to make couples suffer because of their queerness.

The writers give the space for Stede and Blackbeard to explore their relationship & who they are to each other without questioning their own sexuality by establishing the presence of accepted queer (and open) relationships early in the series.

It’s a subtle nod that means a lot to queer watchers who have been hurt before by queerbaiting, and the mockery of calling out queerbaiting with more? queerbaiting? (Looking at you Sherlock and Supernatural).

For those new to the term: queerbaiting is the intentional teasing of a queer relationship in media to appease audiences looking for representation, without the relationship ever ‘paying off’. It’s a very specific term used to describe fictional relationships. Real-life people, like say, Harry Styles, can’t queerbait.

With the emotional turmoil of the ‘are-they-are-they-not?’ queer put to rest early, we’re left with the divine ‘will-they-won’t-they?’. There’s delightful banter and moments of endearing “fuckery” as the characters both grow closer and are, simultaneously, torn further apart. As Stede grapples with the challenge of adapting to the realities of his romanticised life of piracy, Blackbeard contemplates whether the pirate's life still fulfils him and, if it does not, what will?

As I described to my colleagues, ‘I’ve spent my weekend just sobbing over two queer pirates trying to find their place in the world. Ten out of ten, would recommend.’

Season 1 & 2 of Our Flag Means Death is currently streaming on HBO / Binge.

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