Leo Astrum

@leoastrum

queer SFF writer | he/they | UK-based | the autistic transmasc that infantilisers warned you about | icon: cosmitasia currently writing: Wake at Landfall (sci fi novel)

195 Siguiendo432 Seguidores680 Publicaciones

Bluesky

gay trans

¿Es tu perfil?Reclámalo y leoastrum.dirty.social es tuyo.Reclamar perfil

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Jun 16

Hey look I wonder whose work that could be 👀

A screenshot of the book's contents page. The text reads: Trans Possibilities in the Speculative Works of Andrew Joseph White by Leo Astrum

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Apr 4

Trying to psych myself up to revise my novel by reading what other people have written about revision and lol lmao. My protagonist's pronouns are they/them

A screenshot of an extract of text. It reads:

Strengths and Flaws

The protagonist of a novel has to be extremely “round,” with many contrasting sides to his or her personality. For one thing, this makes the

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Jul 31

.........no comment

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Jun 6

My piece, Sing Into Silence, is in this issue!! It's a piece of short modern fantasy flash fiction about encountering religious art made with maligned magic. It's free to read here! www.thepinkhydra.com/issues/02012...

Sing Into Silence by Leo Astrum

“You know, I heard he might have used magic to paint these.”

I try not to freeze at the words, my eyes lingering perhaps too long on the soaring arches of the painted ceiling. I already know that – the artist is famed for it, when you talk to the right people – but I’m not meant to.

genres: fantasy, modern; magical realism, queerness / wordcount: 650

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Jun 2

Oho what's this 👀 www.thepinkhydra.com/issues/02012... Available from 6th June!!

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Apr 1

Oh look what's that After a year of working on it on and off, I finished a first draft for an original manuscript for the first time!!!

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Mar 24

My second book read for the #TransRightsReadathon is An Unkindness of Ghosts, which is phenomenal and deserves every good word I've heard anyone ever say about it. I stayed up late to finish it last night and can barely string coherent thoughts together today, though 😅

A photo of a book on a background of dark blue cloth with stylised stars on it. The book has a dark galaxy background with a face of a black person layered on top. The text reads An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon.

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Mar 21

My first read was a quick one, and not necessarily a book - Gender Who? is a fanzine I picked up in 2021 (!) when it was on sale as a physical book and only read now. It's an interesting collection of works and reads more as a passion project than a particularly curated anthology.

A photo of a book. The cover is black and shiny, dotted with blue, pink, and white stars, with a TARDIS from Doctor Who in the centre and a trans flag streaming behind it.
The text on the cover reads: Gender Who? A Charity Anthology Edited By Elizabeth A. Allen. A Trans / Nonbinary / Gender-Nonconforming Celebration of the Whoniverse.

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Feb 16

I'm a writer so no art of him (yet)... this is Rye!! He is a man of many things - geology, disaster rescue, revolution :D - and he's the (queerplatonic) love interest of my sci-fi wip

An image of a picrew - PotatoLord is the original creator. The image shows a young black man with short, black curly hair and dark eyes. He's wearing a blue jumper with a whale on it and a dark denim jacket with a fur lined collar. The background is split between the asexual and trans flags.

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Feb 1

I'm reading for the fantasy category for the Small Spec Book Awards! #SSBA These are the books I'm reading for the first round: ⚫Design of Darkness 🟠The Jaguar Mask 🔵Nine Levels 🟡The Extravaganza Eternia 🟣The Princess and the Thief 🟢Tree Gods

The background is an image of some very full bookshelves. The foreground is the covers of six books: Design of Darkness by R.D. Pires (a purple book with a light shining from a dark, cave-like landscape), The Jaguar Mask by Michael J. DeLuca (a green and orange book with a jaguar on it), Nine Levels by Elana Gomel (a grey-blue book with a ghostly face imposed over a mountain range), The Extravaganza Eternia by Kristin Osani (a colourful book with a dancer on the front), The Princess and the Thief by Mary Lynne Gibbs (a purple-blue book with a winding path leading from the woods to a castle on it), and Tree Gods by R. Lee Fryar (a green and black book with two figures running beneath a large tree).

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Jan 25

I THINK this is all the books in my flat that are by/include trans and/or nonbinary authors, except my partner's near-complete collection of the works of Alexis Hall. (Almost - there's at least one book each by McQuiston and Yoon Ha Lee that I forgot until I'd already put these back on the shelves)

A stack of books on a table. In the background is a sofa, large windows that open into darkness, a woven rug, and some plants. The books are (from the top to the bottom):
a trans man walks into a gay bar by Harry Nicholas
Chef's Kiss by TJ Alexander
Masculinity: An Anthology of Modern Voices by various authors
Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco
The Nation's Saddest Love Poems by Sam J. Grudgings
The Pairing by Casey McQuiston
The Masked Empire by Trick Weekes
The Best of Assigned Male by Sophie Labelle
Idlewild by James Frankie Thomas
Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White
Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White
Peter Darling by Austin Chant
She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg
Gender Who? A Trans/Nonbinary/Gender Nonconforming Celebration of Doctor Who by various authors
The Unbroken by C. L. Clark
An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon
Dudes Rock by various authors

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Jan 17

Orchin, a disaffected cargo pilot, and Rye, a revolutionary geologist, have nothing in common. Orchin will do anything to leave Duluhan; Rye needs them to stay. The planet is wounded. Orchin doesn't want to care. Running is easy - learning the courage it takes to stay is harder. #P2Ppit #W #A #SF

A grid of nine squares. In the centre is a teal square with 'Wake at Landfall' written in the middle. The other squares are: a photo of a long circular industrial corridor, an image of a starry night sky, a forest with purple trees, a sun-lit conservatory with plants growing in it, a murky image of stacks of cargo containers, a room with white walls and high, vaulted ceilings, a shot of a sunset over water, and a picture of purple and yellow pansies.

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Nov 30

I made it!! 50k in 30 days, for the 12th year in a row

A screenshot of a line graph, with the x axis running from 1st-30th November and the y axis running from 0 to 50k. There is a straight red dotted line across the graph and a blue line which keeps up for six days, falters behind for the following twenty three, and then shoots up just above the red line at the end.

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Nov 17

Saw this and had to immediately run to my danmei shelf because holy shit the coincidence

A photo of a bookshelf. Visible on one end are several books in Seven Seas' danmei print series and on the other end (with several Dragon Age books in between) is a plush toy of shiny Hisuian Zorua.

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Nov 11

I got Rule #35 - Microphone (Fish in a Birdcage). A delightfully unhelpful snippet without context lmao, but Orchin is having a TERRIBLE DAY

Orchin looked at Andromeda, fiddling with a wire attached to something on eir outfit, presumably feeding back to some kind of earpiece or microphone. They didn’t know how to navigate this. They just knew that what Andromeda had admitted right now was the piece they’d been missing, the reason that their interrogators had been so sure that there was some way out of this.

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Nov 3

😊 (I thought I was gonna get something a bit more depressing than this. This is nice)

Your Result:
Love
You create from love. It is an overflowing love that seeps out of your heart and into all you create. You couldn't possibly contain it inside yourself, and so you dedicate yourself to depicting it through everything you make. Your art is a celebration of what you cherish most, a loving tribute to everything that captivates you. There are things too wonderful to be appreciated in silence, and so you sing of your love time and time again. You are determined not to let your vast love go unnoticed or forgotten. That's why your work is a declaration of affection, an expression of fondness for everything that makes your life worth living.

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Oct 28

What was your first Pokemon game and starter? I had a second-hand copy of Pokemon Diamond! We couldn't work out how to delete the save file that was already there (barely started) so my first was Turtwig.

An image of Turtwig, a small green turtle-like Pokemon with a leaf growing out of its head.

The cover of Pokemon Diamond Version, with Dialga - a dark blue Pokemon with paler blue lines across its body (which has four legs, a tail, and a large head on top of a fairly long neck) and several metal spiny features on its chest, back, legs, neck, and head.

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Oct 19

Quote with four of your favourite video games! <- guy who likes sequels, apparently. Honourable mention to Fire Emblem Three Houses, which is basically the reason I'm a writer.

The cover for the video game Splatoon 2. It's a busy landscape of several human-like squid kids flinging ink in pink and green using various weapons, such as water guns and paint rollers.

The cover for the video game Pokemon Black 2. It's a dark background with blue lightning cutting across it, with the Zekrom-Kyurem fusion Pokemon on top. The fusion is hard to describe, but it's a big black and blue dragon creature.

The cover for the video game Dragon Age 2. The background is the spread wings of a large red dragon, with the character Hawke - here a man with dark hair, wearing spiked metal armour and carrying a staff with a red orb on one end and a blade on the other - standing in front.

The cover for the video game Xenoblade Chronicles 2. It depicts several characters - Zeke (a grey haired man in a dark coat with a large grey and blue sword), Pandoria (a green-haired woman wearing a purple dress), Nia (a grey-haired catgirl wearing a yellow jumpsuit), and Dromarch (a grey tiger) running towards Rex (a short brown-haired boy wearing a blue jumpsuit) and Pyra (a red-haired woman wearing red), who stand in front of a huge whale-like creature that's jumping from the cloudy horizon in front of a huge tree.

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Oct 4

When I was studying classical art in my final year at secondary school, I went to Athens for a long weekend. Poked my way through a dimly-lit exhibition with no knowledge of what was inside (signs were in Greek), and right at the end was Diadoumenos, one of my set works. It was MAGICAL.

A photo of Diadoumenos, a white marble statue by Polyclitus. The statue shows a completely naked man tying a ribbon around his forehead. The statue is missing the ribbon and one hand.
The photo is of the back of the statue, showing the stand (a tree trunk) and the bare back muscles and arse of the figure. It is on a black background with strong white lighting to accentuate the shadows.

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Sep 11

#LGBTQWriteAThon My MC is Orchin! They're a nonbinary, aromantic, and disabled space cargo pilot from Earth. After leaving their home to escape the memories of a bioessentialist cult upbringing, they're stranded on a distant planet after its revolution kills the management of their company.

A picrew from the creator PotatoLord. It depicts Orchin, a light-skinned person with long, braided brown hair, heavy eyebrows, a large nose, dark eyes, and stubble. They're wearing dark, practical clothes and sitting in a blue wheelchair. The background features the aromantic and nonbinary pride flags.

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Jun 27

I finally finished writing prep notes for Wake at Landfall - onto the outline!

A screenshot of the Scrivener statistics pane. The word count for the selected documents is 40985.

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Jun 21

#LGBTQWriteAThon day 21 - unhinged trope maps I've never made a trope map before! This was pretty fun

A teal background with a cover in the centre. The cover is an image of space with a teal, wavy overlay on top and a teal rocket. The text of the cover reads: Wake at Landfall, Leo Astrum.
Around the cover is dark text. The text, from left to right, reads:
Ghosts of the capitalists killed in the revolution haunting the narrative
None gender, left bone deep weariness
A singular token cis (she's a lesbian)
He's not dark and mysterious he's just autistic and has PTSD
Alien plants eating your home? Sounds like a skill issue
They didn't bring pets on our ships so we're domesticating these alien creatures instead
Your detatchment isn't cool it's a symptom of a broken system
Shoutout to the cold void of space for inventing a new kind of neurodivergence
Rip to that other cult leader but I'm different (she's not)
Purple plants, because vibes
A socialist education is overrated, just form a queerplatonic relationship with your space Amazon driver

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Jun 1

For the start of Pride, all the queer books I've read so far this year :) that half of these have trans characters has been really great so far, and looking forward to even more in the next 7 months of the year

An image of a set of full bookshelves, overlaid with the progress pride flag. In front are images of eight books - Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall, The Spirit Bares its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White, Queer Crips: Disabled Gay Men and their Stories by Bob Guter and John R Killacky, Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee, New Selected Poems: 1984-2004 by Carol Ann Duffy, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz, The Best of Assigned Male by Sophie Labelle, and Something to be Proud Of by Anna Zoe Quirke.

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Apr 30

I managed to write 25k of prep notes (and 31k overall - I wrote a bit of fanfic on the side) for my new novel this month! I'm pretty pleased with myself, 25k was what I was gunning for

A line graph, with ranges from 0 to 25k. There's a red 'par' line and a blue 'actual' line, which tracks fast progress at the beginning of the month, very little in the middle, and steady progress towards the goal at the end of the month.

Leo Astrum@leoastrum· Mar 23

I'm working on something new! Wake at Landfall is a queer sci-fi novel with a nonbinary, disabled MC whose steady space travel job gets swept out from under them by a revolution on their destination planet, leaving them stranded