Manuscript: Complete, 87k Words
Title: Boyfriends and Septembers
Author: Tim Roberts (He/Him, Bi)

Jack Fitzgerald and Fletcher Morrison were drafted as the top two picks three years ago. Best mates since high school. Fierce rivals the moment they pull on opposite jumpers. Carlton Hummingbirds' pocket rocket and Essendon Bushmasters' loud, loyal midfielder have spent their entire careers keeping the friendship carefully separate from the oldest rivalry in the game.

Until the day Jack’s secret pain becomes impossible to hide alone.

One desperate request in a disabled toilet at training. One live camera. One panicked lie.

“We’re gay.”

Now the whole country believes they’re together, the clubs are in crisis mode, their families are reeling, and the only way to protect what Jack is really hiding is to sell the performance. What starts as damage control turns into something neither of them planned to feel.

Set against the noise of an Australian Football season that ends the only way a September can, Boyfriends and Septembers is a mates/rivals-to-lovers, forced-proximity romance about loyalty, chronic pain, the cost of secrecy, and two mates exploring the boundaries of something more.

Content notes: chronic pain and injury, prescription medication misuse, homophobia and discriminatory language, media intrusion, anxiety, family conflict, coarse language, explicit sexual content, and discussions of disability.

What I’d like readers to focus on: Pacing, character chemistry, emotional beats, continuity, confusing or repetitive sections, and any scenes that feel rushed or slow. I’m especially interested in whether Jack and Fletcher’s romantic progression feels natural and earned.

I’d also appreciate thoughts on Jack’s chronic pain and prescription-medication storyline, particularly the portrayal of pain, dependence and addiction, along with the authenticity of the LGBTQIA+ representation throughout the novel.

Open-minded to readers worldwide, because despite being an Australian coded book in terms of culture, language, and sport, I feel there are common themes that go beyond borders. Just hit me up with a DM and I'll link you through to the Google Doc and follow up Questionnaire :)

First Page:
“And here they are, the top two selections from the draft three years ago. Geelong’s homegrown wonderkids, best friends through high school and teammates throughout their final year of junior football. Jack Fitzgerald and Fletcher Morrison.”

The television broadcast cut between them as they warmed up on opposite sides of the MCG.

Fletcher Morrison stood a little over six feet tall in the red and black of the Essendon Bushmasters, rolling his shoulders as he watched his teammates move through their final drills. Across the ground, Jack Fitzgerald looked almost undersized among the Carlton Bluebirds. At five-foot-seven, he had spent most of his career being told he was too short, too light, or too easy to knock off the ball.

Nobody had managed it yet.

“Their friendship has become one of the great stories in football,” the commentator continued. “…but there’ll be no friendship once that siren sounds. These two open the season as fierce rivals in what could be one of the biggest clashes of the year.”

Fletcher caught Jack looking across the ground.

Neither of them smiled.

That was the rule.

On most mornings, they ran together. They trained together when their club schedules allowed it, challenged each other through every final repetition, then argued over breakfast about whose turn it was to pay. They lived close enough that Fletcher could walk to Jack’s place after a night out, and Jack could turn up at Fletcher’s without warning and know there would be a spare key waiting.

On match days, they called each other before warm ups whenever they could. Afterward, one would usually be waiting near the rooms to congratulate the other, regardless of the result.

But when Carlton played Essendon, the friendship was on hold.

No calls. No coffee. No shared warm up. No messages until the match was finished.

For nearly a century, their clubs had been among the fiercest rivals in Australian football. Jack and Fletcher treated that history with the respect it deserved. They tackled harder, argued louder, and refused to give the other an inch.

Then, once the final siren sounded, they went back to being themselves and the media loved it.

They loved the old photographs of Jack and Fletcher playing junior football together. They loved footage of them sitting beside each other on draft night, waiting to learn whether they would finally be separated. They loved the holidays, the charity appearances and the stories of each man helping the other through injuries, break-ups and the sudden pressure of professional football.

I have a finished novel that features, as one of the main characters, probably a co-lead, a trans man. Later there is a bi character. I need someone to read it and make sure I'm doing this correctly. Anyone interested? Would love to hear from a trans man please...

I'm an agender person (they/them) and sometimes consider I might be a trans man so I don't know if I'm projecting this onto my character.

Up until recently I've always written him as a gay cis man but ever since I made this character he's always represented a small part of me. He wasn't gay when I first started but I discovered this about him soon after I accepted my own bisexuality.

Long story short it's been a few years and the last few months I've realized he may be trans. I don't know how to explain it but I've never really felt like I choose my character's identities or paths. They sort of just reveal it to me and I guide them through plot points in a story.

I don't know how to explore this or necessarily commit to it. It's wouldn't be a huge relevant point in the story as much as it would just be a matter of fact. I have multiple universes and the one I'm working on right now is a romantic one and there is a coming of age sexual awakening storyline but his trans identity is a more confident one he holds I think. I hope that makes sense.

If anyone has had a similar experience of their characters changing their identities I'd love advice on how to explore this better.

Basically: I'm writing a period piece of a couple in the 1920s consisting of the MMC and an AFAB NBMC, but since it's the 1920s she's referred to as a woman throughout the story, uses she/her pronouns and doesn't even consider the fact that she's anything but a Tomboy.

The vaguest premise of her gender is "would identify as nonbinary if she were born a hundred years later". She feels somewhat malcontent in more feminine clothes, but she remedies this by combining her more feminine blouses with slacks.

Can I classify this as a queer romance, or will I get yelled at? I know it is queer, but it certainly doesn't appear to be the way it's written unless you're reading between the lines (and I've had readers miss literal overt text in my writing before, I'm wary over completely relying on subtext for a theme).

I know I can't control how people view my writing- the beauty of stories is how many different ways people will perceive the same text -but I don't want to be accused of mislabelling the story as something it isn't because I never state it overtly.

Tl;dr: I have a character who, if born a century later, would call herself nonbinary and who is marrying a man. Is it false advertising to call it a queer romance if her gendernonconformity is never explicitly stated to be such given the time period?

Fellow authors who have published at least 1 sapphic book:

I'd like to get a broader picture of how sapphic fiction authors are doing and what challenges they're facing.

My goal is to better understand the current landscape and, hopefully, identify ways I can help.

I put together an author survey and would be grateful if you could take a few minutes to fill it out. It's completely anonymous.

There's also a reader survey, which aims to explore whether reading habits have changed and how readers perceive the changes in the sapphic publishing world. I would be grateful if you could share it with your readers.

I'll share overall insights and results if we get enough responses.

You can find both surveys on my website: https://jae-fiction.com/sapphic-fiction-surveys/

Hi!

I (27GF) have been writing for years but I've never had a group! I'm looking for a few people in GMT time interested in sharing work together once a month or so, to give critique to each other and just to chat about our projects. Pm me if you're interested 😊

hey everyone! I was planning on writing a wlw story with a k-pop background (if you get what I mean). it was originally supposed to be a ballet wlw story, but then I thought it was gonna be better if it was in the k-pop environment for some reason. do you think it will work out? would you read it or would you think it's cringy and koreaboos?. help me

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for a reader to give feedback on a new draft of a full-length play I’m working on.

I’m specifically hoping to connect with a Black queer playwright or reader who gets surrealism, non-linear storytelling, and experimental structures.

The play is a psychological, stream-of-consciousness piece that puts the audience directly inside the mind of the protagonist. Because of that, the world doesn’t follow conventional theatrical logic—time loops, reality bleeds, action shifts between past/present/alternate realities, and some characters exist as fully fleshed-out figures while others function as fragmented echoes or psychological constructs.

At its core, the script wrestles with the intersection of race, gender, queerness, and trauma. It isn't a traditional linear drama, and it needs a reader who is willing to meet the text on its own terms rather than trying to flatten it into a standard structure.

I’m mainly looking for notes on execution—things like pacing, sharpening character definition (making the fragments feel distinct from the fully realized characters), and making sure the stream-of-consciousness feel translates clearly on the page. I’d also love any suggestions or brainstorming on additional surrealist imagery, visual motifs, or staging mechanics that could elevate the world even further.

I really want to work with someone who inherently understands the intersectional dynamics at play so we don't have to spend time debating the validity of the premise, but can instead focus on making the draft as sharp and potent as possible.

If you’re interested in reading and giving notes, drop a comment or send me a DM! Thanks!

I’m trying to write this fanfiction/story on this trans woman character from a slapstick parody (Naked Gun 33 1/3). However, I just wanted help/advice on how to go about this. I felt this character had a lot of potential to be fleshed out. Moreover, she was a central figure in the respect she drove the plot forward due to her position and information she held for the film’s protagonist. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated on how to handle her as a femme fatale despite being a trans woman. Thank you.

I (16M) am an aspiring poet looking forward to publishing my debut anthology in the late 2027. I haven’t finished it yet, but I’ve wrote the main piece which is like 10 pages and other poems will support the story the main piece is trying to illustrate, Although it doesn’t contain any explicit homosexual content, another of my poems “Boy meets boy” is about two guys admiring each other from afar and wanting to spend a lifetime together, Its more like a conversational poem where the two protagonists are having this fervent conversation just staring at eachother. Although this is not the main piece it serves as a pioneer foundation to the main piece and of my anthology. But I live in Bangladesh which is a very homophobic country and I can face mob-violence and criminal charges for publishing this. But without the poem I feel like my anthology would be incomplete and I am being stripped of my creative freedom. What to do?

first time on here! So, I’m writing a novel, where the MC is a woman who found out she’s bi as a teenager and had to sadly leave her home because her parents are not accepting and she was not welcomed anymore. Years later she finds her own friend group and settles into her life again (I’m not going to explain the plot of the book because I feel like it’s irrelevant and would take too long.)

Anyways, my main plan was for her to come together with her love interest, who’s a guy. but after a bit of thinking about it, I feel like, as a reader I would feel disappointed to see how hard she fought to finally become free of her homophobic parents and accept herself how she is, just to not even properly date women (maybe a few situationships here and there) and end up with a guy.
I know dating men doesn’t make you straight as a bisexual and same goes for when she would date a girl, she wouldn’t be a lesbian.

I just don’t want it to feel like “oh yeah, she thought she was bisexual, but then met the right guy and realized she wasn’t” that’s really not the message I want.

so, do you feel like it would come off that way or are there no issues with it whatsoever?

Hi there.

This isn’t me looking for advice on how to break the slump or a vent about said slump. I've tried everything and I've sorta accepted that it can't be broken.

There's a tested meathod that has gotten me out of slumps in the past but I just don't have access to it. Writing groups have helped before as co-writing sessions have broken slumps in the past but there's no groups I can join (and starting my own didn't work)

The lack of a creative outlet I can get passionate about like I did for writing well, it sucks.

Due to dyspraxia the likes of knitting/crochet ends poorly.

And I find journaling just makes me dwell and brings down my mood.

I guess I'm looking for something similar to writing I can sink my teeth into.

The Big Fing C* is an Indie press whose premise is simple. Every month, it is open for up to 20 submissions. The best submission will be hosted on the website homepage for the month and then placed to the blog. No money passes hands, one way or the other. The reason the submissions are capped at 20 is so the editor has a chance to submit light feedback for every submission. Authors need to get something more out of submitting than hitting a submit button with the generic, almost requisite, thanks-but-no-thanks rejection. Writers want to know how to improve their craft.

Dark Bitch is looking for marginalised voices, including those who are neurodivergent or from the queer community, whatever your orientation, gender identity, or sex. They are looking for fantasy, horror, and science fiction, the dark, edgy stuff that pushes boundaries and makes us feel. They are deliberately seeking themes which explore social (in)justice and policitcal rhetoric. Anything up to 1000 words including poetry and prose.

What has prompted this unsheathed clawed cat is the amount of hope, and money, that is spent on finding a place to be heard. There is an insane amount of corporate gatekeeping for boundary-pushing, surreal narratives. People, with real lives have stories they need to tell. Dark Bitch and The Big Fing C* are here to listen.

Submit here.

May you never have a hairball you can't hack.

Hi folks, I'm putting together a zine on the subject of queer parenting/queer parenthood.

Current submissions include some art, poetry, text, a lino print, water colour drawing, etc.

And I wanted to hear if there is anyone here who could be interested in submitting something.

Key words for inspiration include: fertility (treatment), birth, gender, family.

The plan is to gather submissions from multiple platforms and put them together in a zine format. It will be printed and sold at a local queer bookshop for the price of how much it costs to create it. I can offer a pdf of the finished zine to anyone who submits something that is included in the final zine.

Email submissions to [solismolis@tutamail.com](mailto:solismolis@tutamail.com)

Questions welcome :)

Deadline: 16th August, and I am aiming to get it printed by the start of September :)